Human Remains in University Museum

REPORT OF THE STEERING COMMITTEE ON

Human Remains in

University Museum

Collections

FALL 2022

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CREATION AND CHARGE TO THE STEERING COMMITTEE

A. Results of Survey of Human Remains in Museum Collections

B. Enslaved or Likely to Have Been Enslaved Individuals

Recommendations Concerning Enslaved or Likely to

Have Been Enslaved Individuals

Provenance Research: Essay by Dr. Aja Lans

C. Return of Other Human Remains

Recommendations for Return of Other Human Remains

Learning from NAGPRA: Essay by Philip Deloria

D.Ethical Care

Recommendation for Ethical Care

E. University Research & Teaching

Recommendations for Research & Teaching

F. Community Consultation

Recommendations for Community Consultation

G.Memorialization

Recommendations for Memorialization

AFTERWORD

APPENDICES

1. Deﬁnition of Terms Used in this Report

2. Membership of the Steering Committee

Warren Anatomical Museum

4. Care and Access Policies for Human Remains in University Museum Collections

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

“We must begin to

confront the reality

of a past in which

academic curiosity

and opportunity

overwhelmed

humanity.”

LAWRENCE BACOW

President of Harvard University

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

We live in a time in which it has become incumbent on the

University to explore and understand, to the fullest extent

possible, its relationship to and participation in the historically

oppressive regimes of slavery and colonialism. This has been

the essential promise of the Presidential Initiative on Harvard

& the Legacy of Slavery, which was initiated

by President Bacow in November 2019.

During the research associated with this

initiative’s charge, it was found that the

Peabody Museum possessed the human

remains of ﬁfteen individuals who may

have been enslaved. Further, it was already

known that the Peabody held one of the

nation’s largest collections of human

remains of Native American individuals.

Additional human remains are also held

in the Warren Anatomical Museum of the

Countway Library. As a result, President

Bacow appointed our committee to assess

issues of the procurement, provenance,

preservation, and disposition of human remains in Harvard

museums and collections. Our committee also was charged

to propose recommendations for the care of these remains

and our ethical and moral responsibilities for their future

protection, possible return, and appropriate recognition and

memorialization.

As members of this committee and the wider Harvard

community, we have recognized that it is fundamental to

our collective values, ethics, and morals to work to fully

understand and assess the University’s collections of human

remains, especially those acquired under the structural

violence of slavery and colonialism, as well as to determine

our current moral and ethical responsibilities regarding these

remains. Our collection of these particular human remains is

a striking representation of structural and institutional racism

and its long half-life.

Science and medicine, from time immemorial, have

demonstrated a deep interest in the pursuit of knowledge

of the human body. Since earliest times there have been

powerful tensions between sacred rituals across all cultures

with human remains and their use for inquiry. Ethical and

moral standards about the dead body and

its remains have no doubt varied over time.

Nonetheless, the human remains under

scrutiny in this report represent a speciﬁc

case of appropriation: they were obtained

under the violent and inhumane regimes of

slavery and colonialism; they represent the

University’s engagement and complicity

in these categorically immoral systems.

Moreover, we know that skeletal remains

were utilized to demonstrate spurious and

racist dierences to conﬁrm existing social

hierarchies and structures.

Full acknowledgement and study of this

history, however, can only be a ﬁrst step in coming to terms

with these human remains in Harvard Museum collections.

One of our committee members, Professor Henry Louis Gates

Jr., consistently reminded us that we must always remember

that “they were people too.” That they ended up in our

collections, owned by our university, demands our careful and

conscientious attention to their care, commemoration, and

where possible, their return to their ancestral peoples and

tribes. This deep and abiding commitment is the basis for the

report and recommendations that follow.

ALLAN M. BRANDT

Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine and

Professor of the History of Science

INTRODUCTION

“It is fundamental to our

collective values, ethics,

and morals to work to fully

understand and assess the

University’s collections of

human remains, especially

those acquired under the

structural violence of

slavery and colonialism.”

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

In the spirit of continuing eorts to understand the legacy

of slavery at Harvard, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology

& Ethnology conducted a detailed assessment of human

remains at the Museum, that revealed the remains of ﬁfteen

individuals of African descent who were or were likely to

have been alive during the period of American enslavement.

In a message to the entire University community on January

28, 2021, President Lawrence Bacow brought attention to

the presence of these remains together with more than

22,000 others in Harvard’s museum collections, principally

the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and the

Warren Anatomical Museum. The Warren had completed

a similar survey of its collections and associated archives in

2016 and did not ﬁnd remains with a connection to slavery

still in the collection.

On behalf of the University community, President Bacow

apologized for Harvard’s role in collection practices that

“placed the academic enterprise above respect for the dead

and human decency.” He continued by arming that “our

museum collections undoubtedly help to expand the frontiers

of knowledge, but we cannot—and should not—continue to

pursue truth in ignorance of our history.” At the same time

Peabody director Jane Pickering made a speciﬁc and formal

apology for the practices that led to the Peabody’s large

collection of Native American human remains and funerary

belongings and pledged to prioritize the urgent work of

understanding and addressing the Museum’s history.

To these ends, President Bacow appointed a University-wide

Steering Committee on human remains in the University’s

museum collections, chaired by Evelynn Hammonds, Barbara

Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and

of African and African American Studies and Professor in the

Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T. H.

Chan School of Public Health.

The Steering Committee’s charge was as follows:

• Undertake archival research on the remains of the ﬁfteen

individuals identiﬁed in the Peabody review and consider

options for the return of these remains, as well as their

burial or reburial, commemoration, and memorialization.

These eorts will serve as a pilot to inform the remainder

of the charge, namely:

• The creation of a comprehensive survey of human

remains present across all University museum

collections, as well as their use in current teaching

and research.

• The development of a University-wide policy on the

collection, display, and ethical stewardship of human

remains in the University’s museum collections.

• The proposal of principles and practices that

address research, community consultation,

memorialization, possible repatriation, burial or

reburial, and other care considerations.

For the purposes of this report, human remains are

described in four ways:

Human remains refers to the physical remains of a human

body, or any part thereof, whether or not naturally shed, freely

given, or culturally modiﬁed. In some cultural contexts human

hair may be considered human remains.

Human skeletal remains refers to bones or teeth. Both a

complete skeleton of an individual and a bone fragment

would be considered human skeletal remains and are referred

to as an “individual” in this report.

Human remains under NAGPRA are ancestral remains that

have been or will be returned under the Native American

Graves Protection and Repatrition Act.

CREATION AND CHARGE TO THE

STEERING COMMITTEE

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

University museum collections: This report covers human

remains found in collections-holding entities at the University,

that is the museums and libraries. It does not include tissue,

DNA, or other samples that are in our aliated hospitals or

research laboratories or human remains acquired as part of

the Harvard Medical School Anatomical Gift Program.

These and other terms used in the report are deﬁned in

Appendix 1. The membership of the Committee can be

found in Appendix 2. The work of the committee was

necessarily informed by existing eorts to implement the

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. As

detailed later in this report, it is the University’s responsibility

to return all ancestral remains to the appropriate tribal

nation or nations through a federally-deﬁned process.

Consequently, this report’s recommendations apply primarily

to human remains not covered by NAGPRA. The Peabody

Museum’s NAGPRA Advisory Committee will use these

recommendations as appropriate to guide NAGPRA activities.

The committee also drew on scholarly perspectives from

across the University and intersected with the Initiative on

Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, engaging a wide range of

expertise to address timely questions about the responsibility

of institutions to society.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

A. Results of Survey of Human Remains in Museum Collections

President Bacow committed to a full review of all human

remains in the University’s museum collections and the

Steering Committee contacted all collections-holding entities

at the University. Most do not steward human remains and

those that do have very small numbers which are mostly hair

keepsakes or from an archaeological context. There are a

small number of skeletal remains with provenances that need

further investigation. The overwhelming majority of human

remains at the University are stewarded by the Peabody

Museum and the Warren Anatomical Museum.

Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology

In 1866, philanthropist George Peabody committed funding

that led to the creation of the Peabody Museum, a place

for the study of anthropology, which was a new academic

discipline at that time. As one of the oldest museums of

anthropology, the history of the Peabody is intricately linked

to legacies of settler colonialism and imperialism both in

the United States and around the globe. The Peabody was

founded on the practice of collecting the cultural heritage

and human remains of diverse communities. Harvard-fund-

ed exploration and research in the name of anthropological

scholarship was the mechanism by which they were removed

from home communities.

In addition to its own active collecting, the Peabody is also a

repository for human remains from across Harvard, reﬂecting

academic practices in other areas of the University. In

addition, the Peabody accepted human remains from other

institutions to further its academic enterprise. Especially in

the late 19th and early 20th centuries, human remains were

often transferred from one entity to another, sometimes in an

exchange between two institutions, to expand and develop

the collections for the purposes of research and teaching.

By the 1980s, prior to the passage of the Native American

Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), the

Peabody cared for human skeletal remains from 10,000

individuals from the United States and the remains of 10,000

individuals from outside the United States. The remains came

from sources spanning archaeological sites of deep antiquity

to individuals “collected” to support racist science. Today

there are remains of 6,500 individuals that have not yet been

returned to tribal communities under NAGPRA.

Of the 10,000 individuals from outside the United States,

more than 90 percent are from archaeological contexts, with

a majority part of large archaeological expeditions supported

by the Museum during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The remainder were largely oered to or acquired by the

Peabody from other entities at Harvard and other universities

and institutions. The Museum has not actively collected

human remains since the 1970s, when there were a number of

ongoing archaeological expeditions around the world led by

Harvard faculty.

Individuals Covered under Native American Graves

Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)

The size and broad scope of the collections at the Peabody

make it one of the largest and most intensive NAGPRA

implementation eorts in the nation. NAGPRA requires the

Peabody Museum and other institutions and federal agencies

to repatriate aliated Native American human remains,

funerary objects, objects of cultural patrimony, and sacred

objects. The statute, along with subsequent administrative

regulations, sets forth a detailed regime that museums

must follow, including the inventorying of relevant holdings,

communications and consultations with tribal nations,

publication of notices in the Federal Register, and eventual

transfer of human remains and cultural items to tribal nations.

Numbers are presented as estimated number of individuals by catalog record

in the museum database. This method tends to overestimate the actual number of

individuals within an accession but is widely used for its consistency in approach.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

The Peabody has developed a systematic and comprehensive

program to administer NAGPRA that includes communication

with all 574 federally recognized American Indian and

Alaska Native tribes and nations as well as many state-

recognized tribes and other native groups, and has issued

more than 170 Federal Register Notices. The current phase of

implementation involves sections of the expanded regulations

issued by the Department of the Interior in 2010.

Individuals from outside the United States

There are skeletal remains from close to 10,000 individuals

originating from outside the United States. Ninety-three

percent are from an archaeological context, most of which

are likely to be more than 500 years old. Approximately

650 individuals are not from an archaeological context.

Large archaeological collections include those from George

Reisner’s expeditions in Egypt during the early 20th century

and excavations from cave sites on Mount Carmel in Israel

that are between 10,000 and 100,000 years old. Harvard

faculty have conducted research in Mexico and Central

America for more than 100 years with particular emphasis

on Maya and Aztec sites in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and

Honduras. Other excavations include European Iron and

Bronze Age sites.

Of the approximately 650 individuals not from an

archaeological context, more than half have no geographic

information. The other individuals are from many dierent

localities. Some were acquired in exchanges with other

institutions and many were transferred to the Peabody from

other parts of the University.

Warren Anatomical Museum

The Warren Anatomical Museum collection in the Center

for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of

Medicine, cares for a historical collection of 3,200 skeletal,

900 ﬂuid-preserved, and 200 anatomically prepared human

remains. The Warren was initiated in 1816 to develop a

collection of human remains to teach anatomy and pathology

at Harvard Medical School. Most of the human remains in

the collection have Massachusetts origins and often come

from private or hospital-based clinical care environments.

The remains are mostly anatomical components or represent

a speciﬁc diseased area and, with few exceptions, are not

whole bodies. At its height in the early 1900s, the Warren

held more than 10,000 remains, but during the post-World

War II period, the museum underwent a gradual contraction,

and some of its holdings were deaccessioned permanently

or transferred to other institutions. It was also during this

period that the Warren largely ceased bringing in new human

remains, only doing so on rare and speciﬁc occasions. In

2000, the Warren was transferred from the then-defunct

Department of Anatomy into the Center for the History

of Medicine, where it was stabilized and reintroduced to

University teaching and research. While a small percentage

of the overall collection, the Warren did collect racialized

crania in the 19th century. Some of these human remains are

still part of the collection, while others have been repatriated

under NAGPRA or transferred to other institutions.

To support its teaching mission, Harvard Medical School has

developed wide-ranging and diverse medical collections.

While medical collections broadly were not the focus of the

Steering Committee’s work, the principles, infrastructure, and

processes recommended should inform eorts toward their

continued responsible stewardship. Maintaining vigilance

and constant reﬂection on the purpose of medical collections

and how they are used in teaching and research remains ever

important.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

Other Repositories at Harvard

In December 2021, the Steering Committee contacted the

directors of all collections-holding entities at the University to

ask about possible human remains in their collections.

The numbers are very small and are largely archaeological

skeletal remains.

The following collections-holding entities care for human

skeletal remains:

Collection of Historical Scientiﬁc Instruments

Twenty-one human teeth in labeled vials prepared for study

at the (then) Harvard Dental School at the turn of the 20th

century.

Dumbarton Oaks

Three human skulls decorated with a mosaic of turquoise and

shell tesserae that were created by the Mixteca-Puebla during

the Mesoamerican Late Postclassic period (1300–1520 CE).

Harvard Art Museums

The Department of Ancient and Byzantine Art & Numismat-

ics cares for a small number of skeletal elements and ashes

associated with funerary urns. The Harvard Art Museums

also administer the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis: the

excavated human remains and all ﬁnds belong to the Turkish

government.

Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East

HMANE has a small collection of archaeological remains that

date from c. 3000 BC to the Late Bronze Age.

Museum of Comparative Zoology

There are a total of 25 catalog numbers representing ﬁve

skulls, eleven single-skeletal elements, four partial skeletons

and ﬁve full skeletons. Associated provenance information

is minimal and almost all came to the collection in the late

19th or early 20th century. Approximately half came from the

Boston Society of Natural History, three are associated with

Alexander Agassiz, and three are associated with Jeries

Wyman. These remains will be assessed by the University’s

new Returns Committee. There is also a small teaching

collection of thirty individual skeletal elements, including ﬁve

crania, most of which have no provenance.

Harvard University Libraries

Houghton Library cares for Des destin es de l’ame, a 19th-

century book bound in human skin, owned by Dr. Ludovic

Bouland and donated to Harvard in 1954. There is a bone

fragment purportedly of Saint Sebastian (ca. 3rd century) in a

medallion reliquary.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

In 2020, a review of the collection of the Peabody Museum

documented the presence of the remains of ﬁfteen individuals

of African descent who were either deﬁnitely or possibly

alive before the end of enslavement of people of African

origin or heritage in the United States. The remains of these

individuals came to the Museum between 1875 and 1964, a

time when human remains were often exchanged between

institutions. Many were transferred to the Peabody from

other museums and entities at Harvard. The formation of

the Steering Committee was founded on (1) the judgment

that retaining the remains of enslaved people in Harvard’s

museum collections runs counter to our fundamental values,

and (2) the immediate need to undertake the necessary

activities to enable interment (in some cases (re)interment or

repatriation) of the remains of these individuals.

The Committee began the necessary provenance research

to identify these individuals and their communities of origin,

and it acknowledges that in some instances we may ﬁnd

that their identities and stories cannot be recovered. Such

research involves detailed examination of available museum

documentation, including ledger entries, catalog cards,

accession ﬁles, and correspondence. These documents provide

clues for research outside Harvard, with examples being

census records and other institutional archives. This eort was

impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, as many archives have

only recently reopened to external researchers. However, the

Committee has made some progress, most recently through the

work of Inequality in America Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Aja Lans.

The Steering Committee has undertaken further research on

skeletal human remains from individuals of African descent

from the Caribbean and Brazil to identify enslaved or likely

enslaved individuals associated with the transatlantic slave

trade. This research found four additional individuals who were

enslaved or likely to have been enslaved, of whom two have

clear provenance that they were enslaved.

For too long, these remains have been separated from their

individuality, their history, and their communities. To restore

those connections will require further provenance research

and community consultation. In addition, research might

include DNA or other analysis for the express purpose of

identifying lineal descendants.

The eorts of research and return undertaken for these

nineteen individuals provide an opportunity to develop a

roadmap to address the remains of other individuals in which

the associated provenances suggest that they should also be

reviewed for respectful return. To accomplish this requires

an institutional infrastructure to support what is a long-term,

resource-intensive endeavor. It requires the assistance of

professional sta with research expertise and funding to

support associated costs, such as consultation with aected

communities, and to eect timely and respectful interment,

reinterment, appropriate return to descendant communities,

or repatriation.

More Details on Remains of Enslaved or Likely to Have

Been Enslaved Individuals

Fifteen Individuals of African Descent from within

the United States

The Museum has begun to identify, to the greatest degree

possible, the identities of these individuals and any lineal

descendants or descendant communities. Access to archives

outside of Harvard has been limited, until recently, due to

restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, when

many archives were closed, and the work is continuing. At this

time, research has suggested that of these ﬁfteen individuals,

one was enslaved and one was extremely likely to have been

enslaved; eleven individuals have provenances that indicate

they may have been enslaved, and two were born after 1865,

when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished

slavery in the United States. More information follows here:

B. Enslaved or Likely to Have Been Enslaved Individuals

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

Four individuals were accessioned from the Boston Society

of Natural History (BSNH); one is conﬁrmed to have been

enslaved and the others may have been enslaved. The BSNH

was founded in 1830. During the late 19th and early 20th

centuries, the Society dispersed much of its collections to

other institutions including several donations to Harvard. In

1939, the Society became the Boston Museum of Science.

One individual is named; was enslaved by Bernard Peyton of

Richmond; was accused of assaulting, with attempt to kill,

overseer Thomas B. Goodman; and was executed in 1847.

A second individual from Richmond, Virginia, was almost

certainly enslaved and was part of the collection donated to

the BSNH by Jeries Wyman, who was Professor of Anatomy

at Harvard College and the ﬁrst curator of the Peabody

Museum. Two individuals are associated with James C. White

(1833–1916), one of the founders of the BSNH, a professor

at Harvard Medical School and Curator of Mammalogy &

Comparative Anatomy at the Society. One cranium was

catalogued September 18, 1861, as part of a large acquisition

upon the passing of Dr. John Foster Williams Lane, an 1837

graduate of Harvard College and 1840 graduate of Harvard

Medical School; the other was given by Detective G. Revere

Curtis to White in 1865. The University is committed to

further research to try to identify lineal descendants and/or

home communities for these individuals.

Two individuals are part of the Terry collection, which is

composed of skeletal remains collected from the gross

anatomy dissection labs at Washington University Medical

School in St. Louis, Missouri between 1898 and 1941. Both

are nearly complete human remains. Most of the Terry

collection is now at the National Museum of Natural History,

Smithsonian Institution. The individuals at Harvard were

accessioned in 1956, having been sent to William Howells,

then Professor of Anthropology. One individual is named, was

born in June 1872 and died in December 1937. Very little is

currently known about the second individual who was born

in 1864 and died in 1934. The University hopes that further

research may help identify this individual.

Cranial remains of two individuals were part of the collections

at the Warren Anatomical Museum. One was likely donated

by Charles H. Stedman, a resident surgeon at the Chelsea

Naval Hospital and later a practicing surgeon in Boston,

before 1847. The second individual has very little provenance

information but was likely from a dissecting room and may

have come to the museum at the turn of the 20th century.

Both are likely to have been from the Boston area.

Cranial remains of one individual were uncovered during

a public works project in 1961 near the intersection of

Linnaean Street and Avon Street. After consultation with

the Cambridge Historical Commission, it is likely the cranial

remains were buried before Avon Street was constructed, so

likely prior to 1845. The land was owned by a Josiah Parker or

A. Stimpson; further research is required on the landowners

to determine if they may have enslaved individuals who could

have been buried on the site.

One individual was transferred from the Marksville Museum

in Louisiana. There is no provenance information on when

the cranial remains came to the Peabody or to the Marksville

Museum, then a state museum, but no longer in existence. It

is possible that this individual was found during excavations

of the Marksville site in Ayolles Parish, an 18th-century Tunica

grave site.

Cranial human remains from one individual were removed

from a peat bog in Delaware and identiﬁed by Peabody

Museum sta as being of African descent. This individual was

likely born before the end of slavery in the United States. As

of the date of this report, there is no further information.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

Human remains from one individual who was buried on

the University of Oklahoma’s grounds in the late 1890s

were uncovered while excavating for a building foundation.

Professor W. Stovall sent the remains to Stanley J. Olsen

at the Museum of Comparative Zoology in 1962. Further

provenance research will be carried out in Oklahoma to

learn about the construction project and history of medical

instruction.

Cranial remains of two individuals are subject to the

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

(NAGPRA). One individual has been repatriated to two

federally recognized Tribes and the second individual is part

of an ongoing consultation with tribal communities to enable

repatriation.

Finally, there is a hair sample obtained from a named

individual child born in 1902 who has been identiﬁed through

census records to have lived in Pike County Mississippi. The

University hopes to identify lineal descendants to make a

decision about the lock of hair.

Four additional individuals from the Caribbean

Islands and Brazil

Peabody sta undertook preliminary documentation of 92

individuals with geographical information connecting them to

the Caribbean Islands or Brazil and possibly the transatlantic

slave trade. Available museum documentation was examined,

including ledger entries, catalog cards, accession cards, and

accession ﬁles. The research indicates that four individuals at

the Peabody from these geographic areas were enslaved or

likely to have been enslaved.

Cranial human remains from one individual from Cuba came

as part of an accession from the BSNH in 1916. Given the high

probability that the remains are from the 19th century, there

is a likelihood the individual was enslaved.

The cranial human remains from one individual from

Martinique may have been associated with La Maison

Lavallette, Paris, which supplied osteological and anatomical

models to French medical schools and other institutions in

Paris during the late 19th century and early 20th century.

The cranium was donated to the Peabody by Dr. Ferdinand

Brigham through Carleton S. Coon in 1941. Depending on the

exact dates, this individual may have been enslaved.

Cranial human remains from an individual from Rio de Janeiro,

Brazil came to the Peabody from the Museum of Comparative

Zoology in 1870. The remains were exhumed from the “streets

of Rio de Janeiro” by “Hunnewell,” likely Walter Hunnewell, a

student of Louis Agassiz who accompanied him on the Thayer

Expedition to Brazil from 1865–1866.

Cranial human remains were sent by Gideon T. Snow to J. C.

Hayward in Boston, who donated them to the collection of the

Boston Society for Medical Improvement prior to 1847; this

collection was ocially accepted by the Warren Anatomical

Museum in 1889. This individual is conﬁrmed to have been

enslaved. He is an unidentiﬁed African man from the Nago

tribe who was injured during the Malê uprising in Bahia,

Brazil, in January 1835 and taken to the Jerusalem Hospital

near Bahia, where he died.

Recommendations Concerning the

Nineteen Individuals

Recommendation: For the individuals who have been

identiﬁed as being enslaved, or likely to have been enslaved,

the University employ provenance research and appropriate

consultation with communities or lineal descendants, to

implement interment, reinterment, return to descendant

communities, or repatriation of remains.

Recommendation: For the individuals who have been

identiﬁed as not being enslaved, the new Human Remains

Returns Committee employ provenance research and

consultation to determine appropriate action.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

As a Black woman and bioarch-

aeologist of the African diaspora,

my research begins with the dead

and objectiﬁed Black body, often as

it appears in museum and university

collections. For centuries, the remains

of “others” have been collected in the

name of scientiﬁc progress—science of

the sort that accepted their bodies as

simple data, objects to be measured.

But in my hands, they are something

dierent. They are evidence of Black

suering and death and an invitation

to explore Black “livingness,” what it

meant to live a Black life at various

moments in the past. In searching

for the Black lives behind these Black

bodies, I grapple with the vestiges of

scientiﬁc racism that continue to shape

the conception of Blackness in science

and in society and to look for new

paths to new ways of knowing.

My educational background in

biological anthropology has given me

tools and frameworks for my research,

but it did not give me language to

describe what I felt while working with

these remains. In fact, my discipline

discouraged that sort of reﬂection in

order to maintain objectivity. To ﬁnd

that language, I needed to become

somewhat undisciplined, reaching

outside my ﬁeld to the work of Black

women creatives and scholars. I found

in them powerful articulations of

the many emotions I was feeling as I

analyzed the remains of people who

I imagined to look like my family, my

friends, and like me. It was through

their decolonizing perspectives that I

realized that no scholarship is neutral,

including my own.

Gender studies scholar Katherine

McKittrick explains that “Black

intellectual life is tied to corporeal

and aective labor (ﬂesh and brains

and blood and bones, hearts, souls).”

This union of bodies, experience,

and labor is quite evident in the work

of bioarchaeologists, as we labor

to excavate, curate, and analyze

remains. At the same time, my identity

and career is contingent upon the

skeletonized remains of individuals

who in most instances never consented

to the act of being studied. Does my

research continue a history of forcing

labor from these bodies, subjugating

them anew to my intellectual curiosity?

Or is my work, with its eorts to

uncover individual lives, histories, and

experiences part of a process of repair?

What I oftentimes come back to is a

question: who will ﬁnd these stories

if I don’t do this? And what will these

researchers say about our bodies?

I doubt I will ever come up with a

satisfactory justiﬁcation for my chosen

occupation, as anthropology did, of

course, begin as a colonial endeavor.

But perhaps there are ways to move

forward that will address the violence

that has been inﬂicted upon the bodies

of “others” and bring a form of healing

to the communities that researchers

have long exploited.

In order to make change, as academics

and gatekeepers, we must make

an eort to slow down and engage

with the communities who are

impacted by our work.

This need

for engagement has become painfully

obvious to me over the past few years,

as the twin pandemics of COVID-19

and structural racism laid bare the

disproportionate harm experienced

by Black and Brown communities. I

reached a breaking point when in a

top anthropological journal, I came

Provenance Research

Essay by Dr. Aja Lans, Postdoctoral Fellow, Inequality in America Initiative

“For centuries, the

remains of ‘others’ have

been collected in the name

of scientic progress—

science of the sort that

accepted their bodies as

simple data, objects

to be measured”

Katherine McKittrick, Dear Science and Other Stories (Durham: Duke University Press, 2021), 3.

Isabelle Stengers, Another Science Is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science (Cambridge: Polity, 2018).

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

across an article discussing indications

of structural violence found on the

skeletal remains of unidentiﬁed

individuals who died attempting

to cross the United States–Mexico

border. Why not ask people who

are still alive and actively suering?

Why not talk to individuals who have

been deemed “illegal” rather than

investigating the unconsenting dead?

Looking for answers in the distant

past is an easier path to an academic

publication—at least if you are a

forensic anthropologist—but it leaves

us continuing a process of scientiﬁc

objectiﬁcation. Instead, the path

less taken runs to our living ethical

stakeholders, the people who are

directly implicated in the topics and

categories of our research projects.

That’s the path I want to walk in

my work.

Many scholars are hesitant to deal

with what is messy, what doesn’t ﬁt

into neat categories.

But if the last

few years have shown us anything, it

is that we will have to own up to our

past mistakes and the legacies of our

academic forebears. This is not to say

we are guilty of the crimes committed

by our academic ancestors, but we are

implicated in what we choose to do or

not do with the people and artifacts

we have been tasked with caring for.

It is because of this that I advocate

for transparency while undertaking

these sorts of projects. I believe it is

imperative that we rebuild trust with

the communities and stakeholders

who have suered from the science

advanced by exploiting unconsenting

bodies. Nearly every historical skeletal

collection in the United States was

started by a desire to deﬁne and

categorize the Other. That does not

mean we have to perpetuate this

narrative moving forward. By slowing

down we might restore personhood to

the remains in our care and develop

solutions for what was previously

considered too dicult to deal with.

Interdisciplinary artist and cultural

producer Ashley B. Wormsley reminds

us, “There Are Black People in the

Future.”

I focus so much on the past

and its ties to the present that I often

forget to think about what lies ahead.

It is easy to be swallowed up by the

centuries of death and suering that

are so central to my research. But it is

vital that I do not fall into the trap of

deﬁning Black life only by racism and

death, and instead consider the various

forms our knowledge production and

liberation take.

I view my work with

the skeletal and archival remains of

Black people as one way forward.

Once we overcome old fears of losing

control, giving up data, and prioritizing

one way of knowing over another, we

can actually ask new questions that

might restore personhood, and perhaps

lay these individuals to rest. At the

same time, we have the opportunity to

learn far more about these persons and

their experiences. Skeletal data provide

data and insights into people’s bodies

that is unique to bioarchaeology,

oering a powerful and nuanced

understanding of how inequality and

discrimination are embodied.

Jennifer A. Lupu, “Sex Workers as Stakeholders: Incorporating Harm Reduction into Archaeological

Praxis,” Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 31 (2020): 66-79.

Stengers, Another Science Is Possible.

Alisha B. Wormsley, “There Are Black People in the Future,” 2011-Present,

https://alishabwormsley.com/there-are-black-people-in-the-future

McKittrick, Dear Science

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

Human remains covered by the Native American Graves

Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)

The Peabody Museum has developed a systematic, compre-

hensive, and collaborative program to administer requests

for human remains under NAGPRA. The remains of these

individuals and their funerary belongings belong with Native

American tribes and are transferred according to the process

outlined by federal regulations through repatriation or dispo-

sition. This requires careful work to ensure the best possible

decisions. Such consideration is a form of respect, both to the

ancestors and to the important practice of tribal consultation,

and diligence is a crucial aspect of care and collaboration to

advance the goal of the return.

The University has recently initiated signiﬁcant eorts in

developing new approaches to its NAGPRA implementation

as it strives to fulﬁll its responsibilities to federally recognized

Tribes across the United States together with other tribal

communities. However, the remains of close to 6,500

individuals continue to be present at the Museum. The

Committee recommends that the Peabody’s NAGPRA eorts

be accelerated while continuing to respect tribal timelines.

It also recommends that NAGPRA implementation remain

separate from the return of other individuals and continue

to be overseen by the Peabody and its NAGPRA Advisory

Committee. While following the legal process is necessary,

the Museum and Committee should be mindful of the

recommendations of this report wherever possible.

Human remains not covered by NAGPRA

The University cares for a diversity of human remains in

terms of the nature of the remains, the rationale for and

circumstances of acquisition, the extent of provenance

information, geography, temporal context, cultural beliefs,

and funerary rites. This means acting appropriately and in

an informed manner is complex and takes time, respect, and

sensitivity. A single comprehensive policy for returns would

not support this type of approach and the University must

consider this an ongoing long-term endeavor that needs to be

adequately resourced to expedite action.

The Steering Committee believes that to proactively and

respectfully plan for the return of individuals, the University

must convene a Human Remains Returns Committee that

has appropriate stang and resources to support its work.

The ﬁrst task of the Returns Committee will be to implement

the recommendations for the nineteen individuals. This

includes additional provenance research, identiﬁcation of

lineal descendants and/or descendant communities, and

implementation of returns.

Additionally, the Committee will have responsibility for

maintaining the criteria for additional circumstances in which

individuals should not remain in University collections. Those

criteria include circumstances of enslavement as well as

individuals from communities that have clearly established

their wish to repatriate ancestral remains.

The Committee

may identify other circumstances that will expand these

criteria and will serve as a resource to Harvard museums as

they consider issues of ethical stewardship of human remains.

Employing provenance research and consultation, the

Committee will oversee and implement these returns.

While this is likely to be a small number of cases, it is a

time-consuming process to ensure careful decision-making

and return. As soon as cases are identiﬁed to be under the

Committee’s purview, they should be immediately subject to

a research and teaching moratorium.

C. Return of Other Human Remains

This aligns with the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples that supports the rights of Indigenous communities to the

repatriation of their human remains.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

The only exception to this moratorium would be research for

the explicit purpose of identifying the best possible action of

return. For example, techniques such as DNA analysis might

be undertaken, unless the descendant community is known to

disapprove of such research for this purpose.

Options for return would include transfer to lineal

descendants or descendant community; interment at an

appropriate cemetery (e.g., cemetery in home community);

repatriation of individuals to their home communities; and,

in some situations, continued care at the University. In

situations where provenance research and other analysis fail

to provide adequate information, the Returns Committee

will determine appropriate and respectful action, with the

assumption that interment would be the default option.

Members of the Returns Committee, collectively, should

have expertise in provenance and other historical research,

bioarchaeology, curatorial work, bioethics, spiritual

leadership, community consultation, repatriation, and

funerary arrangements. Given the involvement of multiple

Schools, the impact on research and teaching, and possible

international relationships, the Steering Committee

recommend that the Returns Committee and its supporting

administration be situated in the Provost’s Oce.

Recommendations for Returns of

Other Human Remains

Recommendation: The University immediately establish

a Human Remains Returns Committee and appropriate

supporting administration to oversee and implement returns

that fall outside the framework of NAGPRA. This Committee

should exist as long as is needed in order to complete its work

and should be situated in the Provost’s Oce.

Recommendation: The University commit to the continued

investigation of the acquisition and presence of the remains

in the museums and further commit to repatriating, (re)

interring, or returning remains where the provenance

precludes them from ethical teaching or research use by

the University, based on criteria determined by the Returns

Committee.

Recommendation: The University should continue and

accelerate its implementation of NAGPRA legislation and the

ethical and moral imperative it represents. Since NAGPRA

mandates a certain process that may not be applicable in

other situations, this should be overseen by the Peabody and

its NAGPRA Advisory Committee while being mindful of the

recommendations of this report.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

I started working on repatriation

issues shortly after the 1990 passage

of the Native American Graves

Protection and Repatriation Act

(NAGPRA). My role has mostly been

on oversight boards and policy-

formation task forces, critical but

unglamorous work with institutions

such as the Denver Art Museum,

Colorado Historical Society, University

of Michigan Museum, Smithsonian

National Museum of the American

Indian, and most recently, the Harvard

Peabody Museum. Over that time, I’ve

come to understand a few things.

First, NAGPRA has undeniably

been burdened by complicated

administrative procedures. But while

that proceduralism can feel like a

barrier created intentionally, it also

has productive dimensions. Good

procedure requires precision and

focus, and that means paying close

attention to human remains, traveling

goods, cultural patrimony, and sacred

things that might otherwise function

as abstract numbers in a catalogue.

Focus means care, and over time a

careful administrative approach to

those catalogue entries transforms

deliberate speed into a form of

respect. Repatriation work can literally

shape one’s humanity, forging humility

in the process. At the same time,

the administrative labors required

by NAGPRA demanded that Native

tribal nations develop expertise and

capacity that has served them well.

Along with humility, then, one ﬁnds in

this work a sense of tribal conﬁdence,

courage, and pride. Museums have

also developed new capacities, and

the consultations that have followed

created opportunities for tribal-

institutional partnerships. Indeed, an

institution that has not done well with

NAGPRA cannot successfully engage

tribal nations. That is as it should be

and serves as a lesson for relationships

with other communities.

Second, an institution in possession

of human remains must engage its

own history, explain its collections

and collecting, and ask dicult but

ultimately productive questions about

how those people ended up in boxes

on shelves. We question, debate,

condemn, and sometimes absolve

our predecessors, realizing that while

we may not be responsible for their

history, we are very much responsible

to it. History is not inert; it demands

action. Third, such action is required

because repatriation poses questions

of ethics, values, and morality that cut

to the heart and soul of an institution—

as an entity in and of itself—and of we

the people who constitute it. There are

the obvious questions, which tend to

stem from the history. Who has a right

to the bodies of the dead? For what

purposes? Under what conditions?

What wrongs come down to us? With

what obligation for repair? But there

are also the less obvious ones, often

generated out of the proceduralism. To

whom exactly should one repatriate?

Determined how? And what to do

about the gaps, uncertainties, and

ambiguities that arise when the

questions stop being abstract? Tribal

nationhood has oered a politically

grounded community for working

through such questions. With no

equivalent community at hand for

the remains of African American

and African-descended people in the

Peabody Museum, such questions take

on an additional layer of complexity.

To what extent should Harvard lead?

Should it help constitute a community?

How, and with whom?

Finally, I have now seen enough

repatriation—including the psychic

challenges to those working in the

trenches and the transcendent power

of moments of physical return—to

have a felt understanding of the

spiritual dimensions of these labors.

Human remains are not simply

Learning from NAGPRA

Essay by Philip Deloria, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History

“We question, debate,

condemn, and sometimes

absolve our predecessors,

realizing that while we may

not be responsible for their

history, we are very

much responsible to it.

History is not inert;

it demands action.”

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

scientiﬁc specimens, administrative

objects, or spurs to ethical debate and

historical accountability, though they

function as all those things. They have

a gravity and meaning of their own.

Add this to the ledger, then: along with

the legacies of enslavement and of

nonconsensual collecting of remains,

there is also a spiritual challenge posed

to our committee, not easily deﬁned

but present all the same. I understand

that not everyone sees it this way, but I

do. It is one of the things that has kept

me committed to repatriation work for

the last three decades—and to moving

the work forward as Harvard considers

its accountability to the legacies of

slavery and colonialism.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

Human remains at the Peabody Museum are presently in

a climate-controlled secure area, accessible only to a small

number of sta. The Warren similarly maintains human

remains collections in secure, monitored, and climate-

controlled storage that is accessible only by speciﬁc

sta. Since its transfer into the Center for the History of

Medicine in 2000, the Warren has focused its resources on

inventorying its collection in order to better center its ethical

stewardship on the remains in its care. Both museums have

invested signiﬁcant eort in creating publicly accessible

descriptions of the collections.

Recommended policies for respectful and responsible

care are outlined in Appendix 4 of this report. Most are

consistent with long-standing museum procedures. They

include access protocols and review of information available

in online databases to balance transparency with cultural

sensitivity and privacy issues with display governed by careful

consideration given to the context of the acquisition of the

remains and the teaching rationale for their exhibition.

The Steering Committee believes that the University

should create an on-campus, purpose-designed space to

support the stewardship of human skeletal remains falling

within the scope of these recommendations. This space

must foster reﬂective and thoughtful consideration with

private, restorative areas as well as a space for community

consultation visits. It should also include appropriate storage,

research facilities, and classroom spaces that promote

respectful scholarship and learning.

Recommendation for Ethical Care

Recommendation: The University construct a purpose-

designed, on-campus space to support respectful treatment

of human skeletal remains falling within the scope of these

recommendations, including areas for consultation, research,

and teaching.

D. Ethical Care

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

Research that is based on human remains from the

University’s museums is mostly associated with the

archaeological collections at the Peabody Museum. This

includes about ﬁve Harvard student projects each year and

15–20 external research visitors from the United States and

abroad. On average, 1–5 Harvard and external researchers

access human remains in the Warren collection per year.

Both the Peabody Museum and Warren Anatomical Museum

also regularly provide access to digital resources, such as CT

scans, image or 3D print ﬁles, and archival information.

Human remains that do not fall under the consideration of

the Returns Committee may be available for research. All

research requests that require use of human skeletal remains

that fall within the scope of these recommendations and are

located within the Harvard museums should be reviewed by

a Research Review Committee on a case-by-case basis. The

Committee may, in the course of its work, identify cases that

should be referred to the Returns Committee, in which case

the remains in question would be placed under an immediate

research and teaching moratorium.

The majority of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences (FAS) teaching

that employs human remains from the University’s museums

is associated with teaching in the departments of Organismic

and Evolutionary Biology, Human Evolutionary Biology, and

Anthropology (archaeological courses). These typically

serve 250–300 students a year. For many courses, replicas or

skeletons that have been donated with consent for research

and teaching, and technological tools such as 3D scanning

and augmented reality (AR) would provide suitable support

for pedagogical goals. There are some classes, especially

those concerned with human variation, historical disease,

or taphonomy (physical processes that alter remains in the

archaeological record) that require the use of human remains

from museum collections. In these cases, the remains must

be treated with respect; existing procedures at Harvard

Medical School for anatomical teaching provide an excellent

model for this.

Since 2019, the Warren has developed strong curricular ties

to the human anatomy courses of Harvard Medical School’s

Program in Medical Education. In addition to instances

requiring the use of primary human remains for medical

education, 160 students each year have used 3D printed

surrogates of human remains from the museum collection

in their head and neck learning studios. The Warren also

recently transferred a teaching collection of remains

preserved in ﬂuid to the anatomy faculty to facilitate future

instructional integration.

The faculties of Harvard’s Schools are encouraged to develop

curricula around the histories of collections of human remains

and other associated cultural items, the ethical dimensions

of their presence, and how they reﬂect the complex history

of the University. A good model is the Peabody Museum’s

class Challenging Collections which addresses the histories

of speciﬁc collections in the Museum and their relationship to

the production of anthropological knowledge at Harvard.

Recommendations for Research & Teaching

Recommendation: The University establish a Human

Remains Research Review Committee to work with Museum

sta on assessing requests to use human skeletal remains for

research by Harvard and external scholars.

Recommendation: For teaching purposes and in lieu of

using human remains falling within the scope of these

recommendations, faculty should make use of new

technologies, high-quality replicas, anatomical models, or

skeletal elements from sources that involve donor consent

whenever possible. Historical collections should only be used

for speciﬁc classes that require them, and in this case the

human remains must be treated with dignity and respect.

E. University Research and Teaching

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

Recommendation: In furtherance of its pedagogical mission,

the University encourage faculty to develop curricula around

collections of human remains and how they reﬂect the

University’s history.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

Community consultation is fundamental to ethical treatment

of human remains, especially in regard to care, returns,

and memorialization. Community members are knowledge

keepers and experts and their involvement is essential to

confront dicult truths and move towards meaningful repair.

Building these relationships takes time, humility, and ongoing

attention.

As noted elsewhere in this report, the University stewards

individuals with very dierent cultural beliefs and funerary

customs. Given this diversity, it is not respectful to have

a “one-size-ﬁts-all” approach to consultation on actions

around human remains. Therefore, the Committee does not

recommend setting up a single community group to advise

on the disposition of all types of human remains. Rather

it is important that the proposed Returns Committee be

a group that includes sucient expertise and experience

to enable it to develop a robust and thoughtful plan for

consultation. Members should include individuals with

experience in community engagement and facilitating dicult

conversations.

Careful provenance research is a necessary ﬁrst step. The

best outcome of provenance research would be identiﬁcation

of lineal descendants but, if that is not possible, research

should aim to ascertain descendant or anity groups that

have a direct social, emotional, family, or place-based

connection to the individual, meaning people who feel a direct

responsibility or interest in the individual themselves. We

acknowledge that this eort can place a signiﬁcant burden on

community members that must be recognized and include,

where appropriate, recompense for people’s time

and expenses.

The Committee also recognizes that there is a larger

community, including members of the Harvard community,

who feel a general responsibility for this work through their

engagement in wider, closely related issues (e.g., social

justice). In particular they may be consulted in regard to

issues around memorialization, as outlined later in the report.

Recommendations for Community Consultation

Recommendation: The proposed Returns Committee should

include members who have the experience and expertise

to enable meaningful descendant community participation

in decision-making, including identiﬁcation of the proper

community partners and culturally appropriate methods for

consultation.

Recommendation: The University commit to consulting

with appropriate community representatives and being

transparent in its actions and decisions while considering the

rights and wishes of community partners, particularly in the

case of lineal descendants.

F. Community Consultation

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

The Steering Committee had initial discussions about

memorialization. Ideas included a dedicated space and

memorial on campus, and ceremonies and programs (some of

which may be similar to the long-standing, annual ceremony

held by the Harvard Medical School Anatomical Donors

Program to honor individuals who have donated their bodies

for research and teaching). Such activities are complex,

especially since the human remains come from individuals

from many contexts and under dierent circumstances.

The University’s focus should be on restoring individuality

as far as possible through provenance research to open the

possibilities of engaging speciﬁc, appropriate communities to

consider memorialization.

The presence of individuals who were enslaved or likely to

have been enslaved in Harvard’s museum collections is one

manifestation of our institutional connection to slavery.

As the University considers memorialization through the

Initiative on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, we recommend

the inclusion of the enslaved or likely enslaved individuals

whose remains have been held in Harvard’s collections.

Recommendations for Memorialization

Recommendation: As the University honors the legacy of

slavery in the University’s history through memorialization we

recommend the inclusion of the enslaved or likely enslaved

individuals whose remains have been held in Harvard’s

museum collections.

Recommendation: The process of return will include the

consideration of appropriate memorialization of the individual

in Harvard’s collections as part of the consultation with lineal

descendants or descendant communities.

G. Memorialization

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

“They were people too”

On a bright, cold day in November 2021, I walked over to the

Peabody Museum to visit the room where human remains

are kept. I had never been in a room that held remains such

as these. The room is well-lit, with tables at one end for the

examination and study of the remains. This room is not large.

It has shelves on which lie grey boxes that resemble ones

used to store other precious objects in museum basements.

Many of their labels are handwritten. A few skeletons stand.

They look familiar to me but are not as tidy as the ones I

am used to seeing on display. The sta here consistently

spoke quietly and the signage on the door included a note

that asked any visitor to be respectful of the fact that there

were human remains in the room. I asked to see one of the

mummiﬁed remains and they were nothing like what I had

expected. I also asked to see what was inside one of the boxes

on the shelves. Rather than a complete skeleton, the box

contained pieces of bones that appeared to my nonexpert

eyes to be from dierent parts of a body. As I walked around

I noticed a light chemical smell in the air. My visit lasted less

than thirty minutes.

I walked back to my oce shaken by my experience. My visit

conﬁrmed for me in a deep and profound way that a museum

is not and should never be a place for the remains of humans.

It is not a mausoleum. It is not a sacred place. It is not a

culturally signiﬁcant resting place for any of our ancestors

on this planet. In fact, how people are kept in a museum

may be antithetical to practices of caring for the dead of the

communities whose “remains” are “stored” in museums. In

the room that I visited that day in November there are no

visible signs of human life—only remains. This room is not

a place for any visitor, researcher, or museum worker to pay

their respects to the humanity that surrounds them.

This committee was charged with three important tasks: to

produce a comprehensive survey of human remains present

across all of the University Museum collections as well as

their use in current teaching and research; the development

of a University-wide policy on the collection, display, and

ethical stewardship of human remains in the University’s

museum collections; and to recommend principles and

practices that address research, community consultation,

memorialization, possible repatriation, burial or reburial, and

other care considerations.

The human remains in the Harvard Museum Collections are

quite extensive. The ﬁrst responsibility of the committee,

however, was to address questions related to the nineteen

people who have been found in the University collections—

nineteen people who were formerly enslaved or likely to have

been enslaved during their life. And to extend our attention

as well to any other formerly enslaved or likely to have been

enslaved people who might subsequently be identiﬁed

through further research on the current collections.

Throughout this report, we have focused, in all the

recommendations, on the need, or rather, the requirement, to

treat these nineteen people as individuals. Given the amount

of provenance work that needs to be done, we recommend

that the University establish a Human Remains Returns

Committee to ensure that these individuals and, in fact, all

individuals in our collections be treated with the dignity

and respect which undergirds the University’s commitment

to repatriating, (re)interring, or returning remains where

possible and as appropriate.

A second important recommendation we have made is

the establishment of a dedicated space on campus that

supports the respectful, digniﬁed, and responsible care of the

individuals in our collections. This space must sit outside of

AFTERWORD

Comment by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

any of the existing museum spaces and must make visible

the University’s accountability for the presence of these

individuals in our collections. It must be a place to reﬂect on

how and why these people are in our care.

Lastly, this must be the end of the beginning of the necessary

work that Harvard University must do to face the history of

its collection, display, research, and stewardship practices in

its museums, especially with respect to human remains. Any

institution with a history as long as Harvard’s will inevitably

ﬁnd itself in the position of needing to continue to care for

some remains “…’ in trust’: in trust not for the present, but for

the future.”

This responsibility is the result of the dearth

of information available on particular people. This means

that the University does not know their descendants or know

where to repatriate them, and as a result must for the time

serve as caregivers and caretakers. As a result, we who are

responsible for them must consider all aspects of what that

duty to care entails.

The duty to care for the people we hold

in trust is to care for our own humanity now and in the future.

We will need to continue to wrestle with the questions we

began with on this Committee for decades to come.

I thank all the members of this committee, our advisors and

the sta and other individuals in the museums, and members

of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Medical

School who have supported this work.

I hope our ancestors whose remains are in our care will see

that we have begun our journey along the path that leads

toward justice.

EVELYNN HAMMONDS

Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science

and Professor of African and African American Studies, Faculty of

Arts and Sciences

Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences,

Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

Steering Committee Chair

Alexandra Fletcher, Daniel Antoine and JD Hill, eds. Regarding the Dead:

Human Remains in the British Museum, (The British Museum, 2014).

Ibid.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

“I hope our ancestors

whose remains are in

our care will see that

we have begun our

journey along

the path that leads

toward justice.”

EVELYNN HAMMONDS

Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science

Professor of African and African American Studies

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

Steering Committee Chair

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

APPENDICES

1. Deﬁnition of Terms Used in this Report

2. Membership of the Steering Committee

Warren Anatomical Museum

4. Care and Access Policies for Human Remains in

University Museum Collections

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

Descendant Community: Descendant or anity groups

have a direct social, emotional, family, or place-based

connection to the individual, meaning people who feel a direct

responsibility or interest in the individual themselves.

Human Remains: For the purposes of this report, Human

remains refers to the physical remains of a human body,

or any part thereof, whether or not naturally shed, freely

given, or culturally modiﬁed. Human skeletal remains refers

to bones or teeth. Both a complete skeleton of an individual

and a bone fragment would be considered human skeletal

remains and are referred to as an “individual” in this report.

Human remains under NAGPRA are ancestral remains that

must be returned to Native American tribes under NAGPRA

legislation.

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

(NAGPRA): NAGPRA was enacted on November 16, 1990,

to address the rights of lineal descendants, Indian Tribes,

and Native Hawaiian organizations to Native American

cultural items, including human remains, funerary objects,

sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. The Act

assigned implementation responsibilities to the Secretary

of the Interior, and sta support is provided by the National

NAGPRA Program.

Provenance Research: Provenance is information on the

place where the human remains originated and their

subsequent history. Determining the provenance of human

remains encompasses archival research together with, in

some instances, studying the remains themselves. Research

to discover provenance information is the critical ﬁrst step

to ensure all parties have conﬁdence that the best possible

decisions can be made.

Returns: The generic term “return” is used to cover all likely

circumstances including (re)interment, repatriation (which

in some cases has a speciﬁc legal meaning), or transfer

to another institution (only if requested by descendant

community).

University Museum Collections: This report covers human

remains found in collections-holding entities at the University,

meaning the museums and libraries. It does not include

tissue, DNA, or other samples that are in our aliated

hospitals or research laboratories or human remains acquired

as part of the Harvard Medical School Anatomical Gift

Program.

Deﬁnition of Terms Used in this Report

APPENDIX 1

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

Allan M. Brandt, Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the

History of Medicine and Professor of the History of Science

Philip Deloria, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University

Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African

and African American Research

Dominic Hall, Curator, Warren Anatomical Museum

Evelynn Hammonds, Chair, Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz

Professor of the History of Science and Professor of African

and African American Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences;

Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral

Sciences, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law

Tiya Miles, (spring 2021), Michael Garvey Professor of

History and Radclie Alumnae Professor

Jane Pickering, William and Muriel Seabury Howells

Director, Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology &

Ethnology

Scott Podolsky, Professor of Global Health and

Social Medicine and Director of the Center for the

History of Medicine

Matthew Liebmann, Peabody Professor of Archaeology,

Department of Anthropology

Robert Truog, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Medical

Ethics, Anaesthesiology & Pediatrics and Director of the

Center for Bioethics

Christina Warinner, Associate Professor, Department of

Anthropology and Sally Starling Seaver Associate Professor

at the Radclie Institute

STAFF

Ellen Berkman, Oce of General Counsel

Nina Collins, Associate Dean and Chief of Sta

to the FAS Dean

Rachael Dane, Director of Media Relations, FAS

M. William Lensch, Associate Provost for Research

(formerly Strategic Advisor to the Dean of

Harvard Medical School)

Membership of the Steering Committee

APPENDIX 2

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

In 2016, the Center for the History of Medicine at the

Countway Library of Medicine initiated a review of the

Warren Anatomical Museum’s connection to enslavement

as part of President Emerita Drew Faust’s Harvard and

Slavery initiative. In addition to the remains of individuals

with evidence of former enslavement, the Center expanded

this original objective to include the cases of remains

and representations of individuals collected and used

to undergird scientiﬁc racism. To achieve this goal, the

curator researched the Museum’s published catalogues,

archival records, and the database entries for the remains

of (and representations related to) every individual of

African descent. This research included cases that were

both extant and nonextant (note that a signiﬁcant portion

of the collection has not survived intact), those that were

transferred to other museums (including the Peabody

Museum), those related to individuals enslaved within and

outside the United States, and all types of Museum holdings,

not just human remains.

This initial review into the remains of individuals of African

descent and related collections yielded 149 case records,

representing extant and nonextant collections and including

human remains, nonhuman biologicals such as calculi, and

objects and images. At its height in the early 20th century, the

Museum’s legacy collection was composed of approximately

14,000 cases and these 149 cases related to individuals of

African descent represented 1.06 percent of that historical

total.

Ten of the 149 cases were found to have direct evidence

of former enslavement. Of these cases, four were

human remains (one cranium, two hair samples, and one

hypertrophied uterus), three were plaster casts, two were

images, and one was a wax model, representing nine

individuals in total (one of the casts was from the same

hypertrophied uterus, removed during surgery). Of these ten

records, only two (potentially three) are known to still exist

within Harvard’s holdings: a plaster phrenological cast of

Eustache Belin, enslaved in Haiti; a plaster cast of the head of

Sturmann Jantjes, enslaved in Massachusetts, that may still

exist among the several copies of that cast in the Peabody

Museum; and the cranium from a man enslaved in Brazil that

was transferred to the Peabody Museum in 1959. Research

is ongoing and the group of remains of enslaved individuals

connected to the Museum could be revised.

In the summer of 2020, President Lawrence Bacow’s Initiative

on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery brought renewed

attention to the original work conducted reviewing the links

between the Warren and enslavement. Conversations with

the Steering Committee and the Peabody Museum about

search criteria led the Warren to redeploy the research data

from the 2016 eort to ﬁnd all the extant human remains

within the Museum relating to individuals of African descent

with either direct evidence of enslavement (of which there

were no extant examples found in 2016 or 2021–2022)

or provenance suggesting a birth date prior to 1865 and a

location within the United States. Based on that criteria,

there are 28 extant remains relating to individuals of African

descent from the United States where it is possible that they

were born prior to 1865. Of these 28 remains of individuals,

27 have Massachusetts-based provenances and one is from

Richmond, Virginia. Eighteen of the remains are limbs, ﬁve are

spines and ribs, two are crania, one is a brain, one is a jaw, and

one is a tumor preparation.

Eighteen of the remains of individuals are late 19th- or early

20th-century dissection room subjects. The remains of these

individuals were collected and anatomically prepared by

Harvard Medical School anatomist Thomas Dwight (1843–

1911), presumably after the 1898 passage of Massachusetts’

An Act Relative to the Promotion of Anatomical Science.

Little is known of these individuals’ lives prior to anatomical

Warren Anatomical Museum

APPENDIX 3

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

dissection and it is dicult to determine if they were old

enough

at the time of death to be born prior to 1865. Five

of the remains of individuals were removed during hospital-

based clinical interventions. Four of the remains were

removed from patients after autopsy and one cranium was

removed after an execution. All of these remains require

continued research to determine if the individuals from

which they were derived were enslaved during their lifetime.

This act made it mandatory for public institutions in Massachusetts to transfer the

unclaimed dead to medical school anatomists and led to significant growth in subjects

being provided to the HMS anatomy labs. Harvard, specifically Dwight, led the effort

to pass the act. At the time, the Tewksbury Almshouse and Bridgewater State Farm

provided many of the anatomical subjects for Harvard Medical School.

The ages or age categories of many of these individuals are known, which would

rule out most as being born prior to 1865. However, the possibility does exist that

they were not collected via the 1898 Act and/or Dwight had the remains long before

donating them to the Warren. Dwight had been teaching anatomy since 1872.

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

Collecting

The Museums do not actively collect human remains and will

continue that policy. Recent museum acquisitions have been

almost exclusively human remains recovered from spaces at

the University outside of the Museums. In these cases, the

Museums have assumed stewardship for the University. In

exceptional circumstances, the museums may take physical

custody of human remains from a third party if that party is

unable to properly care for the remains in an ethical manner

while decisions are made about their future disposition.

Collections Care

Standard care procedures are detailed in the individual

museums’ Collections Management Policy and entail

maintaining a clean, safe, and secure environment for

collections including management of humidity, temperature,

light, and pests; following all relevant Environmental Health

and Safety guidelines; and appropriate security protocols.

Stewardship of human remains follows procedures that

are common to all museum collections, with the following

additional recommendations for respectful and responsible

care:

• Human remains should be stored in a secure, temperature

and humidity-controlled, limited-access location. Storage

spaces should be easily accessible by designated sta and

routinely inspected.

• Human remains should be housed using appropriate

archival-quality materials.

• Speciﬁc sta should be designated and trained to manage

human remains and they should be informed of the

nature of these collections as much as possible prior to

interacting with them.

• All handling of human remains within museum collections

should be kept to a minimum. Handling protocols include

use of gloves and specialized supports. Conservation is

limited to activities needed to stabilize the remains.

• The Museums will consider and wherever possible,

implement descendant community-informed care and

handling requests.

Collections Access

Access to human remains within museums includes

procedures common to all museum collections with

additional considerations and restrictions. Standard

access procedures are detailed in the individual museums’

Collections Management Policy and cover physical access

through examination and handling of collections. In addition,

the general policy outlines procedures for intellectual

access, for example through exhibitions, publications, and

electronic media.

The nature and conditions of the use of human remains must

be consistent with the museum’s commitment to respectful

care and handling. Special consideration for human remains

should include:

• Security access to the human remains collections

storage area is restricted to essential personnel. All other

museum or university sta, as well as contractors, must

be accompanied by a sta member with security access,

e.g., for facilities maintenance needs.

• Access by researchers and students requires sta

supervision to ensure respectful and careful handling of

human remains.

Care and Access Policies for Human Remains in University Museum Collections

These recommended policies are consistent with long-standing procedures at the Museums

APPENDIX 4

Steering Committee Report on Human Remains in University Museum Collections | Fall 2022

• Sta will be prepared to handle the complex emotional

and cultural questions that may be raised by providing

access to human remains.

• Faculty who wish to use human remains from museum

collections for teaching purposes must justify the

importance of using such remains in their course and

whether alternatives have been considered.

• Display will be governed by careful consideration given

to the context of the acquisition of the remains and the

teaching rationale for their exhibition.

• The Museums are systematically updating records to

remove racist terminology and classiﬁcations from

standard publicly accessible database ﬁelds to restricted

ﬁelds that will preserve the historical record. In addition,

the Museums will, where appropriate, add contextual data

to public records, including detailed acquisition history, to

provide a fuller understanding of ethical concerns.

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