Reply to message from [log in to unmask] of Fri, 04 Oct
>
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>Sender:       Archives & Archivists <[log in to unmask]>
>Poster:       Max Evans <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      skeleton-cleaning -Reply
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>
>All of the discussion of skeleton cleaning assumes
>(if I'm reading the discussion correctly) a human
>skeleton.  If that's the case, then the discussion
>should be about the appropriateness of a museum
>keeping human remains in the first place.
>
>Hasn't anyone heard of NAGPRA (the Native
>American Graves Protection and Repatriation
>Act)?  Most culturals consider the disposition of the
>remains of their dead to be special.  For museums
>to ignore these values by curating (or worse,
>displaying) human remains is offensive.
>
>
 
Does this apply to austrolapithcenes and other early hominids?
Where on the timeline do cultural values become discernible?
Are the flowers in the Neanderthal graves at Shanidar evidence
of a reverence for the body; ergo, the skeletons should be
re-buried?
 
Sensitivity to sensibility is certainly appropriate; a blanket
restriction on research posited on emotion and faith is also
certainly questionable.  As others have noted, the archival
task intrudes on the privacy of individuals who may have had
no idea that their private thoughts would be read and re-read
for hundreds of years.  But, as we all well know, to rely on
purely public pronouncements to discern motivation is to be
led into error.
 
We all have our sacred cows, and to display the bones of one
to a Hindu could well be offensive.  A somewhat converse
example: I've been re-reading the articles in the JOURNAL OF
AMERICAN HISTORY regarding the cancellation of the Enola Gay
exhibit, THE LAST ACT, at the Smithsonian.  History (all of it,
documentary and artifactual) is not solely celebratory and
comemmorative; we can't ignore the literal and figurative
skeletons in the closet.  *I* found the quashing of the
analytic aspect of the Enola Gay exhibit both offensive and
disturbing, even if I did not agree with all conclusions the
curators drew.
 
Is it an ox or a sacred cow being gored, and who confers the
sacral status?
 
 
 
 
--
Michael McCormick
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