Reply to message from [log in to unmask] of Fri, 04 Oct > >---------------------- Information from the mail header ----------------------- >Sender: Archives & Archivists <[log in to unmask]> >Poster: Max Evans <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: skeleton-cleaning -Reply >------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >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 [log in to unmask]