Format: Paper presentations wtih discussion
Organisers: Gareth Knapman, Australian National University, Australia,
From the hiring of labourers to excavate graves to the sale of skulls to museums, profit-making from Indigenous human remains in the 19th century appears to have been global in scope and diverse in nature. With producers, distributors, and consumers, the overall activity exhibits all the characteristics of an economy. Yet, its presence in academic literature has received only cursory examination. Preliminary research reveals that remains were sold by those who took them from gravesites, providing a side income for agricultural workers. These remains were purchased by museums, dealers, and private collectors, advertised in medical equipment catalogues, and sold at well-attended auctions. Taxidermists profited by articulating human skeletons for museum displays, while the value of a single skull could be increased through the sale of numerous casts made from it. Collections in smaller museums were often bought by larger institutions, and remains were frequently monetised or bartered for the benefit of both museums and individuals. Initial findings suggest that human remains were priced based on their scarcity, geographic origin, and perceived scientific value. Market demand encouraged sellers to emphasize rarity, capitalizing on European perceptions that Indigenous people were rare, prehistoric “specimens” destined for extinction. These extinction narratives were used in sales pitches to inflate market value. The trade in ancestral remains did not end in the early 20th century but has continued into the present day. Modern scholarship on this trade primarily focuses on illicit and legal transactions for medical markets rather than Indigenous human remains. Nevertheless, numerous Facebook groups and other social media platforms dedicated to skull collecting exist and facilitate sales. However, the extent of their involvement in the trade of Indigenous human remains unknown.
Papers:
Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh and the Role of Purchases
Prof. Cressida Fforde, Return Reconcile Renew Centre, Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, The Australian National University, Australia
This paper undertakes a deep dive into commercial trade through analysis of the collection once held by the Royal College of Surgeons of London (RCS). The RCS provides an excellent example in which to explore the intricacies of commerce and its role in the acquisition of Indigenous human remains more broadly. The RCS bought remains from individuals and auction houses, and also bought entire collections which themselves had been compiled (in part) through purchase. Analysis of this institution enables detailed examination of ancillary businesses and the way in which individuals and minor collections freed up capital by selling collections in their entirety. The College also received Indigenous human remains in exchange. The great majority of what survived in the RCS collection after it was bombed in the Second World War is now in the Natural History Museum in London. The chapter also asks – how does the financial history of collections impact on the morality/immorality of questions existing today?
Casts, Reproductions and the Creation of Value
TBA
Casts of important specimens were actively produced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper explores how Australian museums used casts and reproductions of ancestral remains as a commercial activity to raise funds for acquiring other specimens. It specifically examines casts made by the Public Library of Victoria, the National Museum of Victoria, and the Australian Institute of Anatomy.
Australian Museums and the Purchase of Ancestral Remains
Dr Gareth Knapman, Australian National University, Australia
This paper examines three museums that used purchasing mechanisms to build their collections of ancestral remains: the National Museum of Victoria, the South Australian Museum, and the Australian Institute of Anatomy. In 1899, the National Museum of Victoria began collecting ancestral remains after its director, Frederich McCoy—who believed that human remains and ethnology were not within the scope of a natural history museum—died. His successor, Walter Baldwin Spencer, actively developed a physical anthropology collection, believing that ancestral remains were becoming scarce. Similarly, in the 1920s, Mackenzie donated his anatomy collection of mammals to the Commonwealth Government to establish the Australian Institute of Anatomy. As the director of this new institution, Mackenzie actively built a collection of ancestral remains, employing paid collectors to acquire them. The South Australian Museum began collecting ancestral remains in the mid-nineteenth century but also leveraged its access to these remains to build collections in other areas through both sales and exchanges.
Henry Ward and Commercial Trafficking in Indigenous Ancestral Remains and Cultural Property, 1860-1900
Paul Turnbull, University of Tasmania, Australia
The last third of the 19th century saw the establishment of many new museums and medical schools across Europe, the Americas and Oceania. Many of these institutions sought to acquire skeletal remains of Indigenous peoples and archaeological artefacts illustrative of human biological and cultural development, either for research or to create exhibitions and other educational resources illustrative of human diversity and deep past. In doing so, many became customers of Henry Ward’s Natural Science Establishment. By 1900 Ward was among the world’s largest supplier of museum specimens. In this paper, I explore Ward’s trafficking in Indigenous human remains and artefacts, focusing in particular on his means of securing and selling the ancestors and artefacts of peoples dispossessed by settler colonialism in North America and Australia.
Skulls to Order: The Involvement of New Zealand Museums in the Sale and Exchange of Māori and Moriori Human Remains
Amber Aranui, Curator, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Waikato, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand
Returning Māori and Moriori ancestral remains from overseas institutions has uncovered a growing collection of information about the sale and exchange of human skulls from Aotearoa New Zealand. This aspect of early colonial museology, though at present largely unknown, is increasingly becoming a topic of research as this information in uncovered. This paper explores the sale and exchange of ancestral human remains from a 19th century Aotearoa New Zealand context, and examines the main people involved, their motivations, and the lengths undertaken to the fulfil orders of eager international institutions.
The Webster and Oldman Catalogues and Tracking the Trade in Ancestral Remains
Mark Thomas, Professor of History and Economics, University of Virginia, USA
William Downing Webster and William Ockelman Oldman were major London dealers at the core of the burgeoning global trade in human remains in the late 19th and early 20th century. This paper uses the catalogues, sales ledgers, stock books and letter books of Webster and Oldman to delineate and analyse commercial activity in this vibrant sub-sector of ethnographic exchange, especially with regard to the buying and selling of Indigenous Australian items.
‘A Rich Collection … Acquired by Purchase’: Russian Museums and the Commercial Trade
Hilary Howes, Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Elena Govor, School of Culture, History and Language, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Like other museums worldwide, museums in the former Russian Empire acquired ancestral remains and cultural objects in various different ways, including by donation, inter-museum exchange and specially commissioned expeditions. Russian museums also had a trump card, namely orders of merit of the Russian Empire; in general, Western collectors valued these more than money and even donated money to museums to receive a particular order. Obtaining ancestral remains and cultural objects by purchase from private individuals or commercial providers was uncharacteristic of Russian institutions, but it did occur. We provide an overview of major Russian museums’ acquisition strategies in relation to ancestral remains and cultural objects from Australia, New Zealand and the broader Pacific over the period 1717 – 1925, focusing on formal purchase as well as ‘barter’ for orders of merit. We also highlight promising avenues for further provenance research.
Outlawing the Sale of Human Remains in the UK
Dan Hicks, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, UK
This paper takes stock of the progress of attempts to outlaw the sale of human remains in the UK, and places them in historical perspective. In doing so it introduces the “Laying our Ancestors to Rest” policy brief, published by the UK’s The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Afrikan Reparations in March 2025. The paper offers one example of the history of dehumanisation – the ‘necrography’ of a skull-cup in London and Oxford, a story outlined in Hicks (2025). In conclusion it takes stock of the reception of the recommendations of the report among British archaeologists, reading that reception against the example of the skull cup to interrogate ongoing disciplinary resistance to regulation, transparency, and humanity.
References
All-Party Parliamentary Group on Afrikan Reparations 2025. Laying our Ancestors to Rest. London: Afford. https://afford-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AFFORDLayingAncestorstoRest_Policy-BriefFINAL_11.03.2025.pdf
Hicks, D. 2025 Every Monument Will Fall: A Story of Remembering and Forgetting. London: Hutchinson Heinemann