The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Heritage, and Death (Routledge Handbooks on Museums, Galleries and Heritage) [1 ed.] 1032047046, 9781032047041, 9781003195870

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Introduction
Background
Introduction to the Volume
Volume Structure
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Part 1: Acquisition, Curation, and Conservation of the Dead
1. Historical Contexts of Bodies, Display, and Spectacle
Introduction
A Brief History of Museums
Human Remains: What Comprises Corporeal Remains and Are They Objects?
Traveling Exhibitions and Human Displays
"Freakshows"
World's Fairs, Expositions, and "Human Zoos"
Human Remains in Museums Today
Lessons for Today's Museums
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
2. Conserving the Humanity of Human Remains
Stopping Decomposition
Caring for Human Remains
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
3. A Museum Archive: An Unexpected Final Resting Place but One Full of Promise
Introduction
Museum of London Archaeological Archive and Centre for Human Bioarchaeology
Conservation
Archaeological Archive the Final Resting Place
Notes
Bibliography
4. Striking a Balance: Preserving, Curating, and Investigating Human Remains from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily
Introduction
Preservation and Curation
Scientific Investigation
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
5. The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru: Realities, Challenges, and Wishes
Overview
Introduction
Testimonies from Curatorial Staff
Northern Coast
Central Coast
South Coast
Central Highlands
Southern Highlands
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
6. Engaging with Death in Museums and Collections
Introduction
Death in the Museum Space
Death Topics in Practice
Exhibition
Curation and Research
Public Engagement
Conclusion and Future Challenges
Notes
Bibliography
Part 2: Displaying the Dead: Exhibitions and Ethical Considerations
7. Education, Preservation and Reconciliation: The J.L. Shellshear Museum and the Preservation and Display of Human Remains
Introduction
The Shellshear Museum: History and Context
Indigenous Remains and the Australian Context
Narrabeen Man: A Case for the Display of Remains
Conclusion - Towards a Respectful Curatorial Relationship?
Notes
Bibliography
8. The Mummies of Guanajuato: The Tension between Ethics and Ambition
Notes
Bibliography
Other Sources
9. The Cost of Civil Rights: Loss, Grief, and Death at US Civil Rights Museums
Notes
Bibliography
10. Changing People, Changing Content: New Perspectives on Past Peoples
Introduction
Prehistory Spaces in English Museums
Visualising Past People
People in Place
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
11. Transforming Memento Mori: A Contemporary Lens
Introduction
Death and Grief in the Visual Arts
An Artist's Inspiration
Memento Mori
Memento Morididdle
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
12. The Hollywood Museum of Death: The Commodification of the Maiden, Criminal and the Corpse
Museum of Death Origins
The Charles Manson Room
Synthetic Maiden
The Black Dahlia
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Part 3: Decolonisation and Shifting the Perspective in Museums and Heritage
13. Papuan Pasts: The Origins of Papuan Human Remains Collections in the World's Museums, the Issue of Repatriation, and Telling New Stories with Skeletal Data
Introduction
The Study Area
Pre-Contact Trade
History of Collecting Human Remains along the Papuan Coast
19th and 20th Century European Collecting
Second World War
Professional Archaeology
Human Remains as Artefacts from the Papuan Coast
Papuan Collections Held Overseas
Repatriation and Ownership
Discussion
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
14. Searching for Identities through Archaeological Human Remains in Turkey
Introduction
Theoretical Framework: The Authorised Heritage Discourse and Making of Identities
A New National Identity Written on Bones: Embracing the Anatolians
Rediscovering the Ottoman Roots
Current Perceptions Surrounding Archaeological Human Remains in Turkey
The "Authorised" View
The Public View
Ethno-Genesis Once Again?
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
15. Entangled Entitlements and Shuar Tsantsa (shrunken heads)
Introduction
Tsantsa
The tsantsa in the Pitt Rivers Museum
Taking Heads as Trophies
Made for Trade?
Proyecto Tsantsa
How and Why Were Tsantsa Made?
Contextualising Tsantsa?
Critical Changes in the Museum
Next Steps
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
16. Julia Pastrana's Long Journey Home
Julia Pastrana's First One Hundred and 69 Years
Changing the Narrative to Restore Julia Pastrana's Rights and Memory
Julia Pastrana's Ten Year Repatriation Journey
Notes
Bibliography
17. Egyptian Mummified Remains: Communities of Descent and Practice
Introduction
Framing Considerations
Defining Source Communities: A View from Egypt
Egyptian Perspectives on Displaying "Mummies"
The Golden "Mummies" Parade: Counter Public Debates
Egypt's Dispersed Heritage: Human Remains in Comics
An Internal Conflict: Egyptian Community of Practice
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
18. The Curated Ossilegium: Museum Practices as Death and Mourning Rituals
Eternal Rest on Display
As Above, So Below
Greeting the Skull
Defining Respectful Care
Caring for the Unknown Dead
Building Connections with the Displayed Dead
Towards a Continuum of Death Care
Notes
Bibliography
Part 4: Deathscapes and Heritage
19. From Dead Places to Places of the Dead: The Memorial Power of Battlefields, Ruins, and Burials in the Warscapes of Spain and the Western Front
Introduction
Battlefields
Cemeteries
Ruined Settlements and Dead Places
Mass Graves
Discussion: Materiality, Identity, and Temporality
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
20. From Trauma to Tourism: Balancing the Needs of the Living and the Dead
The Need for Social Consensus
Consumerism and Kitschification
Something Other
Concluding Thoughts
Notes
Bibliography
21. Death, Memory, and Power: Public Memorial Culture of Moscow Necropolises
Introduction
Cemetery Research Approaches
Cemeteries and Mortal Culture in the USSR
Novodevichy Cemetery: A Story of the Country's First Elite Cemetery
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
22. Not Their Heritage Theme Park: Honouring the Outcast at Crossbones Graveyard
Inside the Gates of Crossbones Graveyard
Maintaining the Grunge
The Politics of Curation
Outcast Dead (and Alive)
Intersectional Heritage Spaces
Notes
Bibliography
23. The Ghosts of Kūkai: Virtual Heritage and Landscapes of Death in Japan's Shikoku Pilgrimage
The Ghosts of Kūkai as Companion and Oneself
Kūkai's Death and "Long-Term Samadhi"
The Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage - Challenges in Representing These Aspects of Kūkai in the Digital Pilgrimage - What Inspirations Can We Use?
Notes
Bibliography
24. A Shadow Pandemic: Protest, Mourning, and Grassroots Memorialization in Mexico City
Femicide
Protest and Mourning
Grassroots Memorialization
Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
Part 5: Public Education and Engagement in Museums and Heritage
25. Engagement That Works: Practical Insights for Inviting the Public into Cemeteries
A Place within a Place
Youth Education
Tours for Adults
Scandals and Scoundrels
True Crime of Bygone Times
Events
Tips and Tricks
The Future
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
26. Talking about the D Word: Public Engagement in a Place of the Dead
Background of Arnos Vale Cemetery
The Purpose of Garden Cemeteries
Places for the Living as well as the Dead
Decline and Regeneration
Organisational Structure
For the Improvement of the Great Masses of Society - Public Engagement in AVC
Cemetery Tours
Public Talks
Engagement with Young People
Arts
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
27. The Death Positive Library
Designing Death Positive Futures with Libraries
Books, Mortality, and the Development of the Death Positive Library
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
28. Haunted Houses and Horrific History: Ghost Tours at Historic House Museums
Historic House Museums and Interpretive Programs
Why Ghosts and Haunts at Historic House Museums?
Successful Programs and Considerations at Historic House Museums
Authenticity and Truth
"Beneath the Dignity"
Ethical Challenges
Case Study: Blount Mansion
Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
29. Walking, Public Engagement, and Pedagogy: Mobile Death Studies
Introduction
Thanatological Imagination and Public Engagement
Mobile Pedagogy and the York Death and Culture Walk
Walking and Public Engagement through Mobile Pedagogy
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Part 6: Death Studies and Heritage in Practice
30. The Cemetery Church of All Saints with the Ossuary
Introduction to the Church and the Ossuary
History of the Church and the Ossuary
Specific Details about the Skeletons and the Decorations
The Increase in Tourism at the Sedlec Ossuary
The Photography Ban and Why It Was Implemented
The Future of the Sedlec Ossuary
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
31. Memento Mori Exhibition from the Dominican Crypt, Vác (Március 15 Square, 19), Hungary
Introduction
A Step into the 18th Century - The Uncovering of the Dominican Crypt of Vác
The Views on Death of the 18th-Century Burghers of Vác, Their Deaths and Burials
Burghers of Vác - Mummies of Vác
Special Funerary Objects, Object Types from the Crypt Coffins
Burial Shrouds
Grave Goods and Sacred Objects
Showcasing the Life and Death of 18th-Century People through the Ars Memorandi and the Memento Mori Exhibition
Interpretation and Experiences of the Exhibition
Summary
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
32. Our Queerly Departed - Researching, Remembering and Respecting the LGBTQ+ Deceased
Author's Note
Museums of People
Methods
Brompton Cemetery
Arnos Vale
Tower Hamlets Cemetery
Epitaph
A Letter to Anna Letitia Waring: A Spinster Late of This Parish
Notes
Bibliography
33. Close Encounters with Death and Disease: Young Visitors' Perspectives at the Mütter Medical History Museum
Medical Museums: A Brief Review
The Mütter Museum
Methods
Discussion
Interpretive Texts
Activities
Exhibit Design
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
34. The Use of CT Scan for the Construction of Mummy Replicas for Museography: Social and Ethical Perspectives
Human Bodies' Scientific Investigation and Its Exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History
Alternatives to the Exhibition of Human Bodies
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Part 7: Concluding Remarks
Notes
Bibliography
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MUSEUMS, HERITAGE, AND DEATH

This book provides a comprehensive examination of death, dying, and human remains in museums and heritage sites around the world. Presenting a diverse range of contributions from scholars, practitioners, and artists, the book reminds us that death and the dead body are omnipresent in museum and heritage spaces. Chapters appraise collection practices and their historical context, present global perspectives and potential resolutions, and suggest how death and dying should be presented to the public. Acknowledging that professionals in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) fields are engaging in vital discussions about repatriation and anti-colonialist narratives, the book includes reflections on a variety of deathscapes that are at the forefront of the debate. Taking a multivocal approach, the handbook provides a foundation for debate as well as a reference for how the dead are treated within the public arena. Most important, perhaps, the book highlights best practices and calls for more ethical frameworks and strategies for collaboration, particularly with descendant communities. The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Heritage, and Death will be useful to all individuals working with, studying, and interested in curation and exhibition at museums and heritage sites around the world. It will be of particular interest to those working in the fields of heritage, museum studies, death studies, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, and history. Trish Biers curates the Duckworth Laboratory (human and non-human primate remains) in the Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. Katie Stringer Clary is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Coastal Carolina University.

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOKS ON MUSEUMS, GALLERIES AND HERITAGE

The following list includes only the most-recent titles to publish within the series. THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF CULTURAL LANDSCAPE HERITAGE IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC Kapila D. Silva, Ken Taylor, and David S. Jones THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF HERITAGE DESTRUCTION Edited by José Antonio González Zarandona, Emma Cunliffe, and Melathi Saldin THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MUSEUMS, HERITAGE, AND DEATH Edited by Trish Biers and Katie Stringer Clary For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Handbooks-on-Museums-Galleries-and-Heritage/book-series/RHMGH

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MUSEUMS, HERITAGE, AND DEATH

Edited by Trish Biers and Katie Stringer Clary

Cover image: Memento mori, detail of the monument to Thomas Berkeley (1630–1693), All Saints Church, Spetchley, Worcestershire, UK (Colin Underhill/Alamy Stock Photo) First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Trish Biers and Katie Stringer Clary; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Trish Biers and Katie Stringer Clary to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-04704-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-05075-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-19587-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870 Typeset in Bembo by MPS Limited, Dehradun

This book is dedicated to the named and unnamed individuals who are no longer with us, but whose stories are held here in remembrance.

CONTENTS

List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements

xii xvi xxiii

Introduction Trish Biers and Katie Stringer Clary

1

PART 1

Acquisition, Curation, and Conservation of the Dead

9

1 Historical Contexts of Bodies, Display, and Spectacle Katie Stringer Clary

11

2 Conserving the Humanity of Human Remains Cat Irving

26

3 A Museum Archive: An Unexpected Final Resting Place but One Full of Promise Jelena Bekvalac 4 Striking a Balance: Preserving, Curating, and Investigating Human Remains from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily Kirsty Squires and Dario Piombino-Mascali

vii

37

51

Contents

5 The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru: Realities, Challenges, and Wishes Guido P. Lombardi, Rubén Buitrón, Lizbeht Tepo, Clide Valladolid, Bradymir Bravo, Susana Arce, Elva Torres, Sonia Guillén, and Trish Biers 6 Engaging with Death in Museums and Collections Trish Biers

65

78

PART 2

Displaying the Dead: Exhibitions and Ethical Considerations 7 Education, Preservation and Reconciliation: The J.L. Shellshear Museum and the Preservation and Display of Human Remains Denise Donlon and Fiona Gill

93

95

8 The Mummies of Guanajuato: The Tension between Ethics and Ambition Paloma Robles Lacayo

104

9 The Cost of Civil Rights: Loss, Grief, and Death at US Civil Rights Museums Jenny Woodley

120

10 Changing People, Changing Content: New Perspectives on Past Peoples Rebecca Redfern and Thomas Booth 11 Transforming Memento Mori: A Contemporary Lens Charles Clary 12 The Hollywood Museum of Death: The Commodification of the Maiden, Criminal and the Corpse Tia Tudor Price

viii

130

153

164

Contents PART 3

Decolonisation and Shifting the Perspective in Museums and Heritage 13 Papuan Pasts: The Origins of Papuan Human Remains Collections in the World’s Museums, the Issue of Repatriation, and Telling New Stories with Skeletal Data Jason Kariwiga, Gabriel Wrobel, and Michael C. Westaway 14 Searching for Identities through Archaeological Human Remains in Turkey Eli̇ fgül Doğan

175

177

191

15 Entangled Entitlements and Shuar Tsantsa (Shrunken Heads) Laura N.K. Van Broekhoven

208

16 Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home Laura Anderson Barbata

226

17 Egyptian Mummified Remains: Communities of Descent and Practice Heba Abd el-Gawad and Alice Stevenson

238

18 The Curated Ossilegium: Museum Practices as Death and Mourning Rituals Evi Numen

259

PART 4

Deathscapes and Heritage

273

19 From Dead Places to Places of the Dead: The Memorial Power of Battlefields, Ruins, and Burials in the Warscapes of Spain and the Western Front Dacia Viejo-Rose, Layla Renshaw, and Paola Filippucci 20 From Trauma to Tourism: Balancing the Needs of the Living and the Dead Joanne Mather

ix

275

292

Contents

21 Death, Memory, and Power: Public Memorial Culture of Moscow Necropolises Maria Kucheryavaya

306

22 Not Their Heritage Theme Park: Honouring the Outcast at Crossbones Graveyard Lucy Coleman Talbot

318

23 The Ghosts of Kūkai: Virtual Heritage and Landscapes of Death in Japan’s Shikoku Pilgrimage Ronald S. Green and Susan J. Bergeron

336

24 A Shadow Pandemic: Protest, Mourning, and Grassroots Memorialization in Mexico City Kelsey Perreault

347

PART 5

Public Education and Engagement in Museums and Heritage

361

25 Engagement That Works: Practical Insights for Inviting the Public into Cemeteries Kimberly Bearden

363

26 Talking About the D Word: Public Engagement in a Place of the Dead Janine Marriott

375

27 The Death Positive Library Stacey Pitsillides, Claire Nally, Anita Luby, Rhonda Brooks, Fiona Hill, Joanne Ghee, Katherine Ingham, and Judith Robinson

389

28 Haunted Houses and Horrific History: Ghost Tours at Historic House Museums Katie Stringer Clary and David Hearnes

402

29 Walking, Public Engagement, and Pedagogy: Mobile Death Studies Ruth Penfold-Mounce

416

x

Contents PART 6

Death Studies and Heritage in Practice

429

30 The Cemetery Church of All Saints with the Ossuary Radka Krejčí

431

31 Memento Mori Exhibition from the Dominican Crypt, Vác (Március 15 Square, 19) Hungary Anita Csukovits and Katalin Forró

443

32 Our Queerly Departed – Researching, Remembering and Respecting the LGBTQ+ Deceased Sacha Coward

456

33 Close Encounters with Death and Disease: Young Visitors’ Perspectives at the Mütter Medical History Museum Rachel Anisha Divaker and Mary Margaret Kerr

472

34 The Use of CT scan for the Construction of Mummy Replicas for Museography: Social and Ethical Perspectives Verónica Silva-Pinto, Mario Castro, Yanis Valenzuela-Sánchez, Ayelén Tonko-Huenucoy, Carlos Montoya, Marcelo Gálvez, and Trish Biers

485

PART 7

Concluding Remarks Trish Biers and Katie Stringer Clary

505

Bibliography Index

510 568

xi

FIGURES

1.1 1.2 2.1 3.1

4.1

5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1

6.2 6.3

Outside a freakshow at the Rutland Fair in Vermont Street of Cairo section of the Midway at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois, 1893 The Wohl Pathology Gallery at Surgeons’ Hall Museums Conservator working with skeletal remains during exhibition installation to display for inclusion in exhibition Skeletons: Our Buried Bones, Leeds City Museum 22 September 2017–7 January 2018 A nineteenth century mummy undergoing CT examination inside a mobile unit outside the Capuchin Catacombs, Palermo (image courtesy of the Sicily Mummy Project) Map of Peru showing relevant places discussed here. Map data provided by Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Peru Tattooed right arm of The Lady of Cao Laboratory of Physical Anthropology of Cuzco’s Cultural Office, Peru Rambaramp; an effigy of a male ancestor, Malakula, Vanuatu, on display at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, UK, with permission of the community since 2007 and in collaboration with the Malakula Cultural Centre Dias de los Muertos (days of the dead) altar at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, UK The author speaking about corpse medicine to visitors at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology for Museum Lates xii

16 18 27

43

56 68 69 75

82 85

86

Figures

11.1 11.2 11.3

11.4 11.5 11.6 13.1 14.1 16.1

16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5 17.1 17.2

17.3 17.4

17.5 18.1

18.2 18.3 18.4

The Triumph of Death, oil panel painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted c. 1562 2013 Memorial Installation, Charles Clary Dance of Death, from Hartman Schedel’s Chronicle of the World (Nuremberg, 1493) thought to be created by Michael Wolgemut; public domain 2020 Memento Morididdle installation, Charles Clary 2020 Memento Morididdle installation detail, Charles Clary 2022 Memento Morididdle detail, Charles Clary Excavations for human remains underway at Tubusereia, Bootless Bay Map showing the geographical location of Turkey at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa Julia Pastrana featured in the New York Times entertainment section (“Amusements”), December 27, 1854 Advertisement for exhibition at Regent Gallery, London, 1857, woodcut Obituary announcement. Aftenposten, Oslo, Norway, 2005 Catholic mass for Julia Pastrana, Church of San Felipe y Santiago, Sinaloa, Mexico. February 12, 2013 Julia Pastrana’s death certificate, February 11, 2013 An Egyptian family waving the flag as they watch the Golden Parade from their balcony An Egyptian family performing one of the five Muslim daily prayers nearby ancient Egyptian coffins during their visit to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage project comic on mummified human remains as celebrity museum objects Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage project comic on Egyptian struggle to be heard in ethics of mummified human remains debates Mostafa Ismail, the head of the Golden Parade mummified human remains conservation team Left: a Mt. Athos monk holding an open “osteofilakion” with the bones of a deceased brother. Right: A modern ossuary space containing stored ossuary containers Ossuary of Monastery of Grand Meteora, Greece Bone-picking cremation ceremony at the Doi Saien crematorium in Shikokuchuo, Ehime Prefecture, Japan Above: The ossuary of the New Monastery of Chios, Greece. Below: The Hyrtl Collection display at the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia xiii

154 157

159 160 161 162 180 192

227 228 231 233 234 245

246 248

249 250

261 262 263

266

Figures

18.5

18.6

21.1 22.1 22.2 22.3

25.1 25.2 26.1 26.2 27.1

27.2

29.1

29.2

29.3

30.1 30.2 30.3 31.1 31.2

Left: The giant Magrath by Pietro Longhi in Ca’ Rezzonico Venice. Right: The skeleton of Cornelius Magrath in the Old Anatomy Museum, Trinity College Dublin Left: Portrait of anatomy professor and museum curator Daniel J. Cunningham. Right: Detail of the skeleton of Cornelius Magrath showing the wooden replicas of his missing bones Map of the Novodevichy Cemetery Left: wicker hearts with memorial ribbons, 2016. Right: timeline on the western exterior hoarding, 2018 Left: Barbie in birdcage with pebbles, 2018. Right: close up of Gabriela Silva Leite tribute, 2018 Left: trans flag hanging on the gates, 2021. Right: “Paul and El were raped and murdered” written on the gates, 2018 Elmwood Cemetery film series; projecting films onto the high-pitched roof of the historic office building Elmwood Cemetery Cradle Gardening Aerial photograph of Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol, surrounded by its communities A night tour in the cemetery in October Original pods (top left and right), part of The Final Party, Redbridge Central Library. Geodesic domes redesigned for use within the Tickets for the Afterlife Screenshots of author Q&A poster, book quotes for social media, and Tickets for the Afterlife digital experience online and installed in the libraries The York Death and Culture Walk Map, York, UK showing the walking route around the city centre with nine stopping points Cholera Burial Ground plaque marking the site where 185 cholera victims were buried between June and October 1832 The John Snow Memorial on North Street (the road where he was born in 1813) York, UK entailing a flat bricked area with a water pump with the handle removed along with a tourist information blue plaque Exterior of the Church of All Saints with ossuary as seen from Zámecká Street over the cemetery enclosure wall View of the grounds of the Sedlec Cistercian monastery before the attack of the Hussite wars in 1421 Lower chapel of the Church of All Saints with the ossuary Tragor Ignác Múzeum Tragor Ignác Múzeum, Gallery View xiv

268

269 313 324 325

329 369 370 376 380

390

393

420

422

423 432 434 437 446 450

Figures

32.1 34.1 34.2

34.3

34.4 34.5

Promotional materials for the “Queerly Departed” programme Mummified bodies on display at the beginning of the 20th century Inti Raymi ceremony in front of the National Museum of Natural History of Chile, convened in conjunction with CONACIN The process of creating the replica, where it is observed: (a) Real body of a mummified infant; (b) the body with 2D CT scan; (c) 3D reconstruction of the interior of the body; (d) 3D reconstruction of the exterior of the body; (e) 3D printing; (f) final replica Artistic post-processing process for the realization of the replica of a Chinchorrro infant body Final result of the replicas of Chinchorro infants, comparing the original with the replica

xv

461 487

492

493 494 494

CONTRIBUTORS

Susana Arce is the Director of the Regional Museum of Ica “Adolfo Bermúdez Jenkins” in Peru and co-author of “The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru: Realities, Challenges, and Wishes.” Laura Anderson Barbata is a transdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, USA, and Mexico City, Mexico, and author of “Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home.” Kimberly Bearden is the Executive Director of Elmwood Cemetery, Tennessee, USA, and author of “Engagement That Works: Practical Insights for Inviting the Public into Cemeteries.” Jelena Bekvalac is the Curator of Human Osteology at the Museum of London, UK, and author of “A Museum Archive: An Unexpected Final Resting Place but One Full of Promise.” Susan J. Bergeron is the Chair and an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Geography at Coastal Carolina University, USA, and co-author of “The Ghosts of Kūkai: Virtual Heritage and Landscapes of Death in Japan’s Shikoku Pilgrimage.” Trish Biers curates the Duckworth laboratory (human and non-human primate remains) in the Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. She teaches about ethics, repatriation, treatment of the dead, mortuary archaeology, and osteology. Her research focuses on the ethical curation of human remains and considerations for displaying the dead in museums and heritage sites, as well as paleopathology, and mortuary rituals. She has excavated all over the world but specialises in mummies of South America. xvi

Contributors

Thomas Booth is a Senior Research Scientist at the Francis Crick Institute, UK, and coauthor of “Changing People, Changing Content – New Perspectives on Past Peoples.” Laura N.K. Van Broekhoven is the Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum and Professor of Museum Studies, Ethics and Material Culture at the University of Oxford, UK. She is the author of “Entangled Entitlements and Shuar Tsantsa (shrunken heads).” Rhonda Brooks is the Development Librarian at Redbridge Central Library, UK, and co-author of “The Death Positive Library.” Rubén Buitrón is the Head of the Laboratory of the El Brujo Archaeological Complex, La Libertad, Peru, and co-author of “The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru: Realities, Challenges, and Wishes.” Mario Castro is the Director of the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Chile and co-author of “The Use of CT Scan for the Construction of Mummy Replicas for Museography: Social and Ethical Perspectives.” Charles Clary is an artist, Associate Professor of Studio Art, and Foundations Coordinator at Coastal Carolina University, USA, and author of “Transforming Memento Mori: A Contemporary Lens.” Katie Stringer Clary is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Coastal Carolina University. Since 2007, Clary worked with museums in various capacities from docent to executive director. Through her work, she continues to advocate for accessibility, representation, and equality in museums and historic sites. Clary currently researches the ethics and historical contexts of human remains in museums, dark tourism and ghost tours at historic sites, and the roles death plays, broadly, in the museum and public history worlds. Clary enjoys working closely with community organizations to preserve and interpret the past. Sacha Coward is an independent scholar and a freelance museum professional based in the UK and author of “Our Queerly Departed – Researching, Remembering and Respecting the LGBTQ+ Deceased.” Anita Csukovits is the Deputy Director of the Tragor Ignác Múzeum, Hungary, and co-author of “Memento mori exhibition from the Dominican Crypt, Vác (Március 15 Square, 19.) Hungary.” Rachel Anisha Divaker is a medical scribe at ScribeAmerica, Pennsylvania, USA, and co-author of “Close Encounters with Death and Disease: Young Visitors’ Perspectives at the Mütter Medical History Museum.” xvii

Contributors

Elifgül Doğan is a doctoral researcher at the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre and the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, UK, and author of “Searching for Identities Through Archaeological Human Remains in Turkey.” Denise Donlon is a senior lecturer in anatomy and forensic osteology at the Department of Anatomy and Histology, University of Sydney, and curator of the Shellshear Museum of Physical Anthropology and Comparative Anatomy. She is the co-author of “Education, Preservation and Reconciliation: The J. L. Shellshear Museum and the Preservation and Display of Human Remains.” Paola Filippucci is a Fellow and Senior College Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Murray Edwards College and the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK, and co-author of “From Dead Places to Places of the Dead: The Memorial Power of Battlefields, Ruins, and Burials in the Warscapes of Spain and the Western Front.” Katalin Forró is the Director of the Tragor Ignác Múzeum, Hungary, and co-author of “Memento mori exhibition from the Dominican Crypt, Vác (Március 15 Square, 19) Hungary.” Marcelo Gálvez is Chief Radiologist at the Los Condes Clinic and researcher at the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Chile. He is co-author of “The Use of CT Scan for the Construction of Mummy Replicas for Museography: Social and Ethical Perspectives.” Heba Abd el-Gawad is a project researcher at the University College London, Institute of Archaeology, UK, and co-author of “Egyptian Mummified Remains: Communities of Descent and Practice.” Joanne Ghee is a Library and Information Officer at Newcastle Libraries, UK, and co-author of “The Death Positive Library.” Fiona Gill is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of Sydney, Australia, and co-author of “Education, Preservation and Reconciliation: The J. L. Shellshear Museum and the Preservation and Display of Human Remains.” Ronald S. Green is a professor and the Department Chair at the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Coastal Carolina University, USA, and co-author of “The Ghosts of Kūkai: Virtual Heritage and Landscapes of Death in Japan’s Shikoku Pilgrimage.”

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Sonia Guillén is Director of Centro Mallqui and the Leymebamba Museum and coauthor of “The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru: Realities, Challenges, and Wishes.” David Hearnes is Executive Director at Blount Mansion Association and co-author of “Haunted Houses and Horrific History: Ghost Tours at Historic House Museums.” Fiona Hill is a service specialist at Newcastle Libraries, UK, and co-author of “The Death Positive Library.” Clide Valladolid Huamán is the Head of the Museo de Sitio Puruchuco-Arturo Jimenez Borja, Lima, Peru, and co-author of “The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru: Realities, Challenges, and Wishes.” Katherine Ingham is a librarian at Kirklees Library, Huddersfield, UK, and coauthor of “The Death Positive Library.” Cat Irving is the human remains conservator at the Surgeons Hall Museum, Edinburgh, Scotland, and author of “Conserving the Humanity of Human Remains.” Jason Kariwiga is a doctoral researcher at the University of Queensland, Australia, and co-author of “Papuan Pasts: The Origins of Papuan Human Remains Collections in the World’s Museums, the Issue of Repatriation, and Telling New Stories with Skeletal Data.” Mary Margaret Kerr is Professor, Health and Human Development and Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, and co-author of “Close Encounters with Death and Disease: Young Visitors’ Perspectives at the Mütter Medical History Museum.” Radka Krejčí is the Director of the Parish Organisational Unit, Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic, and author of “The Cemetery Church of All Saints with the Ossuary.” Maria Kucheryavaya is a research assistant at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, Russia, and author of “Death, Memory, and Power: Public Memorial Culture of Moscow Necropolises.” Paloma Robles Lacayo is a biochemical engineer and former director of the Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato (2016–2017), Guanajuato, Mexico, and author of “The Mummies of Guanajuato: The Tension between Ethics and Ambition.” xix

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Guido P. Lombardi is a Visiting Professor in the Medical School of Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Peru, and co-author of “The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru: Realities, Challenges, and Wishes.” Anita Luby is Head of Cultural Services at Vision – Redbridge Culture and Leisure and co-author of “The Death Positive Library.” Janine Marriot is the Public Engagement Manager for the Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust Bristol, UK, and author of “Talking About the D Word: Public Engagement in a Place of the Dead.” Joanne Mather is a Lecturer at Barton Peveril, UK, and author of “From Trauma to Tourism: Balancing the Needs of the Living and the Dead.” Bradymir Bravo Meza is an archaeologist in Huarochiri, Peru, and co-author of “The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru: Realities, Challenges, and Wishes.” Carlos Montoya is an IT engineer at the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Chile, and co-author of “The Use of CT Scan for the Construction of Mummy Replicas for Museography: Social and Ethical Perspectives.” Claire Nally is a professor in the Department of Humanities at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK, and co-author of “The Death Positive Library.” Evi Numen is the Curator of the Old Anatomy Museum, Trinity College Dublin, Republic of Ireland, and author of “The Curated Ossilegium: Museum Practices as Death and Mourning Rituals.” Kelsey Perreault is doctoral researcher and teaching assistant at Carleton University, Canada and author of “A Shadow Pandemic: Protest, Mourning, and Grassroots Memorialization in Mexico City.” Ruth Penfold-Mounce is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of York, UK, and author of “Walking, Public Engagement, and Pedagogy: Mobile Death Studies.” Dario Piombino-Mascali is the scientific curator of the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, physical anthropologist, and a principal investigator at Vilnius University, Lithuania. He is the co-author of “Striking a Balance: Preserving, Curating, and Investigating Human Remains from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily.”

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Contributors

Elva Torres Pino is the Head of the Laboratory of Physical Anthropology at Cuzco’s Cultural Office, Peru, and co-author of “The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru: Realities, Challenges, and Wishes.” Stacey Pitsillides is an Assistant Professor at Northumbria University, UK, and coauthor of “The Death Positive Library.” Tia Tudor Price is an Associate Lecturer at Crawley College, Crawley, UK, and author of “The Hollywood Museum of Death: The Commodification of the Maiden, Criminal and the Corpse.” Rebecca Redfern is a Senior Curator of Archaeology at the Museum of London, UK, and co-author of “Changing People, Changing Content – New Perspectives on Past Peoples.” Layla Renshaw is an Associate Professor in the Applied and Human Sciences, Kingston University, London, UK, and co-author of “From Dead Places to Places of the Dead: The Memorial Power of Battlefields, Ruins, and Burials in the Warscapes of Spain and the Western Front.” Judith Robinson is the Development Librarian at the Kirklees Library, Huddersfield, UK, and co-author of “The Death Positive Library.” Verónica Silva-Pinto is curator of biological anthropology at the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Chile, and co-author of “The Use of CT Scan for the Construction of Mummy Replicas for Museography: Social and Ethical Perspectives.” Alice Stevenson is an Associate Professor in Museum Studies at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, UK, and co-author of “Egyptian Mummified Remains: Communities of Descent and Practice.” Kirsty Squires is an Associate Professor of Bioarchaeology at Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK, and co-author of “Striking a Balance: Preserving, Curating, and Investigating Human Remains from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily.” Lucy Coleman Talbot is a scholar and Community Engagement Officer at Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, UK, and author of “Not Their Heritage Theme Park: Honouring the Outcast at Crossbones Graveyard.” Lizbeht Tepo is the Curator of Physical Anthropology Collections at Peruvian National Museum of Anthropology, Archaeology, and History, Peru, and co-author xxi

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of “The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru: Realities, Challenges, and Wishes.” Ayelén Tonko-Huenucoy is an external researcher at the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Chile, and co-author of “The Use of CT Scan for the Construction of Mummy Replicas for Museography: Social and Ethical Perspectives.” Yanis Valenzuela-Sánchez is an external researcher at the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Chile, and co-author of “The Use of CT Scan for the Construction of Mummy Replicas for Museography: Social and Ethical Perspectives.” Dacia Viejo-Rose is an Associate Professor in Heritage and the Politics of the Past and the Director of Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, University of Cambridge, UK, and is co-author of “From Dead Places to Places of the Dead: The Memorial Power of Battlefields, Ruins, and Burials in the Warscapes of Spain and the Western Front.” Michael C. Westaway is an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia, and co-author of “Papuan Pasts: The Origins of Papuan Human Remains Collections in the World’s Museums, the Issue of Repatriation, and Telling New Stories with Skeletal Data.” Jenny Woodley is a Lecturer in Modern American History at Nottingham Trent University, UK, and author of “The Cost of Civil Rights: Loss, Grief, and Death at US Civil Rights Museums.” Gabriel Wrobel is Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University, USA and co-author of “Papuan Pasts: The Origins of Papuan Human Remains Collections in the World’s Museums, the Issue of Repatriation, and Telling New Stories with Skeletal Data.”

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is a summation of the efforts of many people and to whom I am eternally grateful. To the contributors, who gave us their energy, time and thoughts, I appreciate each and every one of you. To my co-editor Katie Stringer Clary, thank you for your patience on this wild ride, and to Carolyn Dillian for her comments, and to my friends and colleagues in Cambridge who were incredibly supportive and helpful. Thank you to Jocelyne Dudding of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, for the use of the Rambaramp image and to David Redhouse for a beautiful map of Peru. I would like to say a special thank you to my family, David Lloyd, James and Marie Biers, Autumn Pinthong, Alicia, Drew, Colton and Andrew Quinonez, and Melinda Lloyd, for supporting me in so many ways and for truly believing in me. To the Dead I have met, and those I have yet to meet. – Trish Biers This book would not have been possible without the support and encouragement I receive daily from my husband, my parents, and my dear friends. I want to specially thank Charles Clary, Carolyn Dillian, Mark and Brenda Stringer, and my co-editor Trish Biers for helping to make this volume happen. I also want to thank our incredible contributors, without whom this book would not exist. Thank you to Coastal Carolina University and Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts for financial support for research and professional development that made this volume possible. Lastly, I owe a great debt to all the individuals, named and unnamed, who are no longer with us that are memorialized in this book. – Katie Stringer Clary

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INTRODUCTION Trish Biers and Katie Stringer Clary

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? – Edgar Allan Poe

Introduction Museums, Heritage, and Death explores connections among the fields of heritage studies, museum studies, art galleries, and historic sites; this volume also provides an examination of death, dying, and human remains displayed as objects. With an increasing public interest in death and its display,1 this book tethers these activities to new ethical dimensions and best practices. This volume appraises collection practices and offers suggestions in presenting the stories of the dead to the public. As professionals in the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) fields approach new discussions about repatriation and anti-colonialist narratives, these forms of deathscapes are at the forefront of debate. Using a multivocality approach, this volume provides a foundation for debate and a reference for how the dead are treated within the public arena, and galvanises the call for more ethical frameworks and strategies for collaboration, particularly with descendant communities. This book includes both new arguments about the display of the dead for public intake, whether this be in museums or heritage centres, and the increase in dark tourism2 globally. With the recent success of conferences such as Death and Culture I, II, and III,3 Death, Dying, and Disposal,4 and the widely-popular public events associated with The Order of the Good Death,5 it is clear that a research community about the various aspects of death in the present and the past is growing exponentially. While many scholars attached to departments such as sociology, literature, history, anthropology, and archaeology are publishing in various scientific or humanities journals, such as Mortality or the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, a wide body of DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-1

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knowledge from practitioners (and these are not mutually exclusive categories) is also seeing more print, and this includes the myriad of individuals associated with peripheral deathscapes, including indigenous practitioners, cemetery keepers, artists inspired by death and visual culture, and those outside the academy. Other voices are vital components to what can be a deeply philosophical or spiritual conversation – the end of life, and the presentation and interpretation of death as so often seen in museum exhibitions or local history venues has become a highly-debated subject.6 Deathscapes represent both tangible and intangible dimensions of death and can carry within them cultural, ideological, socio-political, socio-economic, and meaningful residues that exude a significant influence on the living.7 The role of the deceased in these spaces is often shaped by deeply held spiritual beliefs, philosophical thought, and social pragmatism; as such, it is a challenge to incorporate the sheer breadth and scope of death heritage in one volume, therefore the topics chosen here reflect the systematic management of death through human remains by those that are stewards for them.

Background An embodied perspective in the discussion of death and the dead body between museum studies and heritage studies reveals a deep, interwoven design from which we can see a central theme emerge – that the dead carry on.8 This volume provides a wide-ranging overview of the roles of curation, narration, and exhibition in death studies associated with museums and heritage subfields, where the dead are a significant part of the main foci. In their groundbreaking volume on the heritage of death, Frihammar and Silverman suggest that while death today is being reconceptualised as heritage, death has always shaped heritage through the expressions of personal, national, and international consequences as well debates over memory and new constructions of identity.9 Museums are active agents for exploring the human experience largely in part because of the objects on display highlighting human creativity, ingenuity, and the classification of natural phenomena. A large part of this story, though not necessarily explicit, is death as featured in the hundreds of burial objects behind glass or in cases, or the contemplative memento mori on the gallery wall. From gilded coffins and mummies to Renaissance paintings on mortality and the maiden, death and the dead body are omnipresent in museum spaces. Heritage sites often have some form of space for displays, storyboards and tours, and even gift shops. These places also offer similar experiences to museums and galleries often delivering high impact within a tightly circumscribed space for education, reflection, and entertainment. Death phenomena has been adapted and “heritagized” to suit the tourism industry.10 Innovative technologies are making an impact in virtual heritage platforms allowing for more of the public to participate in death-related activities such as immersive experiences, city walking tours with a death focus, and library engagement (see Chapters 23, 27, and 29 in this volume for examples). Museums, Heritage, and Death explores these “deathscapes” further by 2

Introduction

concentrating on the philosophical and anthropological foundations of the creation, curation, and proliferation of presenting death to the public. Well-documented themes in historical and modern death studies include: meaning in death and dying, memory and material culture, places of return and transformation from pain to reconciliation, public and political mourning, and the complex relationship between the community of the living and the community of the dead, to name a few.11,12,13 The convergence of disciplines that speak to these deathscapes represent a vast space for inter- and intra-disciplinary research. Central to these studies is the role of the corpse, whether present (displayed in a museum case) or absent (bodies of the disappeared) (see Table 0.1). Through osteobiographies or biographies based on historical documentary sources, the dead play an important role for discourse because they carry the power ascribed to them by the living. In heritage studies the deceased can serve as the materialisation of memory, a political component in a broader agenda, the criminal body, the embodied ancestor to be venerated, the disenfranchised who were collected, the medicalised body that was donated, or the victim of genocide. In museums and collections, the corpse represents both object (inventoried acquisition), and subject (exhibition feature) and is seen as fascinating or repulsive depending on the viewer. For example, in April 2021, Cairo hosted the “The Golden Mummies Parade” for the movement of 22 ancient Egyptian mummies from the older Egyptian Museum to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. The celebration was televised and statements were made about the “greatness of the Egyptian people,”14 with the dead at the centre of it all representing a national identity and cultural change (see Chapter 17 in this volume). For other interested parties, the display of the corpse is often cited as a reinforcement of colonial and institutional authority by Indigenous activists because of the traditional focus on human classification and “the ability of Europeans to obtain control over uncharted worlds.”15 This imbalance of power, control, and agency are at the core of dialogue galvanising the movement for increased proposals of repatriation and restitution cases across the globe but particularly in Africa, North America, and Australia. Table 0.1 The role of the corpse in relation to deathscapes as defined for this volume The Role of the Corpse Museums and galleries • Acquisition • Display • Research (archival and scientific) • Commodification • Restitution • Wellbeing

Cemeteries, burial grounds, formal graves, crypts • Sites of manifestation, commemoration, return • Presencing of absence

Mass graves, abandonment of dead bodies • Sites of disappearance, forgetting, rejection, oblivion, absence • Warfare, conflict, crime, epidemic

Introduction to the Volume This book is categorised by themes relevant to current discourse in museum and heritage studies. The volume includes a range of perspectives to incorporate those of 3

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local scholars, both junior and senior, from a variety of regions, independent academics, artists who have worked with museum displays or published on death, public engagement, and outreach specialists, and those individuals directly involved with heritage sites. Death academics, artists, students, and practitioners in the death industry will benefit from the resources and context of this volume, particularly those focused on curation and exhibition at museums and heritage sites where death is part of the wider story in regards to objects on display, and local presentation at sites such as catacombs or cemeteries. With international attention turning towards more transparency associated with museum collections and dark history at heritage sites, the themes of this volume are becoming more essential to museum studies, archaeology, anthropology, ethnic studies, and history educational programmes.16 The overarching topic of this book about deathscapes is inherently interdisciplinary: not only will public historians or museum professionals benefit from this, but so will individuals in the growing field of death studies, biomedical ethics, and philosophy as well as those doing critical work in public engagement within the field. Globally, dialogue about displaying the dead, decolonial approaches, restitution and repatriation in heritage and museum work is increasing, particularly in regions extrinsically linked to colonialist and imperialist strategies of Western nations.17 In addition, many heritage sites and museums are also grappling with new ways to talk about death via their exhibitions, memorial sites, and scientific investigations into past lifeways of the bodies they display. By inviting researchers working on both theoretical and practical levels, with interesting scholarship from around the world, our hope is to encourage discussion about the challenges in interpretation of context, ethical considerations around display and tourism, and active ways we can engage with deathscapes, and how such work contributes to our current understanding of death more broadly. The contributors of the handbook come from several countries and present us with interesting case studies from Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Egypt, England, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, Peru, Scotland, Spain, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The main objectives of this volume are to: • Explore the multifaceted relationship death studies and death work has within the museum and heritage fields to further support the inclusion of death narratives into these fields for public benefit. • To understand how practitioners and other professionals work with human remains collections and the maintenance of collections’ integrity, ethical issues, and display choices for exhibitions. • Establish new models for curatorial and exhibition design in line with decolonial practice. • Raise awareness of current issues faced by stewards of heritage sites directly related to death tourism and the challenges they face when dealing with public interest and demand. • To bring into focus the innovative and creative ways of facing death from personal perspectives in art, libraries, archives, and through public engagement. 4

Introduction

Volume Structure The book is organised thematically around topics such as: presenting death, collecting of the dead, ethics and scientific investigations, decolonisation and shifting perspectives, death and dying in 21st century museums, and public education and engagement. These areas of interest have seen a vast increase in output through conference proceedings, webinars, social media traction, news headlines, and decision-making in collections management for nationally recognised institutions globally. Our intention is to capture the critical architecture of these debates and provide useful and thoughtprovoking context to build from for a collective of people working within deathscapes. The handbook hosts a variety of professionals that does not exclude those who do not work in large, national museums. Voices stem from historic house museums, local museums, cemeteries and graveyards, catacombs and churches, and memorial sites. The diversity in authorship goes beyond traditional academia because death is egalitarian in respect to the cessation of life in a body, we believe that this volume should also reflect a similar level of equitable inclusivity in its research breadth. The volume is divided into six parts, each containing five to six chapters. The parts have distinct themes; however, many do overlap to some degree but this is expected for a publication of this size and thus complements the overall narrative of the handbook. The first part addresses both historical contexts of how museums and heritage sites acquired human remains, as well as modern deposition from commercial archaeology. This is discussed by Katie Stringer Clary, Jelena Bekvalac, Kirsty Squires with Dario Piombino-Mascali. The challenges of curation and conservation of human remains are presented by Trish Biers, Cat Irving, along with a chapter by Guido P. Lombardi, Rubén Buitrón, Lizbeht Tepo, Clide Valladolid, Bradymir Bravo, Susana Arce, Elva Torres, and Sonia Guillén. The second part of this volume investigates the decisions around public display and the exhibition of human remains and/or images of remains. Here, authors focus on the ethical implications of display from past to present and the challenges curatorial staff face when creating exhibitions. The case studies examine provenance of human remains, see chapters by Denise Donlon and Fiona Gill, Rebecca Redfern and Tom Booth, as well as legal and educational connections as investigated by Paloma Robles Lacayo and Jenny Woodley. Tia Tudor Price and Charles Clary speak to more modern exhibitions about death and display. No discussion of human remains in museums is complete without addressing the shifting perspectives in museums and heritage around decolonial practice and the politics of housing and displaying human remains in public institutions. Case studies in this part include international examples of displaced heritage and human remains, preservation and reconciliation, and a critical look at approaching archives through a more inclusive lens. The involvement of local specialists in collections management of human remains is discussed by Jason Kariwiga along with co-authors Gabriel Wrobel and Michael C. Westaway, as well as Eli̇ fgül Doğan who includes issues about identity. Laura N.K. Van Broekhoven provides insight into cultural collaborations around exhibition display. Heba Abd el-Gawad and Alice Stevenson speak to the importance 5

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of communities of descent and practice, artist Laura Anderson Barbata shares a story of reconciliation, and Evi Numen leads the reader towards a continuum of death care. The fourth part sees the transition into death heritage and goes beyond the traditional museum sector to include sites of memorialisation and public mourning. Politics and political power play a large role in the story of deathscapes and human remains as relevant in these case studies presented here. This part is an exploration of the roles that governments and socio-political history have in identity (see chapters by Lucy Coleman Talbot and Kelsey Perreault), landscapes of death (see Chapter by Ronald S. Green and Sue Bergeron), and collective memory of the public (see chapters by Joanne Mather, Maria Kucheryavaya, Layla Renshaw, Paola Filippucci and Dacia Viejo-Rose). The fifth part combines public education and engagement in museums, libraries, and heritage sites around death-related themes. Contributors share the variety of unique and innovative ways that they are working with national and international communities to develop educational programmes around death, dying, and the modern management of death. The chapters in this part cover spaces such as public cemeteries (see chapters by Janine Marriot and Kimberly Bearden), mobile death studies and city tours (see chapter by Ruth Penfold-Mounce), ghost tours and historic houses (see chapter by Katie Stringer Clary and David Hearnes) to the virtual realm and the Death Positive Library (see chapter by Stacey Pitsillides, Claire Nally, Anita Luby, Rhonda Brooks, Fiona Hill, Joanne Ghee, Katherine Ingham, Judith Robinson). The final part showcases death studies and heritage in practice and explores the way the tourism sector has embraced and memorialised death at cultural centres, historic spaces, subject specialist tours (see chapter by Sacha Coward on remembering the LGBTQ+ Deceased), and working with young people (see chapter by Rachel Anisha Divaker and Mary Margaret Kerr). Case studies include catacombs and relics in churches, and the connections these sites have with both their local publics, and tourists who come to these sites for a variety of reasons. Contributors share the various challenges that are faced by institutions that are experiencing an increase in tourist footfall at historic or sacred sites while trying to maintain a space of reflection and sanctity (see chapters by Radka Krejčí, Anita Csukovits and Katalin Forró). Finally, curatorial strategies for dealing with sensitive remains and display using 3D technology to encourage display and interpretation is also discussed (see chapter by Verónica Silva Pinto, Yanis Valenzuela-Sánchez, Ayelén Tonko-Huenucoy, Carlos Montoya, Marcelo Gálvez and Mario Castro).

Conclusion The chapters in this handbook explore the implications and connections between death and museums, galleries, libraries, archives, and heritage fields. They are a distinctive resource that is comprehensive in both theoretical and historical narratives combined with practical knowledge for how to discuss death in an ethical and meaningful way in less traditional spaces. These discussions are not limited to only museums or only Human Remains, but discussing death ethics, repatriation, and restitution across heritage fields and the crucial overlap with museum studies and exhibitions. It takes a diverse and global approach, including many perspectives, not just those of Western academia. The selected authors and content encompass a 6

Introduction

wide-range of voices in death studies and weave between traditional academic rhetoric with alternative scholarship such as thought-provoking text that is timely with the Black Lives Matter movement, ongoing COVID pandemic, decolonial practice, and spaces of memorialisation and public engagement. In this volume, we argue for an ethical community of practice in the treatment, display, and study of human remains, in interpretation of death studies information in public history fields, and in other heritage and GLAM fields of practice. Any such interactions should include authentic collaboration and community engagement to respect all stakeholders, both past and present, living and dead. Museums, Heritage, and Death aims to be a comprehensive and inclusive volume representative of these fields. The editors and contributors have worked to make it so, but we recognise there is still work to be done.

Notes 1 Mattias Frihammar and Helaine Silverman, eds., Heritage of Death: Landscapes of Emotion, Memory and Practice, 1st ed. (Routledge, 2017), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315440200; Linda Levitt, Culture, Celebrity, and the Cemetery: Hollywood Forever, Culture, Celebrity, and the Cemetery: Hollywood Forever (Routledge, 2018), https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429466021. 2 Dark Tourism refers to the visitation of sites of death, destruction, and mass disaster; A. V. Seaton, “Guided by the Dark: From Thanatopsis to Thanatourism,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 2, no. 4 (December 1, 1996): 234–244, https://doi.org/10.1080/1352725 9608722178; M. Foley and J. Lennon, Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster (Boston, MA: Cengage, 2001), https://www.bookdepository.com/Dark-TourismMalcolm-Foley/9780826450647. 3 “Death and Culture – Sociology, University of York,” accessed November 30, 2022, https://www.york.ac.uk/sociology/research/death-and-culture/. 4 “ASDS Home Page | Association for the Study of Death and Society,” accessed November 30, 2022, https://www.deathandsociety.org/index.php. 5 “The Order of the Good Death,” accessed November 30, 2022, https://www. orderofthegooddeath.com/. 6 Kirsty Squires, David Errickson, and Nicholas Márquez-Grant, eds., Ethical Approaches to Human Remains: A Global Challenge in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32926-6. 7 Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Fear of the Dead, Fear of Death: Is It Biological or Psychological?,” Mortality 17, no. 4 (2012): 322–37, https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275. 2012.734986. 8 Chris Shilling, The Body: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 9 Mattias Frihammar and Helaine Silverman, eds., Heritage of Death: Landscapes of Emotion, Memory and Practice, 1st ed. (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017), https:// doi.org/10.4324/9781315440200. 10 Ibid., 24. 11 Matthew Spokes, Jack Denham, and Benedik Lehmannt, Death, Memorialization and Deviant Spaces (Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2018). 12 Tiffany Jenkins, “Making an Exhibition of Ourselves: Using the Dead to Fight the Battles of the Living,” in Archaeologists and the Dead, by Tiffany Jenkins (Oxford University Press, 2016), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198753537.003.0020 13 Paul Edward Montgomery Ramírez, “Colonial Representations of Race in Alternative Museums: The ‘African’ of St Benet’s, the ‘Arab’ of Jorvik, and the ‘Black Viking,’” International Journal of Heritage Studies 27, no. 9 (September 2, 2021): 937–952, https:// doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2021.1883715.

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Trish Biers and Katie Stringer Clary 14 “Egypt’s Pharaohs’ Golden Parade: A majestic journey that history will forever record,” Egypt Today. 2021-04-04. Retrieved 2022-10-05. 15 Claire Wintle, “Decolonising the Museum: The Case of the Imperial and Commonwealth Institutes,” Museum & Society 11, no. 2 (2013): 185–201. 16 Mattias Frihammar and Helaine Silverman, eds., Heritage of Death: Landscapes of Emotion, Memory and Practice, 1st ed. (Routledge, 2017), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315440200. 17 H. (Eds.). (2020). Fforde, C., McKeown, C.T., & Keeler, The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, 2020, https://doi.org/doi.org/10.4324/ 9780203730966.

Bibliography “ASDS Home Page | Association for the Study of Death and Society.” Accessed November 30, 2022. https://www.deathandsociety.org/index.php. Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin. “Fear of the Dead, Fear of Death: Is It Biological or Psychological?” Mortality 17, no. 4 (November 2012): 322–337. 10.1080/13576275.2012.734986. Chapman, Robert. Death, Burial, and Social Representation. Oxford University Press, 2013. 10.1 093/oxfordhb/9780199569069.013.0004. “Death and Culture – Sociology, University of York.” Accessed November 30, 2022. https:// www.york.ac.uk/sociology/research/death-and-culture/. “Egypt’s Pharaohs’ Golden Parade: A Majestic Journey That History Will Forever Record”. Egypt Today. 2021-04-04. Retrieved 2022-10-05. https://www.egypttoday.com/ Article/4/100469/Egypt%E2%80%99s-Pharaohs-Golden-Parade-A-majestic-journeythat-history-will. Frihammar, Mattias and Helaine Silverman, eds. Heritage of Death: Landscapes of Emotion, Memory and Practice. 1st ed. Routledge, 2017. 10.4324/9781315440200. Jenkins, Tiffany. “Making an Exhibition of Ourselves: Using the Dead to Fight the Battles of the Living.” In Archaeologists and the Dead, edited by Tiffany Jenkins. Oxford University Press, 2016. 10.1093/oso/9780198753537.003.0020. Lamptey, P. S. N. O. “Museums and Skeletons: Prospects and Challenges of Cataloguing, Storing and Preserving Human Remains in the Museum of Archaeology, Ghana.” Ethics, Medicine and Public Health 21 (April 2022): 100753. 10.1016/j.jemep.2022.100753. Levitt, Linda. Culture, Celebrity, and the Cemetery: Hollywood Forever. 1st ed. Routledge, 2018. 10.4324/9780429466021. Montgomery Ramírez, Paul Edward. “Colonial Representations of Race in Alternative Museums: The ‘African’ of St Benet’s, the ‘Arab’ of Jorvik, and the ‘Black Viking.’” International Journal of Heritage Studies 27, no. 9 (September 2, 2021): 937–952. 10. 1080/13527258.2021.1883715. Scarre, Geoffrey. Death. London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Schneider, Arnd, ed. Art, Anthropology, and Contested Heritage: Ethnographies of TRACES. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 10.5040/9781350088139. Spokes, Matthew, Jack Denham, and Benedikt Lehmann. Death, Memorialization and Deviant Spaces. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2018. Squires, Kirsty, David Errickson, and Nicholas Márquez-Grant, eds. Ethical Approaches to Human Remains: A Global Challenge in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019. 10.1007/978-3-030-32926-6. “The Order of the Good Death.” Accessed November 30, 2022. https://www. orderofthegooddeath.com/. Tunbridge, J. E. and Ashworth, G. J. Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.

8

PART 1

Acquisition, Curation, and Conservation of the Dead

1 HISTORICAL CONTEXTS OF BODIES, DISPLAY, AND SPECTACLE Katie Stringer Clary Introduction Almost 3,000 years ago, an Egyptian named Neskhons served the god Amun as a lector priest: one who dressed, anointed, and cared for the god statue in the temple; today his mummified body is on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The story of his death – and his life after death – exemplifies a typical journey from collection to display of human remains in museums. The story of Neskhons’ journey from stolist of the god in Thebes in the first millennium BCE to museum display centerpiece is an interesting case study in a variety of ways and reasons people have viewed human remains. After his mummi­ fication and funerary rites, Neskhons lay undisturbed for hundreds of years, and his record is silent until his body was purchased in the nineteenth century by an American industrialist, who brought him to his home in Ohio, where he donated the remains, and staged an unwrapping party at the Western Reserve Historical Society.1 Neskhons was subsequently displayed at the museum, until the 1990s, when he was loaned to the McClung Museum in Knoxville, Tennessee, where this author en­ countered her first mummy exhibition, sparking a life-long interest in museums and human remains. Neskhons was later sold at auction, and today his body can be viewed at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Texas. Neskhons’ journey is just one example of countless individuals who traveled the world after their life on earth had ended, and some of whom are still on display in museums globally. This book follows the stories of many individuals, known and unknown, from all over the world to the museums where they are either currently displayed or housed, or through their repatriation process. The stories exemplify how their acquisition and subsequent display influences museums today through visitor in­ teractions, education, and relationships with communities, stakeholders, and descendant communities. As museums confront their colonial and, by today’s standards, unethical

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-3

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pasts, bodies and remains are at the forefront of most discussion, as the tangible, personal, and emotional touchstones of human experience. A common adage among nineteenth-century museum creators and directors was that a museum without a mummy was not a museum. From the Tradescant collec­ tions in England that became the Ashmolean Museum to Rudolf II’s Kuntskammer in Prague and P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York, museums have struggled against (or in some cases embraced) the stigma of cabinets of curiosities and ex­ ploitative displays. This chapter focuses on some of the first displays of human beings in museums. In addition, it discusses remains of those who were displayed in life in “freakshows,” museums, or at World’s Fair exhibitions. The chapter ends by exploring the influence of these earlier shows on modern examples, such as those on display at the blockbuster Body Worlds or Bodies exhibits that display plastinated human remains. Collectively, these bodies illustrate the roots of museum history. The tradition of museums as dime museums, pseudoscientific institutions, or entertainment palaces is something modern museums still must attempt to reconcile with the continual display of bodies.

A Brief History of Museums Museum historians often consider the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University to be the first museum. Depending on the definition of museum that one prescribes to, this may be the case. However, going further into the historical record, there are many other institutions that collected items of import or intrigue for display to a specific audience. The oldest documented institution that seems to have collected artifacts of historical import and displayed them for educational purposes is the NeoBabylonian site in Ur, modern day Iraq. The site, E-gig-par, includes a building that housed several artifacts from various sites, with what the archaeologist Leonard Wooley called museum labels.2 The site was part of the temple and school complex overseen by Ennigaldi, daughter of King Nabonidus of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in Persia. The very word for museum comes to us from the Greek museon, or seat of the muses. It is therefore appropriate that the Greeks would also house a museum older than that at Oxford: the Library and Museum at Alexandria in Egypt, which was opened around 280 BCE, less than a century after the Neo-Babylonian museum at Ur. Strabo’s Geographia describes the museum as: “... part of the palaces. It has a public walk and a place furnished with seats, and a large hall, in which the men of learning, who belong to the Museum, take their common meal.”3 Very little primary source material survives today for analysis of the collections, exhibitions, or audience of the Alexandrian site. Regardless, the Ptolemaic house of the muses not only symbolizes the collection of the history and texts of the world, but the word museum survived, the architectural archetype of the museum influenced museums in the modern world, and the essence of what a museum is was codified.4 Cabinets of Curiosities are often touted to be the precursors to the modern museum, though their audience and collection practices would not be accepted today. Both Kunstkammer (chamber of art) and Wunderkammer (chamber of wonder) 12

Historical Contexts of Bodies, Display, and Spectacle

became popular across Europe during the Renaissance, beginning in the late sixteenth century. Some collectors focused on art, while others collected natural specimens, and others unscrupulously created faked items or in less-nefarious situations, mis­ interpreted artifacts as fanciful remains. Olaus Wormius of Denmark, or Ole Worm as he was known, also included Egyptian mummies in his cabinet, and the catalog he published, which painstakingly categorized every item in the museum, listed the bodies under minerals.5 Today, much of the collection is on display at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. Many of the major museums of Europe, and even the esteemed Smithsonian Institute in the United States, began as a haphazard collection of interesting items. The collections often served as the foundational collections of museums that are still in existence today. Peter the Great’s collection became Russia’s oldest museum, Sir Hans Sloane’s is largely held by his home and the British Museum, and the Tradescant and Ashmole collections became the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University. Less than a century after the establishment of the Ashmolean Museum the British Museum opened in London in 1759, and a generation later, the Louvre opened in Paris. The audience of both institutions were much broader than their predecessors, and their respective governments opened the museums and used them to display private and royal collections. Today, The International Council of Museums (ICOM), American Alliance of Museums (AAM), Webster’s online dictionary, and others largely agree that a museum is a place for the procurement, preservation, study, display, and commu­ nication about objects of importance, interest, or value. Many museums hold human remains in their collections or on display, with little to no legal or ethical guidelines to reference.

Human Remains: What Comprises Corporeal Remains and Are They Objects? Defining what a human being or a person is a question too big for this chapter; describing how this study defines human remains is an easier task. Answering this question may seem simple at first; human remains are the corporeal, bodily remnants of people – the “stuff” left behind after death, the ht of Egyptian belief that was necessary for the housing of the spiritual forms of the soul. Skeletons and bones, cremated remains or cremains, mummies, shrunken heads, and plastinated remains may immediately spring to mind. However, there are other examples that are not quite so obvious such as items made from skin or bone that were used in rituals or daily life, fossilized excrement called coprolites, or hair that is used in jewelry or wreaths from the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States, to name a few. Sometimes remains in exhibits are hidden, like in the case of a human skull found in the framework of a diorama at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During restoration work an x-ray showed the skull and teeth served as the base for the sculptor to build the racist caricature figure.6 13

Katie Stringer Clary

Another oft-forgotten example of human remains is prosthetics; many people who wear prosthesis consider them to be a part of their body. One of the most famous examples is Frida Kahlo’s prosthetic leg. The accident that was instrumental to the development of her art also resulted in the need for an assistive device, which was displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, United Kingdom in a 2019 exhibition.7 At many museums in the United States, there are also prosthetics on display, typically in medical or war-related exhibitions. Cellular material, DNA, and other genetic material are also parts of humans that are left behind after death. Since the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City, New York opened, it has been met with protests by the family members of in­ dividuals who died on September 11, 2001. The museum contains exhibits and interpretation of the events of that day, but deep in the museum, not open to the general public, there is also a facility that preserves the human remains of unidentified victims. Jay D. Aronson’s 2016 book, Who Owns the Dead: The Science and Politics of Death at Ground Zero explains that more than 21,000 body parts were recovered from the World Trade Center site, and the remains of over 1,000 people are still unidentified. The room where the bodies are stored is open to only medical examiner office staff. However, many families disagree that the remains, some at the cellular level, should be held in the museum. The question becomes, are these remains objects? Philosophically, one could argue that people are just objects on this earth; however, many see themselves and other people as something more than just an object, even after death. At what point do human remains become far enough removed that they become simply another object to be accessioned into the museum collection? When all known relatives have died? If the remains are of a person of another ethnicity or ability than those displaying it, does that have an impact on the individual’s humanity even in death? If the remains are ancient or old, does that make objectification easier? Are Westerners simply too sensitive and sentimental in regard to death and human remains? The fact remains that in most cases, human remains in museums have received an accession number and are recorded in the museum records through deed of gift or deed of trust as belonging to the museum in trust for the public. Therefore, these remains are indeed, at least under usual museum protocol and through legal language, objects.

Traveling Exhibitions and Human Displays “Freakshows” From the eighteenth century up through the mid-twentieth century (with some modern examples still persisting), dime museums, national exhibitions, and other ancestors to the traditional museum displayed living people who were considered “different” in some way: people with physical and mental disabilities including microcephaly, varieties of dwarfism, or even people from foreign lands were often exhibited. The exhibitions also often included the remains of people and animals, especially those that were foreign or ancient for the public to view. Occasionally those on display were there voluntarily; but more often the individuals displayed themselves 14

Historical Contexts of Bodies, Display, and Spectacle

as an act of desperation. The place of those individuals is an important piece of the past that informs present displays and exhibits, museum policies, and popular attitudes. Raree Shows, Halls of Human Curiosities, Sideshows, Pitshows, Odditoriums, Congress of Oddities, Collections of Human Wonders, Museum of Nature’s Mistakes, and Freakshows: the exhibition of people have been called many things. One of the first examples of a traveling exhibit in the United States appeared in 1738, in a colonial American newspaper. The paper ran an advertisement for an exhibit of a person who “was taken in a wood at Guinea, ’tis a female about four feet high, in every part like a woman excepting her head which nearly resembles the ape.”8 Throughout the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, freakshows or sideshows were among the most popular attractions for the middle-class public.9 In the United States, freakshows were at the height of popularity between 1840 and 1940. In 1840, P.T. Barnum began the American Museum, a New York City attraction that cost a dime to enter. The museum contained exhibits of artifacts, fake artifacts such as the Fiji Mermaid, and other gaffes or faked items made to trick the visitor. The museum was also home to people, including: General Tom Thumb, a person with dwarfism; the Aztec Twins; albinos; the “What is It?” a person with microcephaly; and many other “living curiosities.”10 These human beings were considered to be rarities worthy of exhibition in a museum. Barnum’s American Museum was, in many ways, following in the footsteps of the earliest museums of the Western world such as the Ashmolean Museum, British Museum, or the cabinets of curiosities beloved of European monarchs. In 1865, a fire destroyed P.T. Barnum’s original American Museum. The New York Times published a list of some of the items lost in the fire. Fortunately, none of the exhibited living people died. The article went on to exclaim that Barnum would construct a new museum to replace the old. The author claimed, “The fact is, that the loss of the museum was a national calamity.”11 In spite of the supposed national calamity, when Barnum’s museum burned in 1865, few complained. In The Nation, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, a proponent of the “traditional” museum for the upper, educated classes wrote: “The worst and most corrupt classes of our people must seek some new place of resort.”12 He goes on to question whether visitors were more upset by the fire that destroyed the museum or the state of the artifacts in the museum. Godkin claimed that the “insufficiency, disorder, neglected condition” of the museum should have insulted visitors. To Godkin, museums must be professional, educational, and limited in the audience they sought to attract. He concluded: The profoundly scientific are not those who care for public museums, unless containing this or that unique treasure. The frequenters of museums are those who cannot themselves give much time or means to the collection, classifica­ tion, and study of specimens, but who read in the evenings and would gladly see by day a larger number and greater variety of helps to understand than their own limited time has sufficed to discover.13

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Godkin wanted a new museum that would do justice to that description and to the title of “American Museum.” He said, “It is on behalf of all classes of the community, except that vicious and degraded one by which the late ‘American Museum’ was largely monopolized, that we ask the community for a building and for collections that shall be worthy of the name so sadly misapplied.”14 In 1868, Barnum’s rebuilt museum again burned to the ground in 1868 and this time it was not rebuilt. Instead, Barnum took his show on the road, in the founding of one of America’s most famous traveling circuses and sideshows.15 Soon after, other entrepreneurial businessmen organized traveling exhibitions based on Barnum’s model. Exhibitions included animals, daring feats, and people with physical, mental, and behavioral disabilities or impairments; these displays attracted the public and generated a profit. The shows were often advertised as educational and scientific displays, much like a traveling museum. While people likely did not conflate an actual museum with sideshows, the sideshows generally billed themselves as educational as they grew out of the dime museum tradition (Figure 1.1). These traveling exhibitions allowed the general population in rural and urban settings to see “dioramas, panoramas, georamas, cosmoramas, paintings, relics, freaks, stuffed animals, menageries, waxworks, and theatrical performance.”16 The traveling exhibitions and dime museums served as escapes for Americans who suddenly had

Figure 1.1

Outside a freakshow at the Rutland Fair in Vermont. Photograph by Jack Delano. From the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division Washington, DC. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa2000027091/PP/ (accessed June 14, 2021).

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Historical Contexts of Bodies, Display, and Spectacle

leisure time thanks in part to the industrial revolution. For many, the word museum thus became irrevocably associated with the weird, strange, and unknown, since many of the attractions were called museums by their proprietors.17 In some cases, those who were living displays or seen as curiosities became exhibits or accessioned museum collection “objects.” Some of the most famous cases of such displays are those of Julia Pastrana, who traveled the world in life and death until her repatriation and reburial in 201318; Ishi, who lived, worked, and was collected by the Hearst Museum until 1989 and Smithsonian Museum until 200019; Saartjie Bartman, at the Muséum d’ Histoire Naturelle and later Musée de l’Homme until 197020; and against his well-known wishes, Charles Byrne, who was displayed at the Hunterian Museum in London until 2022.21 These are only a few examples, and countless remains are still on display or in collections at museums and repositories around the world, collections that are particularly populated by indigenous groups.

World’s Fairs, Expositions, and “Human Zoos” In addition to the traveling sideshow, circus, or dime museum, World’s Fairs and Expositions grew in popularity in the nineteenth century throughout the United States. The first World’s Fair was in 1791 in Prague, Bohemia, as a testament to new manufacturing techniques throughout the kingdom.22 As industrialization took hold throughout Europe and the United States, expositions displaying new mechanics, world cultures, and technological advances became popular sites of nationalism and entertainment for the masses. By 1798, the trend had expanded, and France held their first L’Exposition publique des produits de l’industrie française; the popularity of these events continued and grew, and trade fairs and expositions continue into the twentyfirst century.23 In the United States, the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the first major exposition in 1876. The exposition included one of the first displays of Native American artifacts for the general public, in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institute. The curators were instructed to not include live people in their exhibition.24 Rather than display living humans, the exhibit used “life-size papier mache figures,” depicting racist caricatures of “primitive” Native Americans for the largely white audience. According to Judy Zagras, “Baird’s goal of attempting to enlighten the public about native cultures probably did not succeed largely because exhibit tech­ niques were not sophisticated enough to deal with the general attitude that Indians were inferior and primitive beings.”25 This would be the last exhibition to deemphasize the display of people as exhibits at an American exposition. The Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 is perhaps the most wellknown of exhibitions in the United States due to its massive architectural under­ taking, use of electric lights, and the shocking murders by H.H. Holmes during the exhibition. However, it is also famous for its display of living people in “ethnic villages” throughout the fair. The fair included an extensive list of living exhibitions: German, Austrian, Irish, Chinese, “Little Egypt and the Hootchie Cootchie,” and an “Eskimo Village,” to name a few.26 The exhibitions were largely stereotypical 17

Katie Stringer Clary

Figure 1.2

Street of Cairo section of the Midway at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois, 1893. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. USA; https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2014645370/ (ac­ cessed June 14, 2022).

depictions of life in these foreign places, for the entertainment of visitors to the ex­ hibition (Figure 1.2). Displaying humans at world’s expos became commonplace after the “White City” of Chicago in 1893; the London and Colonial Exhibition included displays of “primitive” people behind iron bars in 1896,27 Ota Begna was displayed with 20

18

Historical Contexts of Bodies, Display, and Spectacle

other “pygmies” at the St. Louis fair in 1904,28 and countless others were displayed at the hundreds of exhibitions around the world.29 The connection between fairs and museums may seem tenuous, but they both served as educational opportunities for the general public. G. Brown Goode was one of the nineteenth century’s biggest names in exhibitions; he was interested in world’s fairs and museums, and their ability to connect humans to their past, present, and a variety of cultures.30 He clearly saw the connection between two exhibitionary practices; the public surely did as well. An example of this is the famous case of Ishi, at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley in the United States. Ishi was known as “the last wild Indian,” and was the last known survivor of his tribe, the Yahi people. Anthropologists took Ishi to Berkeley where they studied him, and he worked as a janitor at the museum where he lived. People visited him at the museum, where he lived and worked, as if he were a living display. Upon his death, his remains were cremated and returned to a closely related tribe for burial. It was only discovered in 2000 that his brain had been autopsied and sent across the country to a Smithsonian ware­ house; it has since been repatriated, as well.31 The connection between these human zoos and “traditional” museums is perhaps not as distant as some might wish to believe.

Human Remains in Museums Today Physical, anthropological, and even pseudoscience studies of skulls and foreign cul­ tures also facilitated the acquisition of various human remains, from bones and cre­ mated remains to "shrunken heads" and war-dead trophies. Scientists and medical professionals also added to collections of museums with the research artifacts they studied, which were often human remains of various types. Samuel J. Redman, author of Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums, estimates that the Smithsonian Institute alone contains the remains of over 30,000 individuals. If you have visited a large national museum – or even a medium-sized regional museum – in the United States, chances are you have encountered human remains of one type or another. In my time working in various museums and historical organi­ zations in the southeastern United States I encountered everything from Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) protected human remains to Ecuadorian tsantsas, to a White woman’s long braid and everyday items made from human bone and hair. Victorian-era historic house museums usually have a family hair wreath or hair jewelry from the cult of mourning popular in that time. Most mid-sized museums of a certain age, such as the Charleston Museum in South Carolina and the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, proudly exclaim an Egyptian mummy on display or in storage. The Charleston Museum is one of the biggest attractions, with TripAdvisor reviews exclaiming, “We went for the mummy, and it didn’t disappoint,” and “The mummy was awesome.”32 Large museums, such as the Getty Villa in Malibu or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, boast entire sections of the museum devoted to Egyptian mummies. Other museums, particularly those that began as medical collections, contain almost nothing except human remains. The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia and the 19

Katie Stringer Clary

Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis are just two examples of museums devoted to the study and preservation of human remains. Beyond that, blockbuster traveling exhibits, such as the Bodies … the Exhibition, Body Worlds, and Real Bodies display the (sometimes ill-gotten) human remains of people through a variety of poses highlighting the multitude of internal anatomical systems.

Lessons for Today’s Museums Today, some of the most popular and most-visited “museums” are a part of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Odditorium franchise. These places are called odditoriums, and though today they do not contain living people in their exhibits, wax and plastic figures of people who were considered to be freaks are still on display. Most items in the museums are reproductions or gaffes (such as many examples of the famous Barnum hoax the Feegee Mermaid; many of the sites have one). The Ripley’s franchise of museums and exhibits is decidedly for entertainment, not education, much like the original sideshows and dime museums of the past. The modern Ripley’s franchise includes the odditoriums or museums, perhaps the most recognizable of their brand, as well as aquariums, mini-golf, haunted adventures, and mirror mazes, to name a few. Though many people would not confuse the Ripley’s franchise with a museum, the 2022 Met Gala scandal of Kim Kardashian wearing an original Marilyn Monroe dress owned by Ripley’s shows that many in the public still view the facility as a museum.33 Even today people are still interested in seeing the macabre, taboo, or different in so-called respectable museums, even as they were in the past centuries. Today exhibits that display human bodies are popular in several regions. Gunther von Hagen’s Body Worlds, a German exhibit aimed at exhibiting human anatomy, opened in 1996 and continues to travel in various forms around the world. In this exhibit, there are more than 200 specimens, and 26 whole human bodies that have been prepared and posed in diverse poses. Though many of the bodies may have been obtained illegally or at the least unethically, the press reports on the exhibit, even those that were negative, served only to increase the number of visitors to museums.34 The success of Body Worlds is apparent in the number of exhibits that imitate the original exhibition: Bodies … The Exhibition, The Amazing Human Body, Body Exploration, and Bodies Revealed, are just a few of the traveling popular exhibits that are based on von Hagen’s original work. While these are arguably more scientifically educational than the freakshows of the past, the exhibitions do exploit the bodies of human beings, just as sideshows did throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Science museums, exhibition halls, and other regional and state museums often host the traveling exhibitions.

Conclusion In light of these historical contexts, many questions still remain for this author. Museums today do not often display people who are living as oddities or spectacles, 20

Historical Contexts of Bodies, Display, and Spectacle

even for educational purposes. Even so, how far have museums come from their roots as cabinets of curiosities, human zoos, and even freakshows? A question curators might consider is, “would this individual want to be re­ membered in the way that they are in the museum?” As a student of ancient cultures, these questions always bring this author back to Ancient Egyptian mummies. A major tenant of Ancient Egyptian religions was the idea that an individual’s name must be remembered, spoken, and written down for the soul to exist in the afterlife. If a museum uses this reasoning to justify the display of a mummy, they could argue that the soul is remembered in the afterlife, which was the main goal of mummification and funerary practice.35 However, ancient Egyptian funerary practices also sealed the body, with many funerary objects, in special rituals that allowed various parts of the soul to commune with the objects, writings, and architecture of the burial place. Removing that body, not only from the geographical region where it was placed, but also from the context of the tomb disrupts the intention of mummification and burial. While the person may be remembered on an exhibit text, other religious practices are not maintained, and in many cases, the individual becomes “the awesome mummy.” This chapter begins with the story of Neskhons; he truly exemplifies this path human remains have taken in museums. He was brought to the United States by a wealthy businessman, who held a huge event to make a spectacle of the unwrapping of his mummy. He was later put on display in museums, sold to the highest bidder, and today remains on display in a museum. This is just one example of thousands of individuals who have taken similar paths. What would Neskhons think of this journey if he were here to experience it? At the core of this issue is respect and consent. If museums consult with descendant communities or even primary sources from those ancient cultures that do not have a modern connection, most groups can work out beneficial solutions. This author does not advocate that every piece of human remains in museums be repatriated and reburied or otherwise disposed of in the way that their culture would have wished; for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that some of these cultures’ wishes vary; this would be a daunting task. However, sometimes repatriation and reburial is the right thing to do. This author merely suggests that museums and other cultural organiza­ tions in the United States begin to look at their own policies and develop guidelines or ethical documents to guide these decisions in the most respectful, honorable, and educational way possible.

Notes 1 “An Egyptian Mummy. It Will Be Presented to the Historical Society Friday Evening,” Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio, October 24), 1900: 10. 2 Leonard Wooley, Ur Excavations, The Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods, Volume IX. London: Cambridge University Press, 1962, http://www.etana.org/sites/default/files/ coretexts/20239.pdf. 3 “Strabo, Geography, BOOK XVII, CHAPTER I,” http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ hopper/text?doc=Strab.+17.1&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0239 (accessed June 19, 2019).

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Katie Stringer Clary 4 For a full discussion of the Museum of Alexandria and its influence on modern museums in Frances, see Paula Young Lee, “The Musaeum of Alexandria and the Formation of the Muséum in Eighteenth-Century France,” in The Art Bulletin 79, no. 3 (1997): 385–412, https://doi.org/10.2307/3046259. 5 “Museum Wormianum. Seu Historia Rerum Rariorum, Tam Naturalium, Quam Artificialium, Tam Domesticarum, Quam Exoticarum, Quæ Hafniæ Danorum in Œdibus Authoris Servantur. Adornata Ab Olao Worm... Variis & Accuratis Iconibus Illustrata.” Alvin, http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-104022 (accessed July 8, 2019). 6 Donald Gilliland, “Restoration Reveals Human Remains in Famous Carnegie Diorama,” Triblive.Com, 2017, https://archive.triblive.com/aande/museums/restoration-revealshuman-remains-in-famous-carnegie-diorama/. 7 Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2018. 8 The Political State of Great Britain. United Kingdom: n.p., 1738. 9 Robert Bogden, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 25. 10 Phineas T. Barnum, An Illustrated Catalogue and Guide Book to Barnum’s American Museum (New York: Wynkoop, Hallenbeck& Thomas, circa 1860). 11 “Disastrous Fire: Total Destruction of Barnum’s American Museum,” New York Times, July 14, 1865. 12 Edwin L. Godkin, “A Word about Museums,” The Nation (July 27, 1865): 113–114. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 “Burning of Barnum’s Museum: List of Losses and Insurances,” New York Times, March 4, 1868. 16 Andrea Stulman Dennett, Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 5. 17 More information about the rise and impact of dime museums and entertainment industry as a whole is available in Dennett’s Weird and Wonderful; John Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978); Hugh H. Genoways and Mary Anne Andrei, Museum Origins: Readings in Early Museum History and Philosophy (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2008; Charles C. Sellers, Mr. Peale’s Museum: Charles Wilson Peale and the First Popular Museum of Natural Science and Art (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980); and Gary Kulik, “Designing the Past: History-Museum Exhibitions from Peale to the Present,” in History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment, ed., Warren Leon and Roy Rosenweig (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 3–37. 18 Laura Anderson Barbata, The Eye of the Beholder: Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home. (Lucia|Marquand, 2017). 19 Kevin Fagan, “Ishi’s Kin to Give Him Proper Burial: Indians to Bury Brain in Secret Location in State,” in San Francisco Chronicle (August 10, 2000), p. A-5. 20 Sadiah Qureshi, “Displaying Sara Baartman, the ‘Venus Hottentot,’” in History of Science 42, no. 136 (June 2004). 233–257, DOI: 10.1177/007327530404200204. 21 H. Ellis, “Charles Byrne, the Irish Giant, Whose Skeleton Is Preserved in the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons,” in Journal of Perioperative Practice 31, no. 3 (2021): 114–115, DOI: 10.1177/1750458920950164. 22 Arnošt Klíma, “The Role of Rural Domestic Industry in Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Economic History Review 27, no. 1 (1974): 48–56, DOI: 10.2307/2594203. 23 John E. Findling and Kimberly D. Pelle, eds. Encyclopedia of World’s Fairs and Expositions (London: McFarland & Company, 2015). 24 Judy B. Zagras, “North American Indian Exhibit at the Centennial Exhibition,” in The Curator, 162 (1976), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.2151-6952.1976. tb00496.x (accessed June 14, 2022).

22

Historical Contexts of Bodies, Display, and Spectacle 25 Ibid., 166. 26 Gertrude M. Scott, “Village Performance: Villages at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893,” Order No. 9134689, New York University, 1991, www.proquest. com/dissertations-theses/village-performance-villages-at-chicago-worlds/docview/ 303931914/se-2?accountid=26722 (accessed June 14, 2022). 27 Mathur Saloni “Living Ethnological Exhibits: The Case of 1886,” in Cultural Anthropology 15 (2008): 492–524, DOI: 10.1525/can.2000.15.4.492. 28 Pamela Newkirk, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (New York: Amistad, 2015). 29 Anne Dreesbach, Colonial Exhibitions:‘Völkerschauen’ and the Display of the ‘Other’ (European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2012) and Cinthya Oliveira, “Human Rights & Exhibitions, 1789–1989,” inJournal of Museum Ethnography, no. 29 (2016): 71–94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43915939 30 Robert W. Rydell, “World Fairs and Museums,” in A Companion to Museum Studies (Malden, MA, USA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006), 135–151, https://doi.org/10.1002/ 9780470996836.ch9. 31 Orin Starn, Ishi’s Brain: In Search of America’s Last “Wild” Indian (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004). 32 TripAdvisor Reviews of Charleston Museum, tripadvisor.com, https://www.tripadvisor. com/ShowUserReviews-g54171-d104631-r241476535-Charleston_Museum-Charleston_ South_Carolina.html (accessed June 14, 2022). 33 Katie Stringer Clary, “Marilyn’s Dress and Museum Ethics,” on the American Association for State and Local History Blog, May 19, 2022. https://aaslh.org/marilyns-dress-museumethics/ (accessed June 14, 2022). 34 Peter M. McIsaac, “Gunther von Hagen’s Body Worlds: Exhibitionary Practice, German History, and Difference,” in Museums and Difference, ed. Daniel J. Sherman (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008), 153, 160. 35 Rosalie David, Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt (New York: Penguin, 2002).

Bibliography “An Egyptian Mummy. It Will Be Presented to the Historical Society Friday Evening.” Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), October 24, 1900: 10. “Burning of Barnum’s Museum: List of Losses and Insurances.” New York Times, March 4, 1868. Barbata, Laura Anderson. The Eye of the Beholder: Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home Lucia|Marquand, 2017. Barnum, Phineas T. An Illustrated Catalogue and Guide Book to Barnum’s American Museum. New York: Wynkoop, Hallenbeck & Thomas, circa 1860. Bogden, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1988. David, Rosalie. Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt. New York: Penguin, 2002. Dennett, Andrea Stulman. Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America. New York: New York University Press, 1997. “Disastrous Fire: Total Destruction of Barnum’s American Museum.” New York Times, July 14, 1865. Dreesbach, Anne. Colonial Exhibitions: ‘Völkerschauen’ and the Display of the ‘Other’. European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2012. Ellis, H. “Charles Byrne, the Irish Giant, Whose Skeleton Is Preserved in the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons.” Journal of Perioperative Practice 31, no. 3 (2021): 114–115. DOI: 10.1177/1750458920950164. Fagan, Kevin. “Ishi’s Kin to Give Him Proper Burial: Indians to Bury Brain in Secret Location in State.” San Francisco Chronicle (August 10, 2000), p. A-5.

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Katie Stringer Clary Findling, John E. and Kimberly D. Pelle, eds. Encyclopedia of World’s Fairs and Expositions. London: McFarland & Company, 2015. Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2018. Genoways, Hugh H. and Mary Anne Andrei. Museum Origins: Readings in Early Museum History and Philosophy. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2008. Gilliland, Donald. “Restoration Reveals Human Remains in Famous Carnegie Diorama.” Triblive.Com, 2017. https://archive.triblive.com/aande/museums/restoration-revealshuman-remains-in-famous-carnegie-diorama/. Godkin, Edwin L. “A Word about Museums.” The Nation (July 27, 1865). http://www. perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Strab.+17.1&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999. 01.0239. Kasson, John. Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. Klíma, Arnošt. “The Role of Rural Domestic Industry in Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century.” The Economic History Review 27, no. 1 (1974): 48–56. DOI: 10.2307/2594203. Kulik, Gary. “Designing the Past: History-Museum Exhibitions from Peale to the Present.” In History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment, edited by Warren Leon and Roy Rosenweig, 3–37. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. McIsaac, Peter M. “Gunther von Hagen’s Body Worlds: Exhibitionary Practice, German History, and Difference.” In Museums and Difference, edited by Daniel J. Sherman. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008. “Museum Wormianum. Seu Historia Rerum Rariorum, Tam Naturalium, Quam Artificialium, Tam Domesticarum, Quam Exoticarum, Quæ Hafniæ Danorum in Œdibus Authoris Servantur. Adornata Ab Olao Worm Variis & Accuratis Iconibus Illustrata.” Alvin. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-104022 (accessed July 8, 2019). Newkirk, Pamela. Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga. New York: Amistad, 2015. Oliveira, Cinthya. “Human Rights & Exhibitions, 1789–1989.” Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 29 (2016): 71–94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43915939 Qureshi, Sadiah. “Displaying Sara Baartman, the ‘Venus Hottentot.’” History of Science 42, no. 136 (June 2004): 233–257. DOI: 10.1177/007327530404200204. Rydell, Robert W. “World Fairs and Museums.” In A Companion to Museum Studies, 135–151. Malden, MA, USA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006. DOI: 10.1002/978047099683 6.ch9. Saloni, Mathur. “Living Ethnological Exhibits: The Case of 1886.” Cultural Anthropology 15 (2008): 492–524. DOI: 10.1525/can.2000.15.4.492. Scott, Gertrude M. “Village Performance: Villages at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893.” New York University, 1991. www.proquest.com/dissertationstheses/village-performance-villages-at-chicago-worlds/docview/303931914/se-2? accountid=26722 (accessed June 14, 2022). Sellers, Charles C. Mr. Peale’s Museum: Charles Wilson Peale and the First Popular Museum of Natural Science and Art. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980. Starn, Orin. Ishi’s Brain: In Search of America’s Last “Wild” Indian. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. Stringer Clary, Katie. “Marilyn’s Dress and Museum Ethics.” On the American Association for State and Local History Blog, May 19, 2022. https://aaslh.org/marilyns-dress-museumethics/ (accessed June 14, 2022). “Strabo, Geography, BOOK XVII., CHAPTER I.” Accessed June 19, 2019. http://www. perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0239%3Abook%3D17 The Political State of Great Britain. United Kingdom: n.p., 1738. TripAdvisor Reviews of Charleston Museum. tripadvisor.com, https://www.tripadvisor.com/ ShowUserReviews-g54171-d104631-r241476535-Charleston_Museum-Charleston_ South_Carolina.html (accessed June 14, 2022).

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Historical Contexts of Bodies, Display, and Spectacle Wooley, Leonard. Ur Excavations, The Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods, Volume IX. London: Cambridge University Press, 1962. http://www.etana.org/sites/default/files/coretexts/ 20239.pdf (accessed June 14, 2022). Zagras, Judy B. “North American Indian Exhibit at the Centennial Exhibition.” The Curator 162 (1976). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.2151-6952.1976.tb00496.x (accessed June 14, 2022).

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2 CONSERVING THE HUMANITY OF HUMAN REMAINS Cat Irving Walking through the Wohl Pathology Gallery at Surgeons’ Hall, one sees thousands of jars. Some are made of glass, some are plastic. Some contain fluid, others not. Some hold bone, others tissue. Sometimes there is a flash of colour, where a vessel has been injected with blue or red. Occasionally one will see a silvery flash of mercury. The thing common to most of these jars is that their contents were once part of a person. Some of these are recognisably human, others less so (Figure 2.1). Human remains in museums have the unique status of being both an object embodying historic and scientific ideas, and actually being the physical vestiges of a person. In Objects and the Museum, Samuel Alberti talks of the way we can ask objects questions similar to those we might ask when we write biographies of people.1 And here lies the paradox of these “things in jars”: they are both a person about whom a biography could be written, and an object with a story beyond that person’s life that can help the museum visitor elucidate knowledge about medicine, history, and their own relationship between their body and death. They can also tell us about the lives of the people whose remains reside in our museums. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the individuals whose bodies became specimens were criminals who faced the hangman’s noose, those whose families hadn’t taken adequate precautions against graverobbers, and, after the 1832 Anatomy Act, the bodies of the unclaimed dead from workhouses and prisons. We should also remember that the human remains in this collection don’t always come from the dead – though, obviously, many do. As a surgical museum, Surgeons’ Hall holds many body parts that have been removed surgically – an amputated foot, a portion of resected bowel, an excised appendix. These were often – though not always – the poorer members of society whose stories tend not to be heard today. Therefore, running parallel to the stories of medical history told in Surgeons’ Hall, we can also learn about the difficulties and dangers of everyday life in these times – the factory worker catching her hair in machinery and having her scalp ripped off, the farrier kicked in the chest by a horse, the sailor whose leg had to be amputated after a 26

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-4

Conserving the Humanity of Human Remains

Figure 2.1

The Wohl Pathology Gallery at Surgeons’ Hall Museums. Photograph by the author.

fall on ship, or the woman who died in childbirth because her body was misshapen by rickets. As a conservator working with these human remains every day, there is a constant slippage between these states. There is the practical focus on the task in hand, with the knowledge and manual dexterity required, coupled with the awareness of this as a former person, with their own story which can be learned. Alongside this, always, is the way this proximity with a dead person makes me reflect upon myself. Collections such as the one at Surgeons’ Hall developed out of a need to understand and study anatomy, and in this chapter I will look at the motivations behind these collections, and the methods developed to produce them. Then I will consider the way that conservation and maintenance of such a collection is important, not only to its survival, but also to the respect we owe to the people who inhabit such 27

Cat Irving

a collection and as a debt of gratitude to the knowledge they have provided and can continue to provide.

Stopping Decomposition All things decay with time, and the job of a museum conservator is to slow that process down. With human remains, the complete picture is more complicated. After death, the natural first step is decomposition. Methods of preserving parts of the human body really borrow heavily from ways of preserving food – something that shouldn’t surprise us as, essentially, it is the same base material. Meat and fish have long been dried for storage and transport, and sealed containers of vinegar, honey, brine and oil have been used to extend the life of some foodstuffs. These ideas quickly translated into ways we could think about the human body: the ancient Egyptians were effectively drying their dead out via the mummification process, and in some instances, they removed organs and preserved them in canopic jars, where they would be covered in oils; the Babylonians used honey as an embalming method. These early methods of preserving the human body were as a part of funerary ritual. The idea of systematically studying the human body using cadavers really began in fourteenth century Italy, after a brief flourishing in Ptolemaic Alexandria. The first authorised human dissection for medical study in Western Europe took place in Bologna in 1315, and this became a more regular activity over the next 200 years. With the publication of Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica libri septem in 1543, studying the body really became central to medical teaching. It is here that the tendency for the human body to decompose becomes inconvenient. Timings for dissection were limited by temperature – in the pre-refrigeration era the dissection needed to be done at the coldest times to slow decomposition – and they are a one-time only experience. There’s no possibility to go back and review what you’ve seen, which led Robert Boyle to comment in 1664: [I]t cannot but be a great help to the Student of Anatomy to be able to preserve the parts of human Bodies, and those of other Animals, especially such Monsters as are of very singular or instructive Fabrick, so long as he may have recourse to them at pleasure, and contemplate each of them so often and so considerately, till he have taken sufficient notice of the shape, situation, connection, etc. of the Vessel, Bone, or other part, and firmly impressed an idea of it upon his memory.2 This idea is really the springboard to the medical museum, which became an essential part of anatomical teaching from the eighteenth century well into the twentieth century. Frederick Knox, whose brother Robert was the anatomist who bought the bodies of the victims of serial killers Burke and Hare,3 would claim in 1836 that anatomy couldn’t be taught without a museum.4 Such a museum required a col­ lection of anatomical preparations to act as an archive of the human body, both in health and disease, to be studied and consulted until the student was completely familiar with its appearance, with the eighteenth century collection of William 28

Conserving the Humanity of Human Remains

Hunter forming one of the most comprehensive such archives.5 The problem was, how can one make such an archive in the face of the natural inclination of such tissue to decompose? Frederick Knox tells us in his “Anatomists Instructor” that, “All parts of animal bodies, when life has ceased, have a constant tendency to decay and return to dust; and although nothing can prevent this entirely, yet its progress may be arrested for a certain number of years.”6 Preparations of human tissue can be classified as wet and dry, or dried. Bones and teeth (and items such as calculi) can usually be thought of as dry, and while those acquired archaeologically generally are without tissue, those in anatomical preparations usually have to be prepared. This is usually done by mac­ eration in water, to remove marrow, fats and vessels from the bone. Pole tells us that this can take “three to six months, more or less, according to the season of the year, or temperature of the atmosphere.”7 Eighteenth-century anatomist John Hunter tells us the quickest way is to leave the bones to become “fly blown”: After removing the flesh, […], the quickest way, without boiling to clean them, is to put the bones into a tub, with some loose cover, so as to let the flies get to them; they will fly-blow them immediately, and in a fortnight’s time they will have entirely destroyed the flesh. However this can only be done in summer.8 This will leave what I think of as “the museum bone” – an object that is often seen by the public as inert and unthreatening, and which tends to affect the viewer differently from preserved soft tissue. These prepared bones can be articulated into full or partial skeletons, mounted in jars or on stands, or boxed for handling and study. Until the mid-1980s most medical students had a half skeleton for study at home, which was bought from medical suppliers, or rented from the university. We should remember that while bones outlive the soft tissue in the body, they are not forever and will eventually decompose as well. Bone degradation is a much slower process than that of the flesh. In Spain, archaeologists found 5,000-year-old human bones deliberately coated in a large quantity of pulverised cinnabar. Cinnabar is a form of mercuric sulphide, which is toxic to the bacteria that would degrade the collagen part of the bone, leading to disintegration. This has been thought of as the earliest known attempt at preserving parts of the human body in Europe.9 Mercury would go on to be used in various embalming processes. The dried preparations are those that still have tissue attached, usually dissected to show specific structures, and dried out either by simply hanging it up in the dissection room to air dry, or by soaking in alcohol prior to this to encourage the process due to the higher volatility of alcohol. The next stage of preparation is varnishing; John Hunter describes this “as necessary a part as any, as it keeps them clean and free from insects,”10 while emphasising that it is “the hollow corners or crevices that require it most, as it is there the insects lay their eggs, the worms from which destroy the preparation.” These worms could even eat through the varnish – against which Hunter recommends dissolving a corrosive sublimate into spirit of wine and mixing that into the varnish. 29

Cat Irving

One early collection of dried preparations was compiled by Antonio Maria Valsalva, who was renowned for his work on the ear. It was gifted to the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna by his widow after his death, but they soon began to deteriorate – whether from inadequacies of varnish, or repeated handling of these fragile structure by students is uncertain.11 For Honoré Fragonard, a French surgeon who taught anatomy at the veterinary school in Paris it was the quality of the varnish that was important: he injected the blood vessels with materials such as beeswax and tallow, and dried soft tissue by submerging it in alcohol, then positioned it with pins and frames, before allowing the alcohol to evaporate leaving the tissue rigid. It was then coated with an expensive varnish mixture based on the turpentine of Venice used by artists for coating their paintings.12 Preservation in fluid tends to be a more effective and informative method of demonstrating soft tissues than by drying it out. Key to this is the use of fluids which will kill the bacteria involved in decomposition, along with either fixation or pseudofixation which will alter the cellular chemistry to prevent cell lysis, where the cell breaks down.13 Early fluid preservation used ethanol, a pseudo-fixative, and there is debate about the first person to attempt to preserve tissue this way, with Robert Boyle and Elias Ashmole frequently posited as the first people to do so. Simmons cites the first recorded use of ethanol for this purpose as being in 1662, when William Croone presented two dog embryos to the Royal Society of London, “which he had kept eight days, and were put in spirit in a glass-vial sealed hermetically.”14 The effec­ tiveness of alcohols for this process is down to their bactericidal properties, as well as their antiviral and antifungal actions – effectively the same properties that make it effective as a hand sanitiser.15 People have been producing alcohol for a considerable period of time. Yeasts ferment sugars to convert carbohydrates to alcohol, and this is a process that can happen perfectly naturally without human intervention. The internet abounds with stories of animals drunk after eating fermented fruit, and it must have been similar happy accidents that led people to begin to try and replicate the process, with the earliest evidence dating to around nine thousand years ago.16 The word fermentation comes from the Latin “fervere” meaning to boil, after it was observed that the fermenting fruit mulche bubbled as if it were boiling.17 Alcohol produced by fermentation can only reach a concentration of about 12% – anything stronger than this will prove deadly to the yeasts causing the fermentation, and the process will stop, showing ethanol’s antifungal properties in action. Stronger alcohols require the removal of water, and there seems to have been evidence for this going back to 3500–3000 BCE.18 For fluid preservation, a strength of 70–80% is ideal – the preservative actions of alcohol stem from protein denaturation, which doesn’t happen in the absence of water, so pure alcohol is less effective. One issue is that alcohol is more volatile than water, and so the differential in evaporation rates means that the solution will tend to become more dilute with time. While Robert Boyle’s first recorded preservation in alcohol was two years after Croone’s, he did experiment with techniques. His recommendations included replacing the alcohol after the initial preservation and regularly testing its strength to see if it has become more dilute – by 30

Conserving the Humanity of Human Remains

soaking a paper or cloth in the fluid and seeing if it will burn; alcohol is flammable over 50%. If the fluid has become dilute or discoloured, it should be redistilled.19 In the collections I have worked with at Surgeons’ Hall and the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, the vast majority of preparations from the eighteenth and nineteenth century were preserved in alcohol. The other fluid that is seen regularly – though in comparatively tiny numbers – is oil of turpentine. This solvent is produced by the distillation of resins tapped from various trees, mainly pine. The Venetian turpentine favoured by Fragonard comes from the larch tree. Knox says that tur­ pentine is “an essential in the workshop of the anatomist,” and claims it to be ex­ cellent against insects, as can be seen in its use protecting dried preparations.20 Where preparations are found in jars filled with turpentine, they had usually initially been dried. The purpose of the turpentine here is to render the tissue transparent, to show more clearly structures that have been injected, with pigments or mercury, such as blood vessels, lymphatics, lacteals or excretory ducts.21 Occasionally I have come across other oils such as cedar or wintergreen used for the same purpose. Anatomists tried other fluids, including brine, alum salts, vinegar, ammonia and weak sulphuric acid amongst them with a variety of salts and herbs added to try and improve the preservation properties. Knox states that his preference is “alcohol, distilled from the grain, and rectified,”22 and this certainly seems to have been the most commonly used preservative until the end of the nineteenth century – at least in surviving preparations. The change came with the discovery of formaldehyde. The distinctive smell was first noted by Aleksandr Butlerov when he tried to synthesise methylene glycol in 1858, but it wasn’t until ten years later that Wilhelm von Hofmann developed a process for making an aqueous solution of formaldehyde. This technique would develop into a commercial manufacturing process patented in 1889. German Physician Ferdinand Blum was investigating the potential use of this solution as an antiseptic – something that was in demand as Joseph Lister’s paper on antisepsis became more widely accepted. Blum noticed during his experiments that his fin­ gertips became hardened by exposure to formaldehyde as he worked. Thus, its fix­ ative properties were discovered.23 By 1898, eight medical schools in Europe began to use it for preservation purposes, and the first documented case of embalming with formaldehyde seems to date to 1899.24 Frequently, after initial fixation with a formaldehyde-based fixative, the tissue is transferred to a different preservative solution, such as glycerol-based Pulvertaft-Kaiserling III.

Caring for Human Remains Unfortunately, preserving tissue is not as simple as placing it in some fluid in a jar and leaving it be. Jars can leak, fluid evaporates, and tissue can leach out fat. Even the “museum bone” may have some residual fat which can work its way to the bone surface and act as a magnet for dust, or a food for moulds. My job title is Human Remains Conservator, but what I do doesn’t just fall into the realm of pure con­ servation, where the purpose is to delay deterioration. There is also a degree of restoration and replacement in my rolejob. Over the years, jars have been opened and resealed, and the fluid, lids, mounts and even sometimes the jars themselves changed 31

Cat Irving

because of that interference. We can see the way this has happened looking at the Minute Books of the College: “January 31st 1860. The Conservator has to report that the museum is in good order. Twenty-five wet preparations have been refitted with fresh spirit.”25 And it carries on through the curators meetings. In July 1860, it was reported that 19 preparations received fresh spirit, with 13 gallons of waste spirit redistilled, and 8.5 gallons of 21 o.p. spirit obtained,26 by the end of October 1860 a further 61 preparations had received new fluid.27 In a way that seems anathema to the modern conservator, there did not seem to be a need to record which preparations these were. These quarterly meetings simply record instead the number which have received new “spirit” (i.e. alcohol), and the figures seem to be more a way of quantifying the use of the spirit, probably to justify the not inconsiderable expense this would result in. New developments changed the way jars were sealed. Simmons says that “Sealing containers of fluid-preserved specimens has been a problem as long as fluid preser­ vation has been practiced.”28 Early sealants involved animal bladder in conjunction with cork or lead, which was then tied in place and sealed with materials such as resins, waxes, varnish or pitch. Glass lids were used occasionally, but were expensive; until the mid-nineteenth century plate glass was produced from flattened globes or cylinders of blown glass. … the jar being filled quite full of spirits, a bullock’s bladder, macerated until perfectly soft, is stretched over it and secured by passing abundance of fine twine round the neck of the jar. Tin-foil, neatly cut so as to come slightly over the rim, is then to be applied and another coating of the bladder stretched over as before. This last layer of bladder should be secured by a greater quantity of coarser twine, so as to bind it firmly to the neck of the jar, and cause it to descend considerably lower down than either the first coating or the tin-foil. When thoroughly dry, the outer string may be removed, and the top painted any colour, composed mostly of varnish, to suit the taste of the anatomist.29 This method, Knox says, will “prevent evaporation for a very considerable length of time, but it still goes on, though slowly.”30 And so the lid would need to be removed, and the fluid replaced or topped up regularly. As production methods became cheaper, glass plate lids became the standard. These were held in place with a sub­ stance like pitch, a thick, black material produced from the distillation of coal tar; or gutta-percha, a coagulated latex resin from the tree Palaquium gutta, native to Malaysia. This proved more effective than the bladder-and-tin lids, and gradually they were replaced and became rare in museum collections. This kind of regular replacement or topping up is still part of my everyday work, and again, methods change. The coal-tar derived pitch that was used for the glass lids was also water­ proofing in ships and roofs, and today I frequently use a modern bitumen-based roofing product for this purpose. Glass jars themselves became old fashioned in the twentieth century. Perspexbranded acrylic began to be manufactured in the United Kingdom in 1933, and new preparations began to be stored in this modern material. It was clear like glass, but 32

Conserving the Humanity of Human Remains

more lightweight, cheaper, and less fragile – all of which made it easier to handle the jars, and therefore more practical for students to use. Older preparations were sometimes moved into acrylic containers. We can see it at Surgeons’ Hall where there are items from Charles Bell’s collection given to us in 1825, which are now mounted this way – presumably due to damage to the original glass container, though this is not recorded. The Anatomy Museum at the University of Aberdeen went for a larger transfer of their collection from glass to Perspex as part of a modernisation of the museum in the late 1960s.31 One problem is that alcohol cannot be used in con­ junction with Perspex jars, and the modern material has not proved the perfect solution it was hoped to be: they are not fully impermeable to fluid, and slow leaching of the preservative through the acrylic can cause warping, cracking, leakage and discolouration.32 As such, preparations in leaking Perspex jars are today moved into glass jars, where that is possible. Some might see these constant changes as losing the “authenticity” of the object. The trouble is, that this isn’t just an object. This is also tissue that was once part of a human being, and, for me, this maintenance is not only necessary to ensure the continuation of the preservation of the tissue, but also the maintenance of an aesthetic sense is essential to preserving the dignity of the person that this once was. Thus the act of making sure the fluid is changed regularly and doesn’t appear overly discoloured or fatty, and that the mounting of the tissue – whether this is via suspension, or stitching to a backplate – takes on an important role beyond simple preservation, and is part of the care and respect we offer to the dead. This was poetically captured by writer Rafaela Ferraz, who talked about successive visits to see the head of Diogo Alves, preserved in a jar after his execution in 1841 for multiple murders. The dates and the appearance of the skin suggest the head has been alcohol preserved, while glass eyes give Alves’ preserved head a disconcerting stare. He resides in the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Medicine, but Ferraz talks of going to see him displayed in Coimbra, in an exhibition on the abolition of the death penalty. The fluid had been changed since her previous visit to Alves. She says, “Rather than an act of museological preservation, it felt like an act of kindness to­ wards a fellow human being.”33 This is the conundrum these collections create: our responsibility to them as a museum collection, and our responsibility to them as human beings. One problem is that lack of funding often means this essential care is neglected or delayed.34 Care of these can also be beneficial to current scientific developments: new technologies continually expand the way such a collection can be used for research. This is not just the way we can understand the past; sampling tissue and fluids from the collection has been used in projects analysing the ways in which viruses mutate, and in our current world which is so dominated by coronavirus, it is easy to see how that has relevance.

Conclusion This ability to see these hidden internal areas may be to recognise something of oneself in a face or hand from someone long dead has proven to continue to fascinate – in 1839, there were 10,256 non-medical visitors to Surgeons’ Hall.35 Today, Surgeons’ 33

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Hall receives around 87,000 visitors per year.36 Some medical museums restrict access to those in the medical profession, but this seems to me an elitist attitude that denies the general public the opportunity to understand what these human remains can tell us – about medical and social history, and about ourselves. However, we can never forget that these are human remains, and that we have a debt to the people in collections such as ours. As Frederick Knox said in 1836, the anatomy museum was essential to nine­ teenth century anatomy teaching, and without this – and the dissection that went handin-hand with the development of the anatomy museum – medical understanding would not have developed to the point that we all benefit from today. For me, the best we can do is acknowledge these histories and show our respect by giving these museum col­ lections proper care, to look after human remains preparations in a manner that is preserving not just the physical materiality of the human tissue, but also the human dignity of the people who contributed to it.

Notes 1 Samuel J. M. M. Alberti, “Objects and the Museum.” Isis (University of Chicago Press: 2005) 96 (4): 559–571. 2 Quoted in John E. Simmons, Fluid Preservation: A Comprehensive Reference (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield: 2014), 8. 3 William Burke and William Hare killed at least 16 people in 1828 as a simpler method of providing bodies to sell for substantial sums of money to anatomists for study and teaching. Robert Knox, who bought the bodies, was an influential anatomist who ran a popular private anatomy school in Surgeons Square, Edinburgh, as well as being Conservator – more akin to what we would think of as curator – at Surgeons’ Hall from 1824 until he resigned in 1831. William Burke was hanged for the murders in January 1829, while Hare turned king’s evidence and walked free. Knox’s was exonerated of involvement in the murders, but was publicly vilified, and his career went into decline after the Burke and Hare scandal. 4 Frederick John Knox, The Anatomist’s Instructor, and Museum Companion (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1836), 2. 5 G. M. Wyburn “Foreword,” in Catalogue of the Preparations of Dr. William Hunter, ed. Alice J. Marshall (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 1970). 6 Knox, The Anatomist’s Instructor, 9. 7 Thomas Pole, The Anatomical Instructor: Or, An Illustration of the Modern and Most Approved Methods of Preparing and Preserving the Different Parts of the Human Body, and of Quadrupeds, by Injection, Corrosion, Maceration, Distension, Articulation, Modelling, &c., with a Variety of Copper Plates (London: J. Callow and T. Underwood, 1813), 99. 8 John Hunter, Essays and Observations on Natural History, Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology and Geology. Vol. 1 (London: John von Voorst, 1861), 394. 9 Erich Brenner, “Human Body Preservation – Old and New Techniques,” Journal of Anatomy 224, no. 3 (2004): 316–344. 10 Hunter, Essays and Observations on Natural History, Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology and Geology, 393. 11 Lucia Dacome, Malleable Anatomies: Models, Makers, and Material Culture in Eighteenth Century Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 12 Christophe Deguerce, Fragonard Museum – The Écorchés: The Anatomical Masterworks of Honoré Fragonard (New York: Blast Books, 2017). 13 Simmons, Fluid Preservation, 26. 14 Ibid., 10.

34

Conserving the Humanity of Human Remains 15 Brenner, Human Body Preservation, 328. 16 Patrick McGovern, et al., “Fermented Beverages of Pre- and Proto-historic China,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 101, no. 51 (2004): 17593–17598. 17 L. Alba-Lois and C. Segal-Kischinevzky, “Yeast Fermentation and the Making of Beer and Wine,” Nature Education 3, no. 9 (2010): 17. 18 Simmons, Fluid Preservation, 4–5. 19 Simmons, Fluid Preservation, 11. 20 Knox, The Anatomist’s Instructror, 20. 21 Knox, The Anatomist’s Instructor; Pole, Ibid. 22 Knox, The Anatomist’s Instructor, 16. 23 Simmons, Fluid Preservation, 32. 24 Brenner, Human Body Preservation, 325. 25 Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Minute Book for Meetings of Curators, 1859–1880, Sheet 18. 26 RCSEd. Minute Book, Sheet 21. 27 RCSEd. Minute Book, Sheet 24. 28 Simmons, Fluid Preservation, 90. 29 Knox, The Anatomist’s Instructor, 17. 30 Ibid. 31 Hallam, Elizabeth, “Disappearing Museums? Medical Collections at the University of Aberdeen,” in Medical Museums: Past, Present, Future, ed. S. J. M. M. Alberti and E. Hallam (London: Royal College of Surgeons of England, 2013), 44–59. 32 A. Van Dam, J. P. M. Van Der Ploeg, G. J. M. Koper, and D. Bedeaux, “The Warping and Cracking of Plexiglas Specimen Containers,” Collection Forum 14, no. 1–2 (2000): 47–56. 33 Rafaela Ferraz, Am I too attached to a long-dead Portuguese serial killer? The Order of the Good Death, accessed November 25, 2021, https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/article/ami-too-attached-to-a-long-dead-portuguese-serial-killer/ (2018). 34 Simon Moore, “Fluid Preservation,” in Care and Conservation of Natural History Collections, ed. D. J. Walker and A. Carter (Oxford: Butterworth & Heinemann, 1998), 92–132. 35 Creswell, Clarendon Hyde. 1926. The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh: Historical Notes from 1505 to 1905. Edinburgh: Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. 36 Visitor numbers for 2019 were 86,964. This was the last full year of opening prior to pandemic closures at time of writing.

Bibliography Alba-Lois, L. and Segal-Kischinevzky, C. “Yeast Fermentation and the Making of Beer and Wine.” Nature Education 3, no. 9 (2020). Alberti, Samuel J. M. M. “Objects and the Museum.” Isis (University of Chicago Press) 96, no. 4 (2005): 559–571. Brenner, Erich. “Human Body Preservation – Old and New Techniques.” Journal of Anatomy 224 (2014): 316–344. Creswell, Clarendon Hyde. The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh: Historical Notes from 1505 to 1905. Edinburgh: Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, 1926. Dacome, Lucia. Malleable Anatomies: Models, Makers, and Material Culture in Eighteenth Century Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Deguerce, Christophe. Fragonard Museum – The Écorchés: The Anatomical Masterworks of Honoré Fragonard. New York: Blast Books, 2011. Ferraz, Rafaela. Am I too attached to a long-dead Portuguese serial killer? The Order of the Good Death. https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/article/am-i-too-attached-to-a-longdead-portuguese-serial-killer/ (accessed November 25, 2021).

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Cat Irving Hallam, Elizabeth. “Disappearing Museums? Medical Collections at the University of Aberdeen.” In Medical Museums: Past, Present, Future, edited by S. J. M. M. Alberti and E. Hallam, 44–59. London: Royal College of Surgeons of England, 2013. Hunter, John. Essays and Observations on Natural History, Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology and Geology. Vol. 1. London: John von Voorst, 1861. Knox, Frederick John. The Anatomist’s Instructor, and Museum Companion. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1836. McGovern, Patrick, et al. “Fermented Beverages of Pre- and Proto-historic China.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 101, no. 51 (2004): 17593–17598. Moore, Simon. “Fluid Preservation.” In Care and conservation of Natural History Collections, edited by D. J. Carter and A. Walker, 92–132. Oxford: Butterworth & Heinemann, 1998. Pole, Thomas. The Anatomical Instructor: Or, an Illustration of the Modern and Most Approved Methods of Preparing and Preserving the Different Parts of the Human Body, and of Quadrupeds, by Injection, Corrosion, Maceration, Distension, Articulation, Modelling, &c., with a Variety of Copper Plates. London: J. Callow and T. Underwood, 1813. Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Minute Book for Meetings of Curators, 1859–1880. https://archiveandlibrary.rcsed.ac.uk/special-collections/minute-books-of-the-incpora­ tion-of-barbers-and-surgeons-of-edinburgh/surgeons-hall-museum-minutes/museumminute-book-1859–1880/1779136 (accessed April 11, 2022). Simmons, John E. Fluid Preservation: A Comprehensive Reference. Lanham: Rowan and Littlefield, 2014. Van Dam, A., J. P. M. Van Der Ploeg, G. J. M. Koper, and D. Bedeaux. “The Warping and Cracking of Plexiglas Specimen Containers.” Collection Forum 14, no. 1-2 (2000): 47–56. Wyburn, G. M. “Foreword.” In Catalogue of the Preparations of Dr. William Hunter, edited by Alice J. Marshall. Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 1970.

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3 A MUSEUM ARCHIVE An Unexpected Final Resting Place but One Full of Promise

Jelena Bekvalac Introduction The Museum of London (MoL) is located at the heart of the City of London and opened in 1976 following the passing of Acts of Parliament in 1965 enabling the merging of the collections held by the City Corporation at the Guildhall Museum and London Museum located at Kensington Palace. The Museum of London and its longterm purpose as defined in the Act, was and remains to be, in the ambitions for the new museum location: “to care for, preserve and add objects to our collections; make them accessible via display and for research; promote understanding and appreciation of historic and contemporary London and of its society and culture using this col­ lection and other means.”1 The amalgamation of the collections from the Guildhall and Kensington Palace, not only encapsulate the connections to the past in the objects and skeletal remains but also are an interesting means for reflecting the mechanisms of how they were collected and ultimately the legacy of these acquisitions. The Museum of London is now the largest urban history museum in the world with collections that have increased with advances in the implementation of policies including “Collections Developments” and “Deposition Standards” and strategies underpinning the processes of acquisition. Museums across the United Kingdom have long been the place within the local geographic landscape where archaeological finds are deposited by amateur individuals and professional units, becoming part of a museum archive caring for evidence from the past to provide a public resource for learning about the past. They are not though the only place in which archaeological material may be deposited with local societies, commercial organisations and academic institutions also being a place of repository. Significantly, all material collected in archaeological projects (except material covered by the Treasure Act 1997 and human remains) belongs to the landowner under English law. For an archive or repository to have legal governance over the site finds they have to be transferred by written permission of the landowner giving transfer of DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-5

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legal title to the archive or repository. If there are human remains as part of a site deposition they must have an exhumation license if exhumed from Church of England land, which prior to 2007 was obtained from the Home Office and now from the Ministry of Justice. Over the years there have been changes with the governance for the recovery of archaeological material from sites and variance within archives with the documentation records for the legal and physical deposition of archaeological site collections, which can be challenging at times when establishing the legal transfer of title of ownership. London as a city has been remodelled and redeveloped throughout the course of its long history and continues to do so in the present day with commercial developments and major infrastructure projects. The professional excavations in response to contractor-led developments are closely connected with a formal requirement of planning permission for the implementation of the deposition of a site archive. With the impact of such building processes, these developments have over the centuries and continue today, to reveal the cultural remnants and skeletal remains of people from the past. Today, the procedures for dealing with the consequences of disturbance from building expansions are managed by professional commercial archaeology units, responding to the commercial developer requirements and following preparation guidelines for depositing material with the archaeological archive.2 Fundamental to the deposition of archaeological collections be it artefacts, human remains, paper based records or digital records, is that the relevant deposition standards are followed to create the collation of a stable, orderly and accessible archive. The geographical parameters in which the Museum of London archive will accept deposition of archaeological material is if it relates to the London Boroughs and the City of London. The potential size, scale and type of deposition to the archaeological archive varies according to the extent of the development project, location of site and the nature of the materials retrieved from the excavations. Today there are increasing pressures on archival space, highlighting the need for a clear rationale in relation to the collection and deposition of materials excavated from each respective site, with particular consideration around the type and amount retrieved such as bulk finds, including animal bone and building materials. With funding from Historic England, the Museum of London archaeological archive was one of the organisations selected to take part in the collab­ orative scoping study for the rationalisation of museum archaeology collections. The Museum of London archive did not include the archaeologically derived human skeletal remains within their part of the scoping study. The study, although highlighting pressures faced by many archives, with shortage of space, loss of expertise and reduction in staffing was also identified as a means of indicating the ways in which there could be positive outcomes from such a procedure. Following the outcomes from the undertaken studies, the Society for Museum Archaeology drafted on behalf of Historic England, a guidance document highlighting the challenges faced by museums with archaeological collections and issues with space. The guidance document provides a definition for the term rationalisation in relation to the scope of the project “… the application of agreed selection strategies to previously accessioned archaeological project archives, with the purpose of de-selecting parts of the collection and creating storage space.”3 Large-scale 38

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infrastructure projects, such as Crossrail and HS2, are noteworthy examples of the challenges that can be encountered in consideration of the potential volume for deposition to an archive. This is particularly so with both projects revealing thousands of human skeletal remains. With projects of this nature and scale, coordinated strategic project managing and communicating with all stakeholders is vital, with a key sta­ keholder being the archaeological archive. In contrast with other museums and institutions with collections of human remains, those acquired and retained at the Museum of London were and continue to be derived following the processes of archaeological interventions in a rescue response to building developments in the City of London and Greater London Area, and with a small number found along the Thames foreshore. The deposition and acquisition of the archaeologically derived skeletal remains to the Museum of London came about following a series of interventions to preserve the fascinating London archaeological landscape. The archaeological approach in London has changed over the course of the last 50 years, following both a processual and post-processual movement, that col­ lectively have seen changes and advances adding to make archaeology the diverse discipline it is today. In London during the 1970s, the Department of Urban Archaeology (DUA) was set up, following the Rescue Archaeology movement as a response to record and help prevent the loss of archaeological remains from the pressures at that time of devel­ opments in the City of London. The establishment of the DUA was integral in providing an invaluable insight to the history of London from the documented records, skeletal remains and collected artefacts that would otherwise have been lost for creating the basis of the Museum of London Archaeological Archive. The 1980s also saw a time of mass development not just in the City of London but also across London and responding to this rapid transformative building growth, saw the formation of various local archaeological societies and the creation of the Department of Greater London Archaeology (DGLA). Over the course of the last few decades, there have been a number of legislative changes in relation to the historic environment for building developments undertaken by developer construction companies, the key one being the formulation of planning policy guidance PPG16 1990, updated and replaced by PPS 5 in 2010,4 and put in place for developer funded archaeological excavations to be undertaken as part of the contractual process. In 1991, the DUA and DGLA merged to become the Museum of London Archaeological Service (MoLAS) which later became Museum of London Archaeology (MoLA) following restructuring and expansion. In 2011, the Museum of London and Museum of London Archaeology were formally separated, creating two single organisations. The two organisations, however, remain closely connected with the osteological database and continued deposition of skeletal remains to the archive.

Museum of London Archaeological Archive and Centre for Human Bioarchaeology The Museum of London Archaeological Archive is a captivating repository con­ taining many thousands of artefacts and human skeletal remains recovered from 39

Jelena Bekvalac

excavations, alongside the records and plans from the numerous excavated sites. The archaeological archive was first established in 1993 to be a part of the Museum of London. Funding in 1999 was awarded by the Heritage Lottery for the support of developing what was then called the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC), with the central focus being work on the archive. The archaeo­ logical archive managing the extensive collections is today based at Mortimer Wheeler House, Hackney, with the archive in 2012 being awarded a Guinness World Record for being the world’s largest archaeological archive. The archaeologically derived human skeletal remains curated by the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology (CHB) on site at the Museum of London, form a substantial part of the archaeological archive. This unique stratified collection of human remains from one city through time are of significance at a local level as well as nationally and internationally, cur­ rently at circa 35,000 individuals but with new sites being developed will no doubt continue to increase. The Centre for Human Bioarcheology (CHB) was established in 2003 with funding from the Wellcome Trust to analyse and record into a bespoke Oracle platform inter-relational database, the skeletal collections already held by the Museum of London.5 The CHB at that juncture had a Senior Curator and a team of osteol­ ogists working in tandem with the developer-funded osteologists recording the skeletal remains from Medieval St. Mary Spital recovered as part of the extensive Spitalfields Market Project development spanning 1991–2007.6 Because of the unprecedented number of skeletal remains recovered through excavations from St. Mary Spital, of which from this one site 10,500 are curated, it led to the design and development of the bespoke osteological database. The format of the osteological database across three inter-relational levels, was created as a means to rapidly capture the osteological and pathological data in a digital format.7 The analysis was carried out following guidance for standards8 and osteological recording standards,9 with the aim to aid in providing a uniformity of recording that would assist researchers accessing the data. The records created in the osteological database use the site code assigned for each respective archaeological site with the unique identifying context number allocated for each skeletal individual. With the scope and capabilities of the Oracle platform, the digital osteological records are also populated with the archaeological field data enabling the direct association of archaeological and osteological data. Having the contextual information from the associated archaeological records is of key impor­ tance being invaluable for enabling a more robust interpretation for each recorded skeletal individual and collectively at a population level both temporally and geo­ graphically. The osteological database is a powerful research tool enabling the querying of the standardised recorded osteological data and data readily shared in Excel, which is made freely available through the CHB website. This has aided significantly in research studies for undergraduates, masters, PhD, and post-doctoral researchers as well as small and large-scale collaborative inter and multi-disciplinary research projects. With the ability for connecting to a far-reaching audience, it has undoubtedly enabled opportunities for greater comparative research with the skeletal collections, further adding to their significance and value for continued research.10 40

A Museum Archive

Following the establishment of the CHB and having an online presence with a website was a fundamental turning point for allowing transparency of work with the skeletal remains, having publicly available data for supporting research, being remotely accessible, and reaching a much broader audience. One of the many benefits and positive outcomes from the CHB has been in the participation of outreach events. Participating in these conversations has provided a platform to openly engage and discuss these issues, particularly with the public. Discussions have included: where the skeletal remains have come from and why they have been disturbed, why we have such large collections, how they are cared for, and the many ways they aid in learning about the people, the past and their relevance today. The Museum of London with the CHB has fortunately been in a position to contribute to discussions and issues raised around the curation of human remains, challenges and pressures on osteological collections for research and measures for implementing standards of best practice, ethical considerations, policies and drafting ethical codes of practice.11 In 2004, Hedley Swain, then the Head of the Early Department, Museum of London, chaired the Drafting Group for the compilation of a significant document, the Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums, a document for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).12 The timely establishment of the CHB and the work undertaken by the osteological teams at MoL and MoLA provided an opportune standpoint for drawing information. It was a formative document for critical thinking about human skeletal remains, providing guidance for best practice to museums in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with collections containing human remains. It is still pertinent and valid today for the outlined measures of care for human remains collections and the potential issues surrounding them, with repatriation being an imperative. The Museum of London during this time also hosted discussions at a symposium Human Remains and Museum Practice as part of an international symposium considering the political and ethical issues surrounding collecting and displaying human remains held in museums. The symposium raised difficult and controversial questions with sometimes challenging discussions that opened up a platform of dialogue, enabling a timely exploration of the diversity within museums’ collections and museum practice.13 An important outcome for the Museum of London following from the DCMS guidance document was for it to be the first museum in 2006 (updated 2011, 2022), to draft a Human Remains Policy14 with other British museums subsequently later drafting their own Human Remains policies. Outlined in the Museum of London Human Remains policy is the integrated involvement of conservation with the human remains that assist in maintaining the skeletal remains integrity and their collection management.

Conservation The Museum of London is very fortunate to have an in-house conservation team and the CHB has benefitted from the skill and expertise of the team not only with the direct conservation intervention of skeletal remains but with the broader spectrum in relation to environmental controls, pest control, display and storage of the skeletal remains. The 41

Jelena Bekvalac

osteological database is also a valuable dynamic tool as a means for contributing to the conservation of such a large-scale human skeletal collection, adding information to individual skeletal records to aid in monitoring post-mortem damage and any further changes, destructive sampling and conservation interventions to the remains. The general approach of the museum to the archaeological skeletal remains is to have minimal conservation interventions and only use treatments for the human remains when selected for display or publication, preventing loss of information and stabilising vulnerable areas. The treatments undertaken by the conservator are all fully documented for the human remains, including an annotated skeleton template drawing highlighting the areas with post-mortem damage and those treated. The information of what conservation carried out will also be entered into the individual skeletal records in the database. The type of applied treatments for the conservation of skeletal remains have altered over time, with the consideration of treatments applied in more recent years being those that can be readily reversed. An important adjunct to this aspect is also being mindful with regard to the sampling of the skeletal remains and informing the methods chosen so as not to overly compromise potential chemical analysis in the future (Figure 3.1). The conservation team plays an important role in the curation and use of the human skeletal remains for display within a gallery context and exhibitions. Such displays being well considered and contextual are an effective means to demonstrate the wide range, relevance and diversity of the skeletal collections, which rely on undertaking sound conservation measures. The display of human remains can and does evoke strong emotions and as such, it is imperative for robust measures to be in place for how they are displayed working closely with conservation. When dealing with the human skeletal remains the conservation processes focus upon measures to mitigate any damage and for attaining the best possible standards for the treatment of them. The conservator, working through a series of processes, will assess the skeletal remains and the potential need of any interventions such as temporarily adhering damaged bones and/or creating often intricate and delicate structures to support parts of the skeleton. Conservation will also review the space within a gallery or exhibition, the display case, environmental controls, lux light levels, the materials used for mounts and supporting the bones while on display. From the ground breaking 1999 exhibition London Bodies: the Changing Shape of Londoners from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day to the 2008 Wellcome exhibition Skeletons: London Buried Bones, there was a move away from using marble dust that had always previously been used for display. The marble dust would adhere to the surface of the bones, requiring the cleaning of each individual bone by a conservator when coming off display; this is a time-consuming process with the potential for particles of dust to become embedded in the bone. The alternative was to use instead, an inert gravel for support and display of the bones. Conservators were integral in running tests on the gravel to ascertain the suitability of it for use in the display of skeletal remains, and it has subsequently become the material of choice for museum displays with the inclusion of skeletal remains. This black inert gravel was quite a talking point when first used in the 2008 Wellcome Skeletons exhibition and was invaluable for displaying the often fragile, 42

A Museum Archive

Figure 3.1

Conservator working with skeletal remains during exhibition installation to display for inclusion in exhibition Skeletons: Our Buried Bones, Leeds City Museum 22 September 2017–7 January 2018.

pathological and dissected remains in the 2012 exhibition Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men. For the regional tour of the Wellcome Skeletons: Our Buried Bones in Glasgow, Bristol and Leeds, the gravel was reused and supported the skeletal remains from the different sites in varying conditions. More recently, it was back again for the 43

Jelena Bekvalac

selected skeletal remains in the exhibition Roman Dead at the Museum of London Docklands exploring the archaeological discoveries from the past and present revealing the treatment of the Roman dead. An integral element to the long-term care of the human skeletal remains is the packing of the skeletal remains. Aiding in mitigating the effects of storing and handling the collections this is an important consideration particularly when often accessed for research15 and in relation to the transport of the human remains for inclusion in exhibitions when off site from the museum. In response to the scale of the skeletal collection and pressures of handling the remains from research, the conser­ vation department were instrumental in drawing up packing guidelines for the skeletal remains, using conservation grade cardboard boxes, foam, perforated plastic bags, tyvek labels and for pathological bones using acid free tissue for creating additional support. For the transport of boxes with skeletal remains conservation also provided assistance in additional packing protection with acid free tissue paper made into tissue puffs to aid lessening movement of the bags in the box(es) and dissipating any pressure on the box. With the advent of developments in the methods and applications of destructive sampling for stable isotope and DNA analysis, the CHB has been able to work closely with the museum conservation team to manage the procedure. The implementation of a Destructive Sampling Application form in 2008 was a further important step in the ethical evaluation and management of destructive sampling. The form aids in a critical appraisal of a destructive application with a section for conservation to make comment upon any request and the sampling strategy. The database is also invaluable in relation to sampling requests in being able to run a query for ascertaining which skeletal individuals have already been sampled, what was sampled, dentition and/or bone, and for what analysis. Working in tandem with conservation when dealing with such applications is very beneficial and a valuable support for having a conservator at hand with the actual process of sampling. Conservation plays a role when skeletal remains are found and retrieved along the Thames foreshore that is managed by the Port of London Authority (PLA). The PLA issues a licence for individuals looking for objects on the foreshore, for what is called mud larking. Those finds will ultimately come through the Portable Antiquity Scheme (PAS). When a mud larker recovers human remains, the PAS Finds Liaison officer for London liaises with the museum and CHB, managing the processes from the point of recovery, attaining a carbon 14 date and ascertaining potential interest from the museum for acquisition to the collections. The skeletal remains must have a carbon-14 test to determine the time period they are from, and providing information that they are more than 100 years old before consideration of acquisition to the museum. The museum is not able to accept human skeletal remains less than 100 years old as it does not hold a Human Tissue Licence but it follows and abides by the 2004 Human Tissue Act.16 Once a date range has been determined from the carbon 14 date, a full assessment can be made of the remains by the conservation team and osteologist for the consideration of potentially adding to the curated collections. Conservation may also include taking radiographs to aid in deciding if any treatment 44

A Museum Archive

is required to prevent information being lost if areas appear vulnerable, as well as adding further to the documented recording. Working collectively with conservators and a dedicated Collections Care Team is paramount in the collection management of the human remains and has been invaluable to the informed curatorial care for the collection. This formative collaboration has enabled and enhanced the continued study and analysis of the human remains collec­ tion. As well as supporting and aiding in having the ability for sharing developments in research and engaging with visitors, either as part of a contextualised display in a gallery or stand-alone exhibition. The role of conservation in conjunction with the osteological collection is manifold, with a conservator supporting both the preservation of the physical skeletal remains and the nuanced narrative of an individual’s life and death.

Archaeological Archive the Final Resting Place The nature of human remains is without question a sensitive area that can evoke emotive responses from both the public and those working closely with them. To many, the notion of having an archive of human remains in a museum is an unusual concept and quite rightly open to scrutiny. Conversations should remain dynamic for continually reviewing and implementing best practice with addressing the wide range of challenges and difficulties faced with holdings of human remains.17 It is important that there are ongoing open examinations for curating and studying remains, ethical dilemmas and placing them on public display. It is significant that the human remains collections curated by the CHB at the Museum of London come from archaeological interventions, unlike many other institutions with holdings of human remains, collected in the 18th and 19th century by individuals and institutions, who more often had no regard for a moral code or cultural sensitivities. This of course does not mean that there should not be stringent ethical codes of practice followed in relation to the disturbance of burials as part of present day archaeological interventions. The reason for and nature of a development requiring archaeological excavation varies and can reveal burials of individuals from a high and low socio-economic status. It is important to acknowledge that the burial spaces for individuals from the past of a lower socio-economic status have a greater vulnerability to disturbance and removal from their burial context. Considerations should also be taken with regard to potential traceable descendants, a familial and community affinity and consent from descendants. The purpose of collecting has changed over the years and it is imperative that there is transparency and ethical considerations for ongoing collection management. There have fortunately been major step changes in recent years for critical thinking and reflection when working with human remains collections, with a concerted effort to move away from the turpitude of the past. The archaeological collections have played an integral part in the progress of the Museum of London that link it in such a distinctive way to the past and tangibly through the human skeletal remains, for reflecting upon the development of one City through time. The complexities of the story of London retained within the extensive urban archaeological collections connect researchers and visitors from Prehistory to 45

Jelena Bekvalac

the present day. The deposition of human remains to the osteological archive at the Museum of London are integrally influenced by mortuary practices, taphonomic processes, and the recovery on site with the mechanisms of the archaeological ex­ cavations. All collections will have bias and the archaeological skeletal collections are not exempt but the inherent biases within the osteological collection are a conse­ quence of intrinsic and extrinsic factors and not the caprice of one individual or institution creating a collection. The retention in the archaeological archive and curation of such a significant human skeletal collection provides the means for being able to look temporally and spatially across London giving a singular insight to society and the dynamic changes to London over time. The basis for being able to have such a remarkable opportunity to learn from the skeletal remains of these diverse people, was because of the early endeavours and foresight of figures, who became key in London archaeology and the archaeologists in the field, both amateur and professional. With the advances made in the methods for osteological and chemical analysis, as well as the implementation of the bioarchaeolo­ gical construct, enabled a multi-dimensional picture of the people to be constructed; often giving a voice to many who during their lives would have been marginalised. Having the chance to collect such valuable personal information directly from the remains of the individual people and learning about them as individuals is a poignant means for reflecting upon the momentous changes in London during the course of its over 2,000 years history. The associated archaeological and historical contextual information enables a more comprehensive picture to be formulated of London, looking at the individuals’ life course and collectively as a population at a particular point in time. Remembering them always as an individual person with familial connections to the past and present. The osteological collections have a unique perspective to be able to reflect past social and cultural changes that have affected the adaptation to the lived environment promoting in them a strong pertinence for today. A great wealth of innovative studies and research from demographics, mobility, diet, stress indicators, pathologies, pandemics, and socio-economic challenges have already been undertaken from the analysis of the skeletal remains currently curated, with the potential for more in the future and from the remains of those that are yet be uncovered from developments. The building developments will continue apace, and London will continue to restructure itself, but with it so must the approach for having a focused archival collection strategy and discerning rationale in what is deposited and retained. The ever-increasing pressures on archival space and the necessary resources needed for maintaining such extensive collections is a major consideration for museums and will have a bearing upon the future acquisitions. In tandem with this is the opportunity for there to be more reflection on the ethical considerations for collections. The processes for deciding on acquisitions to the collections in the Museum of London have been modified, developed and updated from when it first opened. In place today at the museum, with the support of a team of registrars, is the Collections Committee composed of individuals with different representative roles in the museum. The registrars oversee the submission of requests for acquisitions to the museum with the Collections Committee through informed discussions making the decision. Depositions to the archaeological archive had up until 2019 been dealt with separately 46

A Museum Archive

and not gone through the Collections Committee process but all acquisitions to the museum now, whether social/historical or archaeological, are duly processed by the Collections Committee. As part of ongoing work within the archaeological archive and to more efficiently fulfil the requirements of the Collections Committee, in 2021, a new template document was drafted for the human remains collections from archaeological units requesting deposition to the archive. The new draft document enables the Collections Committee members to be informed in a consistent way, conveying clear and concise information for making a decision. The form in its layout provides relevant information about the site and skeletal remains, to aid the committee in making a decision. The content in the form provides pertinent information on the skeletal remains from osteological assessment by the respective unit; highlights points for how and where they would add and complement the existing skeletal collection; why they would be a valuable addition and what conservation interventions if any would need to be undertaken. The addition of the archaeological archive for processing deposition requests through the Collections Committee is a step change for the archive but an important one that will more fully incorporate the archive. The skeletal remains of the many thousands of individuals retained as part of the archive at the Museum of London are a privilege to be able to curate and of paramount consideration is to have a critical dialogue about the ethical collection management of them now and in the future. They provide an exceptional and demonstrable means of learning directly from the people who, although lived in a bygone age, continue to shine a light on the enigmas from the past and have a tangible relevance to the present and future.

Notes 1 Museum of London Act, 1965, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1965/17/enacted, accessed August 13, 2022. 2 Museum of London, Preparation of archaeological archives deposited with the Museum of London, 2009. 3 Prepared by Katherine Baxter, Gail Boyle, and Lucy Creighton. Guidance on the Rationalisation of Museum Archaeology Collections (Society for Museum Archaeology on behalf of Historic England, 2018). 4 “Planning Policy Guidance PPG16: Archaeology and Planning, 1990,” accessed August 11, 2022, https://www.cheltenham.gov.uk; “PPS 5 Planning for the Historic Environment,” accessed August 11, 2022, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukia/2010/119/pdfs/ukia_ 20100119_en.pdf. 5 Bill White, “The Museum of London’s Wellcome Osteological Research Database,” in Human Remains and Museum Practice, ed. Jack Lohman and Katherine Goodnow (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Museum of London, Paris and London, 2006), 106–110. 6 Brian Connell, Amy Gray Jones, Rebecca Redfern and Don Walker, A Bioarchaeological Study of Medieval Burials on the Site of St Mary Spital: Excavations at Spitalfields Market, London E1, 1991–2007 (Museum of London Archaeology Monograph Series 60, 2012). 7 Brian Connell and Peter Rauxloh, “A Rapid Method for Recording Human Skeletal Data, Museum of London, 2003”; Natasha Powers, “Updated a Rapid Method for Recording Human Skeletal Data by Brian Connell and Peter Rauxloh, 2007,” Museum of London [online],

47

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8

9

10

11

12 13 14

15

16 17

accessed August 11, 2022, https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/collections/othercollection-databases-and-libraries/centre-human-bioarchaeology/about-osteologicaldatabase; Natasha Powers, “Human Osteology Method Statement,” Museum of London, 2008 [online], accessed August 11, 2022, https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/collections/ other-collection-databases-and-libraries/centre-human-bioarchaeology/aboutosteological-database. Megan Brickley and Jacqueline McKinley, eds., Guidance to the Standards for Recording Human Skeletal Remains, Institute of Field Archaeologists, British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (Reading, 2004); Piers D. Mitchell and Megan Brickley, eds., Guidance to the Standards for Recording Human Skeletal Remains, Institute of Field Archaeologists, British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (Reading, 2017). Don R. Brothwell, Digging up Bones. The Excavation, Treatment and Study of Human Skeletal Remains (British Museum Press, London, 1981); Jane E. Buikstra and Douglas H. Ubelaker, Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains. Proceedings of a seminar at the Field Museum of Natural History organized by Jonathan Haas (Arkansas Archaeological Survey Research Series No. 44, Arkansas, 1994). Jelena Bekvalac and Rebecca Redfern, “Archaeological Human Skeletal Collections: Their Significance and Value as an Ongoing Contribution to Research,” in Identified Skeletal Collections: The Testing Ground of Anthropology?, ed. Charlotte Yvette Henderson and Francisca Alves Cardoso (Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, 2018). Rebecca C. Redfern and Jelena Bekvalac, “The Museum of London: An Overview of Policies and Practice,” in Curating Human Remains, Caring for the Dead in Great Britain, ed. Myra Giesen (The International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University, Boydell Press, 2013); British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (BABAO), (2019), accessed August 11, 2022, https://www.babao.org. uk/publications/ethics-and-standards. “Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums, Department for Culture, Media and Sport” (DCMS, 2004). Jack Lohman and Katherine Goodnow, ed. Human Remains and Museum Practice (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Museum of London, Paris and London, 2006). Rebecca C. Redfern and Jelena Bekvalac, “The Museum of London: An Overview of Policies and Practice,” in Curating Human Remains, Caring for the Dead in Great Britain, ed. Myra Giesen (The International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University, Boydell Press, 2013). Anwen C. Caffell, Charlotte A. Roberts, Rob C. Janaway and Andrew S. Wilson, “Pressures on Osteological Collections: The Importance of Damage Limitations,” in Human Remains. Conservation, Retrieval and Analysis. Conservation, Retrieval and Analysis. Proceedings of a conference held in Williamsburg, VA, Nov 7–11th 1999, ed. E. Williams (British Archaeological Press S934, Oxford, 2001) 187–197. Human Tissue Act 2004, accessed August 11, 2022, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/2004/30/contents. Vicki Cassman, Nancy Odegaard and Joseph Powell, Human Remains: Guide for Museums and Academic Institutions (Oxford: Altamira Press, 2007); Myra Giesen, ed. Curating Human Remains: Caring for the Dead in the United Kingdom (The International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University, Boydell Press, 2013); Jelena Bekvalac, “The Display of Archaeological Human Skeletal Remains in Museums,” in Heritage, Ancestry and Law: Principles, Policies and Practices in Dealing with Historical Human Remains, ed. Ruth RedmondCooper (Institute of Art and Law, 2015); Heather Bonney, Jelena Bekvalac and Carina Phillips, “Human Remains in Museums Collections in the United Kingdom,” in Ethical Approaches to Human Remains: A Global Challenge in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Archaeology, ed. Kirsty Squires, David Erickson and Nicolas Márquez-Grant (Springer, 2019).

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Bibliography Baxter, Katherine, Gail Boyle and Lucy Creighton. Guidance on the Rationalisation of Museum Archaeology Collections. Society for Museum Archaeology on behalf of Historic England. [online] available from: http://socmusarch.org.uk/projects/guidance-on-the-rationalisation-of-museum-archaeology-collections/2018. Bekvalac, Jelena. “The Display of Archaeological Human Skeletal Remains in Museums.” In Heritage, Ancestry and Law: Principles, Policies and Practices in dealing with Historical Human Remains, edited by Ruth Redmond-Cooper, 114–121. London: Institute of Art and Law, 2015. Bekvalac, Jelena and Rebecca Redfern. “Archaeological Human Skeletal Collections: Their Significance and Value as an Ongoing Contribution to Research.” In Identified Skeletal Collections: The Testing Ground of Anthropology?, edited by Charlotte Yvette Henderson and Francisca Alves Cardoso, 11–28. Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, 2018. Bonney, Heather, Jelena Bekvalac and Carina Phillips. “Human Remains in Museums Collections in the United Kingdom.” In Ethical Approaches to Human Remains: A Global Challenge in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Archaeology, edited by Kirsty Squires, David Erickson and Nicolas Márquez-Grant, 211–237. Switzerland: Springer, 2019. Brickley, Megan and Jacqueline McKinley, eds. Guidance to the Standards for Recording Human Skeletal Remains. Institute of Field Archaeologists, British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (BABAO). Reading, 2004. British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (BABAO) Ethics and Standards [online]. Accessed August 11, 2022. https://www.babao.org.uk/publications/ ethics-and-standards/. Brothwell, Don R. Digging up Bones: The Excavation, Treatment and Study of Human Skeletal Remains. London: British Museum Press, 1981. Buikstra, Jane E. and Douglas H. Ubelaker. Standards for data collection from human skeletal remains. Proceedings of a seminar at the Field Museum of Natural History organized by Jonathan Haas. Arkansas Archaeological Survey Research Series No. 44, Arkansas, 1994. Caffell, Anwen C., Charlotte A. Roberts, Rob C. Janaway and Andrew. S. Wilson. “Pressures on Osteological Collections: The Importance of Damage Limitations.” In Human Remains: Conservation, Retrieval and Analysis. Proceedings of a Conference Held in Williamsburg, VA, Nov 7–11th 1999, edited by E. Williams. Oxford: British Archaeological Press, 2001. Cassman, Vicki, Nancy Odegaard and Joseph Powell. Human Remains: Guide for Museums and Academic Institutions. Oxford: Altamira Press, 2007. Connell, Brian, Amy Gray Jones, Rebecca Redfern and Don Walker. A Bioarchaeological Study of Medieval Burials on the site of St Mary Spital: Excavations at Spitalfields Market, London E1, 1991–2007. London: Museum of London Archaeology Monograph Series 60, 2012. Connell, Brian and Peter Rauxloh. A rapid method for recording human skeletal data. Museum of London, 2003. Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums. London: DCMS, 2005. Giesen, Myra, ed. Curating Human Remains: Caring for the Dead in the United Kingdom. The International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013. Human Tissue Act, 2004. Accessed August 11, 2022. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/ 2004/30/contents. Lohman, Jack and Katherine Goodnow. eds. Human Remains and Museum Practice. Paris and London: United Nations Educational. Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Museum of London, 2006. Mitchell, Piers D. and Megan Brickley. eds. Guidance to the standards for recording human skeletal remains. Institute of Field Archaeologists, British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology. Reading, 2017.

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Jelena Bekvalac Museum of London. Policy for the care of human remains in Museum of London collections. London, 2022. Museum of London. Preparation of archaeological archives deposited with the Museum of London. London, 2009. Museum of London Act, 1965. Accessed August 11, 2022. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/1965/17/enacted. Planning Policy Guidance 16, Archaeology and Planning, 1990. [online] available https:// www.cheltenham.gov.uk, accessed (11/08/2022); PPS 5 Planning for the Historic Environment, 2010. Accessed August 11, 2022. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukia/ 2010/119/pdfs/ukia_20100119_en.pdf. Portable Antiquity Scheme (PAS) [online] available from: https://finds.org.uk/about. Powers, Natasha. Human osteology method statement, Museum of London. 2008. [online]. Accessed August 11, 2022. https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/collections/other-collectiondatabases-and-libraries/centre-human-bioarchaeology/about-osteological-database. Powers, Natasha. Updated a rapid method for recording human skeletal data by Brian Connell and Peter Rauxloh. 2007. Museum of London [online]. Accessed August 11, 2022. https://www. museumoflondon.org.uk/collections/other-collection-databases-and-libraries/centrehuman-bioarchaeology/about-osteological-database. Redfern, Rebecca C. and Jelena Bekvalac. “The Museum of London: An Overview of Policies and Practice.” In Curating Human Remains, Caring for the Dead in Great Britain, edited by Myra Giesen, 87–99. The International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013. White, Bill. “The Museum of London’s Wellcome Osteological Research Database.” In Human Remains and Museum Practice, edited by Jack Lohman and Katherine Goodnow, 106–110. Paris and London: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Museum of London, 2006.

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4 STRIKING A BALANCE Preserving, Curating, and Investigating Human Remains from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily

Kirsty Squires and Dario Piombino-Mascali Introduction The mummification rite is typically associated with Egyptian mummies as they have been subjected to extensive scientific analysis, and have been included in high-profile exhibitions and museums around the world since the eighteenth century.1 However, mummification has been practised throughout Europe since the Middle Ages in countries such as England, France, Germany, and Italy.2 The Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily, are home to the largest collection of mummified and partly mummified remains in Europe. The site contains over 1,284 mummified and skeletonised bodies belonging to a range of demographic groups, including babies and children, and both males and females. The Catacombs were founded in 1599 C.E. by the Capuchin Order as a place to house the spontaneously mummified bodies of 45 Capuchin Friars who had been exhumed from a mass grave near the Church of Santa Maria della Pace.3 These remains were moved to a room constructed for their storage behind the main altar of the aforementioned church. Further rooms and corridors were subsequently built to store the bodies of clergymen, nobility, and members of the middle class. The evolution of the mummification rite in modern period Palermo (1599–1880 C.E.) is of great cultural and societal signif­ icance as it shows how attitudes to the dead changed over time within this city. During this period mummification was viewed as a sign of sophistication amongst the middle classes as it was not only an expensive process, but it was believed that mummification maintained the social persona after death.4 There is also evidence to suggest that this funerary rite was connected to the worship of the souls of the purgatory. Followers of this cult believed that the souls of their family became pro­ tective entities for the living following death.5 People were buried in the Capuchin Catacombs up until 1880 C.E., though human remains continued to be stored at the site until 1952.6 DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-6

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Given the unique nature of the site, the Capuchin Catacombs are one of the most popular visitor attractions in Palermo. Thousands of visitors flock to the Catacombs every year to view the Capuchin mummies. Mass tourism at this site can, in part, be attributed to the documentation of the crypt on television shows, online articles and videos, social media, and travel websites such as TripAdvisor. Cruise ship operators that stop at Palermo frequently advertise planned excursions to the Capuchin Catacombs on their websites.7 Stone identifies the Capuchin Catacombs as a “dark exhibition,” whereby the main draw of the site are the deceased individuals, which have the potential to educate visitors and convey commemorative messages.8 Unfortunately, there is limited literature and resources aimed at tourists meaning visitors do not fully comprehend the societal and cul­ tural importance of the mummies and the site as a whole.9 Instead, visitors that wish to learn about the Catacombs are more likely to encounter sensationalist online articles or photographs taken by tourists and uploaded onto travel websites with little, if any, educational context.10 Polzer has highlighted that such resources are problematic as they portray the mummies as “objects of gruesome fascina­ tion.”11 In turn, this can affect the way in which some guests view the human remains and their behaviour while visiting the site, such as flouting the “no photography” policy12 and visitor guidelines, which are outlined on the unofficial Capuchin Catacombs website and displayed on signage throughout the site.13 This can consequently lead to tensions between visitors and the Capuchin Friars as tourists wish to document their excursion to the site; the inability to do so can undoubtedly impact upon visitor satisfaction.14 However, guests are not respecting the beliefs and wishes of the living and deceased.15 This point will be revisited later in this chapter. Yet, despite the popularity of the site with visitors and the income generation it brings, there has been limited investment in the conservation of mummies or the crypt structure. As a result, environmental conditions within the Catacombs have worsened over time. A recent attempt to evaluate the condition of the crypt in its entirety has highlighted a number of biodeterioration phenomena. This is particularly concerning as the current environmental conditions favour an abundant proliferation of moulds and fungi, some of which are potentially harmful to the living and could impact tourists visiting the site and scientists conducting research. The aim of this chapter is thus twofold. We firstly aim to establish how human remains in the Capuchin Catacombs can be preserved and curated to acceptable standards within the confines of limited investment. Subsequently, we will consider how scientific investigation can be successfully carried out at a popular tourist site. Conflicting demands by a wide range of stakeholders, including the Capuchin Friars, descendants of the dead, the Superintendence for the Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Palermo, the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, the scientific community and visitors to the site, will be explored throughout as a means of demonstrating the importance of working transparently and maintaining regular, open dialogue with all relevant stakeholders, whilst ensuring the beliefs of the living and deceased are respected. 52

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Preservation and Curation At present, a door keeper and a Capuchin Friar oversee the daily operation and maintenance of the site. This involves admitting visitors, checking the video surveil­ lance, and selling religious or Catacomb-related items. Since 2010, Dr. Dario Piombino-Mascali has acted as the scientific curator of the Catacombs and is responsible for overseeing research activity and advising on the appropriate curation and conser­ vation of all human remains. To date, no serious attempts to preserve the mummies or the site have been made, with one single exception (as outlined below). This can be attributed to a poor understanding of the importance of historic human remains as a form of heritage by those involved in the daily running of the site, as well as the lack of professional figures trained in the management of the site. The inability to save up funding specifically for conservation purposes may also explain the lack of investment. Nevertheless, a recent inspection (2020) carried out by the local Carabinieri police force, the fire brigade, and cultural heritage bodies (namely, the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, and the Superintendence for the Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Palermo) highlighted the necessity to start a large restoration process involving both the architectural structure and the cultural assets present in the crypt, such as personal effects, funerary furnishings, and human remains. This restoration project is now deemed to be a priority by all stakeholders. The current preservational status and completeness of the human remains in the Capuchin Catacombs are extremely variable. Rosalia Lombardo, a two-year-old girl, demonstrates outstanding preservation and is housed in an environmentcontrolled glass coffin.16 In contrast, other individuals are in variable states of preservation, some of whom exhibit extensive disarticulation and a lack of soft tissue, such as many of the decedents mummified after 1787.17 From the late eighteenth century, mummification became more widespread among Palermo’s inhabitants and, given the growing number of clients wishing to be afforded this funerary treatment, preparation of the bodies was less meticulous than it once was. The poor preservation of many individuals and their associated items can largely be attributed to environmental conditions within the Catacombs over several hundred years.18 At present, the temperature fluctuates between 10 and 25 degrees Celsius depending on the season, while relative humidity peaks at 80 per cent.19 Structural changes have been observed due to these conditions, for instance rosy discoloration and salt formation deposits (leading to cracks and detachment) on many of the internal walls.20 These extreme conditions can be attributed to the permanent closure of some openings that provided ventilation, and inadequate sealing of the Catacombs. Environmental pollution from outside the site, as well as poor cleaning regime of the crypt, may have contributed to these conditions. As a result, bio­ deterioration phenomena, including insect (including wood-boring beetles, moths, and oriental cockroaches) and microorganism (such as, bacteria, fungi, and archaea) proliferation is having a significant impact on the preservation of the human remains, clothing, coffins, and mortuary-related objects (e.g., canes, chairs, and wooden boards).21 The aforementioned restoration project is welcome news as the environmental conditions of the Catacombs require urgent attention. 53

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Deterioration of the mummies and associated funerary artefacts could be slowed down by the implementation of climate-controlled air conditioning throughout the entire complex.22 Whilst this is the most effective solution to the problem, there are difficulties in implementing such a system. Funding is the primary issue as substantial investment would be required to install a large-scale climate-controlled air con­ ditioning unit in this structure. The visitor entrance fee to the Catacombs is three euros per person, though this money is currently used to support the Capuchin Friars charity work and to fund the Order’s different expenses.23 This is challenging as the Friars are the guardians of the mummies and the scientific community, the Superintendence for the Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Palermo, and the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, which are the governmental institutions in charge of the protection of cultural assets at the local and the regional level, respectively, must observe their beliefs, charity work, and the way in which they manage the Catacombs. However, this is putting the preservation of the human remains in jeopardy and, indeed, the health of visitors due to the presence of path­ ogenic bacteria and fungi identified on some mummies.24 If visitors are unable to enter the Catacombs due to health and safety concerns, the Capuchin Friars would generate no income from the site. Consequently, open dia­ logue on reaching a solution is essential for the long-term conservation of the site. This will ensure visitors can continue to enter the crypt, scientific investigations can still take place, and the wishes of the deceased and living are maintained. Ultimately, the preservation and conservation of these mummies are challenging due to the size of the architectural structure, the large number of individuals, the different expertise necessary to deal with wooden coffins, textiles and human tissue, and most impor­ tantly a lack of investment. Furthermore, the Catacombs cannot be closed for pro­ longed periods of time as the entrance fee paid by visitors contributes to the maintenance of the site and will cover any future conservation projects. This suggests that any restoration activity should be done in segments, starting from one of the corridors, and gradually proceeding until the entire structure is completed. Akin to the preservation of the Capuchin mummies, their completeness is also extremely variable. A large proportion of individuals are missing appendages and/or specific bones. One of the reasons behind these losses can be attributed to previous visitor conduct. Before 1978 there were no roped off sections or barriers that separated the mummies from the visitors, and CCTV had yet to be installed.25 Prior to these interventions, tourists were known to break off hands and fingers as mementos of their visit to the Catacombs.26 Even though it is now more difficult for guests to physically touch the mummies, they can still cause damage by not following visitor guidelines. As noted in the introduction, despite signage throughout the site, tourists continue to take photographs of the mummies. Indeed, some websites and travel website reviews have highlighted that despite the “no photography” policy, it is possible to take pho­ tographs as a memento of one’s visit if care is taken, for example by not using a camera flash.27 However, this is not always the case. Visitors use flash photography (utilising their cameras and/or mobile phones) as the Catacombs are somewhat dark, which is important for conservation purposes.28 The use of flashes can cause irreversible damage 54

Striking a Balance

(for instance, discoloration and disintegration) not only to the human remains and the clothing worn by the mummies, but also mortuary-related objects associated with the deceased.29 The current signage in the Catacombs only stipulates “no photography”, and there is no mention of flash photography. One of the most effective means of overcoming the issue of flash photography is by educating visitors and explaining the potential damage that flash photography can cause to personal effects and mummies.30 Indeed, past experience of one of the authors (D. P.-M.) has demonstrated that by explaining site guidelines and rules to visitors, they are more likely to respect and follow them. The implementation of information panels that focus on the conservation of the mummies and associated artefacts may be an appropriate solution to this challenge as there are no attendants in the Catacombs. However, funding from the Friars would be required to implement these boards and stakeholders would have to consider the number of information panels and their location in the Catacombs as they can be large and distracting from the main focus of the site.31 Visitor experience and understanding of the site can be further enhanced by greater collaboration and discourse between the Capuchin Friars, the Superintendence for the Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Palermo, and the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity with the Department of Tourism, Sport, and Entertainment. The official tourist board of the latter lists the Capuchin Catacombs as a key attraction in Palermo.32 In spite of this, limited information is provided on their website, and the only weblink offered directs the reader to an online audio guide.33 There is no link to the unofficial Capuchin Catacombs website which outlines the visitor guidelines,34 nor are these presented on the Visit Sicily webpage.35 Greater collaboration between key stakeholders could vastly improve visitor experience while simultaneously educating tourists on the socio-cultural importance and religious significance of the mummified individuals at this site.

Scientific Investigation Scientific investigations of the mummies have taken place in the Capuchin Catacombs since 2008 when ten bodies were examined using a portable radiography device.36 Since these studies commenced, transparent communication and collabo­ ration between the Capuchin Friars, the scientific curator, the Superintendence for the Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Palermo, the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, and living descendants has been essential. This has consequently facilitated the execution of a dozen research projects on the Catacombs. The scientific curator is responsible for evaluating all research proposals to ensure that there is no overlap between projects at the site, proposed methods are non-destructive and will not damage the mummies or associated funerary artefacts, and ethical approval has been sought from the relevant organisations (e.g., the researcher’s home institution).37 A key agreement between all stakeholders is that mummies are not to be removed from the site at any point of an investigation; there are several reasons for this. Firstly, unnecessary handling and transportation can result in damage to mummified remains as they are incredibly fragile. Repairing impaired individuals is not possible in this 55

Kirsty Squires and Dario Piombino-Mascali

context as conservation costs are prohibitively expensive and there is insufficient funding for this purpose. Indeed, a range of costly techniques have previously been used to repair physical damage caused by handling and transportation of mummies from around the world.38 Secondly, removing the mummified remains could potentially lead to health and safety issues for researchers and any person within close proximity to the remains upon removal.39 This can be attributed to biodeterioration of the human remains, clothing, and stuffing materials (e.g., straw and tow) found in some mummified individuals. Piñar et al. identified pathogenic bacteria (Clostridiales) and fungi (Phialosimplex and Penicillium radicum) in a number of samples, alongside airborne fungal spores; this could pose a health risk for all visitors and researchers, particularly individuals that are immunocompromised.40 It is therefore imperative that mummies are not moved unnecessarily. Thirdly, mobile imaging devices are now a reality, and have already been employed successfully at this and other sites in Sicily, minimising any potential damage to the bodies during scientific analysis whilst simultaneously keeping the remains within or nearby the sacred space in which they are located (see Figure 4.1).41 Some researchers may view the inability to remove human remains off-site for analysis to be restrictive and to limit the amount of data one can obtain from on-site analyses.42 Whilst this may be the case in some circumstances, a variety of noninvasive methods, such as radiography and CT scanning, using mobile devices have allowed researchers to gain a better understanding of the biological profiles and health of individuals, and the mummification rite performed in the Capuchin Catacombs.43

Figure 4.1

A nineteenth century mummy undergoing CT examination inside a mobile unit outside the Capuchin Catacombs, Palermo (image courtesy of the Sicily Mummy Project).

56

Striking a Balance

Whilst restrictions on research activities may need to be negotiated (e.g., the length of time analyses can be carried out), the application of these techniques has been approved for use by all relevant stakeholders. However, one of the main challenges of in-situ investigations in this context is that the majority of analyses must be conducted during opening hours (09:00–13:00 and 15:00–18:00) when visitors also have access to the site. Where radiography or CT scanning is being utilised, cordons must be put in place to ensure visitors do not enter the area that has been set up for the purpose of scientific investigations. Access to this area without appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) could be damaging to the health of researchers due to radiation ex­ posure and the movement of mummies.44 Cordoning off areas in this manner could be an issue for visitors, particularly those that visit the site to view specific mummies or wish to explore the Catacombs in their entirety. In these cases, tourists may speak with researchers to learn more about the work that is being undertaken and why the area is fenced off from visitors. Regular discourse with visitors can cause delays to research, which is problematic when working to a tight deadline (e.g., time limits imposed by stakeholders, funding bodies, and rental companies who have loaned imaging equip­ ment). Yet, there are some benefits to these discussions as they allow researchers to offer context to the site, communicate up-to-date research, and demonstrate that the mummies are being curated and studied by international teams of scientists. To minimise disruptions to in-situ research, free leaflets may be offered to tourists upon entry to the Catacombs and, if visitors would like to know more about the scientific investigation, they may speak to a team member. Researchers should consider incorporating the cost of these leaflets and other forms of research dissem­ ination at tourist sites (e.g., mobile phone applications, audio guides, and information panels) when writing grant applications to funding councils as a means of financing these resources. This approach has been adopted by an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project (AH/V014331/1: The Health, Development, and Social Identity of Children afforded Mummification in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily) led by the authors of this chapter.45 The cost of producing leaflets was factored into the funding bid, and the resultant resource will be distributed to tourists upon entry to the Catacombs. These leaflets will allow visitors to learn more about the scientific analyses employed by researchers and the project findings, alongside further contextual information about the juvenile mummies, why they are displayed, and the socio-cultural significance of mummification in modern Palermo society.

Conclusion The Capuchin Catacombs are a renowned religious and socio-cultural site that attracts visitors from around the world, as well as international researchers who wish to learn more about the mummification process and the individuals that were granted this funerary rite. Consequently, there are many pressures on the limited available funds; stakeholders hold specific interests in the site and have differing views on what should be prioritised when it comes to funding. Ultimately, preservation and the conser­ vation of both the mummies and crypt structure are essential if the Catacombs are to remain open to visitors and researchers. Structural repairs are a current priority as this 57

Kirsty Squires and Dario Piombino-Mascali

will improve the environmental conditions that are needed to conserve the mummies. Repairs will also ensure the Catacombs are safe for visitors and researchers alike. There remain challenges around communication with tourists. Greater investment and collaboration with key organisations, such as cruise operators and the Sicilian tourist board, could improve this situation as these potential stakeholders could provide more information about the Capuchin Catacombs on their website, including visitor guidelines and the reasons for their implementation. Researchers conducting scientific investigations should also factor in costs pertaining to public outreach dis­ semination when writing funding bids. This would not only improve project impact, education of the site and its inhabitants to visitors, but it would also alleviate some of the financial pressures felt by the Capuchin Friars who run this site. Support of this nature will further enhance working relationships and collaborations with all stake­ holders. There is still much to do in terms of conserving the mummies and their associated funerary artefacts, improving visitor resources, and educating tourists that visit the site. However, transparent, open dialogue between the Capuchin Friars, cultural heritage bodies, scientific community, and living descendants of the deceased continues. The announcement of a forthcoming, initial restoration project at the site highlights how communication and collaboration can benefit a wide range of sta­ keholders while concurrently making positive steps to conserve the mummified remains housed in the Capuchin Catacombs.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the Capuchin Friars, the Superintendence for the Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Palermo, and the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity for their continued input and support of our research. We wish to extend a special thanks to Dr. Mark Viner (Cranfield Forensic Institute) for his invaluable guidance on radiation health and safety.

Notes 1 Niels Lynnerup, “Mummies,” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 50 (2007): 166. 2 Rozenn Colleter, et al., “Procedures and Frequencies of Embalming and Heart Extractions in Modern Period in Brittany. Contribution to the Evolution of Ritual Funerary in Europe,” PLoS ONE 11, no. 12 (2016): e0167988; Gino Fornaciari and Luigi Capasso, “Natural and Artificial 13th–19th Century Mummies in Italy,” in Human Mummies: A Global Survey of Their Status and the Techniques of Conservation, ed. Konrad Spindler, et al. (Wien: Springer-Verlag, 1996), 195; Estrella Weiss-Krejci, “Excarnation, Evisceration, and Exhumation in Medieval and Post-Medieval Europe,” in Interacting with the Dead Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, ed. Gordon F. M. Rakita, et al. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), 155–172. 3 Flaviano D. Farella, Cenni Storici della Chiesa e delle Catacombe dei Cappuccini di Palermo (Palermo: Fiamma Serafica, 1982), 78–79; Dario Piombino-Mascali, et al., “Mummies from Palermo,” in Mummies of the World, ed. Alfried Wieczorek and Wilfried Rosendahl (Munich: Prestel, 2010), 357; Natale Spineto, “Bodies as ‘Objects Preserved in Museums’: The Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo,” in Public Uses of Human Remains and Relics in History, ed. Silvia Cavicchioli and Luigi Provero (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 148–166.

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Striking a Balance 4 Kirsty Squires and Dario Piombino-Mascali, “Ethical Considerations Associated with the Display and Analysis of Juvenile Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily,” Conference presentation at the BioantTalks: AnthroEthics in the 21st Century virtual conference, July 7, 2021, accessed October 9, 2021, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=rrJUKpDg_Gs&t=41s; Kirsty Squires and Dario PiombinoMascali, “Ethical Considerations Associated with the Display and Analysis of Juvenile Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily,” Public Archaeology 20, no. 1–4 (2021): 66–84. 5 Dario Piombino-Mascali and Kenneth C. Nystrom, “Natural Mummification as a NonNormative Mortuary Custom of Modern Period Sicily (1600–1800),” in The Odd, the Unusual and the Strange. Bioarchaeological Explorations of Atypical Burials, ed. Tracy K. Betsinger, et al. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2020), 318. 6 Dario Piombino-Mascali, “The Lovely Bones: Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo,” in Athanatos. Inmortal. Muerte e Inmortalidad en Poblaciones del Pasado, ed. Conrado RodríguezMaffiotte Martín (Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Organismo Autónomo de Museos y CentrosCabildo de Tenerife, 2017), 127–131; Ibid, Le Catacombe dei Cappuccini. Guida StoricoScientifica (Palermo: Kalós, 2018), 34; Ibid, Lo Spazio di un Mattino. Storia di Rosalia Lombardo, la Bambina che dorme da Cento Anni (Palermo: Dario Flaccovio, 2020), 118. 7 Squires and Piombino-Mascali, “Ethical Considerations Associated with the Display and Analysis of Juvenile Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily,” 69; 73. 8 Philip R. Stone, “A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a Typology of Death and Macabre Related Tourist Sites, Attractions and Exhibitions,” Tourism: An Interdisciplinary International Journal 54, no. 2 (2006): 153. 9 Dario Piombino-Mascali and Alessia Franco, “Catacombe dei Cappuccini,” accessed September 8, 2021, https://izi.travel/it/acd4-catacombe-dei-cappuccini/it; Juvenile Mummy Project, “The Health, Development and Social Identity of Children Afforded Mummification in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily,” accessed March 23, 2022, https://juvenilemummyproject.wixsite.com/palermo; “The Capuchin Catacombs,” ac­ cessed September 8, 2021, http://www.palermocatacombs.com/. 10 Palermo for 91 Days, “The Bone-Chilling Catacombs of the Capuchin Monks,” accessed 8, 2021, https://palermo.for91days.com/the-bone-chilling-catacombs-of-the-capuchinmonks/; The Wonders of Sicily, “The Macabre Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo,” accessed September 8, 2021, https://www.wondersofsicily.com/palermo-capuchin-catacombs.htm. 11 Natalie C. Polzer, “Ancestral Bodies to Universal Bodies – The “Re-Enchantment” of the Mummies of the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily,” Cogent Arts and Humanities 5 (2018): 6. 12 This policy was implemented to ensure visitors respected the privacy of the deceased. Some images need to be taken for scientific or promotional purposes. However, when this happens their dissemination is controlled and it is established, before any photography takes place, where these images are published and who uses them. In contrast, when visitors take photographs and upload them onto social media networks, there is the risk that images are used inappropriately (e.g., modification of photographs and unregulated dissemination) and/or the deceased and the site are derided, which are both unacceptable (Errickson and Thompson 2019, 299–313). 13 “The Capuchin Catacombs.” 14 Jacob C. Lee, et al., “Photo Taking Paradox: Contrasting Effects of Photo Taking on Travel Satisfaction and Revisit Intention,” Journal of Travel Research 60, no. 4 (2021): 836; Daniel H. Olsen, “Management Issues for Religious Heritage Attractions,” in Tourism, Religion & Spiritual Journeys, ed. Dallen J. Timothy and Daniel H. Olsen (London: Routledge, 2006), 107. 15 Squires and Piombino-Mascali, “Ethical Considerations Associated with the Display and Analysis of Juvenile Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily,” 76.

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Kirsty Squires and Dario Piombino-Mascali 16 Stephanie Panzer, et al., “Multidetector CT Investigation of the Mummy of Rosalia Lombardo (1918–1920),” Annals of Anatomy 195, no. 5 (2013): 402; Marco Samadelli, et al., “Development of Passive Controlled Atmosphere Display Cases for the Conservation of Cultural Assets,” Journal of Cultural Heritage 35 (2019): 152. 17 Farella, Cenni Storici della Chiesa e delle Catacombe dei Cappuccini di Palermo, 87. 18 Piombino-Mascali, Le Catacombe dei Cappuccini. Guida Storico-Scientifica, 61. 19 Pascal Querner, et al., “Insect Pests and Integrated Pest Management in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy,” International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation 131 (2018): 108–109. 20 Guadalupe Piñar, et al., “Microbial Survey of the Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy: Biodeterioration Risk and Contamination of the Indoor Air,” FEMS Microbiology Ecology 86, no. 2 (2013): 341–356; Guadalupe Piñar, et al., “The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo: Problems Facing the Conservation of an Impressive Burial Site,” Coalition 25 (2014a): 2–10; Marco Samadelli, et al., “Theoretical Aspects of PhysicalChemical Parameters for the Correct Conservation of Mummies on Display in Museums and Preserved in Storage Rooms,” Journal of Cultural Heritage 14 (2013): 480–484. 21 Piñar, et al., “Microbial Survey of the Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy: Biodeterioration Risk and Contamination of the Indoor Air,” 341–356; Piñar, et al., “The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo: Problems Facing the Conservation of an Impressive Burial Site,” 2–10; Guadalupe Piñar, et al., “Halophilic Bacteria are Colonizing the Exhibition Areas of the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy,” Extremophiles 18 (2014b): 677–691; Querner, et al., “Insect Pests and Integrated Pest Management in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy,” 107–114. 22 Aufderheide (2003, 505), David (2008, 250), and Samadelli, et al. (2013, 484) recognise that a constant temperature between 10 and 16 degrees Celsius and relative humidity of 25–55 per cent represent the ideal environmental conditions for storing mummified remains. 23 Polzer, “Ancestral Bodies to Universal Bodies – The ‘Re-Enchantment’ of the Mummies of the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily,” 9. 24 Piñar, et al., “Microbial Survey of the Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy: Biodeterioration Risk and Contamination of the Indoor Air,” 345. 25 Farella, Cenni Storici della Chiesa e delle Catacombe dei Cappuccini di Palermo, 103. 26 Piombino-Mascali, Le Catacombe dei Cappuccini. Guida Storico-Scientifica, 82. 27 Sam Van den Haute, “The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo,” accessed September 8, 2021, https://www.checkoutsam.com/capuchin-catacombs-of-palermo/. 28 Marco Samadelli, et al., “Theoretical Aspects of Physical-Chemical Parameters for the Correct Conservation of Mummies on Display in Museums and Preserved in Storage Rooms,” Journal of Cultural Heritage 14 (2013): 483–484. 29 Terry T. Schaeffer, Effects of Light on Materials in Collections: Data on Photoflash and Related Sources (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2001), 51–55; Kent R. Weeks and Nigel J. Hetherington, The Valley of the Kings: A Site Management Handbook (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2014), 176. 30 Narelle Lemon, “Evaluating the Integration of Digital Cameras in Gallery Learning,” in Gallery and Museum Education, ed. Purnima Ruanglertbutr (Melbourne: Melbourne Graduate School of Education, 2014), 237. 31 Reuben Grima, “Presenting Archaeological Sites to the Public,” in Key Concepts in Public Archaeology, ed. Gabriel Moshenska (London: UCL Press, 2017), 90. 32 Visit Sicily, “Palermo,” accessed September 9, 2021, https://www.visitsicily.info/10cosea/ palermo/. 33 “Catacombe dei Cappuccini.” 34 “The Capuchin Catacombs.” 35 “Palermo.” 36 Stephanie Panzer, et al., “Radiologic Evidence of Anthropogenic Mummification in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily,” RadioGraphics 30, no. 4 (2010): 1126.

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Striking a Balance 37 Squires and Piombino-Mascali, “Ethical Considerations Associated with the Display and Analysis of Juvenile Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily,” 76–79. 38 A. Rosalie David, “Benefits and Disadvantages of Some Conservation Treatments for Egyptian Mummies,” Chungará 33, no. 1 (2001): 113–115; Antony E. David, “Conservation Treatment for Mummies,” in Egyptian Mummies and Modern Science, ed. A. Rosalie David (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 253–254; Jens Klocke, “Conservation of Mummies – Having Bones to Pick with the Dead,” in Mummies of the World, ed. Alfried Wieczorek and Wilfried Rosendahl (Munich: Prestel, 2010), 251–253; Cinzia Oliva, “The Conservation of Egyptian Mummies in Italy,” Technè 44 (2016): 122–126. 39 Squires and Piombino-Mascali, “Ethical Considerations Associated with the Display and Analysis of Juvenile Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily,” 78. 40 Piñar, et al., “The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo: Problems Facing the Conservation of an Impressive Burial Site,” 8. 41 Ronald G. Beckett, et al., “A Paleoimaging Study of Human Mummies Held in the Mother Church of Gangi, Sicily: Implications for Mass Casualty Methodology,” Forensic Imaging 23 (2020): 200416; Stephanie Panzer, et al., “CT Checklist and Scoring System for the Assessment of Soft Tissue Preservation in Human Mummies: Application to Catacomb Mummies from Palermo, Sicily,” International Journal of Paleopathology 20 (2018): 50–59; Dario Piombino-Mascali, et al., “Paleoradiology of the Savoca Mummies, Sicily, Italy (18th–19th Centuries AD),” The Anatomical Record 298, no. 6 (2015): 988–1000; Dario Piombino-Mascali, et al., “Paleopathology in the Piraino Mummies as Illustrated by X-rays,” Anthropological Science 125 (2017): 25–33. 42 Louise Loe and Sharon Clough, “Ethical Considerations in the Excavation of Burials in England: A Perspective from Developer Led Archaeology,” in Ethical Approaches to Human Remains: A Global Challenge in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology, ed. Kirsty Squires, David Errickson, and Nicholas Márquez-Grant (Cham: Springer, 2019), 166. 43 Panzer, et al., “Radiologic Evidence of Anthropogenic Mummification in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily,” 1123–1132; Panzer, et al., “Multidetector CT Investigation of the Mummy of Rosalia Lombardo (1918–1920),” 401–408; Panzer, et al., “CT Checklist and Scoring System for the Assessment of Soft Tissue Preservation in Human Mummies: Application to Catacomb Mummies from Palermo, Sicily,” 50–59. 44 Ronald Beckett and Mark Viner, “Field Paleoimaging Safety and Health Challenges,” in Advances in Paleoimaging: Applications for Paleoanthropology, Bioarchaeology, Forensics, and Cultural Artifacts, ed. Ronald G. Beckett and Gerald J. Conlogue (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2020), 226; Mark Viner and Gerald J. Conlogue, “Radiation Protection and Safety,” in Advances in Paleoimaging: Applications for Paleoanthropology, Bioarchaeology, Forensics, and Cultural Artifacts, ed. Ronald G. Beckett and Gerald J. Conlogue (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2020), 236. 45 “The Health, Development and Social Identity of Children Afforded Mummification in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily.”

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Kirsty Squires and Dario Piombino-Mascali Cultural Artifacts, edited by Ronald G. Beckett and Gerald J. Conlogue, 221–230. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2020. Colleter, Rozenn, Fabrice Dedouit, Sylvie Duchesne, Fatima-Zohra Mokrane, Véronique Gendrot, Patrice Gérard, Henri Babernat, Éric Crubézy, and Norbert Telmon. “Procedures and Frequencies of Embalming and Heart Extractions in Modern Period in Brittany. Contribution to the Evolution of Ritual Funerary in Europe.” PLoS ONE 11, no. 12 (2016): e0167988. 10.1371/journal.pone.0167988 David, A. Rosalie. “Benefits and Disadvantages of Some Conservation Treatments for Egyptian Mummies.” Chungará 33, no. 1 (2001): 113–115. 10.4067/S0717-73562001000100020 David, Antony E. “Conservation Treatment for Mummies.” In Egyptian Mummies and Modern Science, edited by A. Rosalie David, 247–254. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Errickson, David and Tim J. U. Thompson. “Sharing Is Not Always Caring: Social Media and the Dead.” In Ethical Approaches to Human Remains: A Global Challenge in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology, edited by Kirsty Squires, David Errickson, and Nicholas Márquez-Grant, 299–313. Cham: Springer, 2019. Farella, Flaviano D. Cenni Storici della Chiesa e delle Catacombe dei Cappuccini di Palermo. Palermo: Fiamma Serafica, 1982. Fornaciari, Gino and Luigi Capasso. “Natural and Artificial 13th-19th Century Mummies in Italy.” In Human Mummies: A Global Survey of Their Status and the Techniques of Conservation, edited by Konrad Spindler, Harald Wilfing, Elisabeth Rastbichler-Zissernig, Dieter zur Nedden, and Hans Nothdurfter, 195–203. Wien: Springer-Verlag, 1996. Grima, Reuben. “Presenting Archaeological Sites to the Public.” In Key Concepts in Public Archaeology, edited by Gabriel Moshenska, 73–92. London: UCL Press, 2017. Juvenile Mummy Project. “The Health, Development and Social Identity of Children Afforded Mummification in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily.” 2021. Accessed March 23, 2022. https://juvenilemummyproject.wixsite.com/palermo Klocke, Jens. “Conservation of Mummies – Having Bones to Pick with the Dead.” In Mummies of the World, edited by Alfried Wieczorek and Wilfried Rosendahl, 251–253. Munich: Prestel, 2010. Lee, Jacob C., Yuanyuan Cui, Jungkeun Kim, Yuri Seo, and Hyunji Chon. “Photo Taking Paradox: Contrasting Effects of Photo Taking on Travel Satisfaction and Revisit Intention.” Journal of Travel Research 60, no. 4 (2021): 833–845. 10.1177/004728752 0912334 Lemon, Narelle. “Evaluating the Integration of Digital Cameras in Gallery Learning.” In Gallery and Museum Education, edited by Purnima Ruanglertbutr, 232–261. Melbourne: Melbourne Graduate School of Education, 2014. Loe, Louise and Sharon Clough. “Ethical Considerations in the Excavation of Burials in England: A Perspective from Developer Led Archaeology.” In Ethical Approaches to Human Remains: A Global Challenge in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology, edited by Kirsty Squires, David Errickson, and Nicholas Márquez-Grant, 157–177. Cham: Springer, 2019. Lynnerup, Niels. “Mummies.” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 50 (2007): 162–190. 10.1002/ ajpa.20728 Oliva, Cinzia. “The Conservation of Egyptian Mummies in Italy.” Technè 44 (2016): 122–126. 10.4000/techne.1205 Olsen, Daniel H. “Management Issues for Religious Heritage Attractions.” In Tourism, Religion & Spiritual Journeys, edited by Dallen J. Timothy and Daniel H. Olsen, 104–118. London: Routledge, 2006. Palermo Catacombs. “The Capuchin Catacombs.” n.d. Accessed September 8, 2021. http://www. palermocatacombs.com/ Palermo for 91 Days. “The Bone-Chilling Catacombs of the Capuchin Monks.” 2011. Accessed 8, 2021. https://palermo.for91days.com/the-bone-chilling-catacombs-of-thecapuchin-monks/

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Striking a Balance Panzer, Stephanie, Albert R. Zink, and Dario Piombino-Mascali. “Radiologic Evidence of Anthropogenic Mummification in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily.” RadioGraphics 30, no. 4 (2010): 1123–1132. 10.1148/rg.304095174 Panzer, Stephanie, Heather Gill-Frerking, Wilfried Rosendahl, Albert R. Zink, and Dario Piombino-Mascali. “Multidetector CT Investigation of the Mummy of Rosalia Lombardo (1918-1920).” Annals of Anatomy 195, no. 5 (2013): 401–408. 10.1016/ j.aanat.2013.03.009 Panzer, Stephanie, Peter Augat, Albert R. Zink, and Dario Piombino-Mascali. “CT Checklist and Scoring System for the Assessment of Soft Tissue Preservation in Human Mummies: Application to Catacomb Mummies from Palermo, Sicily.” International Journal of Paleopathology 20 (2018): 50–59. 10.1016/j.ijpp.2018.01.003 Piñar, Guadalupe, Dario Piombino-Mascali, Frank Maixner, Albert Zink, and Katja Sterflinger. “Microbial Survey of the Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy: Biodeterioration Risk and Contamination of the Indoor Air.” FEMS Microbiology Ecology 86, no. 2 (2013): 341–356. 10.1111/1574-6941.12165 Piñar, Guadalupe, Dario Piombino-Mascali, Frank Maixner, Albert Zink, and Katja Sterflinger. “The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo: Problems Facing the Conservation of an Impressive Burial Site.” Coalition 25 (2014a): 2–10. Piñar, Guadalupe, Lucia Kraková, Domenico Pangallo, Dario Piombino-Mascali, Frank Maixner, Albert Zink, and Katja Sterflinger. “Halophilic Bacteria are Colonizing the Exhibition Areas of the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy.” Extremophiles 18 (2014b): 677–691. 10.1007/s00792-014-0649-6 Piombino-Mascali, Dario. Le Catacombe dei Cappuccini. Guida Storico-Scientifica. Palermo: Kalós, 2018. Piombino-Mascali, Dario. Lo Spazio di un Mattino. Storia di Rosalia Lombardo, la Bambina che dorme da Cento Anni. Palermo: Dario Flaccovio, 2020. Piombino-Mascali, Dario. “The Lovely Bones: Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo.” In Athanatos. Inmortal. Muerte e Inmortalidad en Poblaciones del Pasado, edited by Conrado Rodríguez-Maffiotte Martín, 127–131. Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Organismo Autónomo de Museos y Centros-Cabildo de Tenerife, 2017. Piombino-Mascali, Dario and Alessia Franco. “Catacombe dei Cappuccini.” 2016. Accessed September 8, 2021. https://izi.travel/it/acd4-catacombe-dei-cappuccini/it Piombino-Mascali, Dario, Albert R. Zink, and Stephanie Panzer. “Paleopathology in the Piraino Mummies as Illustrated by X-rays.” Anthropological Science 125 (2017): 25–33. 10.1537/ase.160916 Piombino-Mascali, Dario, Arthur C. Aufderheide, Stephanie Panzer, and Albert R. Zink. “Mummies from Palermo.” In Mummies of the World, edited by Alfried Wieczorek and Wilfried Rosendahl, 357–361. Munich: Prestel, 2010. Piombino-Mascali, Dario and Kenneth C. Nystrom. “Natural Mummification as a NonNormative Mortuary Custom of Modern Period Sicily (1600-1800).” In The Odd, the Unusual and the Strange. Bioarchaeological Explorations of Atypical Burials, edited by Tracy K. Betsinger, Amy B. Scott, and Anastasia Tsaliki, 312–322. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2020. Piombino-Mascali, Dario, Rimantas Jankauskas, Albert R. Zink, Mario S. Todesco, Arthur C. Aufderheide, and Stephanie Panzer. “Paleoradiology of the Savoca Mummies, Sicily, Italy (18th–19th Centuries AD).” The Anatomical Record 298, no. 6 (2015): 988–1000. 10.1002/ar.23132 Polzer, Natalie C. “Ancestral Bodies to Universal Bodies – The ’Re-Enchantment’ of the Mummies of the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily.” Cogent Arts and Humanities 5 (2018): 1482994. 10.1080/23311983.2018.1482994 Querner, Pascal, Katja Sterflinger, Dario Piombino-Mascali, Johnica J. Morrow, Reiner Pospischil, and Guadalupe Piñar. “Insect Pests and Integrated Pest Management in the

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Kirsty Squires and Dario Piombino-Mascali Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Italy.” International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation 131 (2018): 107–114. 10.1016/j.ibiod.2017.02.012 Samadelli, Marco, Albert R. Zink, Graziella Roselli, Serena Gabrielli, Shahin Tabandeh, and Vito C. Fernicola. “Development of Passive Controlled Atmosphere Display Cases for the Conservation of Cultural Assets.” Journal of Cultural Heritage 35 (2019): 145–153. 10.1016/j.culher.2018.05.005 Samadelli, Marco, Graziella Roselli, Vito C. Fernicola, Ludwig Moroder, and Albert R. Zink. “Theoretical Aspects of Physical-Chemical Parameters for the Correct Conservation of Mummies on Display in Museums and Preserved in Storage Rooms.” Journal of Cultural Heritage 14 (2013): 480–484. 10.1016/j.culher.2012.11.004 Schaeffer, Terry T. Effects of Light on Materials in Collections: Data on Photoflash and Related Sources. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2001. Spineto, Natale. “Bodies ‘as Objects Preserved in Museums’. The Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo.” In Public Uses of Human Remains and Relics in History, edited by Silvia Cavicchioli and Luigi Provero, 148–166. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Squires, Kirsty and Dario Piombino-Mascali. “Ethical Considerations Associated with the Display and Analysis of Juvenile Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily.” Paper presented at BioantTalks: AnthroEthics in the 21st Century 2021, virtual, July 7, 2021. Accessed October 9, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJUKpDg_Gs& t=41s Squires, Kirsty and Dario Piombino-Mascali. “Ethical Considerations Associated with the Display and Analysis of Juvenile Mummies from the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily.” Public Archaeology 20, no. 1–4 (2021): 66–84. 10.1080/14655187.2021.2024742 Stone, Philip R. “A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a Typology of Death and Macabre Related Tourist Sites, Attractions and Exhibitions.” Tourism: An Interdisciplinary International Journal 54, no. 2 (2006): 145–160. The Wonders of Sicily. “The Macabre Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo.” n.d. Accessed September 8, 2021. https://www.wondersofsicily.com/palermo-capuchin-catacombs.htm Van den Haute, Sam. “The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo.” n.d. Accessed September 8, 2021. https://www.checkoutsam.com/capuchin-catacombs-of-palermo/ Viner, Mark and Gerald J. Conlogue. “Radiation Protection and Safety.” In Advances in Paleoimaging. Applications for Paleoanthropology, Bioarchaeology, Forensics, and Cultural Artifacts, edited by Ronald G. Beckett and Gerald J. Conlogue, 231–239. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2020. Visit Sicily. “Palermo.” 2015. Accessed September 9, 2021. https://www.visitsicily.info/ 10cosea/palermo/ Weeks, Kent R. and Nigel J. Hetherington. The Valley of the Kings: A Site Management Handbook. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2014. Weiss-Krejci, Estella. “Excarnation, Evisceration, and Exhumation in Medieval and PostMedieval Europe.” In Interacting with the Dead Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, edited by Gordon F. M. Rakita, Jane E. Buikstra, Lane A. Beck, and Sloane R. Williams, 155–172. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005.

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5 THE HANDLING OF THE REMAINS OF THE ANCESTORS IN PERU Realities, Challenges, and Wishes

Guido P. Lombardi, Rubén Buitrón, Lizbeht Tepo, Clide Valladolid, Bradymir Bravo, Susana Arce, Elva Torres, Sonia Guillén, and Trish Biers Overview From a general standpoint, handling of human remains has suffered a dramatic transfor­ mation over the last two centuries, worldwide. From being looted, desecrated, sold, and exhibited even in freakshows, to being properly curated at specialised, custom-designed facilities, following respectful and rightful guidelines, the relationship between living humans and the deceased has changed for good. Despite all advances, this is still an ongoing process that has lately faced specific cultural and even political agendas. Difficulties have risen in some countries, revealing long neglected gaps of understanding among incumbent parties. Besides legal ownership of the dead and their belongings, including ancestral lands, other important questions have emerged, dealing with complexities in their own right, such as cultural identity, displacement, religion, and human rights. Academia tends to prescribe clear-cut guidelines and flowcharts to fulfil criteria without acknowledging grey zones. Lately, physical anthropology has certainly progressed using those forms too; from properly excavating, coding, labelling and recording to storing, curating, and exhibiting: protocols aspire to define innocuous standards to follow universally in lockstep. Nevertheless, objection has lately risen against some of these prescriptive policies which are seen by some as impositions from a dominant culture and even gender. Moreover, the very development of physical anthropology as a science in the 19th century is presented by some scholars as an inherently racist product that permeates the present. Certainly, in the case of Peru or any other territory which endured colonial rule, besides these sensible criticisms, the improvement of the handling of our ancestors’ remains should fit our complex heritage. Solutions could be based on our own reality and expressed in our own terms. DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-7

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Introduction There is no known number of ancient human remains stored over hundreds of places in Peru, as some of them include remote schools and even regular homes. Common sense tells us that, if a comprehensive register be made, the goal would be achieved by just gathering the numbers provided by museums, universities, and official depen­ dencies’ curators. Nevertheless, such a sensible process would miss the bulk: many ancestral skulls, whole skeletons, and even mummies, are kept without much care in private homes or are known to be scattered over hundreds of archaeological sites. A few elements in nature have contributed to Peru’s physical anthropological wealth. First, prevailing aridity in the air and ground of the western Andes is so intense that bodies tend to dehydrate naturally very fast, beating decay. In preColumbian times, though detailed information is missing, it is known that funerary specialists achieved mummification in selected, high rock shelters close to mountain passes featuring constant dry drafts. Thick fabric cocoons or “mummy bundles” each wrapped around a hyper-flexed seated body nucleus ensured the preservation of soft tissues of particularly high-status people for centuries.1 Though commoners’ bodies would receive less care and thinner wrappings, their bodies would mummify too, but would eventually decay over time, contributing to the thousands of skeletons which are prevalent in most archaeological cemeteries in Peru. Evidence of post-mortem handling of human remains in pre-Columbian times is well known to Andean archaeologists. Through ethnographies and tradition, we know ancestor worship included periodically visiting and feasting amongst the deceased relatives’ graves, but eventually, in some cases, ended up with secondary simplified interments most probably carried out by designated deceased relatives. This observation indicates cultures had assimilated skeletonisation. In fact, the prevalent absence of skulls in many tombs suggests the process of ancestor worship ended with the removal of crania to be kept in the household or another ritual place. Higher status burials not only received more offerings and even retinues from the start, but were kept in places, such as rock shelters, caves or important natural formations – paqarinas – associated with founding myths. In the Andes, pre-Columbian VIPs did not die; their passing meant being pro­ moted to permanent, supervising positions carried out by their mummified corpses. Therefore, as in the case of the Inca, dead rulers had sets of sitters, palaces, and busy agendas; they participated in banquets, private and public gatherings, and even tours. No doubt pre-Columbian Cuzco was the undead capital of the world!2 In the present, ancient traditions still permeate the relationship between the living and the deceased in different forms and degrees. Besides formal human remains collections housed in museums, universities, and archaeological sites, two main important areas of interaction remain off academic grounds: cemeteries and private households. Modern Andean worship of the dead is well documented – Día de los Muertos – and is not that far removed from its more famous, elaborate, and colourful Mexican counterpart.3,4 The other, and less documented area, is perhaps more important because it deals with a more intimate and permanent contact at home. Through anecdotal 66

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observation, it is known that some families keep a skull, in some cases from a known ancestor, indoors or in a particular place around the house, as a watchperson. It is believed that the spirit of the deceased would repel any intruder through performing different scary actions, ranging from making noises, whistling, or through physical contact. It is interesting that this complex protective function overlaps the cultivation of a plant, particularly in the northern coast: the San Pedro – Saint Peter’s cactus (Echinopsis pachanoi). Some people believe the post-Contact cactus’ name relates to its hallucinogenic properties, as the namesake saint “holds the keys of heaven”; such a moniker likely reflects the effort by Catholic priests to uproot a compound form of ancestor worship which involved crania and cactus. Variations of the aforementioned practice includes holding more skulls and keeping some other, mostly long bones, along with small numbers of grave goods. In all cases, the skulls are “paid” by the homeowners through periodical rituals in which they receive food, cigarettes, and/or dry coca leaves. Finally, it is important to mention two other cultural practices which are related to the handling of ancient human remains. One is grave-looting and the other is shamanism. Their existence dates from time immemorial and survives because they have been assimilated into modern lifeways. Grave-looting survives, particularly in some coastal towns, where it is seen as a legitimate trade inherited from one generation to the next. Looting is not a main occupation though, and its practice follows strict rituals on given dates, to counter the innate evil of desecrating the dead. Shamanism is more prevalent and better documented.5 A shaman office would not be complete without a skull, or even better, a set of skulls, long bones, and grave goods, particularly belonging to a deceased medicine man or woman of fame. It is easy to see how these activities are intertwined by an invisible trade of grave goods and remains that make their way towards private homes and shamanic offices. Besides the previously described informal sector, human remains are formally curated in different manners all over the country; a good picture is drawn from testimonies by handlers describing a selection of particular cases in different areas of the country (Figure 5.1).

Testimonies from Curatorial Staff Northern Coast Rubén Buitron Picharde, Head of El Brujo Archaeological Complex Lab (CAEB: Complejo Arqueológico El Brujo). CAEB collections encompass about 45,000 pieces of pottery, metals, human remains, mummy bundles, and colonial period objects, which were recovered over three decades of archaeological research led by the Wiese Foundation. The anthro­ pological collection houses about 600 items, such as funerary bundles and mostly skeletal remains, among which the most famous is the Lady of Cao mummy. CAEB collections’ curation and monitoring follow guidelines set by the CAEB Collections’ Management Protocol, which prescribes, for instance: (1) registration on a 67

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Complejo Arqueológico El Brujo

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Trujillo

Museo de Sitio Arturo Jiménez Borja, Puruchuco

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Museo Regional de Ica Adolfo Bermúdez Jenkins " Cusco

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Ica

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museum populated place

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Huarochirí

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Figure 5.1 Map of Peru showing relevant places discussed here. Map data provided by Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Peru. Copyright (c) 2022. Inset map data provided by Natural Earth.

digital management database; (2) curatorial conservation processes; (3) permanent management and monitoring of displayed and stored items; (4) registering and microclimate control; and (5) emergency procedures. Temperature and humidity fluctuations over the year render curation challenging. CAEBs revamped its storage facilities over 2018 and 2019, including those devoted to physical anthropology (room #4: 142 funerary bundles; room #6: skeletal remains). Therefore, both now have a thermo hygrometers, a thermal buffering system, dehumidifiers that are set on over the wet, winter months, and air filtering systems to reduce the concentration of volatiles, sulphur-oxidising bacteria, spores, etc. Microclimate data is recorded on a datalogger, which allows for appropriate measures to be taken, on a monthly basis. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement, as the only place with an air conditioner system in the CAEB is the mummy’s display area. The Lady of Cao is subject to daily monitoring, real time thermo hygrometric data reachable via WiFi, besides a silica gel reserve for lowering its relative humidity. 68

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Figure 5.2 Tattooed right arm of The Lady of Cao. Source: CAEB photographic files.

Locals react to her display with awe and pride, particularly given the associated discourse which enhances the role of women in Moche society (AD 100–700). Actual visualisation respects modesty, as 90% of her body is covered by a veil, preventing direct observation: onlookers indeed merely see a tenuous reflection of the body through a mirror. On the other hand, one cannot deny a thanatic morbidity among some visitors to the museum. There have not been recorded any complaints against the display of the body over my three-year-long tenure; quite the contrary, visitors insisted on viewing “the mummy” over a brief period when the display area remained closed due to maintenance. Personally, I believe the mummy should be kept in storage. Despite our care, display lights still damage her body, particularly her tattoos. Moreover, the museum risks revolving around just one character and discourse, thus ignoring the other collections (Figure 5.2). Shamanic practices are still prevalent in the Northern coast of Peru, therefore unsurprisingly, the actual tomb where the Lady of Cao was found is frequently subject to discreet homages. The guards usually find flower bunches and coca leaves. This type of practice has not been observed in the museum, but is known to happen over other Northern archaeological sites, particularly associated with elite burials. In the Southern highlands of Peru, rural communities keep a closer relationship with their deceased, which is vividly expressed on the Day of the Dead; something that is fading in the cities. In the North, the use of skulls as guards is extensive, particularly those taken from close relatives. This practice, as well as the use of skulls by shamans as part of their paraphernalia, should be understood in its real, traditional dimension, 69

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without promoting tomb profanation. Another unfortunate prevalent practice is grave looting among some poor peasant families, who know the best quality and com­ mercially valuable items associated with elite burials. Criminalised now, this patri­ mony – destructive practice is slowly being phased out. Regarding the development of a national set of curatorial guidelines for anthro­ pological collections, it is important to consider all foreign experiences possible as reference. Nevertheless, the norms that could be adopted here should result from our own diagnostic, which should (besides encompassing ethical criteria over research, curation, conservation, exhibition, and publication) also involve the different cultural practices that exist in the country. Evaluation of human remains kept and cared by people in their homes should be descriptive and diagnostic, avoiding being judg­ mental, in order to foster communications. Given my experience managing this collection, which contains one of the most celebrated mummies in the country, I believe I could contribute to developing norms towards the appropriate handling and care of human remains. It is possible to develop protocols to achieve minimal conditions for the conservation in the storage rooms and over the exhibition areas, specifically for institutions with limited budgets.

Central Coast Lizbeht Tepo Briceño – Curator of Physical Anthropology Collections. MNAAHP (Peruvian National Museum of Anthropology, Archaeology, and History, Lima). MNAAHP holds one of the most important and better preserved repositories of human remains worldwide, ranging from mummies and shrunken heads to teeth and hair samples, its 18,492 catalogued items include over 11,000 skulls, 5,000 funerary bundles, and 100 mummified bodies. Most items date from collections made by the museum’s founder, Dr. Julio C. Tello, over 33 expeditions held throughout Peru over three decades (1917–1947). Besides in situ collections, Tello also directed several public funerary bundle openings, which revealed many more items that increased the collections and led to publications, such as Dr. Pedro Weiss’ Cultural Osteology (2 volumes, 1958 and 1961). Our collections main repository has been climatised since the 1970s thanks to support from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Although we lack official conservation protocols; nowadays we perform preventive curation following guidelines from local and foreign specialists. Therefore, we consider that our col­ lections are kept in ideal, constantly monitored conditions. Though temperature oscillates between 17 and 22°C and relative humidity between 45 and 55%, they are mostly stable at 20°C and 50% RH. Over the last three years, the museum has been closed due to general upgrading and renovation. Before this period, we did not have any human remains on per­ manent display, and whenever we did, we ensured they were treated with respect and dignity, teaching the public about the importance of respecting life beyond death.

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These objectives comply with the Code of Ethics for Museums of ICOM6 (articles 2.5, 3.7, and 4.3), which emphasise scientific institutions holding human remains to treat them with respect, following local ethics codes, the will of their communities of origin, and their overall human dignity. The average Peruvian has inherited a rich relationship towards the ancestors, which mostly is fully expressed on the Day of the Dead (November 2nd). Though I do not interact with visitors, it is known that most of them feel surprised and fascinated by the exhibit of human remains, particularly because in many other countries this type of display does not happen anymore. In the same line, the only evidence of rites we have seen occurs when we receive skulls seized by the police from shamans. The skulls arrive in our labs covered by candle wax and, sometimes, they hold coca leaves and handwritten notes in their vaults. On our own, what we sometimes do is to respectfully greet the deceased when entering the storage rooms. I believe it is important to develop our conservation policies based on international discourse and learning from the experiences and guidance developed by colleagues handling other national collections. In this regard, the Vermillion Accord (1989) clearly states that, “both human remains and the wishes of those close to them must be respected, as well as the needs of science and knowledge. On the basis of this mutual respect, consensus must be reached that is satisfactory for all those involved.”7 Clide Valladolid Huamán. Head of the Site Museum Arturo Jiménez Borja – Puruchuco (MSPUR). MSPUR’s Department of Bioarchaeology holds 172 funerary bundles, eight mummies and approximately 800 skeletons. This collection was gathered in the 1950s by the museum’s founder, Dr. Arturo Jiménez Borja, out of explorations in Puruchuco – Huaquerones, Rinconada de la Molina, Huanchihuaylas, Pedreros, Huallamarca, among other archaeological Eastern Lima sites. Thanks to a grant prize from the United States Embassy, the Ambassador’s Fund 2014, our museum improved its conservation policies, which began in 2013. As a consequence, an internal protocol was devised, which consists of two parts: Preventive Conservation: documentation, storage, monitoring, and Curative Conservation: mechanical and chemical cleaning oriented to improve long-term storage conditions. Physically, the fund allowed us to acquire temperature, light, and humidity monitors, as well as air filtering systems. Future work includes the building of a second, insulating, rainproof roof and to screen some windows to reduce the entrance of pests. Currently, there is only one human body on display: the skeleton of an infant, as an example of the funerary practices in pre-Columbian times. Most visitors show genuine interest in learning about the ways our ancestors dealt with their deceased; there is no opposition to their exhibition, quite the contrary. In fact, there is evidence of an active but discreet interaction of some members of the public with some of the displayed bodies. At Huallamarca museum (San Isidro, Lima), for instance, people asked favours from the “long-hair mummy” and the museum personnel lit candles for 71

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her. On Watanakuy (a yearly seed exchange ceremony held at MSPUR), two mummies are brought over from the storage rooms to participate. One of them, a child mummy, gets toys as presents from representatives of a Cuzco community who usually attends. This comes as no surprise, as many people still follow ancestral tra­ ditions that include keeping human skulls as household guards, such as in the Central highlands, for example; paying their ‘services’ with some offerings. I do not believe Peru should implement policies regarding our handling of human remains based on foreign policies that reflect different realities. Each country should develop their own guidelines, considering tradition, ancestral knowledge and focusing on research, in order to keep learning directly from our ancestors’ own bodies about their origin, social status, physical activities, diseases, etc.

South Coast Susana Arce, Head of Ica’s Regional Museum “Adolfo Bermúdez Jenkins.” Our museum holds about 30,000 cultural objects, including 1,300 elements of anthropological origin. The museum has a general conservation protocol, while it goes over a lengthy process of organisation of its collections. Occasionally, insect infestations have affected our mummy collection, in which case, we have resorted to fumigation. We should phase out this measure soon, as it poses a risk to our personnel and also compromises future studies that could be performed on the affected items. Therefore, despite perceived local atmospheric dryness, the conservation conditions of our collections need improvement, as data loggers’ records show inacceptable oscillations of temperature and relative humidity. There are about 40 skulls and mummies on display at the museum (3% of our collections). Most visitors react with surprise, admiration, and satisfaction. The guards report that very seldom some people get sad, cry, or avoid entering the hall displaying these items. The relationship between the public and human remains out of the museum is more complex. There is indifference and, in some instances, greed that has led to grave-looting as a form of business in some areas. In the archaeological site of Chauchilla, mummies are exhibited in situ, through makeshift recreations using looted materials and done by ill-oriented tourist guides looking for “improving” the attractiveness of the site. Sadly, on other occasions, true black-market commerce exists for some “special” items, such as remodelled skulls. More recently, an infamous twist has generated the modification by mutilation of ancient Nasca mummies so that they are presented to the public as “extraterrestrials.” It is disappointing that researchers at the National University of Ica are involved in this unfortunate illegal business.8 I do not believe foreign policies should be applied to our handling of ancient human remains. Those policies respond to different realities. The development of our own guidelines should be based on both the traditional values of our ancestral cultures – basis of our identity – and the scientific value human remains hold, as well as to be respectful of human rights beyond death.

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Central Highlands Bradymir Bravo Meza. Archaeologist in Huarochiri. Huarochiri, east of Lima’s highland province, holds a special place in the history of physical anthropology. Thousands of specimens, particularly trepanned skulls were hastily collected and “exported,” over a century ago, from archaeological sites otherwise not studied at all.9 Quite paradoxically, skull-hunting accelerated thanks to expeditions led by the renowned Huarochiri native archaeologist, Julio C. Tello, who, no doubt, capitalised personally from his land’s particular wealth.10 Might have he considered giving back to Huarochiri with a nice museum, showing its collections with the best care possible and fulfilling an educational purpose? Nobody knows, his death prevented any move in that direction. As if this missed opportunity was not bad enough, the province – and neighbouring Yauyos,11 too – indeed learned that grave opening and skull collecting were the right things to do. Therefore, nowadays, most schools and town halls in this part of the country show mummies, skulls, and human remains along with other funerary goods, without much care and lacking any archaeological background information. Grave-looting has gained a place as an acceptable field activity for local school students; thinking of it as good ways to learn about the past and to promote tourism to their localities. Perhaps the most representative case of this twisted evolution of Julio C. Tello’s legacy occurred a couple of years ago in San Pedro de Casta, a leading tourist desti­ nation famous for neighbouring Marcahuasi geological formations, which summon mystical and, more recently, ufology enthusiasts. Badly oriented by this influence, communal authorities accepted removing human remains including five mummies from the cave site of Achin, in order to make them more accessible to tourists at Los Ayllus museum. Of course, one of the mummies quickly received the moniker of “the extraterrestrial.” Again, no archaeological studies were made, nor proper curatorial measures followed. Formal scholars should accept partial guilt, as we have neglected the education and guidance of local communities, so their authorities have just fol­ lowed ill-advice from pseudoscientists.12 This situation is particularly dramatic as the culture pretended to be displaced and erased by these New Age narratives, is still alive in the recipients of these scam plots. Although it is difficult to estimate the number of amateur anthropological collec­ tions in Huarochiri and Yauyos, they certainly hold hundreds of items without inventories, contextual information, and curation measures. This situation should change by, first, teaching authorities and principals that there is no better museum than the original grave, and second, by improving the conditions of the collections, before proceeding to return, if possible, all human remains to original archaeological sites. Both chullpas (funerary stone towers) and machays (funerary caves) have natural museum-quality stable climate conditions of low temperature and humidity. There is no reason to break their stability by placing them on display for tourists’ comfort. There is no reason to break the will of the ancestors to provide their dead with a place to rest for eternity, either. An important element to consider is the generational shift of values. The younger generation, as we have mentioned, participate in school field trips to collect bones, for 73

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instance, for their school collections. Yet, at the same time, their elders fear even getting close to the funerary caves, lest desecrating the dead, which in return would cast evil on their crops and lives in general. In order to counter these beliefs, in the case of the mummies taken for Los Ayllus museum, special rites were performed to “pay the Old Ones” for the action: the extraction party had to offer cigarettes, coca, sweets, fruit, and liquor to the dead, as well as to recite formulae and prayers to cast away all evil. It might come as a surprise to realise how, despite enormous efforts by the colonial power and the catholic church, who ran “idolatry extirpation” raids for over two centuries, the highlands of Lima have preserved so many testimonies of ancestral respect for their pre-Columbian elders. The chullpas or machays where the bodies and skeletons of the “Grandparents” are stored, are located everywhere in the sacred landscape: on mountains, in the middle of fields, next to irrigation canals; the ancestral presence permeates traditions and stories just the same as some towns are built atop pre-Columbian foundations. For instance, over the Champeria festival, when the canals are cleaned before the rainy season, some communities temporarily remove the skulls of some of their ancestors from their tombs, so that they par­ ticipate by “giving permission” for using their lands to the living. Ancestral human remains in Huarochiri are not elements of the past, they are part of a lively, though transformed, reality. I consider that the handling of ancient human remains, such as those aforemen­ tioned, should naturally consider the will of the local communities, besides whatever the scientific community has to say regarding their care. In that regard, the spirit of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA) in the United States can be adapted to each reality worldwide: listening to the com­ munities first and always respecting the deceased as human beings belonging to particular cultures.

Southern Highlands Elva Torres Pino, Head of the Laboratory of Physical Anthropology of Cuzco’s Cultural Office. Established in 2002, our laboratory holds human remains belonging to 65 local archaeology research projects, which corresponds to 1,580 individuals, including ten mummies. Given the dry and cold weather of Cuzco, we do not have conservation problems. Our self-designed protocol is basically oriented to storage and labelling. Each individual is stored in plastic cardboard boxes, which provide good thermic insulation and physical protection. Appropriate identification labels are applied on top of each box, which then is placed on metallic shelves in our safe storage rooms. Although we do not organise exhibits officially; nevertheless, we display some special items whenever visitors come. On such occasions, guests show both curiosity and satisfaction. We have not witnessed neither opposition to these displays nor the performance of any rituals. In Cuzco, as in other areas of the Andes, some people privately keep skulls in their households as guards. This is something that deserves further studies as it is part of contemporary Peruvian culture (Figure 5.3). 74

The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru

Figure 5.3 Laboratory of Physical Anthropology of Cuzco’s Cultural Office, Peru.

Conclusion Peruvian anthropological wealth derives from a rich and complex past that adapted to many different environments and landscapes. Inherited culture, both material and immaterial, reflects that wealth as well as it compounds different philosophies and approximations to life and death, which cannot be encompassed in a single manner. Dealing with human remains in museums and elsewhere collections is, therefore, challenging and setting up national guidelines to deal with respectful curation would need thorough research beyond academia. The generous testimonies provided by some of the contributors to this chapter clearly show that there is no one approximation to deal with the bodies of our an­ cestors. Moreover, it is clear that many Peruvians interact with the remains of our ancestors in private ways. One possible contribution towards a culturally-sensitive national policy would consider incorporating places for ancestral worship in museums and archaeological sites. Acknowledging international policies regarding ethical handling of human remains is important; nevertheless, any future decisions should adapt to our varied reality. Merely extending NAPGRA’s scope to the Andes, for example, would not only be wrong, it would be taken as an example of modern colonialism. Contrary to a prevalent sensitivity to bodies displayed in many museums in the world today, in the Andes, mummies were meant to be displayed, paraded, fed, and feasted, as they were not kept as “really dead.” Another important suggestion stemming from our contributors is considering repatriating human remains from national and international museums and collections 75

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to their resting places of origin. Perhaps, this practice alone, could become the most important contribution of the Andean region towards a local ethics handling of our ancestral remains. Another conclusion is that looting and illegal commerce of any cultural items, particularly ancient human remains should be considered absolutely unacceptable and non-negotiable. Alternatives to direct museum display, besides visiting original burial places, could include the use of naturalistic replicas and virtual imaging. Finally, we believe that the elaboration of this chapter could become seminal to the development of national policies for keeping, respectfully, the remains of our ancestors. It is very encouraging that most contributors to this chapter expressed their willingness to work toward that end.

Notes 1 Father Bernabe Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, trans. R. Hamilton (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990 [1653]), 251. 2 James Vreeland Jr and Aidan Cockburn, “Mummies of Peru,” in Mummies, Disease and Ancient Cultures (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 135–174. 3 Moraima Montibeller, Continuidad de los Ritos Ancestrales en el Perú: Reciprocidad y Armonía (Lima: Plectro Editores, 2021), 61–98. 4 Manuel Perales and Agustin Rodriguez, “Tullupampay: Descripción etnográfica de un ritual en homenaje a los difuntos en el Valle del Mantaro, Junín,” Arqueología y Sociedad 23 (2011): 223–239, https://doi.org/10.15381/arqueolsoc.2011n23.e12314 5 Donald Joralemon and Douglas Sharon, Sorcery and Shamanism: Curanderos and Clients in Northern Peru (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993). 6 Code of Ethics for Museums, International Council of Museums, accessed November 13, 2022, https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/code-of-ethics/ 7 The Vermillion Accord on Human Remains, available at https://worldarch.org/code-ofethics/ (last visited November 13, 2022). 8 Guido Lombardi and Conrado Rodríguez Martín, “Fake and Alien Mummies,” in Handbook of Mummy Studies (Singapore: Springer, 2021), 1139–1152. 9 John Verano, Holes in the Head: Art and Archaeology of trepanation in Ancient Peru (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Studies of Art and Archaeology Collections Number 38, 2016). 10 César Astuhuamán y Richard Daggett, “Julio César Tello Rojas: una biografía,” (Lima: UNMSM, 2005), http://sisbib.unmsm.edu.pe/bibvirtualdata/libros/historia/paracas_1/ 01_astuhuam%C3%A1n.pdf 11 Yauyos is a highland province of the Lima Region, located immediately SouthEast of Huarochiri. 12 Francois Bucher, The Second and Half Dimension, an Expedition to the Photographic Plateau (Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlín, 2010).

Bibliography Astuhuamán, César y Richard Daggett. “Julio César Tello Rojas: una biografía.” Lima: UNMSM, 2005. http://sisbib.unmsm.edu.pe/bibvirtualdata/libros/historia/paracas_1/ 01_astuhuam%C3%A1n.pdf Bucher, Francois. The Second and Half Dimension, an Expedition to the Photographic Plateau. Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlín, 2010.

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The Handling of the Remains of the Ancestors in Peru Cobo, Father Bernabe. Inca Religion and Customs. Translated by R. Hamilton. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1990 [1653]. Fernández, Arabel and Régulo Franco. “Conservación y medidas de protección de los restos de la Señora de Cao, dignataria de la cultura Moche en la costa norte del Perú.” In Momias: Manual de buenas prácticas para su preservación, 219–228. Madrid: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deportes, 2012. Fundación Augusto N. Wiese. Protocolo de Gestión de Colecciones arqueológicas del CAEB. Documento interno. 2019. “Historia de la Señora de Cao.” Last accessed on November 13, 2022. https://www.elbrujo. pe/senora-de-cao-historia International Council of Museums. “Code of Ethics for Museums.” 2021. Last accessed November 13, 2022. https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/codeof-ethics/ Joralemon, Donald and Douglas Sharon. Sorcery and Shamanism: Curanderos and Clients in Northern Peru. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993. Lombardi, Guido and Bernardo Arriaza. “South American Mummies.” In The Handbook of Mummy Studies: New Frontiers in Scientific and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Dong Hoon Shin and Raffaella Bianucci, 931–943. Singapore: Springer, 2021. Lombardi, Guido and Conrado Rodríguez Martín. “Fake and Alien Mummies.” In Handbook of Mummy Studies, 1139–1152. Singapore: Springer, 2021. Maeshiro, Akira. “¿Tienen derechos las momias?” https://puntoedu.pucp.edu.pe/noticia/ tienen-derechos-las-momias/ (last accessed November 13, 2022). Matos, Ramiro. “Repatriación de Restos Humanos: Unos Comentarios desde el Museo Nacional del Indígena Americano.” Presentation at the IX Seminario sobre Patrimonio Cultural: Museos en Obra, Santiago, Chile, November 21–22, 2007. Montibeller, Moraima. Continuidad de los Ritos Ancestrales en el Perú: Reciprocidad y Armonía, 61–98. Lima: Plectro Editores, 2021. Perales, Manuel and Agustin Rodriguez. “Tullupampay: Descripción etnográfica de un ritual en homenaje a los difuntos en el Valle del Mantaro, Junín.” Arqueología y Sociedad 23 (2011): 223–239. 10.15381/arqueolsoc.2011n23.e12314 Salazar Fernández, Jhonatan. Cien años de Huancaya, Yauyos y el Perú. Huancayo: Premier Grafica Publicitarias, 2017. Verano, John. Holes in the Head: Art and Archaeology of trepanation in Ancient Peru. Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Studies of Art and Archaeology Collections; Number 38, 2016. Vreeland, James Jr and Aidan Cockburn. “Mummies of Peru.” In Mummies, Disease and Ancient Cultures, 135–174. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980. World Archaeological Congress. “The Vermillion Accord on Human Remains.” Last visited November 13, 2022. https://worldarch.org/code-of-ethics/

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6 ENGAGING WITH DEATH IN MUSEUMS AND COLLECTIONS Trish Biers Introduction Museums represent different things to different people. For some, it’s a great place to wander around, looking at beautiful things while learning about a particular topic that’s on exhibition at the time. For others, museums represent imperial expansion and colonial power, where the bodies of marginalised people and their objects reside suspended in time. This juxtaposition has been debated for decades and is in a par­ ticularly robust phase of discussion based on recent events that reveal a problematic history of collecting.1 At present, significant changes are sweeping through the museum world to address the very serious outcomes that historic collecting events have had on descendant communities, placing the spotlight over museum practice, ethical guidelines, exhibition design, and public engagement. See Chapter 15 in this volume for a discussion about what followed after the human remains were removed from display at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, UK. Material culture is also under examination to better understand the power of interpretation and subsequent public perception of how displayed objects represent a culture or community in a positive or archaic light.2 Museums with relevant collections, such as natural history, science, medicine, archaeology, local history, and art, are rethinking their displays featuring human remains, whether they are whole bodies, body parts, or objects with human tissues.3 Objects that reflect death, disease, and medicine are being returned to collections stores while curatorial staff try to rethink their strategies for the future.4 Of course, the key issues in addressing racist, ableist, and sexist presentations should be addressed and actioned because the public display of sensitive remains and objects is also a reminder of the complex relations that exist between museums and members of originating communities.5 Curators should be aware of the likely public effects of exhibitions as they carry authority, and therefore it is crucial to evaluate whether an exhibition is

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-8

Engaging with Death in Museums and Collections

reinforcing cultural stereotypes or broadening an understanding of a particular group of people in a way which is relevant to the present day.6 Death is uniquely placed in this transformation because museums are filled with vestiges of burial depositions though they may not be obvious at first. Remnants of fine fabrics, gold and stone bangles, battle beaten armour, and highly stylised vessels often come from graves or a deceased individual. Paintings too, from the 13th century onwards, remind us that life, or innocence, is fleeting when we gaze upon the res­ urrected corpse running their bony hands through the flaxen hair of a maiden. Folk art museums delight visitors with their whimsical scenes of skeletons posed doing the activities of everyday life. The artistic breadth of Memento Mori trinkets fill collections such as the Science Museum in London or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Medical museums are also excellent resources for the presentation of the vis­ ceral side of death, showing decay, disease, and the attempts made by the body to heal itself. From a general public point of view, according to Elizabeth Hallam, there has been great interest in exhibitions related to anatomy and art, and treatment of the dead and, “they highlight the varied personal, cultural and medical meanings that bodies after death accrue, and point to a wide spectrum of educational, legal and ethical issues associated with displays of the dead.”7 This chapter intertwines personal reflection, theoretical background, and practical suggestions in order to embrace more fully the notion of museums as a resource for learning about death. Years of experience talking to people about their reactions to seeing mummified remains, skeletons (real and replica), grave offerings, cremation urns, effigies, and death masks has created a catalogue of dialogue that often proves useful when speaking with multiple kinds of audiences. Cross-disciplinary research can benefit too because death is multifaceted, displaying technological and material sides as well as economic, psychological, spiritual, philosophical, and historical (to name a few). This breadth can also benefit the decision-making process when it relates to how museums want to speak about death more fully and to do that in a sensitive, ethical way.

Death in the Museum Space There is a long tradition of European museums displaying bodies and body parts, particularly skulls, which served as actors of inspiration to contemplate vanity and mortality.8 The corpse was presented as part of scientific, ethnographic, archaeo­ logical, or medical exhibitions, as well as potent religious, sacred objects.9 Twentieth century displays were aligned with exploration and classification of nature and biology, as well as scientific racism and the commodification of the dead.10 In par­ ticular, those bodies that were of the criminal, the impoverished, the disenfranchised, the disfigured, and the “exotic” skulls of powerful figures or Egyptian mummified body parts were seen as treasures to be viewed, thus bringing tangible death to a general audience. With this also came a more publicised fear of death, ghosts, and spirits, and what is referred to as “corpse aversion,”11 or the avoidance of the corpse out of fear of disease contamination, thus furthering the “distance” between human being and object. 79

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The integrity of the body is consequently of the utmost importance to many cultures; when the body is deconstructed, removed, and dispersed for profit, it can cause great distress for the living. The potent symbolic value of human remains can be used to rep­ resent multiple belief systems and offer control over one’s biological agency which is why it is not surprising that sensitive issues arise. The handling, or viewing of dead bodies or body parts can address the relationship between the individual and society, specifically in cultural practice, ideology, and external influences such as disparity in life and in death12 (see Chapter 18 by Numen in this volume for in-depth examples). How we respond to death is deeply embedded in our culture, our life experiences, and by socio-political agendas. This is where the debate lies in deliberating concepts of personhood and the objectification of the dead when they are on display in a museum or gallery because we put them into another context, with interpretation that is controlled or privileged.13 Attitudes towards death and the treatment of human remains is remarkably different across populations and has been throughout time. Museums that focus on natural history or anatomical sciences for example can be a resource for discussion as they themselves have a similar variation across collections. This allows for opportunities to talk about death in practice as well as the distribution of displaced bodies for the purpose of collecting. Understanding the motivations and circumstances that contributed to bringing human remains and burial objects into museums is an important aspect of the history of collections acquisition because it directly relates to modern discussions around control, repatriation, and restitution.14 Transparency in museum practice and the renegotiation of display are exciting and daunting. On the one hand, celebrating diversity and multiculturalism through technology, art, relics, adornments, and treatment of the body has the ability to spark curiosity to learn more and face our own ignorance. On the other hand, poor context can lead the viewer to believe that cultural ties have been severed with modern communities, that peoples have gone extinct, furthering a colonial power narrative which can lead to prejudice and mis­ understandings. Through careful consideration and community involvement, museums can represent cultural memory in mortality and multiple ways of making knowledge while bridging the past with the present.

Death Topics in Practice Exhibition Museums have the ability to engage in death discourse around meaning and memory in several ways. In general, when visiting a museum, one is left to their own choices, deciding what to see and how involved one wants to be with the exhibits. In what is becoming a more standard practice, when human remains are on display there is a warning posted prior to entering the space, giving the viewer more power over what they choose to see. Most gallery spaces are quiet with low-lighting to protect what’s on display, already setting an atmosphere for contemplation, study, or creativity.15 For example, in 1957, upon seeing the display of the skeleton of a “Roman Lady” in their stone sarcophagus at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, England, the poet Sylvia Plath wrote All the Dead Dears.16 Interactives that feature 80

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handling objects, smells or sound can enhance the overall experience, making the connection more visceral in some cases.17 This author has witnessed visitor engagement that is intimate and emotional when looking at death-related displays, particularly between children and their parents, but also from individuals fleeing war-torn regions, or those that have faced recent loss. Because the museum space is less formally structured than a typical learning environment, visitors are not under pressure or scrutiny to form opinions about what they see in that moment, or how they feel about seeing it. There is a privatised experience between objects or remains and the viewer. Whether talking about death in museum spaces is deemed good or bad is not the argument here, per se, but rather that museums have the ability to start conversations, from a multiplicity of perspectives and with the power of presence and emotive materiality.18 While talking about death or gazing19 upon it through museum glass will certainly not be for everyone, exhibiting the material culture or ancestral culture of a group can shift the focus back to living people today. This provides a platform for speaking about important issues such as “the disruption to cultural life”20 and the lasting effects of es­ tranged ritual objects. Collaborative exhibitions can speak to how many cultures regard human remains as intrinsic social actors, and as a conduit between the living and the dead.21 In Southern Malakula, Vanuatu, effigies known as Rambaramp were built from the over-modelled skull and body of a high-ranking male. The remains were then attached to a wooden framework covered with tree fern and a paste made from tree fibre, then adorned with pig tusks and turtle-shell armlets depending on their achievements in life (see Figure 6.1). The face was modelled like a life portrait of the deceased individual and after decay set in the skull was removed and placed in a clan ossuary. These figures are the physical embodiment of liminality, where the spirit resided until the transformation from named person to ancestor occurred, therefore prolonging the memory of their achievements. Today, the display of Rambaramp in museums is a collaborative process with the Malakula Cultural Centre and community members, to better understand ancestor veneration and funeral culture, past and present.22 Exhibitions of human remains and burial goods also encourage critical thinking and evaluation about the ethical dimensions associated with public viewing of funerary culture. Educators, for example, can pose questions about how these bodies and objects find their way into museum cases. What do descendant or local communities think about these kinds of displays? Examination of interpretative text can also be a part of the dialogue. Why are text panels or labels talking about the donor rather than discussing differential treatment among the dead, or how they were collected in the first place? The vast ways in which humans have mourned their dead and the ritual objects used should be included in museum descriptions or storylines just as subjects such as trade, technology, or subsistence strategies are; not only because they share the attributes of human ingenuity and creativity, but because these subjects can all relate to each other through mortuary practices such as ritual adornment and feasting for the dead.

Curation and Research Research into human remains and their context through the formation of osteobio­ graphies are an important source of direct evidence about the past. This includes 81

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Figure 6.1

Rambaramp; an effigy of a male ancestor, Malakula, Vanuatu, on display at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, UK, with permission of the community since 2007 and in collaboration with the Malakula Cultural Centre. Copyright MAA 1927.2174, early 20th century.

information about demography and mortality, mortuary treatment, adaptation and genetics, the history and evolution of disease, social inequality, and medical inter­ vention. Some of this information can be lost, however, when only parts of bodies are on display and are curated more like objects rather than people, such as amputated limbs or charms and talismans from human tissues.23 Dismantling the body changes the narrative which is why context provided through labelling and storyboards is so important in the museum space, acting as a direct link to the visitor with a point of impact that has lasting effects. 82

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Museum collections, depending on their size, history and scope, can consist of broad categories24 of human remains from widespread geographic origin and include: 1 osteological remains, i.e. the skeleton or part of the skeleton, as well as cremated remains 2 dried soft tissue remains, i.e. the desiccated remains of skin, muscle, or other soft tissues, usually attached to the bones they were attached to in life 3 mummified remains, i.e. intentionally preserved or desiccated body, or part of a body 4 human skeletal remains modified intentionally after death, including decorated bones and skulls, or the transformation of a human bone into a cultural implement 5 thin sections of human bones and teeth, some of which are mounted in slides for microscopic observation; and samples of dental calculus (plaque) 6 historic blood samples 7 historic/ethnographic hair collections – although not considered human remains under the UK DCMS guidelines of 2005,25 many of the same issues regarding care, curation, and repatriation apply (in the author’s opinion). Anthropologists and archaeologists have long recognised that studying the interment of the dead through mortuary context (grave structure, funerary offerings) and ritual (treatment of the body, adornment or placement of possessions) provides an oppor­ tunity to develop inferences about the past through the interpretation of communal practices, material culture, and biological remains.26 A burial can be an idealised synthesis of the images that the survivors wished to convey.27 Some argue that mortuary analysis lends insight into how the living envisioned gender roles, occu­ pation, status, wealth, and religious ideals.28 Archaeological digs and antiquarian research regularly focused on these topics for research and were responsible for populating museum collections in the 20th century, and then later as commercial archaeology grew, museum archives became repositories for local finds.29 These stories are often under-explored in museum displays with small text labels but can be shared through supplemental text and public engagement. Grave associations offer opportunities to investigate social factors in prehistory such as status, age, and gender distributions in past populations.30 For example, in segmentary societies (autonomous groups that occasionally join together to form a larger ethnic unit), detailed analyses of grave goods can reveal much about inequalities in social status.31 One must consider that what is buried with the deceased person is not an exact picture of status but rather a tool for determining it. Belief systems can alter the role of grave associations in burials because what is used during life may not necessarily translate after death. Burials are made by living individuals, and are used by them to express and influence their relationships with others still alive, as much as to symbolise or serve the dead.32 From an archaeological point of view, there is often a relationship between the role and rank of the deceased during life and the manner in which the remains are disposed of and accompanied by burial objects. In some ways, this mirrors contemporary society and issues with the mortuary industry such as body 83

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disposal, the transfer of possessions, and the discrepancies in access to funeral care due to economics, prejudices, and legislation. Museum displays offer an immediate opportunity to talk about these social issues from an analytical and/or artistic per­ spective, for example, using an osteobiographical approach to how they display human remains, along with an examination of materials used as grave goods. The discussion can go further using historical narratives and engagement that encourages thinking critically upon human behaviour in association with trade, slavery, and power, and the perception of status in the building of empires past and present– all of which involved the living and the dead. Museum galleries and their collections are also in a unique position to speak to the commodification of the body, both historically and today. As discussed earlier, how the dead and their objects become accessioned into a collection can be fairly straightforward or it can be controversial, or both. In the past five years there has been an uptake of commercial trade and sale for human remains and objects made with human remains.33 Many of these “specimens” as they are usually referred to originate from medical collections that have been passed on from facility to facility or person to person studying medicine. Sellers often cite them as “ethically sourced”34 and try to legitimise their sale through language that pulls the buyer away from the truth that most historic medical skeletons were never ethically collected in the first place. Sadly, also on the market are many Indigenous remains for sale collected in the 18th–20th centuries through archaeological excavations, exploration, graverobbing, and trade. These range from the mummified heads of ancient Peruvian children to the decorated and adorned ancestor, as well as divi­ nation, or trophy heads. Parallels absolutely exist between historical collecting for museums and collecting for private benefit, however, museums today are able to address past unethical practices and collaborate with living descendants over the future of such remains. If in private collections, these opportunities for reconcili­ ation are virtually non-existent. Museum text and interpretation when showing human remains on display can facilitate conversation about these issues in a less confrontational way than through social media which can be more combative, thus shutting down constructive en­ gagement often entirely. Gallery staff in particular, as the forward-facing re­ presentatives that have the most interaction with the public, are in a unique position to answer questions or have conversations about the long history of commodification of the dead, both in collection spaces and for profit externally.

Public Engagement The ways in which objects are displayed directly impacts on how the public imparts identities upon collections35 and public engagement has the ability to shape those impressions further. Presented here are two examples of death-related events that had high attendance and showed first-hand how museums can be a resource for talking about death. In 2013, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) in Cambridge held its first Day of the Dead Altar Project with the Mexican Society at the University 84

Engaging with Death in Museums and Collections

of Cambridge (Figure 6.2) . For several years, this project grew into an annual event that was popular with visitors of all ages. The Mexican Society did an excellent job of building an altar complete with appropriate and authentic offerings and spoke to the public about the meaning behind the celebrations on the 1st and 2nd of November, celebrated across Latin America. Unlike other museum altars popping up across British museums, the Mexican Society along with MAA staff, made significant efforts to dedicate the altar to specific people who published, painted, or fought for social causes, some of whom passed away doing so. Many of the comments from the public were very thoughtful, having been moved by the stories of these people.36 The authenticity of the altar and the intimacy it provided for reflection and contemplation was also very unique with some visitors commenting on how original the altar felt, rather than large, commercialised displays. With reflection came personal stories being shared and more in-depth conversation around the traditions of keeping death close and approaching it with positivity rather than disgust or fear. Some visitors had misunderstood the purpose of Dias de los Muertos entirely, thinking it was “devil worship” or “pagan” but were then delighted to leave the museum better informed. This is the power of talking about death openly, with informed staff and volunteers, and tactile and sensory learning. In my opinion, incorporating activities that are sensefocused can help people shift into sharing and conversation more naturally due to memories evoked from scent and touch.

Figure 6.2

Dias de los Muertos (Days of the Dead) altar at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, UK. Photo by the author.

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Figure 6.3

The author speaking about corpse medicine to visitors at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology for Museum Lates. CC by 4.0.

Public engagement events with death themes are an excellent way to highlight col­ lections that might get overlooked. For an event about the plague in England, MAA staff and academics from the University of Cambridge, shared their research on plague burials found underneath Cambridge sites. Educators put together a “Death Trail” that ferried visitors around three floors of exhibitions pointing out the unique collections on display related to death while gallery attendants were on hand to answer questions. Personally, I was thrilled to occupy a corner of the galleries to talk to the public about corpse medicine (how human tissues were used in medical treatments) and the popularisation of certain herbal remedies to prevent disease between the 14th and 16th centuries (not unlike to­ day’s social media). This event was an excellent way to talk about the history of medicine and some of the parallels faced in contemporary society with access to care, affordability, and the transmission of disease, but in an open and meaningful way (Figure 6.3).

Conclusion and Future Challenges While the focus here is to shine a light on how museums can be a resource for death education, it is intrinsically linked with wider issues of curation and repatriation which are featured across this volume and in several recent publications.37 Ethical decision making about displaying the dead, while standard in its national guidelines and codes of ethics, is open to interpretation due to diverse beliefs, cultural politics, and traditions of care.38 Museums are unique spaces to talk about death because of their acquisition histories, human remains and material culture in the collections, the events they have highlighting these collections on display, and the less formal atmosphere of a traditional learning en­ vironment. What is on display has an impact on public perceptions, particularly about 86

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other cultural traditions and values. Institutions need to think about this in a proactive and sensitive way through interpretation and presentation (and many are, for example, with warning labels for galleries that show human remains). Death can be represented through ritual objects, displaced or distributed bodies, art and craft, and through text and image in a museum space. Themes such as the ways in which burial is ritualised, idealised, politicised, and how scientific racism infiltrated the assembly of collections should, and can be, discussed with visitors to encourage visibility and transparency of often difficult histories and/or underrepresented peoples in the past. These stories can have tremendous impact when looking at the tangible heritage before you.

Notes 1 Peter Crimmins, “Penn Museum Apologizes for ‘Unethical Possession of Human Remains,’” All Things Considered transcript, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/04/27/ 988972736/penn-museum-apologizes-for-unethical-possession-of-human-remains; Ed Pilkington, “Ivy League University Set to Rebury Skulls of Black People Kept for Centuries,” The Guardian, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/07/us-universityplans-repatriation-black-american-remains; P. S. N. O. Lamptey, “Museums and Skeletons: Prospects and Challenges of Cataloguing, Storing and Preserving Human Remains in the Museum of Archaeology, Ghana,” Ethics, Medicine and Public Health 21 (2022): 100753, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jemep.2022.100753; Lizzie Wade, “The Ghosts in the Museum,” Science, n.d., https://www.science.org/content/article/racist-scientist-built-collectionhuman-skulls-should-we-still-study-them?intcmp=trendmd-other. 2 Claire Smith, “Decolonising the Museum: The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC,” Antiquity 79, no. 304 (2005): 424–439, https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0003598X00114206; and Neil G. W. Curtis, “Human Remains: The Sacred, Museums and Archaeology,” Public Archaeology 3, no. 1 (2003): 21–32, https://doi.org/10.1179/ pua.2003.3.1.21. 3 Examples in: D. Gareth Jones and Maja I. Whitaker, “The Contested Realm of Displaying Dead Bodies,” Journal of Medical Ethics 39, no. 10 (2013): 652–653, https://doi.org/10.1136/ medethics-2012-100983; Samuel Alberti et al., “Should We Display the Dead?,” Museum and Society 7, no. 73 (2009): 133–149, https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies/ museumsociety/documents/volumes/alberti2.pdf.l; Tiffany Jenkins, “Dead Bodies: The Changing Treatment of Human Remains in British Museum Collections and the Challenge to the Traditional Model of the Museum,” Mortality 13, no. 2 (2008): 105–118, https:// doi.org/10.1080/13576270801954419; Sharon DeWitte, “Bioarchaeology and the Ethics of Research Using Human Skeletal Remains,” History Compass 13, no. 1 (2015): 10–19, https:// doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12213; and Trisha M Biers, “Rethinking Purpose, Protocol, and Popularity in Displaying the Dead in Museums,” in Ethical Approaches to Human Remains, ed. N Squires, K., Errickson, D., Márquez-Grant (Springer, 2019), https://doi.org/https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32926-6_11. 4 Robin McKie, “Wellcome Collection in London Shuts ‘Racist, Sexist and Ableist’ Medical History Gallery,” The Guardian, November 27, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/ culture/2022/nov/27/wellcome-collection-in-london-shuts-racist-sexist-and-ableist-medicalhistory-gallery. 5 Anita Herle, Mark Elliott, and Rebecca Empson, eds., Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination – Exhibition (Cambridge: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2009). 6 Museum Ethnographers, “Professional Guidelines Concerning the Storage, Display, Interpretation, and Return of Human Remains in Ethnographical Collections in U.K. Museums,” Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 6 (1994): 22‐24. S3.3.

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Trish Biers 7 Elizabeth Hallam, Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed (London: Reaktion Books, 2016). 8 Shane McCorristine, “The Dark Value of Criminal Bodies: Context, Consent, and the Disturbing Sale of John Parker’s Skull,” Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies 13, no. 1 (February 9, 2015): 1–7, https://doi.org/10.5334/jcms.1021220. 9 See Simon J. Knell, Suzanne MacLeod, and Sheila Watson, Museum Revolutions: How Museums Change and Are Changed, Museum Revolutions: How Museums Change and Are Changed, 2007, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203932643.; Ellen Adams, “Defining and Displaying the Human Body: Collectors and Classics during the British Enlightenment,” Hermathena 187, no. 187 (2009): 65–97.l; and Hedley Swain, “Dealings with the Dead:,” 2018, 2003–8. 10 Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute (London: Routledge, 1978). 11 Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Fear of the Dead, Fear of Death: Is It Biological or Psychological?,” Mortality 17, no. 4 (2012): 322–337, https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275. 2012.734986; Rachel E. Bennett, Capital Punishment and the Criminal Corpse in Scotland, 1740–1834, Capital Punishment and the Criminal Corpse in Scotland, 1740–1834, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62018-3. 12 Christopher Carr, “Mortuary Practices: Their Social, Philosophical-Religious, Circumstantial, and Physical Determinants,” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 2, no. 2 (1995): 105–200, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20177326. 13 Samuel Alberti et al., “Should We Display the Dead?” Museum and Society 7 (3): 133–149. 14 Emily K. Wilson, “The Collection and Exhibition of a Fetal and Child Skeletal Series,” Museum Anthropology 38, no. 1 (2015): 15–27, https://doi.org/10.1111/muan.12070. 15 Aglaja Kempinski, “Dead Images Multivocal Engagement with Human Remains,” no. November (2022). 16 Sylvia Plath, “All the Dead Dears,” in The Grecourt Review, vol. 1 (Northampton, Mass: Smith College, 1957). 17 Trisha Biers and Sarah-Jane Harknett, “Separating Artefact from Fiction: Using Museum Education and Outreach to Increase Archaeology’s Relevance and Impact in Society,” Archaeological Review from Cambridge. Archaeology: Myths within and Without 30, no. 2 (2015); R. Crowest, “Multisensory Interpretation and the Visitor Experience. Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements of the Degree of MA in Heritage Interpretation,” 1999; C. Spence, “Making Sense of Touch: A Multisensory Approach to the Perception of Objects,” in The Power of Touch (Routledge, 2007), 45–62, https:// doi.org/10.4324/9781315417455-10. 18 Samuel J. M. M. Alberti, “Focus: Museums and the History of Science – Objects and the Museum,” ISIS 96, no. 4 (December 2005): 559–571, https://doi.org/10.1086/498593; Cressida Fforde, Jane Hubert, and Paul Turnbull, The Dead and Their Possessions: Repatriation in Principle, Policy and Practice, The Dead and Their Possessions: Repatriation in Principle, Policy and Practice, 2003, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203165775; Chris Gosden and Yvonne Marshall, “The Cultural Biography of Objects,” World Archaeology 31, no. 2 (1999): 169–178, http://www.jstor.org/stable/125055. 19 For an interesting look at gaze and human remains see Nilsson 2016 in Archaeologists and the Dead: Mortuary Archaeology in Contemporary Society. 20 Hugo DeBlock, “Objects as Archives of a Disrupted Past: The Lengnangulong Sacred Stone from Vanuatu in France, Revisited,” Museum Worlds 8, no. 1 (2020): 88–101, https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2020.080107. 21 Trisha Biers, “Rethinking Purpose, Protocol, and Popularity in Displaying the Dead in Museums,” in Ethical Approaches to Human Remains, ed. N. Squires, K., Errickson, D., Márquez-Grant (Springer, 2019), https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32 926-6_11. 22 Anita Herle, Mark Elliott, and Rebecca Empson, eds., Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination – Exhibition (Cambridge: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2009).

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28

29

30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37

38

Ibid., Biers. Duckworth Laboratory Human Remains Policy, October 2022. DCMS, “Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums,” 2005, 36. Mike Parker Pearson, The Archaeology of Death and Burial (Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1999). See T. N. D’Altroy, The Incas (Malden Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2002); and Robert Chapman, “Death, Burial and Social Representation,” The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, no. March (2013): 47–58, https://doi.org/10.1093/ oxfordhb/9780199569069.013.0004. Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Sam Lucy, and Staša Babić, Archaeology of Identity: Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity and Religion, Archaeology of Identity: Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity and Religion, 2007, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203087572; Michael E. Moseley, The Incas and Their Ancestors: The Archaeology of Peru. 2nd Ed (New York: Thames Hudson, 2001). Alex Barker, “Exhibiting Archaeology: Archaeology and Museums,” Annual Review of Anthropology 39 (October 1, 2010), https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809. 105115; Chip (John Stephen) Colwell, Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017). Sandra E. Hollimon, “Sex and Gender in Bioarchaeological Research: Theory, Method, and Interpretation,” in Social Bioarchaeology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 147–182, https:// doi.org/10.1002/9781444390537.ch6. J. R. Sofaer, The Body as Material Culture: A Theoretical Osteoarchaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Ibid. Website, British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, sub-group on the sale of human remains, https://www.babao.org.uk/index.php/sale-of-humanremains/. Patrick Pester, “Desecrated Human Skulls Are Being Sold on Social Media in UK’s Unregulated Bone Trade,” Livescience.com. October 6, 2022, https://www.livescience. com/human-skulls-desecrated-uk-human-remains-trade; Kristin Hugo, “Human Skulls Are Being Sold Online, But Is It Legal?” Nationalgeographic.com, https://www. nationalgeographic.com/science/article/human-skulls-sale-legal-ebay-forensics-science; Patrick Pester, “Grave Robbing Is Feeding a Macabre Market Currently Booming in the UK,” Livescience.com. October 7, 2022, https://www.livescience.com/grave-robbingfor-uk-human-remains-trade. S. Moser, “The Devil Is in the Detail: Museum Displays and Creation of Knowledge,” Museum Anthropology 33 (2010): 22–32. The author worked for MAA for four years and had the pleasure of working with this project and assisting Ms Sarah-Jane Harknett (Head of Education). See: C. Fforde, C. T. McKeown, and H. Keeler, eds., The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, 2020, https://doi.org/doi.org/10.4324/ 9780203730966; Biers, “Rethinking Purpose, Protocol, and Popularity in Displaying the Dead in Museums”; Mattias Frihammar and Helaine Silverman, Heritage of Death: Landscapes of Emotion, Memory and Practice, Heritage of Death: Landscapes of Emotion, Memory and Practice, 2017, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315440200; Matthew Spokes, Jack Denham, and Benedikt Lehmann, Death, Memorialization and Deviant Spaces, Death, Memorialization and Deviant Spaces (Emerald Publishing Limited, 2018), https://doi.org/ 10.1108/9781787565715. Gillian A. Flynn and Deborah Hull-Walski, “Merging Traditional Indigenous Curation Methods with Modern Museum Standards of Care,” Museum Anthropology 25, no. 1 (September 2001): 31–40, https://doi.org/10.1525/mua.2001.25.1.31.

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Bibliography Adams, Ellen. “Defining and Displaying the Human Body: Collectors and Classics during the British Enlightenment.” Hermathena 187, no. 187 (2009): 65–97. Alberti, Samuel J. M. M. “Focus: Museums and the History of Science – Objects and the Museum.” ISIS 96, no. 4 (December 2005): 559–571. 10.1086/498593. Barker, Alex. “Exhibiting Archaeology: Archaeology and Museums.” Annual Review of Anthropology 39 (October 1, 2010). 10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.105115. Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin. “Fear of the Dead, Fear of Death: Is It Biological or Psychological?” Mortality 17, no. 4 (2012): 322–337. 10.1080/13576275.2012.734986. Bennett, Rachel E. Capital Punishment and the Criminal Corpse in Scotland, 1740–1834. Capital Punishment and the Criminal Corpse in Scotland, 1740–1834, 2018. 10.1007/978-3-31962018-3. Biers, Trisha. “Rethinking Purpose, Protocol, and Popularity in Displaying the Dead in Museums.” In Ethical Approaches to Human Remains, edited by N. Squires, K. Errickson, and D. Márquez-Grant. Springer, 2019. 10.1007/978-3-030-32926-6_11. Biers, Trisha and Sarah-Jane Harknett. “Separating Artefact from Fiction: Using Museum Education and Outreach to Increase Archaeology’s Relevance and Impact in Society.” Archaeological Review from Cambridge. Archaeology: Myths within and Without 30, no. 2 (2015): 160–171. Carr, Christopher. “Mortuary Practices: Their Social, Philosophical-Religious, Circumstantial, and Physical Determinants.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 2, no. 2 (1995): 105–200. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20177326. Chapman, Robert. “Death, Burial and Social Representation.” The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, no. March (2013): 47–58. 10.1093/oxfordhb/97801995 69069.013.0004. Colwell, Chip (John Stephen). Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture. The University of Chicago Press, 2017. Crimmins, Peter. “Penn Museum Apologizes For ‘Unethical Possession of Human Remains.’” All Things Considered transcript, 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/27/988972736/ penn-museum-apologizes-for-unethical-possession-of-human-remains. Crowest, R. “Multisensory Interpretation and the Visitor Experience. Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements of the Degree of MA in Heritage Interpretation,” 1999. St Mary’s: Strawberry Hill University of Surrey. Curtis, Neil G. W. “Human Remains: The Sacred, Museums and Archaeology.” Public Archaeology 3, no. 1 (2003): 21–32. 10.1179/pua.2003.3.1.21. Curtis, Neil G. W. “Universal Museums, Museum Objects and Repatriation: The Tangled Stories of Things.” Museum Management and Curatorship 21, no. 2 (2006): 117–127. 10.1 080/09647770600402102. D’Altroy, T. N. The Incas. Malden Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. DCMS. “Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums,” 2005, 36. DeBlock, Hugo. “Objects as Archives of a Disrupted Past: The Lengnangulong Sacred Stone from Vanuatu in France, Revisited.” Museum Worlds 8, no. 1 (2020): 88–101. 10.3167/ armw.2020.080107. DeWitte, Sharon. “Bioarchaeology and the Ethics of Research Using Human Skeletal Remains.” History Compass 13, no. 1 (2015): 10–19. 10.1111/hic3.12213. Díaz-Andreu, Margarita, Sam Lucy, and Staša Babić. Archaeology of Identity: Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity and Religion. 2007. 10.4324/9780203087572. Fforde, Cressida, Jane Hubert, and Paul Turnbull. The Dead and Their Possessions: Repatriation in Principle, Policy and Practice. 2003. 10.4324/9780203165775. Fforde, C., McKeown, C. T., and Keeler, H. eds. The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew. 2020. 10.4324/9780203730966.

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Engaging with Death in Museums and Collections Flynn, Gillian A. and Deborah Hull-Walski. “Merging Traditional Indigenous Curation Methods with Modern Museum Standards of Care.” Museum Anthropology 25, no. 1 (September 2001): 31–40. 10.1525/mua.2001.25.1.31. Frihammar, Mattias and Helaine Silverman. Heritage of Death: Landscapes of Emotion, Memory and Practice. 2017. 10.4324/9781315440200. Gosden, Chris and Yvonne Marshall. “The Cultural Biography of Objects.” World Archaeology 31, no. 2 (1999): 169–178. http://www.jstor.org/stable/125055. Hallam, Elizabeth. Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed. London: Reaktion Books, 2016. Herle, Anita, Mark Elliott, and Rebecca Empson, eds. Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination – Exhibition. Cambridge: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2009. Hollimon, Sandra E. “Sex and Gender in Bioarchaeological Research: Theory, Method, and Interpretation.” In Social Bioarchaeology, 147–182. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. 10.1002/9781444390537.ch6. Hugo, Kristin. “Human Skulls Are Being Sold Online, But Is It Legal?” Nationalgeographic.com. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/human-skulls-sale-legal-ebay-for­ ensics-science. Jenkins, Tiffany. “Dead Bodies: The Changing Treatment of Human Remains in British Museum Collections and the Challenge to the Traditional Model of the Museum.” Mortality 13, no. 2 (2008): 105–118. 10.1080/13576270801954419. Jones, D. Gareth and Maja I. Whitaker. “The Contested Realm of Displaying Dead Bodies.” Journal of Medical Ethics 39, no. 10 (2013): 652–653. 10.1136/medethics-2012-100983. Kempinski, Aglaja. “Dead Images Multivocal Engagement with Human Remains,” no. November (2022). Knell, Simon J., Suzanne MacLeod, and Sheila Watson. Museum Revolutions: How Museums Change and Are Changed. 2007. 10.4324/9780203932643. Lamptey, P. S. N. O. “Museums and Skeletons: Prospects and Challenges of Cataloguing, Storing and Preserving Human Remains in the Museum of Archaeology, Ghana.” Ethics, Medicine and Public Health 21 (2022): 100753. 10.1016/j.jemep.2022.100753. Marselis, Randi. “On Not Showing Scalps: Human Remains and Multisited Debate at the National Museum of Denmark.” Museum Anthropology 39, no. 1 (2016): 20–34. 10.1111/muan.12106. McCorristine, Shane. “The Dark Value of Criminal Bodies: Context, Consent, and the Disturbing Sale of John Parker’s Skull.” Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies 13, no. 1 (February 9, 2015): 1–7. 10.5334/jcms.1021220. McKie, Robin. “Wellcome Collection in London Shuts ‘Racist, Sexist and Ableist’ Medical History Gallery.” The Guardian, November 27, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/ culture/2022/nov/27/wellcome-collection-in-london-shuts-racist-sexist-and-ableistmedical-history-gallery. Moseley, Michael E. The Incas and Their Ancestors: The Archaeology of Peru. 2nd Ed. New York: Thames Hudson, 2001. Moser, S. “The Devil Is in the Detail: Museum Displays and Creation of Knowledge.” Museum Anthropology, no. 33 (2010): 22–32. Museum Ethnographers. “Professional Guidelines Concerning the Storage, Display, Interpretation, and Return of Human Remains in Ethnographical Collections in U.K. Museums.” Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 6 (1994): 22–24. Parker Pearson, Mike. The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1999. Pester, Patrick. “Desecrated Human Skulls Are Being Sold on Social Media in UK’s Unregulated Bone Trade.” Livescience.com. October 6, 2022. https://www.livescience.com/humanskulls-desecrated-uk-human-remains-trade. Pester, Patrick. “Grave Robbing Is Feeding a Macabre Market Currently Booming in the UK.” Livescience.com. October 7, 2022. https://www.livescience.com/grave-robbing-foruk-human-remains-trade.

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Trish Biers Pilkington, Ed. “Ivy League University Set to Rebury Skulls of Black People Kept for Centuries.” The Guardian, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/ 07/us-university-plans-repatriation-black-american-remains. Plath, Sylvia. “All the Dead Dears.” In The Grecourt Review, Vol. 1. Northampton, Mass: Smith College, 1957. Richardson, Ruth. Death, Dissection and the Destitute. London: Routledge, 1978. Simpson, Moira. “Museums and Restorative Justice: Heritage, Repatriation and Cultural Education.” In Museum International, 61, no. 1‐2 (1 May 2009): 121–129. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2009. 10.1111/j.1468-0033.2009.01669.x. Smith, Claire. “Decolonising the Museum: The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.” Antiquity 79, no. 304 (2005): 424–439. 10.1017/S0003598X00114206. Sofaer, J. R. The Body as Material Culture: A Theoretical Osteoarchaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Spence, C. “Making Sense of Touch: A Multisensory Approach to the Perception of Objects.” In The Power of Touch, 45–62. Oxon: Routledge, 2007. 10.4324/9781315417455-10. Spokes, Matthew, Jack Denham, and Benedikt Lehmann. Death, Memorialization and Deviant Spaces. Emerald Publishing Limited, 2018. 10.1108/9781787565715. Swain, Hedley. “Dealings with the Dead,” 2018, 2003–2008. Wade, Lizzie. “The Ghosts in the Museum.” Science, n.d. https://www.science.org/content/ article/racist-scientist-built-collection-human-skulls-should-we-still-study-them? intcmp=trendmd-other. Wilson, Emily K. “The Collection and Exhibition of a Fetal and Child Skeletal Series.” Museum Anthropology 38, no. 1 (2015): 15–27. 10.1111/muan.12070. Wintle, Claire. “Decolonising the Museum: The Case of the Imperial and Commonwealth Institutes.” Museum & Society 11, no. 2 (2013): 185–201.

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PART 2

Displaying the Dead Exhibitions and Ethical Considerations

7 EDUCATION, PRESERVATION AND RECONCILIATION The J.L. Shellshear Museum and the Preservation and Display of Human Remains

Denise Donlon and Fiona Gill Introduction The J.L. Shellshear Museum is located in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney. Established in 1959, it provides the locus for teaching, learning and research relating to osteology, forensics and physical anthropology at the university, and houses the universities osteological and physical anthropological collections (human and non-human), skull and brain casts and books and papers, and represents one of the most comprehensive collections of anthropological collections in Australia. This collection includes skeletal material from some of the oldest body donors in Australia and represents a valuable repository for knowledge and education in one of the oldest medical schools in Australia. Despite its obvious ongoing utility and value as a site of education, the museum is also implicated in the broader colonial project of removing and displaying human remains associated with Australia’s Indigenous population. This chapter explores some of the implications of holding indigenous remains within the Australian context, and the tensions inherent in maintaining and managing relationships with Indigenous communities. We argue that it is possible to preserve and retain guardianship of the remains respectfully, while also allowing the research and educational functions of the museum to continue. In this chapter, we examine the role of the Museum in the preservation of knowledge about one of the oldest continuous human cultures, the medical, historical and anthropological education of students and Australian citizens, and the processes of repatriation and reconciliation between the university and Indigenous Australians. Using the case study of Narrabeen Man, we suggest that the preservation and display of human remains in museums is not necessarily a disrespectful or dehumanising act, DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-10

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but instead can offer the opportunity for the development of a respectful relationship between community and institution. Conversations with the Indigenous communities have meant that, while Indigenous remains are not normally on display, sometimes permission is given for such display by descendant groups.

The Shellshear Museum: History and Context The J.L. Shellshear Museum of Comparative Anatomy and Physical Anthropology is named after Joseph Lexden Shellshear (1885–1958) who was a research professor of anatomy at the University of Sydney from 1937 to 1948. Previously he had been professor of anatomy in Hong Kong from 1923 to 1936. He was known for his work on the blood supply to the brain, research into endocasts of hominins especially Peking Man, Hong Kong prehistory and comparative morphology of the human skull. Shellshear donated to the University of Sydney’s Department of Anatomy, a large collection of human skulls and endocranial casts, books, bound scientific papers and records relating to his research work. This material was added to the department’s osteological and zoological collections to form what is now the J.L. Shellshear Museum, established and named by Challis Professor NWG Macintosh in Shellshear’s honour in 1959.1 Since then, much anthropological and archival material has been added to the collections. The museum has been completely refurbished as a result of a very generous donation by Mrs Ann Macintosh and has become an important research facility for anthropological, forensic and other research work. The Shellshear Museum is the only museum of physical/biological anthropology in Australia and the only one which employs a full-time physical anthropologist. The museum is located in the Anderson Stuart Building at the University of Sydney in which anatomy and histology are taught and researched. The Museum is used in teaching of anatomy to science and medical students and to school groups. Current research is concerned with investigation of the nature and distribution of Australian Aboriginal burials along the New South Wales coast, the forensic identification and taphonomy of human skeletal remains in the Sydney region, commingling of bones and the identification of non-human bones. The collections housed in the museum include over 500 human skeletal remains which include historic human skeletal remains from Australia (both Indigenous and European), Papua New Guinea, Oceania and Jordan (Pella). It also holds probably the largest collection of hominin casts and endocranial casts of any museum in Australia. Non-human collections include skulls and some skeletons of most classes of vertebrates with an emphasis on marsupials and dogs/dingoes, and museum staff are experts in the differentiation between human and non-human remains. Archival material includes books, papers and research records of J.L. Shellshear, the N.W.G. Macintosh collections relating to research and field work on the dingo, New Guinea Highlands, and Australian Aboriginal fossil skulls and Aboriginal art and collected notes and references of former curator S.L. Larnach. The Museum therefore has a role in the sometimes fraught relationship between the need to display remains for educational processes and the desire to preserve and 96

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enhance the essential dignity and humanity of those who are displayed. First, the Museum and its staff educate medical and anthropological students on skeletal remains, allowing students to understand the unique nature of the Australian context and its population. It also provides workshops to external groups such as Indigenous Heritage officers, archaeologists and forensic workers (e.g. forensic pathologists and police) in the identification of both human and nonhuman skeletal remains. The Shellshear Museum therefore plays a critical role in the preservation of anthropological and forensic information of Australia and the region. How, then, does this fit with the broader colonial legacy of missing Indigenous remains?

Indigenous Remains and the Australian Context The ongoing debate relating to the presence and display of human remains in museums and universities has been informed by broader discussions relating to the impacts of colonisation on indigenous communities. Understanding the display of human remains in museums is becoming increasingly contested, debates relating to the potential benefits versus uses of such displays are often framed around the harms caused by the display of the remains in the museum.2 The debates are further informed by the ongoing refusal on the part of some institutions to engage meaningfully with processes of repatriation of stolen remains with the Indigenous communities demanding their return. In the Australian context, this has involved indigenous communities engaging with institutions globally, but particularly in the United Kingdom and United States, as well as processes for the repatriation of remains being negotiated and established between communities and museums and universities across Australia. This is no small task. The history of the collection of indigenous remains in Australia is bound up in the twin stories of the process of conquest and colonisation of indigenous lands and the Frontier Wars, and the burgeoning development of scientific and anthropological knowledge. The process of colonisation involved the violent and brutal oppression of indigenous Australians, including documented instances of kidnapping, massacre and imprisonment, including regular “reprisal” raids against community groups accused of attacking or killing white “settlers” or their livestock. However, the links between this colonial project and 19th century racial pseudo-science is less well-known and the presence and participation of individuals interested in and employed to collect “specimens” for examination and curiosity has remained largely invisible. Such activities involved, not only the collection of existent human remains, but also the killing and harvesting of skeletal parts. The desire for such specimens, for display as curiosities, or for “scientific” research, drove the involvement of some people in such raids and into practices which went beyond the random killing of indigenous individuals. Instead, specific people were targeted, dehumanised as “subjects” to be “ anatomised” and then their body parts harvested for a colonial scientific project.3 These practices can be understood as being part of a long tradition of the unethical and forceful collection of anatomical specimens, foreshadowing the development of the Nazi’s “Jewish skeleton collection”4 and culminating in the development of anatomical displays such as BodyWorks.5 97

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Positioning the human body and skeleton as objects to be studied instead of subjects to be respected, the discourses surrounding such displays have tended to emphasise the scientific utility of the physical materials present, rather than the humanity of the remains. In the Australian case, this is also reflected in descriptions of the collection of “specimens” undertaken during a regular patrol. The unpublished memoirs of Korah Halcombe Wills, a butcher and hotel manager in the Queensland town of Bowen in the 1860s, provide an example of the details of this practice: The designation of the victim as a “subject … intended to anatomise”, the brutality and dehumanisation inherent in the process of disembodiment, and the consequent disgust of even those heavily involved and implicated in the massacre of Indigenous Australians, makes clear the reality of the collection of such specimens. Nor is this an isolated incident, with scientists visiting the frontier being offered the shooting of an Aborigine for the purpose of the collection of their skulls, or the designation of indigenous Australians as “stray skeletons” to be “slaughtered” and then included into museum collections (Evans 2010, 20).6 This significantly contributes to the trauma attached to memories of the Frontier Wars among Indigenous Australians, and also serves to explain the strong desire to reclaim and repatriate their kinfolk. Other “specimens” were collected from those who died as vagrants, in hospitals or jails, or were stolen from burial sites.7 The struggle for the repatriation of these remains from institutions within Australia and abroad has been ongoing since the 1970s. This has involved engagement with a complex web of state, national and international legislation surrounding the identification, establishment of provenance, repatriation and ultimate burial within ancestral lands.8 Difficulties in international collections include locating and accurately identifying the remains, and a lack of resources to process repatriation claims. This has resulted in significant frustration among community members.9 Within the Australian context, remains held within institutions are also subject to repatriation processes. However, this process is complicated by the difficulties associated in establishing provenance of remains. For example, the National Museum of Australia securely houses the remains of over 700 Indigenous Australians. However, many have little or no provenance beyond an attribution to “Australia” or one of its states or territories,10 triggering calls for the development of a national resting place for such remains to allow their ultimate respectful burial. Despite these difficulties, repatriation of remains is generally seen as an important step in processes of reconciliation and acknowledgement of the great harms wrought by colonisation.11 The collections of human skeletal remains in the Shellshear Museum were developed in a number of different ways. Almost all of the Australian Aboriginal skeletal remains were acquired via the police and/or Coroners Court. These were discovered as a result of construction, development, erosion or accidental finds by members of the public and are housed at the Museum for safekeeping. A small number were excavated by archaeologists or anthropologists or donated by members 98

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of the public. With the National Parks and Wildlife Act of 1974, which now makes the Australian Museum the repository of such remains, the Shellshear Museum no longer accesses any Australian Aboriginal skeletal remains. Since 1996, the University of Sydney has had a policy for the management of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands remains and culturally significant items, resulting in a large proportion of these Indigenous remains being repatriated. Skeletal remains from neighbouring regions such as Papua New Guinea and Oceania have been mainly acquired through donation from the public. Some of these have now been repatriated. As part of this policy, no indigenous remains are displayed in the museum, and those used for teaching purposes are used only with the permission of the relevant communities. One significant exception to this is Narrabeen Man.

Narrabeen Man: A Case for the Display of Remains Narrabeen Man, as he is commonly known, represents one of the most significant anthropological and archaeological finds in Sydney. Found in 2005 in the beachside suburb of Narrabeen during the digging of a trench for an electricity cable, his resting place was originally sand dunes behind a beach. When initially unearthed, his remains were treated as a suspected homicide, and the police, a forensic pathologist and anthropologist were called on to examine the remains. Upon examination, the weathered condition of the bones suggested a burial of some antiquity and so a salvage excavation was performed by an archaeologist, anthropologist and the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council (MLALC). This occurred after consultation with the MLALC and the NSW Department of Environment and Conservation, who are the legal government body responsible for Indigenous burials and were involved in all subsequent decisions about the management of the remains. The MLALC gave permission for the remains to be examined by an anthropologist, and analysis was undertaken by Dr. Denise Donlon, the curator of the Shellshear. The remains were taken to the Shellshear Museum for examination and for the bone to be dated and sampled for dietary analysis. Examination indicated the remains were that of a man of between 30 and 40 years of age. His skeleton was that of a strong man who displayed very strong muscle attachments and at 183 cm (6 ft) was particularly tall for an Indigenous man whose average height pre-colonisation was approximately 168 cm.12 The only indications of antemortem poor health were two healed depressed cranial fractures and some minor degenerative changes to his cervical vertebrae and elbow region – most likely activity related. Radiocarbon dating gave a date of c. 3,677 BP (3480 ±30 years, CAMS120202) making him the oldest known Indigenous remains discovered in the Sydney region.13 This date has provided evidence of continuous occupation of the Sydney region. This is a critical piece of information for Indigenous communities, proving “scientific” evidence of what they have known all along – that they have continuously occupied this land for millennia. Narrabeen Man was further set apart by finds made during the excavation and subsequent analysis, which made it clear that this was no ordinary burial. Two stone spear barbs were discovered lodged in vertebrae, along with 12 stone spear barbs 99

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scattered around the body. Use marks were consistent with their use on hafted armatures on implements such as spears or knives.14 These spear barbs are associated with a “death spear,” thought to have been used in ritual slaying. This burial is the first time in Australia that remains have been found with evidence of backed artefacts implicated in a death. The awkward position of the body when found further supported the suggestion that something was amiss. His final resting position was not consistent with any known burial practices: The final resting posture of the body … attests to the body being abandoned on the surface of the dune soon after death. As well as the head being displaced from the top of the spine, the arms were flexed at the elbows with the left arm flung across the neck, a similar posture to the 5300 year old frozen corpse of Otzi, which also had a stone arrowhead embedded in its back.15 The bodily position is similar to that of more recent homicides, and the stone artefacts and body position correspond strongly to ethnographic and anthropological accounts of ritual slayings.16 This evidence raised concerns that this was a ritual killing, and that Narrabeen Man may have been an intruder, and not from the area in which he was found. This was a significant issue, as the community was concerned about where he should be reburied. This is of crucial spiritual significance as the return and burial of remains on country is a responsibility born by contemporary community members to their elders and ancestors.17 However, the potential killing and discarding of the body, without burial and outside country, suggests that he was not welcome on country, and had been excluded in death as a deliberate act. Contravening this act would also be profoundly disrespectful. Anthropologists were asked if his origins could be determined. Stable isotope analysis was conducted to establish if his diet was of only terrestrial origin or if he had a coastal diet. The analysis revealed a diet high in marine foods, relying heavily on mid-trophic level marine foods such as fish, shellfish, seaweed and seabirds. Thus, Narrabeen Man was from the coast, not inland, but whether he was from the Narrabeen area or not could not be established. This ambiguity, we believe, is the main reason he remains at the Shellshear. His provenance is unclear and reconciling the circumstances of his death and burial, with the community desires and spiritual needs both past and present, has proven difficult for community members. He has not been accessioned into the Museum’s collections and is free to be repatriated whenever the local Indigenous community wishes. The unique nature of this man’s death along with his antiquity and the light it has thrown on the use of certain artefacts has meant that the MLALC allowed his remains to be filmed and photographed for the media.18 In addition, his story is now part of the year seven secondary school history curriculum (Australia). Aims of this module include the understanding of how historians and archaeologists investigate history, including excavation and archival research, what they reveal about Australia’s past in the ancient period, such as the use of resources and the importance of conserving the remains of the ancient past, including the heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. 100

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Conclusion – Towards a Respectful Curatorial Relationship? The Museum houses and preserves skeletal remains for the communities to which they belong, allowing community members to visit and, should they so wish, facilitating their repatriation. In addition, it seeks to establish and preserve relationships with indigenous and non-indigenous communities. The development and preservation of these relationships is critical for the benefit of both parties. We suggest that this is the case for several reasons. First, the development of a respectful curatorial relationship is essential in the development and preservation of trust of Indigenous communities in the Museum’s ability to safely and respectfully house the ancestors located there. Though not displayed, the remains come to no harm and this safety allows communities the time and space to negotiate the sometimes complex and fraught decision necessary when deciding the final resting place of the elders. Second, as both sides acknowledge the enormity of the atrocities committed in the name of “advancing science,” it is nonetheless true that scientific research and education can benefit Indigenous Australians. Deepening understanding of the ancient and continuous guardianship and kinship experienced by Indigenous Australians occurs through the embrace of different knowledge systems. The example of Narrabeen Man illustrates this. The continuous use of the Narrabeen area for millennia by a complex and rich culture disrupts pervasive colonial discourses relating to Indigenous land rights and competing land claims. His presence, and the information gained from his remains, in addition to the telling of his story, should be understood as a collaborative effort on the part of the Museum and the Indigenous communities to further mutual understanding and foster ties. Although the preservation of this relationship requires ongoing commitment and labour on both sides, it is a relationship the Museum is determined to foster and develop. An abiding commitment to the respectful preservation of remains on behalf of the communities involved represents an acceptance of the role of steward and protector of the remains until the communities wish to repatriate them. The negotiation of the display of remains is possible, particularly when the complexities associated with repatriation are understood, and when all involved parties are consulted. This suggests that it is possible to display Indigenous remains respectfully and to develop a strong curatorial relationship with communities which protects the spiritual safety of those involved while also furthering the aims of education, understanding and reconciliation.

Notes 1 Jonathan Stone, Shellshear, Joseph Lexden (Joe) (1885–1958). Australian Dictionary of Biography 16 (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, 2002 (2006), 16. 2 Tiffany Jenkins, Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections: The Crisis of Cultural Authority (New York: Routledge, 2011). 3 Paul Turnbull, “International Repatriations of Indigenous Human Remains and Its Complexities: The Australian Experience,” Museum & Society 18, no. 1 (2020): 6–19.

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Denise Donlon and Fiona Gill 4 Paul Weindling, Anna von Villiez, Aleksandra Loewenau, and Nichola Farron, “The Victims of Unethical Human Experiments and Coerced Research under National Socialism,” in Endeavour 40, no. 1 (2016): 1–6. 5 Uli Linke, “The Limits of Empathy: Emotional Anaesthesia and the Museum of Corpses in Post-Holocaust Germany,” in Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation, edited by Alexander Laban Hinton and Kevin Lewis O’Neill (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 147–191. 6 Raymond Evans, “The Country Has Another Past: Queensland and the History Wars,” in Passionate Histories: Myth, Memory and Indigenous Australia, edited by Frances Peters-Little, Ann Curthoys and John Docker (Canberra: ANU Press, 2010), 9–38. 7 Paul Daley, Restless Indigenous Remains (Canberra: CAL Cultural Fund, 2014). 8 Turnbull, Museum and Society, 6. 9 Ibid., 11. 10 Ibid. 11 Jordi Rivera Prince, “Can the Repatriation of the Murray Black Collection Be Considered an Apology? Colonial Institutional Culpability in the Indigenous Fight for Decolonization,” In Situ no. 1 (2015): 11–13. Article 5. Available at: https://repository. upenn.edu/insitu/vol4/iss1/5 12 Josephine J. McDonald, et al., “The First Archaeological Evidence for Death by Spearing in Australia,” Antiquity 81 (2007): 880. 13 McDonald, et al. “Death by spearing in Australia,” 877. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., 882–883. 16 Ibid., 883. 17 Sarah Morton, The Legacies of the Repatriation of Human Remains from the Royal College of Surgeons of England: Final Project Report (University of Oxford, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 27. 18 Max Lloyd, “Catalyst in Narrabeen Man,” Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), 2008.

Bibliography Daley, Paul. Restless Indigenous Remains. Canberra: CAL Cultural Fund, 2014. Evans, Raymond. “The Country Has Another Past: Queensland and the History Wars.” In Passionate Histories: Myth, Memory and Indigenous Australia, edited by Frances Peters-Little, Ann Curthoys, and John Docker, 9–38. Canberra: ANU Press, 2010. History Teachers’ Association of Australia. “The Ancient Past – Narrabeen Man.” Australia Curriculum: History Units. Accessed 17 February 2022. https://www.achistoryunits. edu.au/year-7/unit-program/y2-overview-v2-1.html. Jenkins, Tiffany. Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections: The Crisis of Cultural Authority. New York: Routledge, 2011. Linke, Uli. “The Limits of Empathy: Emotional Anaesthesia and the Museum of Corpses in Post-Holocaust Germany.” In Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation, edited by Alexander Laban Hinton and Kevin Lewis O’Neill, 147–191. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Lloyd, Max. “Catalyst.” In Narrabeen Man, Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), 2008. McDonald, Josephine J., Denise Donlon, Judith H. Field, Richard L. K. Fullagar, Joan Brenner Coltrain, Peter Mitchell, and Mark Rawson. “The First Archaeological Evidence for Death by Spearing in Australia.” Antiquity 81 (2007): 877–885. Morton, Sarah. The Legacies of the Repatriation of Human Remains from the Royal College of Surgeons of England: Final Project Report. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

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Education, Preservation and Reconciliation Prince, Jordi Rivera. “Can the Repatriation of the Murray Black Collection Be Considered an Apology? Colonial Institutional Culpability in the Indigenous Fight for Decolonization.” In Situ (1) (2015): 11–13. Stone, Jonathan. Shellshear, Joseph Lexden (Joe) (1885–1958). Australian Dictionary of Biography 16. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, 2002. Turnbull, Paul. “International Repatriations of Indigenous Human Remains and Its Complexities: The Australian Experience.” Museum & Society 18, no. 1 (2020): 6–19. Weindling, Paul, Anna von Villiez, Aleksandra Loewenau, and Nichola Farron. “The Victims of Unethical Human Experiments and Coerced Research under National Socialism.” Endeavour 40, no. 1 (2016): 1–6. Wills, Korah Halcomb. Reminiscence. Brandon Papers. Brisbane: Oxley Memorial Library, 1895.

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8 THE MUMMIES OF GUANAJUATO The Tension between Ethics and Ambition

Paloma Robles Lacayo At the height of the fashion for building walled cemeteries on the outskirts of towns based on the sanitary logic of preventing the spread of nineteenth century pandemics1 and the saturation of graveyards connected to religious institutions owing to the death toll from the cholera morbus epidemic of 1833, came Guanajuato’s present “Panteón Municipal” opened on March 13, 1861.2 Another historical juncture that underlines the civil (as opposed to Catholic) character of the new burial ground was the administrative transformation in Mexico entailed in the enactment of the Reform Laws (aimed at doing away with all ecclesiastical influence in those affairs that the government was coming to see as its business)3 and particularly the decree on the Secularization of Cemeteries, whose uncompromising opening article announces: “All interventions relation to the economics of cemeteries, graveyards, burial grounds and mortuary vaults or crypts that the clergy has enjoyed to date shall henceforth cease throughout the entire Republic.”4 Significant in this decree, pronounced by then the president of Mexico, Benito Juárez, on July 31, 1859, is its article 9, which lays out the legal precedent that enabled the discovery of the mummified remains buried in the Guanajuato municipal cemetery: Once the five-year term of temporary concessions has elapsed, there shall be, if necessary, an exhumation of the bones which will be conserved in the general ossuary or the urns referred to in the previous article or outside the premises and at the point that the parties to whom they are delivered designate, if they request them, without demanding further remuneration for this than the ordinary cost of exhumation. With the exception of those cases in which the interested parties wish to renew conservation on the premises for a further five years, in which cases a new, though reduced, payment shall be effected.5 Article 8 indicated the possibility of five-year interments, but the importance of article 9 lies in its dictation of the fate of the human remains once the agreed five-year period had 104

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elapsed: exhumation and conservation in the ossuary, a sequence that all the Guanajuato mummies followed to the place where they remain to this very day, as it is the ossuary that became the site museum. The desiccated bodies, according to official documents held by the Government of the State of Guanajuato (such as the log of exhumed mummies, whose records cover the second half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth) began turning up in 1870 (with the exhumation of French doctor Remy Leroy on June 23), with the number reaching 70 by 1900 (today’s collection contains 117). A book published in 1895 under the title Campbell’s Complete Guide and Descriptive Book of Mexico by Reau Campbell6 promoted from that moment on a visit to the Panteón de Guanajuato and its mummies to an international readership by way of photographs of more than 20, although the oldest dated image is from 1880 and is available for viewing at the media archives of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).7 Besides these, another photo of the Mummies of Guanajuato worth knowing is dated 19108 and shows around 30 bodies which are notable for the fact that they are wearing tunics, something that perhaps hints at the first questions regarding the exhibition of the bodies; although their intent was circumscribed to objecting to the corpses’ nudity, whence the use of public funds to run up these garments which, while they did obscure any view of the mummies’ genitalia, must also have caused some deterioration through friction, and thus a loss of bodily material. Perhaps the second significant landmark in the ethics of exhibiting these human remains comes with the visit of Dr. Ciro Caraballo Perichi and the subsequent publication of his article “The Guanajuato Mummies Museum: Mummies or Corpses? The Commercial Exploitation of Morbid Curiosity”9 in which he goes as far as to assert that, “Cemeteries cannot be converted into circuses open to the morbid curiosity of idle tourists,” and that, “The fate of the Mummies of Guanajuato gives rise to surprise, laughter, incredulity, but above all shame. Death is used for commercial purposes, with the bodies of innocents whose only fault is that of failing to renew, on time, their legal burial rights,” affirms the former coordinator of cultural programs for the UNESCO Representation in Mexico City, Lima, and Quito.10 These were the conditions in place on December 15, 2015, when only naked bodies were on exhibition, with nothing in the space to explain how they had come to be there and what they were doing there. That day saw the inauguration of a new administration at the Guanajuato Mummies Museum, which had never before been under the supervision of professionals specializing in cultural management, much less the handling of human remains; so self-evident in the dilapidated condition and profound deficiencies of the space where this bio-cultural heritage, significant for both town and country as a whole, was being safeguarded. The activities set in motion by the resulting action plan, it turned out, exactly matched the recommendations subsequently published by the National Commission for Bioethics. The priority, it was decided, was to guarantee the suitability of the conditions for the conservation of the bodies. Bibliographic materials were acquired (among them titles such as, Mummies: A Manual of Good Practices for Their Preservation11), and a determination was made regarding the appropriateness of commissioning a report on the state of conservation of the mummified material, something never before carried out for the 105

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Mummies of Guanajuato. For this purpose, contact was made with the Office of Physical Anthropology of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which proposed that María del Carmen Lerma Gómez (the country’s only specialist in the safeguarding and conservation of mummified human remains) attend to Guanajuato’s needs. As a result of the municipality’s actions, she worked from July 3 to 9, 2016, delivering the resulting document, titled “Assessment and Recommendations for the Handling and Conservation of the Mummified Elements of the Guanajuato Mummies Museum,” to the Department of Museums on the final day of her stay. These recommendations were progressively adopted as the administrative conditions for their implementation came into being. In addition to overseeing the conservation of desiccated bodies, a proposal was developed for the interpretation of heritage and research was undertaken to recover the identities and biographies of the people whose preserved bodies are on display at the municipal museum (a task assigned to María José Abreu Abreu, who is now writing, based on this research, her thesis for the Master’s in Cultural Administration at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico), which turned out to make even greater sense, given that, presented in this way, the bodies are the material vestiges of people ultimately deprived of the human right to identity, was has no expiration date.12 The proposal for the interpretation of heritage was made by the present author and reviewed by Dr. Rafael Guerrero Rodríguez,13 an academic at the University of Guanajuato who presented it before the Tourism panel: “The journey as an experience of familiarization with macabre situations, death or disaster,” coordinated by Patricia Viera Bravo (Institute of Geography, National Autonomous University of Mexico) on November 8, 2017, at the AIBR International Conference of Anthropology14 held in the Mexican city of Puerto Vallarta. Although it had been previously presented at the University of Guanajuato Seminar on Tourism Studies on May 18, 2017.15 The proposal subsequently became the central plank of the museographic discourse, overseen by Dr. Rogelio García Espinosa,16 still in place at the Museum today. Based on the questions most frequently put by visitors, a design was drawn up for interpretative planning and the incorporation of informational elements. It was essential to explain, for example, how and from where the mummies had come, thus the explanation of the history of Guanajuato’s municipal cemetery and the unearthing of the mummies. It was especially important to make clear that the Guanajuato mummies are natural and that there was no human intervention in the conservation of the bodies, unlike that of artificial mummies (such as those of Egypt, whose complex process of mummification requires sophisticated anatomical knowledge in order to mummify the corpses), or those resulting from natural, induced mummification (such as those from South America, where environmental conditions were exploited in order to conserve the remains of admired personages).17 In the case of Guanajuato, it is a completely spontaneous phenomenon that occurs inside the columbaria due to their hermetic nature which prevents any exchange with the outside of either oxygen or moisture, which is what favors the dehydration rather than the decomposition of the corpses. As the academic María del Carmen Lerma Gómez points out in her book “Mummies of Mexico,” they exist in nearly every state in the Mexican Republic, and 106

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“come, for the most part, from archeological contexts, looting, cemeteries, tombs inside churches, and fortuitous discoveries.”18 However, what is important about Guanajuato is how frequent the phenomenon is. According to workers at the municipal cemetery, it is estimated that, of every 100 corpses recovered from the drawers, at least six are found to be mummified. During the year 2000 just, 35 mummies were exhumed (according to a statement by Roberto López Morales, a worker at the Panteón Municipal).19 The decomposition of organic material is accelerated or slowed according to physical parameters that include temperature, humidity, oxygen, and acidity.20 Evidently, the combination of these factors explains the mummification occurring in the Guanajuato cemetery, along with others such as altitude, atmospheric pressure, sun exposure, etc., meaning that there may be more studies to conduct. From a legal perspective, as well as the aforementioned reform laws, it is essential to refer to the 2009 Regulations on Public Cemeteries Service in the Municipality of Guanajuato, Gto., whose Chapter Three deals with the use of desiccated human remains for cultural purposes, starting with article 77, which is worth reproducing here in full: For the effects of this chapter, if, as a product of exhumation, a mummified body should appear, this will be understood to form part of the Cultural Heritage of the Municipality of Guanajuato, barring express opposition to this within the period of five business days from the date of exhumation. Said opposition must be presented in writing by the secondary disponent to the Municipal Treasurer, who shall resolve the issue within the three days following receipt of the document and provide immediate notification as to the nature of the resolution, which shall be duly grounded in law. In the event that such opposition proceeds, the secondary disponent shall undertake to incinerate the mummified remains in question.21 This evidently represents the intention to confer legitimacy to the historical governmental practice of appropriating “for cultural purposes” the mummified bodies exhumed due to the expiration of the five-year period (renewable if the appropriate payment was made) per the administrative agreement with the secondary disponents for the safekeeping of the deceased’s body on the cemetery premises. In this regard, the contents of article 72 of the Regulations are also worth noting, since it makes it a condition prior to exhumation to contact the deceased’s family, descendants or close friends: ARTICLE 72.- On expiration of the periods set forth in these Regulations, the Department may take possession of the remains in accordance with the following procedure: I. Immediate written notification to the secondary disponent requesting his or her presence before the Department of Cemeteries Administration within the period of five business days in order that, once appropriately informed, the party in question expresses what is in his or her best interests. 107

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II. In the event that the aforementioned period elapses without the secondary disponent appearing in said manner, the cemeteries administration will dispose of the remains, making a special record of the date, number and line position of the grave, drawer, columbarium, crypt, or niche and their physical condition, signed by the administrator; and III. In order to carry out all the actions set forth in the preceding sections, the cemetery’s administration shall submit a copy to the Secretary of the City Council or his/her designated representative.22 However, it is worth asking exactly how the municipal authority proceeds when, once the five years are up, it is not easy, or even possible, to locate the so-called secondary disponents. In fact, there is one testimony to the effect that the burial of a second body in the same casket as had been used for a previously deceased family member (as article 67 of the Regulations permits), revealed the latter to be unexpectedly absent.23 That is, there is a possibility that the municipal authority has managed the bodies in a discretionary manner and, if they were mummified, has taken possession of them with or without the consent of those who might legitimately decide their fate. In fact, there was one occasion when, on providing this information to a visiting couple – she German, he Argentinian – the latter said, “You mean if I die in Guanajuato I could end up in the Museum?” The answer to which was, and still is, clearly affirmative. Given the important position that death occupies in Mexican culture (thus the power and significance of the Day of the Dead celebrations, “a traditional inclusive, representative and communitarian expression” listed by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage24) and its diverse evocations in national artistic production, a compilation was made of poetic texts capable of situating visitors in terms of this society’s appreciation of the continuity of life beyond this one and even some which indirectly explain the significance of the mummifications which, in its turn, reinforces that identity while simultaneously displaying the poetry of classic Mexican authors. One of the texts selected is verse IV of Mexican writer Xavier Villarrutia’s poem “Tenth Death.”25 The selection criterion was the possibility of interpreting the poem as the firstperson statement of a corpse (with its “opaque, febrile, shifting” shroud), its eyes closed after death (which will, in addition, never open again of their own accord), placed in a wooden coffin (mysterious grain of fresh cut timber) which is closed (“dark chamber”), and its transformation into “diamantine, luminous, eternal and pure,” which can be associated with the dry clarity of the mummified bodies. Another of the poetic excerpts selected is the Chilean writer Pablo Neruda’s “Only Death.”26 This was included particularly because of the definition in the final lines of death as a “falling from our skins down to our souls,” as it is precisely their skin that distinguishes the mummies from mere skeletons. Added to this is the allusion to the cemetery combined with the closeness of the current Museum (formerly the ossuary) 108

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to the Municipal Cemetery from which the mummies emerged. Today’s Museum is thus an extension of the burial ground. Another text that has proven extremely meaningful to visitors (photographed and published on social media) is “On Myth” by Jaime Sabines which occupies a place on the final wall of the exhibition.27 This was chosen because it embodies (in this author’s opinion) an existentialist vision that bestows sense on the exposure of human remains: the recognition of death as a source of motivation and development.28 Another quote forming part of the museographic narrative is from the Mexican writer Octavio Paz. “Our death illuminates our life. If we don’t die as we live it is because it wasn’t really our life that we lived,”29 along with the famous phrase attributed to William Wallace: “Every man dies. Not every man truly lives,”30 which resonates so strongly with visitors. Added to this, it was decided that the exhibition would cease to be a purely passive experience and would now be interactive. Taking our lead from the recommendation of the specialist Patricia Alonso Pajuelo of encouraging an element of respect in the visitors’ attitude,31 certain pieces of museum furniture were incorporated into the exhibit. One of these was a display case for use by the visitors themselves in order to offer them the experience of placing themselves in the same condition as the mummies on show – behind glass and under the lights, thereby encouraging increased awareness of the living past the mummies embody, reclaiming their status as human remains, and even the possibility of any one of the living of future entry into the collection. Other devices incorporated with the same aim were a number of caskets. Since one of the bodies is displayed inside its original coffin, it was decided to make two replicas for the visitors’ use. The first two caskets were delivered to the museum on July 13, 201632 and were dropped off near the exit in a parking zone. Initially debuted by the museum staff, little by little the visitors started to line up to climb in. Children, seniors, teenagers, men and women, everyone wanted their turn inside. Some even asked if there was an extra charge for the service – something we had never thought of. We had to wait until the museum closed and the crowds had dispersed in order to place the coffins in the place they were to occupy in the exhibition, at the end of the tour route. The results were highly gratifying. During each vacation period, the museum receives thousands of people, all of whom filled out satisfaction surveys in 2017, the year in which the museography was overhauled.33 Some were of the opinion that the coffins were the best part of the exhibition. They were such a success that it was necessary to create replicas for all age groups. As a result, three more were added, built to the following height specifications: 90 cm, 120 cm and 2 m.34 These more playful resources were particularly significant because of their relationship to the principle of existential psychology that affirms that an encounter with death can produce a sort of personal resurgence, as mentioned previously. It even converges, through its symbolic use of the coffin, with the popular South Korean practice of the mock funeral, devised in order to “live better” in a country where, in 2016, the suicide rate was 20.2 of each 100,000 residents, almost double the worldwide average of 10.53, according to the World Health Organization.35 109

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A message on a social media site posted by a visitor that displays exactly the kind of reflection we were seeking to produce in response to the museographic concept we implemented: This experience created one of the strangest feelings, each instant is a moment that is given to us to learn something, going in there for the photos and knowing that those moments will arrive at some point makes us more aware that life was made to be lived with a purpose, honestly, bravely, and in complete freedom!36 It was explained scientifically that, although water is an essential element for the conservation of life, it was equally essential to isolate the mummies from any moisture in order to guarantee their conservation, as water encourages the spread of microorganisms that might contribute to the decomposition of the mummies that had so conveniently been on hold for so many years. Additionally, four questions were displayed on the museum walls: Are you alive? Do you pursue the passion that makes you live? Whose body would you preserve after their death? How would you like to be remembered? Clearly, the vision at all times was to convert the visit into an experience that was not only educational but also reflective and even transcendental, which gave new meaning to the purpose of life and human dignity, as it is only when the display of human remains produces such an impact on visitors that we can, perhaps, justify it from an ethical perspective. The significance of this collection to the local identity is also worthy of mention. For example, Guanajuato’s traditional candy, known as the charamusca, is shaped like a mummy.37 When the bodies returned from an international tour in April 2013, they were received by the authorities and families from the state capital, along with a traditional musical ensemble (estudiantina) performing the song “Tierra de mis amores” (Land of my loves), composed by Guanajuato’s own Jesús Elizarrarás Farías and widely considered to be the state anthem.38 “Momias” is the name of the street leading to the museum (Carretera a Momias). It can be read in the addresses on the official IDs of the area’s residents, on the clothes and candy stores that surround it and throughout the neighborhood. Probably all the tourist information stands in the city center offer tours to the Museum, and some even go as far as to display replicas of the mummies to attract visitors.39 Guanajuato Mummies Museum has historically represented the municipality’s second biggest source of income, but this decreases once the local property taxes have been deducted,40 a fact which has impacted people’s understanding of its public utility and importance. In fact, while the rest of the world’s museums are unable to selffinance, this one holds the distinction of not only being self-sustaining but also subsidizing the activities of the municipal administration (as the National Coordinator of Museums and Exhibitions of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Enrique Ortiz Lanz pointed out in 2016)41 to the degree that, the annual share of public resources it takes in, less than 10% goes back into its budget (according to information from the Guanajuato Municipal Treasury, the Museum contributed 110

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$43,916,706 MXN in 2019,42 but the municipal government granted it an annual budget for 2020 of $2,729,907.80 MXN).43 In 2018, a municipal agreement was created to protect the mummies and recognize them as the cultural heritage of the city of Guanajuato.44 Also, the government established that, “the use, exhibition, and study of the Mummies of Guanajuato will require the prior authorization of the City Council.”45 However, the municipal administration for 2018–2021 revoked this agreement on October 25, 2019, substituting it with another that was identical to the previous one with the sole difference of, again, its article 4. To grant power to the holder of the Municipal Presidency of Guanajuato for the use or exhibition of the Mummies of Guanajuato, or to delegate such power to the heads of the offices of municipal public administration in charge of the promotion of tourism in Guanajuato. The holder of the municipal presidency shall make known to the city council all results obtained from the use or exhibition of the Mummies of Guanajuato and, as the case may be, the resources thereby generated, in the ordinary plenary session following the date of the transportation of the bodies to their place of origin. The use or exhibition of the mummies may be either singly or in groups, within or outside the municipal territory exclusively for cultural purposes and that of promoting tourism and must be carried out in accordance with the measures in place for their protection and conservation during transportation, installation and safeguarding at their final destination.46 This allowed, up to now, the existence of eight touring exhibitions of the mummies47 at venues dedicated to recreation, entertainment, and performance,48 as well as alcohol tastings49,50 or their exhibition at the León´s Fair (202051 and 2021 editions52), and even their presence of these desiccated remains at press conferences (10/29/2019 and 2/7/ 2020) in Mexico City (some 435 km [270 mi] away) in order to announce, at the second of these, that the legendary Mummies of Guanajuato would have their official launch on the third day of the World Rally Championship, the world’s most important extreme motorsport event.53 These events surrounding this invaluable bio-cultural heritage produced a forceful social movement to reverse the municipal authorities’ actions, which were in fact illegal. On June 3, 2020, a criminal case for profanation of human remains was brought before the Guanajuato Public Prosecutor’s Office54 (under article 222 of the Penal Code of the State of Guanajuato)55 for having exhibited the mummies in noneducational contexts, leading to the creation of investigation file 51856/2020. Notwithstanding this, on June 26, 2020, the Agent of the Prosecutor’s Office exercised his “power of waiver of investigation” (according to the file), thereby foregoing any right to assess whether the touring exhibitions might be guilty of said offense, as it conceded the credibility of the municipal agreement then “in force,” which granted the city mayor the power to use the mummies to promote tourism. Given that the current state and municipal governments come from the same political party, there is some suspicion of a coverup.56 111

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That same June 3, a request for a technical appraisal was sent to the National Commission for Bioethics57 regarding the Mummies of Guanajuato touring exhibitions. The response is emphatic: We urge the adoption of bioethical principles in the exhibition of mummified remains; that is, to grant them their due dignity and bear in mind that they are the material testament of once living people and that therefore respect should be paid to the life stories, customs and traditions, not only of those particular individuals, but of all those who form part of the same culture. This respect should also apply to the care taken in conserving each mummy’s body, since they are a physical embodiment of the past that enables us to make contact with the history of the societies that preceded us. Exposing them [the mummies] to potential damage would represent a major ethical affront that threatens the inheritance of the past and puts cultural rights in Mexico at risk. Likewise, we believe it would be useful to form a multidisciplinary team made up of researchers specializing in the area of mummification in Mexico, such as physical anthropologists, physicians, biologists, chemists, and historians, for these to work in a multidisciplinary manner and improve their state of conservation, given the stated importance of preservative or adequate packing that responds “conditions or necessities specific to each particular piece, meaning that it is impossible to establish uniform patterns.” Give the foregoing, it is necessary to avoid any risk of cultural or patrimonial damage, protection and respect must be guaranteed to the mummies at all exhibitions, whether these are for scientific, cultural, or educational purposes, with strict respect for human dignity and the heritage and cultural identity of the State of Guanajuato, avoiding at all costs any objectification and the promotion of unhealthy attitudes towards them. With this in mind, the National Commission for Bioethics hereby declares its opposition to any activities tending to act to the detriment of Guanajuato’s cultural heritage, recognizes the importance of ensuring the protection of this cultural heritage, inasmuch as it embodies a symbol of the identity of the state, as well as the remains of a human being, within a framework of secularity and absolute respect for human rights.58 This document represents the first national parameter in the area of bioethics regarding the use of mummified human remains. It was published on August 19, 202059 and sent to the Governor of Guanajuato on October 26 of the same year in order to request that, in the light of its recommendations, there be no further touring exhibitions of mummies, but this was not to be, and, as mentioned above, the desiccated remains made an appearance at the 2021 León Fair. With regard to national health legislation, section XVII of article 314 of the General Law on Health clearly defines the ruling as “the set of activities relating to the procurement, extraction, analysis, conservation, preparation, supply, use and final destination of organs, tissues, components of tissues, cells, products and the cadavers of human beings for therapeutic, educational, or investigative ends.”60 Which is to say 112

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that, for this law, the only possible destination of the mummies is for the purpose of teaching or research as mummified corpses of human beings. Added to this, article 319 makes it clear that any use of the organs, tissues, cells and bodies of human beings without due legal authorization will be considered illicit. Article 346 further clarifies that corpses may not be subject to ownership and are always to be treated with the due respect, dignity and consideration. Article 416 states that infringements of the precepts of this law, its regulations and other provisions resulting from it will be administratively sanctioned, without prejudice to any punishment applicable in the event that this constitutes a crime; while article 417 lays out exactly what these administrative sanctions might consist of. Article 419 says that a fine will be imposed of up to 2,000 times the unit of measurement and the updating of the infringement of the provisions of the articles of this law, including number 346.61 For its part, the Regulations of the General Law on Health respecting sanitary control and the disposal of human organs, tissues and cadavers contains the following provisions. Article 67 states that bodies that have been in graves for five (in the case of persons under 15 years of age at the time of their death) or six (those over 15 when they died) will be considered to be desiccated remains. Article 88 is emphatic in its clarification that educational institutions are to be responsible for the appropriate, ethical use of corpses. Lastly, article 100 explicitly details those operations requiring health permits, with section IV describing the transportation of corpses and desiccated remains across state lines.62 On March 18, 2020, a complaint was brought before the Secretariat of Health of the State of Guanajuato for “transportation of desiccated remains between federal states without appropriate health permits,”63 the response to which, on July 16, 2021, was that, “on February 11, 2021, Health Jurisdiction I determined an administrative resolution as a result of which the Municipality of Guanajuato appeared before Central Regional Court III to demand the annulation of the same, which judicial proceeding is currently in process.”64 On September 7, 2021, a complaint65 was brought to the Secretary of Health for the Federal Government signaling as improper handling of corpses (by exhibiting them in contexts devoted to recreation, entertainment and performance outside the educational sphere, thus updating the concept of illicit disposal set forth in article 319 of the General Law on Health), and therefore treating them in a disrespectful and undignified manner (in violation of article 346 of the same law). The response is pending.

Notes 1 M. S. Martínez, The Panteón Municipal de Santa Paula and Its Celebrated Occupants (México: University of Guanajuato, 2014). 2 L. Marmolejo, Guanajuato Ephemerides, or Data Shaping the History of the City of Guanajuato, Vol. 2 (México: University of Guanajuato, 2015) (Text originally published in 1914.) 3 Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, Expedición de las Leyes de Reforma, accessed November 11, 2021, https://www.cndh.org.mx/noticia/expedicion-de-las-leyes-de-reforma 4 B. Juárez, Decreto de secularización de cementerios, en Enciclopedia Parlamentaria de México, Tomo II, Serie III, Documentos, Volumen I. Leyes y documentos Constitutivos de la

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5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22

23 24 25

Nación Mexicana, (México: Instituto de Investigaciones Legislativas de la Cámara de Diputados, LVI Legislatura, 1997), https://www.segobver.gob.mx/juridico/var/4.pdf Ibid. R. Campbell, Campbell’s complete guide and descriptive book of Mexico, (Chicago: Poole Bros. Press, 1895), https://archive.org/details/campbellscomple00camp/page/110/mode/2up. National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/ repositorio/islandora/object/fotografia%3A367248, accessed November 22, 2021. Gallery of the dead mummied remains in the catacombs, (Library of Congress, 1901), https://www.loc.gov/resource/stereo.1s32729/ Ciro Caraballo Perichi, “The Guanajuato Mummies Museum: Mummies or Corpses? The Commercial Exploitation of Morbid Curiosity,” https://repository.javeriana.edu.co/ handle/10554/23017, accessed November 22, 2021. C. C. Perichi (2016). CV-Ciro-Caraballo.2016.pdf. Universidad de la República de Uruguay / Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo, http://www.fadu.edu.uy/ bedelia-posgradosyep/files/2016/10/CV-Ciro-Caraballo.2016.pdf Momias. Manual de buenas prácticas para su preservación (Guanajuato: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 2012). Registro Nacional de Población, Derecho a la identidad, la puerta de acceso a tus derechos, accessed February 11, 2020, https://www.gob.mx/segob/renapo/acciones-y-programas/ derecho-a-la-identidad-la-puerta-de-acceso-a-tus-derechos R. G. Rodríguez, CVWeb_Rafael_Guerrero.pdf. Universidad de Guanajuato – Campus Guanajuato – División de Ciencias Económico Administrativas, accessed December 2021, http://www.dcea.ugto.mx/images/posgrados/ma/CVWeb_Rafael_Guerrero.pdf AIBR International Conference of Anthropology, http://www.aibr.org/antropologia/ 2017/AIBR.ESP.2017.pdf https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1446881852039688&set=a.109793265748560 and https://twitter.com/GuanajuatoGob/status/866698993757290501?s=04&fbclid= IwAR2gWj74UWiVXWmPBlkl4m Rogelio García Espinosa. (s/f). LinkedIn, accessed winter, 2021, https://mx.linkedin.com/ in/rogelio-garc%C3%ADa-espinosa-399b1240 Momias. Manual de buenas prácticas para su preservación. C. Lerma Gómez, Las momias en México. Propuesta metodológica para su manejo, estudio y conservación (México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2016). L. A. de Guardiola, “El Panteón de Santa Paula ☠ … De noche!!. Las Aventuras de Guardiola,” filmed October 28 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hXPBqQXHyU OPS, “Peligros biológicos,” https://www3.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=10838:2015-peligros-biologicos&Itemid=41432&lang=es Presidencia Municipal de Guanajuato, Reglamento del Servicio Público de Panteones en el Municipio de Guanajuato, Gto. (Guanajuato: Periódico Oficial del Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato, 2009), http://periodico.guanajuato.gob.mx/downloadfile?dir=files_ migrados&file=200904071338510.PO_56.pdf Presidencia Municipal de Guanajuato, Reglamento del Servicio Público de Panteones en el Municipio de Guanajuato, Gto. (Guanajuato: Periódico Oficial del Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato, 2009), http://periodico.guanajuato.gob.mx/downloadfile?dir=files_ migrados&file=200904071338510.PO_56.pdf Y. R. R. Arroyo, in conversation with the author, November 7, 2020. El Día de Muertos: el regreso de lo querido. (2019, octubre 29). Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura, https://es.unesco.org/news/ dia-muertos-regreso-lo-querido-0 X. Villaurrutia, “Décima muerte,” Col. Material de Lectura (México: UNAM), http://www. materialdelectura.unam.mx/index.php/poesia-moderna/16-poesia-moderna-cat/37-015xavier-villaurrutia?start=16

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The Mummies of Guanajuato 26 P. Neruda, “Sólo la muerte,” in Residencia en la tierra (Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1992), https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/residencia-en-la-tierra–0/ 27 J. Sabines, “Del mito,” en La señal (México, Joaquín Mortiz, 1951). 28 G. L. R. Osorio, “Aportes de la psicología existencial al afrontamiento de la Muerte” (tesis, UNAM, 2014), 50–63, https://biblat.unam.mx/hevila/Tesispsicologica/2014/vol9/no1/3.pdf 29 O. Paz, El laberinto de la soledad. Posdata. Vuelta a El laberinto de la soledad (México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004). 30 J. L. Espinosa, “Todos los hombres mueren, pero no todos los hombres realmente viven,” ABC, August 23, 2015, https://www.abc.es/archivo-historia-abc/20150823/abcidesmontando-brave-heart-201508221918.html 31 P. Alonso Pajuelo, “La exposición de restos humanos en museos: el caso de las tsantsas (cabezas reducidas),” Anales del Museo Nacional de Antropología XVIII (2016): 109–140, https://www.libreria.culturaydeporte.gob.es/libro/anales-del-museo-nacional-de-antropologia-xviii-2016_4431/ 32 Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato, Facebook, July 13, 2016, https://www.facebook. com/Museodelasmomiasdeguanajuatooficial/photos/a.910274605749014/ 910276329082175 33 S. Cisneros, “Las nuevas sorpresas del Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato,” México desconocido, https://www.mexicodesconocido.com.mx/las-nuevas-sorpresas-del-museo-lasmomias-guanajuato.html 34 P. Robles Lacayo (@paloma.robleslacayo) P. (2017, noviembre 3). ¡#Momiamigos! Le damos la bienvenida a los nuevos ataúdes (y María José Abreu ya estrenó uno). ¡Vengan a inaugurarlos! Facebook, November 3, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/paloma. robleslacayo/posts/1438206599573880 35 J. Garriga, “En Corea del Sur miles de personas participan en funerales falsos para vivir mejor,” La Vanguardia, November 9, 2019, https://www.lavanguardia.com/cribeo/estilode-vida/20191109/471425878675/corea-del-sur-miles-personas-participan-funeralesfalsos-ataud-vivir-mejor.html 36 E. Orozco R. (@enriqueorozcor), En las momias de Gto! Instagram, December 21, 2017, https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc-ZyDQBHS-/?utm_medium=copy_link 37 Notimex, “Charamusca, dulce tradicional guanajuatense,” El Universal, November 3, 2018, https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/cultura/la-charamusca-el-dulce-tradicional-deguanajuato 38 C. Olvera, “Con algarabía reciben guanajuatenses a sus momias,” April 23, 2013, https:// portalguanajuato.mx/2013/04/con-algarabia-reciben-guanajuatenses-a-sus-momias/ 39 G. Navarro, “Confiscan momia de papel maché,” AM Express, February 13, 2017, https:// www.pressreader.com/mexico/periodico-am-express-guanajuato/20170213/ 281479276166148 40 Programa de Gobierno Municipal de Guanajuato 2012–2015, Periódico Oficial del Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato, 54, June 7, 2013, http://periodico.guanajuato.gob.mx/ downloadfile?dir=files_migrados&file=PO_91_2da_Parte_20130606_1014_15.pdf 41 “Los museos no deben ser aburridos: Ortiz Lanz,” Desde el balcón. Miradas libres, December 13, 2016, https://www.desdeelbalcon.com/los-museos-no-deben-ser-aburridos-ortiz-lanz/ 42 Oficio TMG-075/2020, en respuesta a solicitud de acceso a información pública folio 03373219. 43 Presupuesto de Egresos 2020, December 17, 2019, http://www.guanajuatocapital.gob.mx/ files/2019-12/8.%20Presupuesto%20de%20Egresos%202020%2017.12.19%20DEF.pdf 44 Acuerdo municipal, mediante el cual se reconoce expresamente por el H. Ayuntamiento como bienes culturales a las Momias de Guanajuato, incorporándolas en el catálogo municipal de bienes patrimonio cultural del Municipio de Guanajuato. Periódico Oficial del Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato, November 4, 2008, http://periodico.guanajuato. gob.mx/downloadfile?dir=files_migrados&file=200811051136060.PO_177_2da_Parte.pdf

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Paloma Robles Lacayo 45 Municipio de Guanajuato, Lineamientos Generales que regulan el Dominio, Conservación, Protección, Promoción, Difusión y Valoración de las Momias de Guanajuato, como parte del Patrimonio Cultural Guanajuatense. Periódico Oficial del Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato, November 11, 2019, 53–55. 46 Ibid. 47 Municipio de Guanajuato, Oficio DGCyE-0512/2020, Dirección General de Cultura y Educación, 2020, and Municipio de Guanajuato, Oficio DGCyE-0870/2021, Dirección General de Cultura y Educación, 2021. 48 Carmina Cuevas Acevedo et al. “La identificación de compuestos químicos derivados de la contaminación que se asocia con el deterioro de materiales constructivos de la calle subterránea Miguel Hidalgo de la ciudad de Guanajuato,” XXV Verano de la Ciencia, 5, 2019, http://www.repositorio.ugto.mx/handle/20.500.12059/3515 49 Municipio de Guanajuato, “Presenta Alcalde Túnel de Tradición, el Festival del Día de Muertos en ‘La Subterránea,” Comunicación Social, 2018, http://www.gtocapital.gob. mx/comunicado/presenta-alcaldetunel-de-tradicion-el-festival-del-dia-de-muerto 50 Municipio de Guanajuato, “Presenta Navarro segunda edición del Túnel de Tradición; bajan Momias a la Calle Subterránea,” Comunicación Social, 2019, http://www. guanajuatocapital.gob.mx/comunicado/presenta-navarro-segunda-edicion-del-tunel-detradicion-bajan-mo 51 R. Quintanar, “Momias de Guanajuato presentes en fiestas de enero de León,” Milenio Diario, January 13, 2020, https://www.milenio.com/politica/comunidad/feria-leon-2020momias-guanajuato-visita 52 S. Medina, “Visitan Momias de Guanajuato la Feria de Verano León,” El Sol de León, July 2, 2020, https://www.elsoldeleon.com.mx/local/visitan-momias-de-guanajuato-la-feriade-verano-leon-6915605.html 53 “Anuncian arrancada del Rally México en Guanajuato Capital con todo y Momias,” Televisa Regional, 2020, https://televisaregional.com/anuncian-arrancada-del-rallymexico-en-guanajuato-capital-con-todo-y-momias/ 54 P. Robles Lacayo, Denuncia penal por profanación de restos humanos, presentada ante el Ministerio Público de la Fiscalía General del Estado de Guanajuato, 2020. 55 Código Penal del Estado de Guanajuato, https://congresogto.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ reforma/pdf/3167/ULTIMA_VERSION_20201222.pdf 56 O. Meza y E. Pérez-Chiqués, “Consolidación de la corrupción en los gobiernos locales: Un marco analítico fundamentado,” Public Administration, 2020, https://www.researchgate. net/publication/352832983_Consolidacion_de_la_corrupcion_en_los_gobiernos_locales_ Un_marco_analitico_fundamentado 57 Comisión Nacional de Bioética, “¿Qué es la Comisión Nacional de Bioética?,” April 12, 2012, http://www.conbioetica-mexico.salud.gob.mx/interior/queeslacomision.html 58 Comisión Nacional de Bioética, Oficio No. CONBIOÉTICA-CN-127–2020, June 12, 2020. 59 H. de Mauleón, “Las momias profanadas,” El Universal, August 19, 2020, https://www. eluniversal.com.mx/opinion/hector-de-mauleon/las-momias-profanadas 60 Ley General de Salud de México, accessed November 22, 2021, http://www.diputados. gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf_mov/Ley_General_de_Salud.pdf 61 Ibid. 62 Reglamento de la Ley General de salud en materia de control sanitario de la disposición de órganos tejidos y cadáveres de seres humanos, March 26, 2014, http://www.diputados.gob. mx/LeyesBiblio/regley/Reg_LGS_MCSOTCSH.pdf 63 P. Robles Lacayo, Queja por presuntas violaciones a la reglamentación sanitaria en contra del gobierno municipal de Guanajuato, 2020. 64 Secretaría de Salud, Oficio CAJ/DCyN/5498/2021, July 16, 2021. 65 P. Robles Lacayo, Queja enviada al Secretario de Salud del gobierno federal por presuntas violaciones a la legislación sanitaria en torno a la utilización de las Momias de Guanajuato, September 7, 2021.

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Bibliography AIBR International Conference of Anthropology. http://www.aibr.org/antropologia/2017/ AIBR.ESP.2017.pdf Alonso Pajuelo, P. “La exposición de restos humanos en museos: el caso de las tsantsas (cabezas reducidas).” Anales del Museo Nacional de Antropología XVIII, (2016): 109–140. https:// www.libreria.culturaydeporte.gob.es/libro/anales-del-museo-nacional-de-antropologiaxviii-2016_4431/ “Anuncian arrancada del Rally México en Guanajuato Capital con todo y Momias,” Televisa Regional, 2020. https://televisaregional.com/anuncian-arrancada-del-rally-mexico-enguanajuato-capital-con-todo-y-momias/ Campbell, R. Campbell’s Complete Guide and Descriptive Book of Mexico. Chicago: Poole Bros. Press, 1895. https://archive.org/details/campbellscomple00camp/page/110/mode/2up Cisneros, S. “Las nuevas sorpresas del Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato.” México desconocido. https://www.mexicodesconocido.com.mx/las-nuevas-sorpresas-del-museo-las-momiasguanajuato.html Comisión Nacional de Bioética. “¿Qué es la Comisión Nacional de Bioética?” April 12, 2012. http://www.conbioetica-mexico.salud.gob.mx/interior/queeslacomision.html Comisión Nacional de Bioética. “Oficio No. Conbioética-cn-127-2020”. June 12, 2020. Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos. Expedición de las Leyes de Reforma. Accessed November 11, 2021. https://www.cndh.org.mx/noticia/expedicion-de-las-leyes-de-reforma Cuevas Acevedo, Carmina, Luis López Alarcón, Ana González Garnica, Víctor Ojeda Hernández, Esteban Rangel Alvarado, Gilberto Álvarez Guzmán, Jorge Cervantes Jáuregui, and Adrián Zamorategui Molina. “La identificación de compuestos químicos derivados de la contaminación que se asocia con el deterioro de materiales constructivos de la calle subterránea Miguel Hidalgo de la ciudad de Guanajuato.” XXV Verano de la Ciencia, 5, 2019. http://www.repositorio.ugto.mx/handle/20.500.12059/3515 De Guardiola, L. A. “El Panteón de Santa Paula ☠ … De noche!!. Las Aventuras de Guardiola,” filmed October 28, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hXPBqQXHyU De Mauleón, H. “Las momias profanadas.” El Universal, August 19, 2020. https://www. eluniversal.com.mx/opinion/hector-de-mauleon/las-momias-profanadas Espinosa, J. L. “Todos los hombres mueren, pero no todos los hombres realmente viven.” ABC, August 23, 2015. https://www.abc.es/archivo-historia-abc/20150823/abcidesmontando-brave-heart-201508221918.html Garriga, J. “En Corea del Sur miles de personas participan en funerales falsos para vivir mejor.” La Vanguardia, November 9, 2019. https://www.lavanguardia.com/cribeo/estilo-devida/20191109/471425878675/corea-del-sur-miles-personas-participan-funeralesfalsos-ataud-vivir-mejor.html Juárez, B. “Decreto de secularización de cementerios.” In Enciclopedia Parlamentaria de México, Tomo II, Serie III, Documentos, Volumen I. Leyes y documentos Constitutivos de la Nación Mexicana. México: Instituto de Investigaciones Legislativas de la Cámara de Diputados, LVI Legislatura, 1997. https://www.segobver.gob.mx/juridico/var/4.pdf Lerma Gómez, C. Las momias en México. Propuesta metodológica para su manejo, estudio y conservación. México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2016. “Los museos no deben ser aburridos: Ortiz Lanz.” Desde el balcón. Miradas libres, December 13, 2016. https://www.desdeelbalcon.com/los-museos-no-deben-ser-aburridos-ortiz-lanz/ Marmolejo, L. Guanajuato Ephemerides, or Data Shaping the History of the City of Guanajuato. Vol. 2. México: University of Guanajuato, 2015. (Text originally published in 1914.) Martínez, M. S. The Panteón Municipal de Santa Paula and Its Celebrated Occupants. México: University of Guanajuato, 2014. Medina, S. “Visitan Momias de Guanajuato la Feria de Verano León.” El Sol de León, July 2, 2020. https://www.elsoldeleon.com.mx/local/visitan-momias-de-guanajuato-la-feriade-verano-leon-6915605.html

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Paloma Robles Lacayo Meza, O. yE. Pérez-Chiqués. “Consolidación de la corrupción en los gobiernos locales: Un marco analítico fundamentado.” Public Administration (2020). https://www. researchgate.net/publication/352832983_Consolidacion_de_la_corrupcion_en_los_gobiernos_locales_Un_marco_analitico_fundamentado Momias. Manual de buenas prácticas para su preservación. Guanajuato: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 2012. Municipio de Guanajuato. Lineamientos Generales que regulan el Dominio, Conservación, Protección, Promoción, Difusión y Valoración de las Momias de Guanajuato, como parte del Patrimonio Cultural Guanajuatense. Periódico Oficial del Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato (November 11, 2019): 53–55. Municipio de Guanajuato. “Presenta Alcalde Túnel de Tradición, el Festival del Día de Muertos en ‘La Subterránea.” Comunicación Social (2018). http://www.gtocapital.gob. mx/comunicado/presenta-alcaldetunel-de-tradicion-el-festival-del-dia-de-muerto Municipio de Guanajuato. “Presenta Navarro segunda edición del Túnel de Tradición; bajan Momias a la Calle Subterránea.” Comunicación Social (2019). http://www. guanajuatocapital.gob.mx/comunicado/presenta-navarro-segunda-edicion-deltunel-de-tradicion-bajan-mo Navarro, G. “Confiscan momia de papel maché.” AM Express, February 13, 2017. https:// www.pressreader.com/mexico/periodico-am-express-guanajuato/20170213/ 281479276166148 Neruda, P. “Sólo la muerte”. In Residencia en la tierra. Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1992. https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/residencia-en-la-tierra–0/ Notimex. “Charamusca, dulce tradicional guanajuatense.” El Universal, November 3, 2018. https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/cultura/la-charamusca-el-dulce-tradicional-deguanajuato Olvera, C. “Con algarabía reciben guanajuatenses a sus momias.” April 23, 2013. https:// portalguanajuato.mx/2013/04/con-algarabia-reciben-guanajuatenses-a-sus-momias/ OPS, “Peligros biológicos.” https://www3.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_content& view=article&id=10838:2015-peligros-biologicos&Itemid=41432&lang=es Osorio, G. L. R. “Aportes de la psicología existencial al afrontamiento de la Muerte.” Thesis, UNAM, 2014: 50–63. https://biblat.unam.mx/hevila/Tesispsicologica/2014/vol9/no1/ 3.pdf Presidencia Municipal de Guanajuato. Reglamento del Servicio Público de Panteones en el Municipio de Guanajuato, Gto. Guanajuato: Periódico Oficial del Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato, 2009. http://periodico.guanajuato.gob.mx/downloadfile?dir=files_migrados&file= 200904071338510.PO_56.pdf Quintanar, R. “Momias de Guanajuato presentes en fiestas de enero de León.” Milenio Diario, January 13, 2020. https://www.milenio.com/politica/comunidad/feria-leon-2020momias-guanajuato-visita Registro Nacional de Población. Derecho a la identidad, la puerta de acceso a tus derechos. Accessed February 11, 2020. https://www.gob.mx/segob/renapo/acciones-y-programas/ derecho-a-la-identidad-la-puerta-de-acceso-a-tus-derechos Robles Lacayo, P. Denuncia penal por profanación de restos humanos, presentada ante el Ministerio Público de la Fiscalía General del Estado de Guanajuato, 2020. Sabines, J. “Del mito.” In La señal. México: Joaquín Mortiz, 1951. UNESCO. “El Día de Muertos: el regreso de lo querido.” (2019, octubre 29). https://es. unesco.org/news/dia-muertos-regreso-lo-querido-0 Villaurrutia, X. “Décima muerte.” Material de Lectura. México: UNAM http://www. materialdelectura.unam.mx/index.php/poesia-moderna/16-poesia-moderna-cat/37015-xavier-villaurrutia?start=16

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Other Sources Acuerdo municipal, mediante el cual se reconoce expresamente por el H. Ayuntamiento como bienes culturales a las Momias de Guanajuato, incorporándolas en el catálogo municipal de bienes patrimonio cultural del Municipio de Guanajuato. Periódico Oficial del Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato. November 4, 2008. http://periodico.guanajuato. gob.mx/downloadfile?dir=files_migrados&file=200811051136060.PO_177_2da_ Parte.pdf Código Penal del Estado de Guanajuato. https://congresogto.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ reforma/pdf/3167/ULTIMA_VERSION_20201222.pdf Ciro Caraballo Perichi. https://repository.javeriana.edu.co/handle/10554/23017. Accessed November 22, 2021. Gallery of the dead mummified remains in the catacombs. [1901] Library of Congress, Washington, DC. https://www.loc.gov/resource/stereo.1s32729/ Ley General de Salud de México. Accessed November 22, 2021. http://www.diputados.gob. mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf_mov/Ley_General_de_Salud.pdf National Institutie of Anthropology and History citations. https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/ repositorio/islandora/object/fotografia%3A367248. Accessed November 22, 2021. Presupuesto de Egresos 2020. December 17, 2019. http://www.guanajuatocapital.gob.mx/ files/2019-12/8.%20Presupuesto%20de%20Egresos%202020%2017.12.19%20DEF.pdf Programa de Gobierno Municipal de Guanajuato 2012–2015. Periódico Oficial del Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato, 54, June 7, 2013. http://periodico.guanajuato.gob.mx/ downloadfile?dir=files_migrados&file=PO_91_2da_Parte_20130606_1014_15.pdf Reglamento de la Ley General de salud en materia de control sanitario de la disposición de órganos tejidos y cadáveres de seres humanos. March 26, 2014. http://www.diputados. gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/regley/Reg_LGS_MCSOTCSH.pdf

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9 THE COST OF CIVIL RIGHTS Loss, Grief, and Death at US Civil Rights Museums

Jenny Woodley In the early hours of 12 June 1963, Medgar Evers pulled his car into the drive of his family home in Jackson, Mississippi in the United States. It was after midnight, and Evers was returning from a long and tiring day of work in his position as field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As he stepped out the car, a gunshot rang out and he fell to the ground; he had been shot and fatally wounded.1 It would be another 30 years before his killer, Byron de la Beckwith, was eventually sentenced for the murder. The rifle with which Beckwith killed the 37-year-old activist is now on display at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, only a few miles from the home where Medgar lived with his wife Myrlie and their three children. It is part of an exhibition which details the assassination and its legacy. There is a photograph of Medgar Evers awaiting burial and another of the huge funeral procession held in the city after his death. Visitors, who in previous parts of the gallery have learned about Evers’ dedication to the cause of civil rights in his home state of Mississippi, are now confronted with his death. The murder of Medgar Evers has become one of the touchstone events of the civil rights movement. The killing has entered American collective memory, along with other deaths discussed in this chapter: the lynching of Emmett Till, the murder of “four little girls” in the Birmingham church bombing, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.2 Evers, his murder, and his funeral even make brief appearances in the 2011 film, The Help, a dramatization of the era which otherwise studiously ignores the civil rights movement that provides its context.3 It is not likely to be a surprise for visitors, therefore, when they visit civil rights museums and see stories of assassinations, bombings, and murders. These events are crucial elements of the history of the era. However, I believe there is greater significance to the inclusion of death in museums than the fact that such occurrences were part of the civil rights movement. I argue it allows museums to show the cost of civil rights; that the progress made during the era came with a high price. Telling the stories of those killed encourages people, especially white visitors, to acknowledge the danger inherent in not just civil rights 120

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activism but in being Black in the United States, as well as to understand the bravery and resolve required to fight against this injustice. Demonstrating the cost of civil rights is done through a range of techniques, including showing images of dead bodies and highlighting the aftermath – the absence and the grief – of loss, as well as emphasising the martyrdom of those who died. The three museums in this study are all located in the US South, in cities and states with well-known relationships to the narratives they interpret; they are situated in places with rich histories of Black organising and with pasts infused by white supremacist oppression and violence. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) in Alabama opened in 1992.4 It is in downtown Birmingham, in the same block as Kelly Ingram Park, site of violent confrontations when civil rights activists were attacked with fire hoses and dogs, and opposite the Sixteenth Street Baptist church, which was blown up by white terrorists in 1963, killing four Black girls. The museum pays particular attention to local events of the civil rights era such as these, focusing on the years 1954–1965. Atlanta’s National Center for Civil and Human Rights (CCHR) opened its doors in 2014. It is in a tourist area of the city, near the World of Coca-Cola and the Georgia Aquarium. The main exhibit, and the one discussed in this chapter, “Rolls Down Like Water,” focuses on a well-known narrative of the civil rights movement between 1954 and 1968.5 The year 2017 saw the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum (MCRM). The museum, in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, is twinned with the Museum of Mississippi History, and tells the story of the Black freedom struggle in the state, with an expansive chronology going back to enslavement and situating Mississippi’s civil rights movement within a wider context of white oppression and Black resistance. Scholars have critiqued some of the ways in which the civil rights movement has been constructed in America’s collective memory. Jeanne Theoharis explains that the modern civil rights movement has been told as a story of progress and national redemption. Jim Crow was framed as a horrible Southern relic and the movement to unseat it became a powerful tale of courageous Americans defeating a long ago evil. … A movement that had challenged the very fabric of US politics and society was turned into one that demonstrated how great and expansive the country was. Public histories have “depoliticized the scope of the struggle, distorted the work of the activists honored, … and obscured ongoing calls for racial justice through a celebration of a nearly postracial, self-correcting America.”6 Romano and Raiford point out that the civil rights movement has been held up as a “shining example of the success of American democracy.”7 It is not my intention to assess whether the three museums discussed here perpetuate such narratives because I do not discuss the totality of their exhibitions. Rather, I wish to consider how exhibits about violence and death during the Black freedom struggle fit within these broader collective memories. I ask what the introduction of death could potentially add to visitors’, particularly white visitors’, 121

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understanding of the civil rights movement, its legacies, and the continuing problem of racial inequality in the United States. Civil rights museums use a range of exhibitory strategies to tell the stories of the killing of African Americans during the movement. They present visitors with evidence of those deaths, often through images of dead bodies. Display boards include photographs of the deceased in open caskets. For example, the MCRM shows an image of Medgar Evers in his casket at the funeral home, with Myrlie Evers and their children at his side. In Atlanta, the CCHR includes a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. in his casket, surrounded by his family. Open casket funerals were common within the Black community. As Karla Holloway explains, a “laying-on of hands, touching, kissing, and expressing one’s grief by viewing the remains have traditionally mattered deeply” and reflect Black traditions “that respected the emotional power of the presence of the deceased.”8 Furthermore, the practice presented evidence of the violence committed against African Americans. The most famous example of the open casket funeral in this tradition was that of Emmett Till, whose mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted that “the world see what I’ve seen.”9 Photographs of Emmett’s battered body were published in Jet magazine. The MCRM displays a copy of the magazine, open to the relevant page, in its exhibit on the Lynching of Emmett Till. It is displayed within the small theatre space where a video documentary about Till is shown; visitors are warned “the multimedia exhibit contains graphic content” and “may not be suitable for some viewers.” In the museum context, then, images of Black bodies can serve as evidence of white violence. The reality of those deaths is brought home to visitors; they are asked to confront the deaths of civil rights activists through viewing (photographs of) their remains. Incorporating death allows history museums to demonstrate the consequences of white supremacy. This is necessary for visitors, white visitors particularly, to understand the pervasive and destructive power of racial inequality. The context of open casket photographs, however, also echoes and facilitates the Black tradition of allowing a final goodbye; visitors recreate the experience of the original mourners filing past the coffin. It may be that this experience is more meaningful for Black visitors. They do not need to be told of the dangers of white supremacy and so commemorating deaths is a way of reaffirming Black identity and community. Photographs of funerals from the era are also frequently displayed. Images, such as the long lines of mourners for Medgar Evers or those who paid their respects to James Chaney, one of the three civil rights workers killed in the so-called “Mississippi Burning” murders of 1964, demonstrate the resolve and bravery of activists and Black communities to continue the fight. The display of postmortem photographs in Black history museums can be fraught. They can too easily summon the spectre of lynching photographs, images which were common during the phenomenon’s peak in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and which objectified and dehumanised Black victims. The Center for Civil and Human Rights has chosen not to show an image of America’s most famous lynching victim after death. The display about Emmett Till reproduces, instead, a large, colourised image of Emmett and his mother. Her arm is across his shoulder and they are both smiling broadly; Emmett looks directly at the camera. George C. Wolfe, 122

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curator of the civil rights exhibit, “comments that enlarging the photo of Emmett and his mother, rather than his brutalized dead body, was intended to emphasize the loss of a young person in his prime.”10 As this quote suggests, death is presented in civil rights museums not only by dead bodies but also by loss. Loss requires an acknowledgement of what was there before, of what was taken. The MCRM Till exhibit includes a copy of the same photograph of Emmett and his mother (though this one is black and white, and much smaller). There is also another, frequently reproduced, image of Emmett looking smart in hat, shirt, and tie. These photographs – mother and son, and boy in hat – are two of the three images that were pinned to Emmett’s open casket. Shawn Michelle Smith points out that you now cannot see the image of Till smiling in his hat without also “conjuring” the image of his brutalised face. The iconic pairing of the photographs means the “before” image has come to signify “incalculable loss.”11 Museums which display the portraits but not (or not prominently) the postmortem image are relying on the visitor reading the photographs in this way and understanding the loss that they represent. Photographs of the victims of the Birmingham church bombing are used by the BCRI in a similar way to represent the loss of young life. Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley were killed when the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed by white supremacists on 15 September 1963. Although individually the photographs of the girls have not become iconic in any comparable way to those of Emmett Till – indeed, different photographs of the girls are used in different settings – when placed together they become the “four little girls” of popular memory.12 The BCRI has a large display about the bombing, which includes four photographs of the girls, with their names and ages (three of the girls were 14; one, Denise, was 11). There are also painted portraits of two Black boys who were killed by white violence in Birmingham on the same day. Virgil Ware, 13, was shot by two white boys while riding his bike; Johnnie Robinson, 16, was shot in the back by a policeman. Visitors are provided an expanded version of these stories. It is interesting that the museum chose not to use photographs of Ware and Robinson. Whether intentional or not, this has the effect of minimising the sense of loss visitors might feel about the two boys. In their paintings, they do not appear as lifelike as the girls and therefore the loss is less tangible. The BCRI is, however, careful to include the two boys – so often forgotten in memories of the event – in its narrative.13 A panel reads, “Six Young Lives Cut Short. One loved her pet dog. Another was wearing highheeled shoes for the very first time. Yet another was fond of the ‘Perry Mason’ show on television. Six children died on September 15, 1963.” The exhibit includes personal effects of Denise McNair. The items were found with her body and later donated to the museum by her family. They include the shoes she was wearing, items of jewellery, and a miniature children’s Bible. There is also a small piece of brick which, we learn, “was found in her skull.” These artefacts speak to the sense of a loss. Shoes, for example, are common symbols of the devastation and loss of the Holocaust.14 Denise’s empty shoes are a material reminder of her past presence and now absence. The piece of brick, which appears to be discoloured or stained, appears incongruous amongst these personal items. Its intrusion in the clutter 123

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of the everyday life of a young girl is an act of violence. The visitor cannot help but think of the young girl’s body, on whose feet those shoes were found when it was recovered, and in which the shard of brick was lodged. Her dead body is represented by its absence. The Birmingham church bombing exhibit includes a photograph of Maxine McNair, mother of Denise, her face etched with shock “in the aftermath of the explosion.” The display board is headed in large font with a quote: “My first words were, ‘My baby! My Baby!’” Her cry is echoed in a quote from Sarah Collins, who was 12 when she was blinded in the bomb blast: “Right after the explosion I called my sister … I said – I called about three times – ‘Addie, Addie, Addie.’ Addie didn’t answer.” In reading these words we can hear the voices crying out, the repetition of names – baby, Addie – and then the silence. When men, women, and children were killed during the civil rights movement, they left behind not just shoes and Bibles and purses, but also families, friends, and communities. Civil rights museums expose visitors to the grief of the bereaved. The innocence of children in particular is emphasised because it shows most powerfully that simply being Black was enough to get you killed. Grief is almost always presented through female mourning. At the MCRM, Medgar Evers’ wife, Myrlie, is shown at her husband’s funeral, with a close-up photo of her tear-streaked face. In another photo, Exerlena Jackson weeps for her husband, Wharlest Jackson, who was killed by a car bomb in 1967. The museum’s Till exhibit includes a photograph of Mamie Till Bradley, collapsing in grief, as she receives her son’s body. The image is cropped in such a way that she takes up almost the whole frame, forcing the viewer to see and asking them to acknowledge her anguish. Mamie Till Bradley, in particular, became, in Rhaisa Williams’ words, “an icon of Black maternal mourning.”15 According to Heather Pool, images of Till Bradley’s “maternal grief [were] … visible and legible across racial lines,” and this is why they were published by the white press in the 1950s.16 I would argue the same is true for this wider collection of images of Black women’s grief displayed in civil rights museums: curators use them strategically to provoke empathy from visitors of all races. Visitors see the cost, not just to society, to justice, or to American democracy, but the very real cost in human lives, in the loss of people cherished and held dear. The high price paid by African Americans is symbolised by the tear-stained faces and the expressions of shock and devastation. Visitors must confront what was left behind and therefore must acknowledge what, or rather who, was lost. Many of those killed during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s are remembered as martyrs. They died, indeed it is suggested that some gave their lives, for the cause. The icon of civil rights martyrdom is, of course, Martin Luther King Jr. Naveh argues that King became a martyred American hero through a combination of factors, including the minister’s personality and background, his own deployment of the tropes of martyrdom, and through the ways in which he was spoken of after his death. Many of the elements which Naveh identifies as securing King’s status as a martyr are reflected in museum interpretation of his life and death: his nonviolence; the perception of King as leader of the Movement; his faith; and own realisation that sacrifice was necessary for the Movement’s success. Naveh asserts that King is a martyr 124

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because his task was not finished at the time of his death and so his martyrdom provides a source of inspiration.17 This memory of King is particularly seen at the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, the city in which he was born and which is his final resting place. In the museum, King’s assassination is retold, with news footage of Walter Cronkite announcing the shooting. In the museum gallery, visitors go up the stairs to a balcony, modelled on the Lorraine Motel, where King was killed. Photographs from the day are enlarged and displayed. There is archival footage of his funeral and its procession.18 On the wall is a quote from his wife, Coretta Scott King: If you give your life to a cause in which you believe, and if it is right and just, and if your life comes to an end as a result of this, then your life could not have been spent in a more redemptive way. I think that is what my husband has done. Martin Luther King Jr.’s status as a martyr is made clear to visitors.19 King spoke often of his own death; the night before he was shot, he warned the crowd that “I may not get there with you.” He was a public figure long before he was killed. There were others, however, who only became known after, and because of, their deaths. They became martyrs not because of their actions but because of the way in which they were spoken of after they died. These “accidental martyrs” came to be perceived this way “through the rhetorical efforts of other members of their … movement.”20 In US civil rights museums, the commemoration of accidental martyrs is best exemplified by exhibits for the four little girls killed in Birmingham, and the display at the CCHR in Atlanta is the clearest example of how the martyrdom of Collins, McNair, Robertson, and Wesley continues in the museum setting. There are no photographs of the girls in this exhibit; instead, they are depicted in four stained glass window panels, which hang from the ceiling. They are dressed in choir robes and their first names are etched at the bottom of each window. The shattered stained glass of the church windows became symbolic of the destruction of a Godly place; the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, for example, displays shards from the windows. In Atlanta, there are no authentic artefacts from this event. Instead, the desecration of the church is symbolised by a pile of rubble on the museum floor. The stained glass depicts the girls as Saint-like. The display is dimly lit and shafts of light falling through the windows give them an angelic appearance. Their purity and innocence are emphasised. The choice to show them in choir robes is also interesting, as they were wearing their Sunday best when they died. They are shown here, then, not at the moment of death but after death, when they have ascended to Heaven. Other than their names, there are no details about their individual lives or personalities. There is no reference in this section to Virgil Ware and Johnnie Robinson, an omission which suggests that the boys don’t fit within the tropes of martyrdom.21 The text of Martin Luther King’s eulogy for Colins, McNair, and Wesley is printed on the wall. (Carole Robertson’s parents wanted a private funeral and so she was buried separately.) It was through this eulogy that the girls were sanctified as martyrs. King called them, “the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity.” He claimed that in their deaths, the girls “have something to say” to 125

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those who have not supported or who imperil the campaign for Black freedom. He associated their deaths with the freedom struggle in order to garner support for it from white society and to fortify the resolve of African Americans to continue their fight. This is an important element in martyrdom for social movements. Making martyrs “in the face of social injustice … gives the community cause, purpose, and a direction for their shared anger.”22 This was seen, too, after the death of Emmett Till; his murder is also remembered for the ways in which it galvanised civil rights activists. The display board about Till at the CCHR explains, “Many civil rights activists pointed to the Emmett Till murder as a catalyst for their involvement.” As evidence, it includes a quote from Rosa Parks, explaining “I thought about Emmett Till, and I could not go back.” Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth is quoted as saying Till’s death, “set in concrete the determination of people to move forward.” At the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, there is a quote from Joyce Ladner, explaining the effect of images of Till on young activists: “I can name you ten SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] workers who saw that picture [of Till’s body] in Jet magazine, who remember it as the key thing about their youth that was emblazoned in their minds.” Another panel makes it clear to visitors: “Black youth identified with Emmett Till, and many later described the Till murder as the event that led them into the Movement.” Again, through stories of death, museums present a picture of Black courage and determination.23 Another question arises when considering this martyrdom: in presenting Black Americans as martyrs, are museums reinforcing or disrupting a redemptive narrative of the civil rights museum? Joyce Apsel argues that in museums like the CCHR, the emphasis on the “‘purity’ and righteousness of the martyrs and their cause” means “leaving out historical complexity and controversy.” She argues that the martyrdom of King and the four little girls is part of a museum narrative that has a beginning, middle, and “redemptive end.” 24 According to this analysis, martyrdom as a presentational strategy simply reinforces a limited understanding of the civil rights movement and fails to illuminate the unresolved issue of racial injustice. These deaths are presented not as aberrations, but as steps – tragic but necessary steps – towards the fulfilment of America’s democratic promise. They died so that others might be free. The implication is that after their deaths, African Americans were finally “free.” As very many contemporary observers, Aspel amongst them, would point out, continuing systemic racism, disparate economic and life chances, a racially biased criminal justice system, and police violence, would all suggest that this is not the case. Yet, even including narratives of deaths in civil rights museums does not necessarily make the links between historic and contemporary violence clear to visitors. However, some aspects of the museums’ exhibitory strategy, particularly at the BCRI and MCRM, offer more complicated interpretations of death than solely martyrdom. They work to create an empathetic response from visitors. In showing the grief of Black women and mothers especially, they ask visitors to feel and share in their sorrow. There is nothing triumphant or redemptive about the shock and loss of violent deaths. In telling the stories not just of these deaths but also in highlighting the aftermaths, museums can challenge smoothed-out narratives of civil rights. Nevertheless, there is a tension in framing grief in this way, particularly with its emphasis on women’s 126

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grief. When analysing museum exhibitions of slavery, Arnold-de-Simine suggests that white visitors might only feel empathy because of a maternal connection. Do white visitors only think about a mother’s bereavement and not about the specific context of anti-Black violence? Furthermore, does this allow white people to align themselves with the victims rather than understanding their own privilege and complicity in the continuation of racial hierarchies? Empathy may not be enough for museums to challenge (white) visitors’ complacency. Indeed, using Arnold-de-Simine’s critique, it might even be counterproductive.25 It is important for Black history museums to show the cost of civil rights. White violence and Black death were an integral part of the Black freedom struggle; people died during and for the civil rights movement. Activists and Black communities had to live with the threat of death as a daily reality. Increasing public awareness of the sacrifice of African Americans is necessary and it should deepen our admiration for the resolve and courage of Black Americans. However, showing that people died and acknowledging the impact of their deaths, may not, by itself, be enough to complicate a collective understanding of the civil rights movement as an eventual triumph that resolved the issue of race in America. For Black history museums to become places for a real reckoning with not just America’s racial past but also with the continuation of racial injustice, then maybe something more than telling stories of death and asking people to empathise is needed. Perhaps visitors need to connect with and acknowledge those deaths on a deeper and more meaningful level. How this might be achieved is beyond the scope of this chapter. But a first step might be highlighting the historic realities of death and grief and loss within museums; in doing this, we begin to see the transformative potential of acknowledging the cost of civil rights.

Notes 1 Michael Vinson Williams, Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr (Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 2011), 13–14. 2 There were other people killed during the movement whose stories are told at these museums. In this chapter it is not possible to discuss every example of death in the museum exhibits; I have focused on the stories of death that the museum curators have prioritised with substantial displays. 3 See Allison Graham, “‘We Ain’t Doin’ Civil Rights’: The Life and Times of a Genre, as Told in The Help,” Southern Cultures 20, no. 1 (2014): 51–64. 4 Kristan Poirot, “Gendered Geographies of Memory: Place, Violence, and Exigency at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 18, no. 4 (2015): 632. For a detailed examination of the BCRI’s creation, see also Glenn Eskew, “The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the New Ideology of Tolerance,” in The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, ed. Renee C. Romano and Leigh Raiford (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 28–66. 5 For useful background on the museum’s creation, see Joyce Apsel, “‘Inspiration Lives Here’: Struggle, Martyrdom, and Redemption in Atlanta’s National Center for Civil and Human Rights,” in Museums and Sites of Persuasion: Politics, Memory and Human Rights, ed. Joyce Apsel and Amy Sodaro (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), 91–115. 6 Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018), 7–8.

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Jenny Woodley 7 Renee C. Romano and Leigh Raiford, The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), xvii. 8 Karla F. C. Holloway, Passed on: African American Mourning Stories, a Memorial (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2002), 25. 9 Till Bradley quoted in Davis W. Houck and Matthew A. Grindy, Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 31. 10 Apsel, “Inspiration Lives Here,” 99. Interestingly, Apsel writes that there is also a small photograph of Till in his casket, but this was not part of the display when I visited in 2019. 11 Shawn Michelle Smith, “The Afterimages of Emmett Till,” American Art 29, no. 1 (2015): 23, 25. 12 Romano argues that the Associated Press photo collage of the four girls has become an iconic image of the civil rights era. She also explains that the phrase “four little girls” tellingly emphasises the attributes that made them particularly attractive to the media, namely their youth and gender. Renee C. Romano, “Narratives of Redemption: The Birmingham Church Bombing Trials and the Construction of Civil Rights Memory,” in Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, ed. Romano and Raiford (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 103, 102. 13 Sandra Gill shows that, although the boys’ deaths were reported in the news at the time, they soon became overshadowed and forgotten. Sandra K. Gill, “Recalling a Difficult Past: Whites’ Memories of Birmingham,” Sociological Inquiry 82, no. 1 (2012): 35. 14 Oren Baruch Stier, Holocaust Icons: Symbolizing the Shoah in History and Memory (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015), 15. 15 Rhaisa Kameela Williams, “Toward a Theorization of Black Maternal Grief as Analytic,” Transforming Anthropology 24, no. 1 (2016): 17–30. 16 Heather Pool, “Mourning Emmett Till,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 11, no. 3 (October 2015): 433. 17 Eyal Naveh, Crown of Thorns: Political Martyrdom in America from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: New York University Press, 1990), 179–188. 18 See also Apsel’s discussion of this section of the museum. Apel, “Inspiration lives here,” 107–109. 19 Interestingly, King’s assassination is not discussed at the BCRI nor, in any detail, at the MMCR. 20 Richard J. Jensen, Thomas R. Burkholder, and John C. Hammerback, “Martyrs for a Just Cause: The eulogies of Cesar Chavez,” Western Journal of Communication 67, no. 4 (2003): 337. 21 Romano discusses the ways in which the girls’ gender played a role in their canonisation as martyrs. She argues that in the media coverage of subsequent decades, they are “grouped together as generic victims, made especially innocent because of their age, their location at the time of their murder, and their gender.” Romano, “Narratives of Redemption,” 105. 22 Melissa Renee Harris and Ashley R. Hall, “‘My Living Shall Not Be in Vain’: The Rhetorical Power of Eulogies in the Face of Civil Unrest,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 8, no. 3 (2018): 180. 23 It was interesting to see how the framing of Till’s lynching as a spark for the movement was reflected in public discourse of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which was finally passed in March 2022. The Act is another way of memorialising Emmett Till the martyr. See, for example, Rep. Bobby Rush’s quote in Corey Williams, “Taking a Deeper Look at the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act,” Chicago Tribune, 27 March 2022, https://www. chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-emmett-till-explainer-20220329-yuxc6qvb xnccflj6t5mqlmoigi-story.html. 24 Apsel, “Inspiration Lives Here,” 109–110. 25 Silke Arnold-de-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 110, 113.

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Bibliography Apsel, Joyce, “‘Inspiration lives here’: struggle, martyrdom, and redemption in Atlanta’s National Center for Civil and Human Rights.” In Museums and Sites of Persuasion: Politics, Memory and Human Rights, edited by Joyce Apsel and Amy Sodaro, 91–115. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. Arnold-de-Simine, Silke. Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Eskew, Glenn. “The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the New Ideology of Tolerance.” In The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, edited by Renee C. Romano and Leigh Raiford, 28–66. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006. Gill, Sandra K. “Recalling a Difficult Past: Whites’ Memories of Birmingham.” Sociological Inquiry 82, no. 1 (2012): 29–41. Graham, Allison. “‘We Ain’t Doin’ Civil Rights’: The Life and Times of a Genre, as Told in The Help.” Southern Cultures 20, no. 1 (2014): 51–64. Harris, Melissa Renee and Ashley R. Hall. “‘My Living Shall Not Be in Vain’: The Rhetorical Power of Eulogies in the Face of Civil Unrest.” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 8, no. 3 (2018): 173–183. Holloway, Karla F. C. Passed on: African American Mourning Stories, a Memorial. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2002. Houck, Davis W. and Matthew A. Grindy. Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press. Jacksonville: University Press of Mississippi, 2008. Jensen, Richard J., Thomas R. Burkholder, and John C. Hammerback. “Martyrs for a Just Cause: The Eulogies of Cesar Chavez.” Western Journal of Communication 67, no. 4 (2003): 335–356. Naveh, Eyal J. Crown of Thorns: Political Martyrdom in America from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: New York University Press, 1990. Poirot, Kristan. “Gendered Geographies of Memory: Place, Violence, and Exigency at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 18, no. 4 (2015): 621–648. Pool, Heather. “Mourning Emmett Till.” Law, Culture and the Humanities 11, no. 3 (October 2015): 414–444. Romano, Renee C. “Narratives of Redemption: The Birmingham Church Bombing Trials and the Construction of Civil Rights Memory.” In The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, edited by Renee C. Romano and Leigh Raiford, 96–133. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006. Romano, Renee C. and Leigh Raiford, eds. The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006. Smith, Shawn Michelle. “The Afterimages of Emmett Till.” American Art 29, no. 1 (2015): 22–27. Stier, Oren Baruch. Holocaust Icons: Symbolizing the Shoah in History and Memory. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015. Theoharis, Jeanne. A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018. Williams, Michael Vinson. Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr. Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 2011. Williams, Rhaisa Kameela. “Toward a Theorization of Black Maternal Grief as Analytic.” Transforming Anthropology 24, no. 1 (2016): 17–30.

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10 CHANGING PEOPLE, CHANGING CONTENT New Perspectives on Past Peoples

Rebecca Redfern and Thomas Booth Introduction This chapter is an exploration of how ancient individuals are recreated in museum settings and considers how that process has ethical considerations which intersect with wider debates within archaeology, forensic genomics and anthropology, and work to decolonise museum spaces in the Global North.1 It focuses on the Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery in Brighton and also draws on the first author’s experience creating a new prehistory offer for the London Museum. We recognise that we are writing from positions of privilege, as we both have post-graduate degrees, are white middle class and able-bodied individuals, and these aspects of our identity put us in the majority group within both heritage and academia.2 To counter this, our work is informed by Black Feminist Archaeological thought and the need to decentre whiteness in archaeology.3

Prehistory Spaces in English Museums A recent analysis of prehistory displays in English museums4 found that the Victorian educational strategy remains strongly evident in displays, with finds placed within a linear evolutionary framework to show progression from “primitive” societies to civilisation. This choice is widely acknowledged within heritage to be problematic, with alternatives not being chosen, because of the need to respond to the expectations of audiences/visitor groups, in particular school students as part of the National Curriculum, which asserts that students should “know and understand the history of these islands as a coherent, chronological narrative, from the earliest times to the present day,” and between the ages 7–11 years old, “changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age.”5 In England, permanent museum galleries are typically in-place for 10–20 years,6 and reflect the scholarship and museology trends at the time of their creation, but 130

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-13

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generally, they echo how colonialised communities were presented to the public, with past people exoticised and “othered.” Research suggests that this is because museums regard the remote past as politically “safe,” appealing to notions of a “natural order.”7 In many museums, the skeletons and/or burial contexts of prehistoric individuals are displayed, and if reconstructions are present, then these are generally busts created in the late 1990s or early 2000s, and either depict the person in the colour of the clay selected for the bust, or else reconstructed as resembling a person of white European descent, because genetic evidence for pigmentation in ancient humans had not yet been discovered.8 The conservative approach was to assume population continuity and give the bust the same features as the contemporary majority population from the same locale (i.e. white European). This choice was reasonable, in that it reflected the common view that pigmentation in human groups lightened very quickly once they arrived in more northerly latitudes. However, this strategy is uncontroversial, and potentially panders to an uncomplicated narrative of population continuity, which (unwittingly) appeals to and potentially encourages a nationalist narrative of profound connections between biologically essentialist ideas of peoples (particularly their appearance), land and heritage. Facial reconstructions are incredibly costly, and even when digital versions became available, which arguably could be easier to change, they are still expensive investments that have to last for at least a decade. In addition, there is anxiety over the longevity of digital reconstructions, as the increasingly rapid turnover of digital technologies and platforms means it may be difficult to assess how future-proof they are.9 For nearly a decade, prehistory displays have become problematic, as museums are unable to accommodate or refresh content to reflect information about the lack of genetic continuity between prehistoric and present-day British populations, and the evidence that the lighter pigmentation phenotypes only become frequent within the last 4,500 years, and were not present or at low frequencies amongst earlier prehistoric people.10 The situation worsened, after 2015, when there was the “migrant crisis” in Europe, and the lead-up to the Brexit vote in 2016,11 because prehistory was and is being increasingly used by nationalist and right-wing extremists to support their world-views,12 and they challenge the scientific evidence for past population diversity, often directly with researchers on social media.13 Moreover, certain groups of right wing and nationalist extremists have developed a sophisticated understanding of DNA that often surpasses archaeologists or museum professionals. These groups collectively develop ways of rationalising archaeogenetic findings which conflict with their ideologies, and alter their narratives so that the archaeogenetic evidence fits the ideal of an uncomplicated and deep ancestral connection to particular parts of Europe, granting people with that ancestry privileged rights to certain identities and access to heritage.14 This nationalistic view is spurious, as both genetic ancestry and variants linked to particular phenotypes are always changing in any population through time, as a result of genetic admixture, drift and natural selection. These nationalistic viewpoints often see genetic ancestry and genealogical ancestors as interchangeable, when in fact these two concepts begin to diverge beyond a few generations into the past.15 131

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New ancient DNA (aDNA) data gathered over the last decade suggests that populations with recent ancestry in Britain are not substantially genetically descended from the people who lived there 20,000 years ago.16 The earliest point at which the genetic ancestry of the inhabitants of Britain resembles that of the people who live there today is the Chalcolithic, only 4,500 years ago, although this is still not the whole story.17 The genetic ancestries of people who have inhabited Britain since the Mesolithic have been transformed by episodic migrations carrying relatively diverse genetic ancestries.18 These migrations brought both novel genetic ancestries and variants linked to lighter pigmentation, but do not explain the pigmentation characteristics observed in present-day people with recent ancestry from Britain. Genetic variants linked to lighter pigmentation have become prominent in the last 5,000 years, as a result of these migrations and natural selection.19 Therefore, absolute or even substantial associations between genetic ancestries and phenotypic traits are confounded by these sorts of results. This picture is further complicated by the fact that people with recent British ancestry do ultimately derive some of their genetic ancestry from Western European Hunter-Gatherers groups (WHG). These ancient “ghost” populations may have carried genetic variants linked to pigmentation that are absent from any human group alive today, and we cannot know for sure how particular pigmentation variants operated in these genetic environments.20 Problems of epistasis may be addressed to some extent with greater sampling of under-represented contemporary populations, but there is no straightforward way that this could be done for an ancient “ghost” population. Similarly, the dark skin and light eye colour of reconstructions of WHG people defy classification in terms of modern “folk” categories of race, which is indicative of WHG being “ghost” population groups. By unwittingly encouraging this link between pigmentation and ancestry, recent reconstructions are potentially encouraging essentialist associations between race, biology and ancestry.21 However, these links arguably challenge the assumptions and expectations which underlie the norms of racialised thinking. It may be questionable whether it is worthwhile to play on the public’s often racialised understandings of facial reconstructions to communicate a broader truth which subverts common assumptions about race and ancestry. The inability of museums to quickly update or revise content remains problematic, as many people believe that we are living through a “culture war” albeit one exaggerated by politicians and the press.22 This is typified by the recent case of a Neolithic man buried at Stonehenge, whose 2014 reconstruction depicted him being of what today would be commonly recognised as white European descent.23 This reconstruction was criticised by an archaeologist and other twitter users for not reflecting the (later) aDNA evidence, and other threads suggested that it was done to appeal to the majority of visitors.24 The populations who inhabited Britain and most of Europe during the Neolithic carried only one of the two gene variants strongly associated with light skin pigmentation typical of groups with recent ancestry from northern Europe,25 suggesting that they would likely have had intermediate (colloquially referred to as “olive-skinned”) or in some cases “dark” skin pigmentation.26 132

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As the reconstruction of the Stonehenge burial was produced before recent advances in aDNA technology. It is probable that the pigmentation of the reconstruction was informed by the default assumptions we have discussed above. Comments on The Mirror newspaper’s website show that the public still strongly hold onto the belief that all prehistoric people had light skin tones, and that “science” is lying to fit a “woke,” left-wing agenda,”27 underscoring how embedded whiteness is in heritage.28

Visualising Past People Caroline Wilkinson suggests that creating reconstructions of past people treads a path between art (intuitive) and science (method) and how these are balanced or prioritised is an area of intense debate.29 In a forensic setting, the priority is to ensure that the face is recognisable.30 However, as Wilkinson discusses,31 there are a variety of assumptions built into methods and decisions, which are not informed by anything anatomical, meaning there is always some interpretation involved. In a museum, where designers are employed to create exhibition spaces, it is suggested that the aesthetic appeal has more importance, as the purpose is to engage and inspire people with the content. For example, the digital facial reconstruction of a female Beaker burial from Achavanich (Scotland) dating to 2,300–2,145 B.C.E. The artist’s first digital recreation was based on people who inhabit that area today, because sampling for aDNA had not taken place.32 However, subsequent genetic analysis found that it was more probable that she had “intermediate” skin pigmentation – brown eyes and dark, possibly black hair.33 The reconstruction was altered and this new image prompted further (positive) news stories, focusing on the finding that she had generally darker pigmentation characteristics than the contemporary population.34 Initially, because pigmentation data are available, creating a reconstruction appears to be more a straight-forward process. More recent full-scale reconstructions35 are imbued with emotion and are posed such as the new figure of ice-mummy Ötzi,36 which contrasts to previous iterations.37 These reconstructions can provoke an emotional response because the majority of facial signals are widely shared between cultures.38 However, the methods (e.g. craniometrics) used to create reconstructions do have their origins in racist science,39 as does the language used to describe differences between populations, which keep returning to racialised frameworks.40 The application of modern racial categories with roots in 18th century European colonialism to ancient human groups is not only jarringly anachronistic, but also encourages the projection of modern assumptions around race onto past peoples. Forensic DNA work has looked critically at its own approaches, and these concerns should carry-over in the use of aDNA to create reconstructions. In forensic DNA, phenotyping is a technology which predicts phenotypic characteristics (i.e. hair colour) from genotypes, but it is not regarded by the majority of those working in the field as a form of racialised science.41 The work of Amade M’charak and colleagues42 has challenged this belief, showing that this type of DNA work is a “biologization of appearances.”43 Throughout their publications,44 they clearly show that because physical appearance has been racialised for 133

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several hundred years, DNA work is entering a space whereby the viewer is “primed” to view phenotype information in a negative and harmful way.45 Their research has many lessons and parallels for creating reconstructions of past people46: race is embodied by phenotypic traits becoming “othered” by society, which then feeds back into social stereotypes about appearance, heritage and origin; forensic DNA analyses provide information about a suspect population not an individual; and how this information is interpreted, corresponds to how a given society interprets race.47 These important discussions are under-represented in the archaeogenetic literature,48 but appear to be much more frequent on social media. The underlying principles and statistical techniques of many genetic analyses have their origins in 19th and 20th century race science and eugenics, and geneticists have often failed to deal adequately with these troubling legacies.49 Pigmentation represents one aspect of ancient facial reconstructions that until recently was a particular source of uncertainty. Developments in statistical forensic tools that can be used to predict these physical characteristics from DNA, independent of assumptions informed by overall genetic ancestry,50 and advances in aDNA technology have facilitated analysis of genome-wide data,51 including genetic variants that are known to be associated with pigmentation in present-day populations,52 allowing reconstructions to draw on these data.53 Like all other aspects of facial reconstruction, the prediction of pigmentation from DNA comes with uncertainties.54 Human pigmentation is a highly polygenic trait, meaning that it is affected by many genetic variants, with variable effect sizes distributed across the whole genome.55 We do not have an exhaustive catalogue of all genetic variants that affect human pigmentation, and new relevant variants are still being discovered.56 Moreover, our knowledge of variants is biased towards European populations whose genetics are overstudied compared to people with genetic ancestries from other parts of the world. This bias potentially exacerbates problems of epistasis. Some of these uncertainties are mitigated to some extent by the very broad predictive categories used in these types of prediction software.57 These uncertainties around the transferability of pigmentation predictions formed the basis of some of the criticism of the facial reconstruction of Cheddar Man, a 10,000-year-old Mesolithic skeleton recovered from Somerset, who belongs to an ancient “ghost” population of WHG.58 Skin pigmentation in WHGs suggests they are likely to have had variably dark skin but light (blue, green or hazel) eyes.59 The Hirisplex-S predictive algorithm, predicted Cheddar Man would have had blue-green or hazel eyes, brown hair and dark skin, specifically “dark to dark-to-black.”60 His 2018 facial reconstruction received substantial press coverage, stirring-up controversy and comment in both traditional and social media, particularly around the dark skin pigmentation and what it meant for our understanding of identity, belonging and heritage in Britain.61 This national conversation is an extreme example of how reconstructions are viewed in racial terms.62 The fact that the bust proved so controversial speaks to the persistent sense of white British identity, heritage and deep history, tied to an idea of profound continuity of peoples, often understood through racially charged understandings of physical characteristics. A New Scientist article focussed on some of the uncertainties discussed above,63 and is illustrative of how even ostensibly scientifically-minded critiques were still 134

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filtered through the racialised reception. Criticisms and controversies over the bust were concentrated on skin pigmentation far more than eye or hair pigmentation, despite all three having been predicted by the same method, and vulnerable to the same sorts of critiques. Moreover, there has been no comparable controversy around reconstructions of other ancient individuals with lighter pigmentation characteristics, which were informed by the same or similar methods, including those at Brighton Museum.64 Part of the controversy around the inference of pigmentation characteristics is that these methods incorporate both descriptive and racial labels in their outputs, which may be reflective of some of the problematic ways in which forensic anthropology continues to conflate race, phenotype and genetic ancestry. For instance, the Hirisplex-S tool, assigns point probabilities for five different categories based on the Fitzpatrick Scale.65 The incorporation of “black” into the final category both confuses the methodology, which otherwise uses descriptors of pigmentation, and is problematic in the way it ties a particular phenotype to a modern racial category, providing a confusing account of whether we are inferring simply pigmentation or racial affiliation. Forensic phenotyping tools produce predictions that cover a wide range of possibilities, and one of the difficulties in using this information is how to express this potential variation.66 This problem is particularly acute for reconstructions that involve a physical bust, where the expense involved means that only one reconstruction can be created and a specific skin pigment has to be selected. The selection of a particular pigmentation out of the wide range provided by predictive software is always arbitrary to some extent. This represents another way in which digital reconstructions may have an advantage over physical busts. Without an empirical way of deciding what aspect of a pigmentation prediction to favour, it is easy for anybody who, for ideological reasons, is unhappy to criticise reconstructions. When the image of “Whitehawk Woman” was released by Brighton Museum, there was an immediate backlash on social media by far right commentators who believed her skin pigmentation was too dark. aDNA extracted from the skeleton was too poorly preserved to predict skin pigmentation, so the curators used a prediction generated from what was then the highest quality Neolithic genome available from Britain.67 The Hirisplex-S software had predicted “dark to intermediate” skin, with the probability shifted more towards the “dark” category.68 The wide range of possibilities and many of the uncertainties discussed above, provides ample room for conspiracy-minded far right trolls to try to create controversy by arguing that the pigmentation choice was largely a political decision fuelled by the supposed “Culture War.” The reactions to the “Whitehawk Woman” further highlight the racialised way in which reconstructions are received, and how they can subsequently have a radical impact on aspects of individual and national identity.69 It is easy to see why it might be tempting for people commissioning reconstructions of ancient people to sidestep these pitfalls by leaving busts unpainted, using figurative or monochrome representations. While this is a reasonable decision to make, curators have to grapple with the problem that this approach leaves the public exposed to a glut of older ancient reconstructions, where pigmentation was informed by an assumption of profound population continuity. We now know that this 135

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assumption false, and may unintentionally feed nationalistic narratives of indelible links between ancestry, land and heritage. Therefore, while avoiding depicting pigmentation in ancient facial reconstructions may be defensible, it is not a neutral act while outdated reconstructions still exist.

People in Place A smaller permanent exhibition space at the London Museum (Smithfield) will focus on the London region from 350,000 B.C.E. to 1st century C.E. We are still at the early stages of design and have yet to choose an illustrator, but have undertaken audience evaluation.70 The audiences for this gallery are primary schools, families and “self-developers”71; the teachers’ panel explained that 7–8 year olds find prehistory a very challenging topic! Our evaluation revealed that many were unaware that paleogenetics can provide pigmentation information, and were “shocked” that prehistoric people had dark skin tones – when shown an image of a Mesolithic person, they thought the person had African heritage.72 Hyper-realistic digital images challenged past stereotypes, and provoked a strong response from the self-developers.73 They were surprised that these were based on genomics, and found the absence of gender and age stereotypes (i.e. man the hunter) troubling, one commented, “[it] is so real, that I might walk away thinking that’s how it was.” In contrast, teachers and families felt they were very appealing to children, would be valuable in teaching, and wanted the evidence underpinning them to be shared so their authenticity could be understood. These findings echo the work undertaken at Brighton.74 Their advisory group, consisting of members of the local archaeological society and primary school teachers, and museum staff, allowed them to trial the resources and gallery interpretation.75 The group were keen to make sure that the busts were realistic, “so visitors would get a sense of coming face to face with their ancestors and … could have a strong representation of what the people in their City would have looked like.”76 The remains and hyper-realistic busts of seven individuals dating from the Neolithic to the early Medieval period are displayed. The busts and cases work together, so that visitors can understand why the reconstructions might show certain pathologies.77 The scientific evidence underpinning the physical appearance of the people was shared with the sculptor, Oscar Nilsson.78 Explanatory videos are provided in the gallery and online. In their audience evaluation, this supporting information was praised by visitors. Teachers were particularly inspired by the reconstructions, The faces are just breathtaking. In such a divided world … to see stories of actual people, actual DNA … our ancestors, their ancient migration stories will have a huge and long-lasting effect on my class and no doubt on many people.79 Interestingly, in recording where people spent time in the gallery, they found that visitors spent as much time looking at the busts, as using the interactives or talking/ socialising. When people were asked about their visit, the majority felt that they had “met their ancestors” and it was “inclusive and representative of a diverse audience.”80 136

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The gallery team fully embraced these new data and were brave in challenging interpretations about Britain’s past, which have been held since Antiquarian times.81 They knew that it was important for them as a space for educating the public, and for this information to be shared in an accessible and open way. Additionally, it enabled them to create ties to contemporary life, by addressing themes of migration and immigration, which further serves their decolonisation work.82

Conclusion Over the past six years, countries in Global North have experienced many political and social upheavals, whether this is in response to climate change, Black Lives Matter or the COVID-19 pandemic. In periods of instability, societies rely on the past to help them make sense of their present and to give them a sense of security.83 Museums, in their role as spaces of learning and communicators of evidence, are not separate from that process84 – they are political spaces too.85 Looking at social media, it is increasingly clear that the new scientific evidence for a British prehistory that included migrants and people who looked different to the majority of visitors to heritage attractions, is problematic for many. Despite the uncertainties involved, the ability to make caveated pigmentation predictions of prehistoric individuals from their aDNA is preferable to traditional reconstructions. While we know that the facial reconstructions we create are always wrong, we can say that those which incorporate genetic evidence related to pigmentation are “less wrong” than previous attempts. Brighton have shown that historical narratives about prehistory can be challenged, with the majority of visitor evaluations showing that these new perspectives are welcomed. This chapter asserts that the scientific work underpinning content should be more transparent about the history of the methods used, and it must engage with ethical issues raised by studying the population affiliations of past people – these results enter the public domain and are often from publicly funded research, and therefore authors must not side-step the fact that their research “lands” in a racialised space.

Acknowledgements We are grateful to all of the museums across England who have a permanent prehistory gallery and found the time during the pandemic to answer our enquiries about displays. It would not have been possible to write this chapter without the help of Richard Le Saux, Dan Robertson, Su Hepburn and Andy Maxted from Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust, Brighton & Hove. They were incredibly generous with their time and sharing of experiences and documentation. We are also grateful to Dr Paola Ponce (University of York) and Dr Selena Brace (NHM, London) who shared their experience and knowledge about their work on the “Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery” with us. We are also grateful to Dr Fiona McDowall for sharing the results of her doctoral research, and making her presentations available online. 137

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RR would like to thank the Research Centre for Museum and Galleries at the University of Leicester and the Advancing Equity Project at MoL; the “Before London” Expanded Moment and the Learning and Engagement teams at MoL, in particular Kate Sumnall. She is indebted to her parents for providing the childcare needed to complete this writing.

Notes 1 E.g. Paul Edward Montgomery Ramírez, “Colonial representations of race in alternative museums: The ‘African’ of St Benet’s, the ‘Arab’ of Jorvik, and the ‘Black Viking,’” International Journal of Heritage Studies 27, no. 9 (2021): 1–16. 2 Raksha Dave, “Archaeology must open up to become more diverse,” The Guardian 23/05/ 2016. Accessed November 4, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionalsnetwork/2016/may/23/archaeology-must-open-up-become-more-diverse; Hannah Cobb, “Digging Diversity 2 – Interim results,” (2019) Accessed October 27, 2021, https:// hannahcobbarchaeology.wordpress.com/digging-diversity-2/; Hannah Cobb and Karina Croucher, Assembling Archaeology: Teaching, Practice, and Research (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). 3 Maria Franklin, “A Black feminist-inspired archaeology?,” Journal of Social Archaeology 1, no. 1 (2001): 108–125; Rachel J. Watkins, “An Alter(ed)native Perspective on Historical Bioarchaeology,” Historical Archaeology 54, no. 1 (2020): 17–33; Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Black Feminist Archaeology (London: Routledge, 2017). 4 Fiona A. McDowall, “A visual and visitor-based analysis of the presentation of prehistory in museum displays across England,” (2020) PhD diss. (Durham University). Data from 173 institutions and 718 visitor interviews. 5 Department of Education, “National curriculum in England: History programmes of study,” (2013). Accessed October 27, 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/ publications/national-curriculum-in-england-history-programmes-of-study/nationalcurriculum-in-england-history-programmes-of-study 6 Adrian Murphy, “The balancing act of designing permanent exhibitions,” Museums +Heritage Advisor (2015). Accessed October 27, 2021, https://advisor.museumsandheritage. com/features/in-focus-the-balancing-act-of-designing-permanent-exhibitions/ 7 Sue Ballard, “Warriors and weavers: Constructing British Iron Age identities in museums,” in Archaeology and Women: Ancient and Modern Issues, ed. Sue Hamilton, Ruth D. Whitehouse, and Katherine I. Wright (London: Routledge, 2016), 167–182. 8 This is curious given the many decades of research into the evolution of pigmentation in hominids and humans, e.g. Nina G. Jablonski, Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color (London: University of California Press, 2012). 9 Lorna-Jane Richardson, “The future of recording the past: Web archives as a resource for public archaeology,” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1 (2015): S28–S32. 10 I.e.Iñigo Olalde, et al., “Derived immune and ancestral pigmentation alleles in a 7,000year-old Mesolithic European,” Nature 507, no. 7491 (2014): 225–228; Iain Mathieson, et al. “Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians,” Nature 528, no. 7583 (2015): 499–503; Selena Brace, et al., “Ancient genomes indicate population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain,” Nature Ecology & Evolution 3, no. 5 (2019): 765–771; Dan Ju and Iain Mathieson, “The evolution of skin pigmentation-associated variation in West Eurasia,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118, no. 1 (2021): e2009227118. 11 BBC News, “Migrant crisis: One million enter Europe in 2015.” Accessed October 28, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35158769; BBC News, “Brexit: What you need to know about the UK leaving the EU” (2020). Accessed October 28, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32810887

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Changing People, Changing Content 12 See Chris Manias, Race, Science, and the Nation: Reconstructing the Ancient Past in Britain, France and Germany (Oxford: Routledge, 2013). 13 McDowall, Presentation of Prehistory in Museum Displays, 6; Richard Hingley, Chiara Bonacchi, and Kate Sharpe, “‘Are you local? ‘Indigenous Iron Age and mobile Roman and post-Roman populations: Then, now and in-between,” Britannia 49 (2018): 283–302. 14 Peter Bull and Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, “Equivocation and doublespeak in far right-wing discourse: An analysis of Nick Griffin’s performance on BBC’s Question Time,” Text & Talk 34, no. 1 (2014): 1–22; Lorna-Jane Richardson and Thomas Booth, “Response to ‘Brexit, Archaeology and Heritage: Reflections and Agendas,’” Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 27, no. 1 (2017): 25, http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/ diva2:1252352/FULLTEXT01.pdf; Tom J. Booth, “Exploring your inner hades: DNA as mortuary archaeology,” AP Online Journal in Public Archaeology 8, no. 2 (2018): 221. 15 Peter Ralph and Graham Coop, “The geography of recent genetic ancestry across Europe,” PLoS Biology 11, no. 5 (2013): e1001555; Michael D. Edge and Graham Coop, “Donnelly (1983) and the limits of genetic genealogy,” Theoretical Population Biology 133 (2020): 23–24; Iain Mathieson and Aylwyn Scally, “What is ancestry?,” PLoS Genetics 16, no. 3 (2020): e1008624. 16 Iñigo Olalde, et al., “The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe,” Nature 555, no. 7695 (2018): 190–196; Brace, et al., “Population Replacement in Early Neolithic Britain”; Nick Patterson, et al. “Large-scale migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age,” Nature 601, no. 7894 (2022): 588–594. 17 Patterson, et al., “Migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age”; Rui Martiniano, et al. “Genomic signals of migration and continuity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons,” Nature Communications 7 (2016): 10326; Stephan Schiffels, et al., “Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history,” Nature Communications 7 (2016): 10408. 18 The British Mesolithic dates from 9,600 to 4,000 B.C.E. Torsten Günther and Mattias Jakobsson, “Genes mirror migrations and cultures in prehistoric Europe—a population genomic perspective,” Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 41 (2016): 115–123; Olalde, et al., “Genome-wide patterns”; Brace, et al., “Population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain”; Patterson, et al., “Migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age.” 19 Gamba, et al., “Genome flux”; Matheison, et al., “230 ancient Eurasians”; Ju and Mathieson, “Skin-pigmentation in West Eurasia”; Patterson, et al., “ Migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age.” 20 Ju and Mathieson, “Skin-pigmentation in West Eurasia”; Skoglund and Mathieson, “Ancient genomics.” 21 M’charek, “Tentacular faces,” 373. 22 Bobby Duffy, Kirstie Hewlett, George Murkin, Rebecca Benson, Rachel Hesketh, Ben Page, Gideon Skinner and Glenn Gottfried, “Culture wars in the UK: Division and connection, Kings College London,” Policy Institute Kings College London, and Ipsos MORI (2021). Accessed September 1, 2021, https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/ assets/culture-wars-in-the-uk-division-and-connection.pdf 23 The reconstruction pre-dates the new genomic work on prehistoric Britain. 24 John Bett, “‘Surprisingly white’ facial reconstruction of 5,500-year-old man sparks debate,” in The Mirror (2021). Accessed October 28, 2021. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weirdnews/surprisngly-white-facial-reconstruction-5500-25136544. In 2018–2019, 75.4% of visitors to heritage sites identified as being of white ethnicity. Department of Digital Culture Media and Sport. “Visits to heritage sites” (2021). Accessed October 20, 2021, https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/culture-andcommunity/culture-and-heritage/adults-visiting-heritage-sites/latest 25 Cristina Gamba, et al., “Genome flux and stasis in a five millennium transect of European prehistory,” Nature Communications 5 (2014): 5257; Gülşah M.Kılınç, et al., “Archaeogenomic

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analysis of the first steps of Neolithization in Anatolia and the Aegean,” Proceedings: Biological Sciences/The Royal Society 284, no. 27 (2017): 1867; Brace, et al., “Population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain.” Our current understanding suggests that the majority of Neolithic people had brown or black hair and brown eyes. As defined by the Fitzpatrick Scale, on Wikipedia. Accessed May 2, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale Bett, “Surprisingly white.” Arts Council, “Equality and diversity within the arts and culture sector in England.” Accessed May 2, 2022, https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/ Equality_and_diversity_within_the_arts_and_cultural_sector_in_England.pdf Caroline Wilkinson, “Facial anthropology and reconstruction,” in Forensic Human Identification: An Introduction, ed. Tim Thompson and Sue Black (Boca Raton: Florida CRC Press Inc., 2007), 231–256; Caroline Wilkinson, Forensic Facial Reconstruction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Royal Anthropological Institute, “What is forensic anthropology?” Accessed October 29, 2021, https://therai.org.uk/forensic-anthropology/what-is-forensic-anthropology Wilkinson, Facial Anthropology; Wilkinson, Facial Reconstruction. Jason Daley, “Meet Ava, a Bronze Age Woman from the Scottish Highlands,” Smithsonian Magazine (2016). Accessed February 25, 2022, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/meet-ava-bronze-age-woman-scottish-highlands-180959988/ Maya Hoole, Alison Sheridan, Angela Boyle, and Thomas Booth, “‘Ava’: A Beakerassociated woman from a cist at Achavanich, Highland, and the story of her (re-)discovery and subsequent study,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 147 (2016): 73–118; Olalde, et al. “Genome-wide patterns.” Jason Daley, “No, wait, this is the real Ava, a Bronze Age woman from the Scottish Highlands [online],” Smithsonian Magazine (2018). Accessed February 25, 2022, https:// www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/no-wait-real-ava-bronze-age-woman-scottishhighlands-180970950/ The full-body reconstructions of Neanderthal and early modern humans at the Natural History Museum (London) by Adrie and Alfons Kennis, typify the move away from earlier reconstructions which gave people a neutral expression. Created by the Kennis’. South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. “Ötzi. Life. Science. Fiction. Reality,” (2011–2013). Accessed October 29, 2021, https://www.iceman.it/en/ exhibition-archive/ The previous reconstruction was, in Robb’s (2009, 120) phrasing – “Ice man as technician.” John Robb, “Towards a critical Ötziography: inventing prehistoric bodies,” Social Bodies, ed. Helen Lambert and Mary McDonald (USA: Berghahn Books, 2009), 100–128. Susanne Kaiser, “Facial expressions as indicators of ‘functional’ and ‘dysfunctional’ emotional processes,” in The Human Face, ed. Mary Katsikitis (Boston, MA: Springer, 2003), 235–253. Maciej Henneberg, Ellie Simpson, and Carl Stephan, “Human face in biological anthropology: Craniometry, evolution and forensic identification,” in The Human Face, ed. Mary Katsikitis (Boston, MA: Springer, 2003), 29–48. Tina Lasisi, “The constraints of racialization: How classification and valuation hinder scientific research on human variation,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 175, no. 2 (2021): 376–386. Roos Hopman, “The face as folded object: Race and the problems with ‘progress’ in forensic DNA phenotyping,” in Social Studies of Science (2021); Katrina Karkazis and Rebecca Jordan-Young, “Sensing race as a ghost variable in science, technology, and medicine,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 45, no. 5 (2020): 763–778; Rafaela Granja and Helena Machado, “Forensic DNA phenotyping and its politics of legitimation and contestation: Views of forensic geneticists in Europe,” Social Studies of Science (2020): 0306312720945033; Catherine Bliss, Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice

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(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012); Catherine Bliss, Social by Nature: The Promise and Peril of Sociogenomics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018); Nadia Abu El-Haj, “The genetic reinscription of race,” Annual Review of Anthropology 36 (2007): 283–300; David Skinner, “Forensic genetics and the prediction of race: What is the problem?,” BioSocieties 15, no. 3 (2020): 329–349. RaceFaceID. Accessed October 30, 2021, https://race-face-id.eu/ Amade M’charek, “Tentacular faces: Race and the return of the phenotype in forensic identification,” American Anthropologist 122, no. 2 (2020): 372. Amade M’charek, “Silent witness, articulate collective: DNA evidence and the inference of visible traits,” Bioethics 22, no. 9 (2008): 519–528; Amade M’charek, “Beyond fact or fiction: On the materiality of race in practice,” Cultural Anthropology 28, no. 3 (2013): 420–442; Amade M’charek and Katharina Schramm, “Encountering the face—unraveling race,” American Anthropologist 122, no. 2 (2020): 321–326; Amade M’charek, “Traces of race, roots of gender: A genetic history,” The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories, ed. Janell Hobson (London: Routledge, 2021), 297–309; Amade M’charek, Katharina Schramm and David Skinner, “Topologies of race: Doing territory, population and identity in Europe,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 39, no. 4 (2014): 468–487; Amade M’charek, Victor Toom and Lisette Jong, “The trouble with race in forensic identification,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 45, no. 5 (2020): 804–828. M’charek, “Tentacular faces,” 373. Forensic DNA phenotyping uses biogeographical ancestry to make sense of its data, and assumes there is a causal relationship between phenotype and genotype – the former also applies to forensic anthropology methods to estimate population affiliation; Marin A. Pilloud and Joseph T. Hefner, Biological Distance Analysis: Forensic and Bioarchaeological Perspectives (London: Academic Press, 2016); Henneberg, Simpson and Stephan, “Human face.” Roos Hopman and Amade M’charek, “Facing the unknown suspect: Forensic DNA phenotyping and the oscillation between the individual and the collective,” BioSocieties 15, no. 3 (2020): 438–462; M’charek, et al., “Forensic identification”; M’charek, “Tentacular faces.” See also, Queirós, Filipa. “The (re) invocation of race in forensic genetics through forensic DNA phenotyping technology,” in Racism and Racial Surveillance: Modernity Matters, ed. Sheila Khan, Nazir A. Can and Helena Machado (London: Routledge, 2021), 199–222. E.g. Sarah Abel and Marcela Sandoval-Velasco, “Crossing disciplinary lines: Reconciling social and genomic perspectives on the histories and legacies of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans,” New Genetics and Society 35, no. 2 (2016): 149–185; Catherine J. Frieman and Daniela Hofmann, “Present pasts in the archaeology of genetics, identity, and migration in Europe: A critical essay,” World Archaeology 51, no. 4 (2019): 528–545; Naomi Sykes, Matthew Spriggs and Allowen Evin, “Beyond curse or blessing: The opportunities and challenges of aDNA analysis,” World Archaeology 51, no. 4 (2019): 503–516. See Michael L. Blakey, “On the biodeterministic imagination,” Archaeological Dialogues 27, no. 1 (2020): 1–16, and responses. Michael Yudell, Dorothy Roberts, Rob DeSalle, and Sarah Tishkoff, “Taking race out of human genetics,” Science 351, no. 6273 (2016): 564–565; Ewan Birney, Michael Inouye, Jennifer Raff, Adam Rutherford, and Aylwyn Scally, “The language of race, ethnicity, and ancestry in human genetic research,” arXiv [q-bio.PE] (2021), https://doi.org/10.48550/ arXiv.2106.10041 Susan Walsh, et al., “Developmental validation of the HIrisPlex system: DNA-based eye and hair colour prediction for forensic and anthropological usage,” Forensic Science International: Genetics 9 (2014): 150–161; Susan Walsh, et al., “Global skin colour prediction from DNA,” Human Genetics 136, no. 7 (2017): 847–863; Lakshmi Chaitanya, et al., “The HIrisPlex-S system for eye, hair and skin colour prediction from DNA: Introduction and forensic developmental validation,” Forensic Science International: Genetics 35 (2018): 123–135.

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Rebecca Redfern and Thomas Booth 51 I.e. data distributed across all 23 pairs of chromosomes. Pontus Skoglund and Iain Mathieson, “Ancient genomics of modern humans: The first decade,” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 19 (2018): 381–404. 52 Gamba, et al., “Genome flux.”; Olalde, et al., “Ancestral pigmentation alleles.” 53 Hoole, et al., “Ava.”; Brace, et al., “Population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain”; Natalija Kashuba, Emrah Kırdök, Hege Damlien, Mikael A. Manninen, Bengt Nordqvist, Per Persson and Anders Götherström, “Ancient DNA from mastics solidifies connection between material culture and genetics of Mesolithic hunter–gatherers in Scandinavia,” Communications Biology 2, no. 1 (2019): 1–10. 54 Kevin Walsh, The Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the Post-Modern World (London: Routledge, 2002); Chaitanya, et al., “The HIrisPlex-S system.”; Jeppe D. Andersen, et al., “Skin pigmentation and genetic variants in an admixed Brazilian population of primarily European ancestry,” International Journal of Legal Medicine 134, no. 5 (2020): 1569–1579; Maria-Alexandra Katsara, et al., “Evaluation of supervised machinelearning methods for predicting appearance traits from DNA,” Forensic Science International: Genetics 53 (2021): 102507. 55 Candille, et al., “Genome-wide association studies of quantitatively measured skin, hair, and eye pigmentation in four European populations,” PloS One 7 (10) (2012): e48294; Beleza, et al., “Genetic architecture of skin and eye color in an African-European admixed population,” PLoS Genetics 9, no. 3 (2013): e1003372; Lida Rawofi, et al., “Genome-wide association study of pigmentary traits (skin and iris color) in individuals of East Asian ancestry,” PeerJ 5 (2017): e3951, 0.7717/peerj.3951; Tina Lasisi and Mark D. Shriver, “Focus on African diversity confirms complexity of skin pigmentation genetics,” Genome Biology 19 (2018): 13; Michael D., et al., “Genome-wide study of hair colour in UK Biobank explains most of the SNP heritability,” Nature Communications 9, no. 1 (2018): 5271; Manjari Jonnalagadda, et al., “A genome-wide association study of skin and iris pigmentation among individuals of South Asian Ancestry,” Genome Biology and Evolution 11, no. 4 (2019): 1066–1076; Frida LonaDurazo, et al., “Meta-analysis of GWA studies provides new insights on the genetic architecture of skin pigmentation in recently admixed populations,” BMC Genetics 20, no. 1 (2019): 59; Ellen E. Quillen, “Shades of complexity: New perspectives on the evolution and genetic architecture of human skin,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 168, no. 67 (2019): 4–26; Nina G. Jablonski, “The evolution of human skin pigmentation involved the interactions of genetic, environmental, and cultural variables,” Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research 34, no. 4 (2021): 707–729; Ju and Mathieson, “Skin-pigmentation in West Eurasia.” 56 Nicholas G. Crawford, et al., “Loci associated with skin pigmentation identified in African populations,” Science 358 (2017): 6365: eaan8433. 57 Chaitanya, et al., “The HIrisPlex-S system.” 58 Olalde, et al., “ Ancestral pigmentation alleles.”; Eppie R. Jones, et al., “Upper Palaeolithic genomes reveal deep roots of modern Eurasians,” Nature Communications 6 (2017): 8912; Chaitanya, et al., “The HIrisPlex-S system.”; Kashuba, et al., “Ancient DNA from mastics.”; Lara M. Cassidy, et al., “A dynastic elite in monumental Neolithic society,” Nature 582, no. 2020 (7812): 384–388. 59 Gamba, et al., “Genome flux.”; Olalde, et al., “Ancestral pigmentation alleles.”; Iain Mathieson, et al., “Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians,” Nature 528 (2015): 499–503; Cassidy, et al., “Monumental Neolithic society.” 60 The algorithm uses Machine Learning to make predictions of hair eye and skin pigmentation based on the state of 41 genetic variants. Skin colour terms defined by the Fitzpatrick scale; Brace, et al., “Population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain.” 61 The bust was created by the Kennis twins. E.g. Arathi Prasad, “Thanks to Cheddar Man, I feel more comfortable as a brown Briton,” The Guardian, February 12, 2018. Accessed May 11, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/12/cheddarman-brown-briton-national-identity-white-skin 62 M’charek. “Tentacular faces.”

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Changing People, Changing Content 63 Colin Barras, “Ancient ‘dark-skinned’ Briton Cheddar Man find may not be true,” New Scientist (2018). Accessed March 3, 2022, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2161867ancient-dark-skinned-briton-cheddar-man-find-may-not-be-true/ 64 Torsten Günther, et al., “Genomics of Mesolithic Scandinavia reveal colonization routes and high-latitude adaptation,” bioRxiv (2017): 164400; Hoole, et al., “Ava.”; Vanessa Villalba-Mouco, et al., “Genomic transformation and social organization during the Copper Age–Bronze Age transition in southern Iberia,” Science Advances 7, no. 47 (2021): eabi7038. It is not clear the extent to which the amount of coverage reflects the communications resource and reputation compared to a local/regional museum. 65 Very pale, pale, intermediate, dark and dark-to-black. Chaitanya, et al., “The HIrisPlex-S system.”; Walsh, et al., “DNA-based eye and hair colour prediction for forensic and anthropological usage.”; Walsh, et al., “Global skin colour.” 66 Walsh, et al., “Global skin colour.”; Chaitanya, et al., “The HIrisPlex-S system.” 67 Brace, et al., “Population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain.” 68 Ibid. 69 M’charek, “Tentacular faces,” 373. 70 This has happened remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as is common practice in the heritage sector, undertaken by an external company. They showed the audience groups widely available images of prehistoric people, such as those by English Heritage and Tom Björkland. 71 “Self-developers are described as a slightly older, perhaps more conservative group. They are keen to learn new things but value tradition at the same time.” Antony Robbins, “Segmenting a cultural audience,” RESEARCHLIVE (2014). Accessed October 30, 2021, https://www.research-live.com/article/opinion/segmenting-a-cultural-audience/id/ 4012189 72 As raised above, this lack of awareness is being utilised by those who hold nationalist and anti-immigration views. Chiara Bonacchi and Marta Krzyzanska, “Heritage-based tribalism in Big Data ecologies: Deploying origin myths for antagonistic othering,” Big Data & Society 8, no. 1 (2021): 20539517211003310. 73 For example: individuals whose gender was not signalled by modern notions of gendered physiques or hair length/styles; women smelting ores; and showed children sleeping or hunting. 74 It has received many accolades and awards for the display. Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust, Brighton & Hove, “The Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery,” (2021). Accessed November 1, 2021, https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/brighton/exhibitions-displays/theelaine-evans-archaeology-gallery/; Carly Hilts, “Meeting Brighton’s ancestors,” (2019). Accessed November 1, 2021, https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/reviews/museum/ meeting-brightons-ancestors.htm 75 Richard Le Saux, Daniel Robertson, and Sue Hepburn, “Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery, Brighton Museums,” (2021). Accessed September 9, 2021, https:// brightonmuseums.org.uk/brighton/exhibitions-displays/the-elaine-evans-archaeologygallery/ 76 Richard Le Saux, Daniel Robertson, and Sue Hepburn, “Elaine Evans.” Increasingly, the use of “ancestors” to describe prehistoric British populations is proving problematic. In the first instance, its use may unintentionally imply that only those people with a long-term ancestral stake in a particular place should be interested in or even have access to any associated heritage, a concept which could be highly exclusive. In any case, in terms of genetics, people who have recent ancestries from Britain are genetically dissimilar from people who inhabited Britain prior to 2500 BC. Genealogical ancestry and genetic ancestry diverge from one another very quickly meaning that past a couple of millennia into the past everybody, no matter their genetic ancestry has a myriad of genealogical ancestors distributed all over the world (Ralph and Coop, “Recent genetic ancestry.”). Some neo-pagans use the term to reflect their connection to prehistoric monuments and people, a perspective that appears to have been

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adopted and in some cases misappropriated from Indigenous communities. Robert J. Wallis and Jenny Blain, “Sites, sacredness, and stories: Interactions of archaeology and contemporary Paganism,” Folklore 114, no. 3 (2003): 307–321; Robert J. Wallis and Jenny Blain, “‘Sacred’ sites, artefacts and museum collections: Pagan engagements with archaeology in Britain,” Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, ed. Murphy Pizza and James Lewis (Amsterdam: Brill, 2009), 591–610; Jenny Blain and Robert J. Wallis, “Pasts and pagan practices: Moving beyond Stonehenge,” Public Archaeology 5, no. 4 (2006): 211–222; Piotr Bienkowski and Elizabeth Burns Coleman, “Contesting ‘claims’ on human remains: Which traditions are treated as legitimate and why?,” Global Ancestors: Understanding the Shared Humanity of Our Ancestors, ed. Margaret Clegg, et al. (Oxford: Oxbow Books), 81–103. The remains were studied by a bioarchaeologist, and experts in stable isotope and ancient DNA analyses ( https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/brighton/exhibitions-displays/theelaine-evans-archaeology-gallery/science/). Oscar Nilsson, personal website (2019). Accessed October 31, 2021, https://www. odnilsson.com/ Le Saux, Robertson and Hepburn, “Elaine Evans.” Ibid. Manias, “Race, Science, and the Nation.” Le Saux, Robertson and Hepburn, “Elaine Evans.” Manias, “Race, Science, and the Nation.” Irene Pérez López, “Museum education and the epistemological turn,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, ed. George Noblit, et al. (2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/ acrefore/9780190264093.013.1441. Amongst others, Walsh, The Representation of the Past.

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Rebecca Redfern and Thomas Booth Hajdu, T. Szeniczey, J. Dani, Z. Bernert, M. Hoole, O. Cheronet, D. Keating, P. Velemínský, M. Dobeš, F. Candilio, F. Brown, R. F. Fernández, A.-M. Herrero-Corral, S. Tusa, E. Carnieri, L. Lentini, A. Valenti, A. Zanini, C. Waddington, G. Delibes, E. Guerra-Doce, B. Neil, M. Brittain, M. Luke, R. Mortimer, J. Desideri, M. Besse, G. Brücken, M. Furmanek, A. Hałuszko, M. Mackiewicz, A. Rapiński, S. Leach, I. Soriano, K. T. Lillios, J. L. Cardoso, M. P. Pearson, P. Włodarczak, T. D. Price, P. Prieto, P.-J. Rey, R. Risch, M. A. Rojo Guerra, A. Schmitt, J. Serralongue, A. M. Silva, V. Smrčka, L. Vergnaud, J. Zilhão, D. Caramelli, T. Higham, M. G. Thomas, D. J. Kennett, H. Fokkens, V. Heyd, A. Sheridan, K.-G. Sjögren, P. W. Stockhammer, J. Krause, R. Pinhasi, W. Haak, I. Barnes, C. Lalueza-Fox, and D. Reich “The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe.” Nature 555, no. 7695 (2018): 190–196. 10.1038/nature25738. Patterson, Nick, M. Isakov, T. Booth, L. Büster, C.-E. Fischer, I. Olalde, H. Ringbauer, A. Akbari, O. Cheronet, M. Bleasdale, N. Adamski, E. Altena, R. Bernardos, S. Brace, N. Broomandkhoshbacht, K. Callan, F. Candilio, B. Culleton, E. Curtis, L. Demetz, K. S. D. Carlson, C. J. Edwards, D. M. Fernandes, M. G. B. Foody, S. Freilich, H. Goodchild, A. Kearns, A. M. Lawson, I. Lazaridis, M. Mah, S. Mallick, K. Mandl, A. Micco, M. Michel, G. B. Morante, J. Oppenheimer, K. T. Özdoğan, L. Qiu, C. Schattke, K. Stewardson, J. N. Workman, F. Zalzala, Z. Zhang, B. Agustí, T. Allen, K. Almássy, L. Amkreutz, A. Ash, C. Baillif-Ducros, A. Barclay, L. Bartosiewicz, K. Baxter, Z. Bernert, J. Blažek, M. Bodružić, P. Boissinot, C. Bonsall, P. Bradley, M. Brittain, A. Brookes, F. Brown, L. Brown, R. Brunning, C. Budd, J. Burmaz, S. Canet, S. Carnicero-Cáceres, M. Čaušević-Bully, A. Chamberlain, S. Chauvin, S. Clough, N. Čondić, A. Coppa, O. Craig, M. Črešnar, V. Cummings, S. Czifra, A. Danielisová, R. Daniels, A. Davies, P. de Jersey, J. Deacon, C. Deminger, P. W. Ditchfield, M. Dizdar, M. Dobeš, M. Dobisíková, L. Domboróczki, G. Drinkall, A. Đukić, M. Ernée, C. Evans, J. Evans, M. Fernández-Götz, S. Filipović, A. Fitzpatrick, H. Fokkens, C. Fowler, A. Fox, Z. Gallina, M. Gamble, M. R. González Morales, B. González-Rabanal, A. Green, K. Gyenesei, D. Habermehl, T. Hajdu, D. Hamilton, J. Harris, C. Hayden, J. Hendriks, B. Hernu, G. Hey, M. Horňák, G. Ilon, E. Istvánovits, A. M. Jones, M. B. Kavur, K. Kazek, R. A. Kenyon, A. Khreisheh, V. Kiss, J. Kleijne, M. Knight, L. M. Kootker, P. F. Kovács, A. Kozubová, G. Kulcsár, V. Kulcsár, C. Le Pennec, M. Legge, M. Leivers, L. Loe, O. López-Costas, T. Lord, D. Los, J. Lyall, A. B. Marín-Arroyo, P. Mason, D. Matošević, A. Maxted, L. McIntyre, J. McKinley, K. McSweeney, B. Meijlink, B. G. Mende, M. Menđušić, M. Metlička, S. Meyer, K. Mihovilić, L. Milasinovic, S. Minnitt, J. Moore, G. Morley, G. Mullan, M. Musilová, B. Neil, R. Nicholls, M. Novak, M. Pala, M. Papworth, C. Paresys, R. Patten, D. Perkić, K. Pesti, A. Petit, K. Petriščáková, C. Pichon, C. Pickard, Z. Pilling, T. D. Price, S. Radović, R. Redfern, B. Resutík, D. T. Rhodes, M. B. Richards, A. Roberts, J. Roefstra, P. Sankot, A. Šefčáková, A. Sheridan, S. Skae, M. Šmolíková, K. Somogyi, Á. Somogyvári, M. Stephens, G. Szabó, A. Szécsényi-Nagy, T. Szeniczey, J. Tabor, K. Tankó, C. T. Maria, R. Terry, B. Teržan, M. Teschler-Nicola, J. F. Torres-Martínez, J. Trapp, R. Turle, F. Ujvári, M. van der Heiden, P. Veleminsky, B. Veselka, Z. Vytlačil, C. Waddington, P. Ware, P. Wilkinson, L. Wilson, R. Wiseman, E. Young, J. Zaninović, A. Žitňan, C. Lalueza-Fox, P. de Knijff, I. Barnes, P. Halkon, M. G. Thomas, D. J. Kennett, B. Cunliffe, M. Lillie, N. Rohland, R. Pinhasi, I. Armit, and D. Reich. “Large-scale migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age.” Nature 601, no. 7894 (2022): 588–594. 10.1038/s41586021-04287-4. Pérez López, Irene. “Museum education and the epistemological turn.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, edited by George Noblit, Dennis Beach, Derek Gladwin, Kathy Hytten, Farida Khan, Yuto Kitamura, Jo Lampert, Allan Luke, William T. Pink, Brad J. Porfilio, Paula Groves Price, Williams M. Reynolds, Pratim Sengupta, Umesh Sharma, Diana Vidal. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. 10.1093/acrefore/97801 90264093.013.1441.

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Changing People, Changing Content Pilloud, Marin A., and Joseph T. Hefner. Biological Distance Analysis: Forensic and Bioarchaeological Perspectives. London: Academic Press, 2016. Prasad, Arathi. “Thanks to Cheddar Man, I feel more comfortable as a brown Briton.” The Guardian. February 12, 2018. Accessed May 11, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2018/feb/12/cheddar-man-brown-briton-national-identity-white-skin. Queirós, Filipa. “The (re)invocation of race in forensic genetics through forensic DNA phenotyping technology.” In Racism and Racial Surveillance: Modernity Matters, edited by Sheila Khan, Nazir A. Can, and Helena Machado, 199–222. London: Routledge, 2021. RaceFaceID. n.d. Accessed October 30, 2021. https://race-face-id.eu/. Ralph, Peter, and Graham Coop. “The geography of recent genetic ancestry across Europe.” PLoS Biology 11, no. 5 (2013): e1001555. 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001555. Rawofi, Lida, Melissa Edwards, S. Le Krithika, Cha Phuong, David Cha, Zhaeohui Yang, Yanyun Ma, Jiucun Wang, Bing Su, Li Jin, Heather L. Norton, and Esteban J. Parra. “Genome-wide association study of pigmentary traits (skin and iris color) in individuals of East Asian ancestry.” PeerJ 5 (2017): e3951, 0.7717/peerj.3951. Richardson, Lorna-Jane. “The future of recording the past: Web archives as a resource for public archaeology.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2, no. 1 (2015): S28–S32. 10.155 8/jca.v2i1.28284. Richardson, Lorna-Jane, and Thomas Booth. “Response to ‘Brexit, Archaeology and Heritage: Reflections and Agendas.’” Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 27, no. 1 (2017): 25. http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1252352/FULLTEXT01.pdf. Robb, John. “Towards a critical Ötziography: Inventing prehistoric bodies.” In Social Bodies, edited by Helen Lambert and Mary McDonald, 100–128. USA: Berghahn Books, 2009. Robbins, Antony. “Segmenting a cultural audience.” RESEARCHLIVE. 2014. Accessed October 30, 2021. https://www.research-live.com/article/opinion/segmenting-acultural-audience/id/4012189. Royal Anthropological Institute. n.d. “What is forensic anthropology?” Accessed October 29, 2021. https://therai.org.uk/forensic-anthropology/what-is-forensic-anthropology. Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust, Brighton & Hove. 2021. “The Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery.” Accessed November 1, 2021. https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/brighton/ exhibitions-displays/the-elaine-evans-archaeology-gallery/. Schiffels, Stephan, Wolfgang Haak, Pirita Paajanen, Bastien Llamas, Elizabeth Popescu, Louise Loe, Rachel Clarke, Alice Lyons, Richard Mortimer, Duncan Sayer, Chris Tyler-Smith, Alan Cooper, and Richard Durbin. “Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history.” Nature Communications 7 (2016): 10408. 10. 1038/ncomms10408. Skinner, David. “Forensic genetics and the prediction of race: What is the problem?” BioSocieties 15, no. 3 (2020): 329–349. Skoglund, Pontus, and Iain Mathieson. “Ancient genomics of modern humans: The first decade.” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 19 (2018): 381–404. 10.1146/ annurev-genom-083117-021749. South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. 2011-13. “Ötzi. Life. Science. Fiction. Reality.” Accessed October 29, 2021. https://www.iceman.it/en/exhibition-archive/. Sykes, Naomi, Matthew Spriggs, and Allowen Evin. “Beyond curse or blessing: The opportunities and challenges of aDNA analysis.” World Archaeology 51, no. 4 (2019): 503–516. 10.1080/00438243.2019.1741970. Villalba-Mouco, Vanessa, Camilla Oliart, Cristina Rihuete-Herrada, Ainash Childebayeva, Adam B. Rohrlach, María Inés Fregeiro, Eva Celdrán Beltrán, E.C., Carlos VelascoFelipe, Franziska Aron, Marie Himmel, Caecilia Freund, Kurt W. Alt, Domingo C. Salazar-García, Gabriel García Atiénzar, Ma P. de Miguel Ibáñez, Mauro S. Hernández Pérez, Virginia Barciela, Alejandro Romero, Juana Ponce, Andrés Martínez, Joaquín Lomba, Jorge Soler, Ana Pujante Martínez, Azucena Avilés Fernández, María HaberUriarte, Consuelo Roca de Togores Muñoz, Iñigo Olalde, Carles Lalueza-Fox, David

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Rebecca Redfern and Thomas Booth Reich, Johannes Krause, Leonardo García Sanjuán, Vicente Lull, Rafael Micó, Roberto Risch, and Wolfgang Haak. “Genomic transformation and social organization during the Copper Age–Bronze Age transition in southern Iberia.” Science Advances 7, no. 47 (2021): eabi7038. 10.1126/sciadv.abi7038. Wallis, Robert J., and Jenny Blain. “‘Sacred’ sites, artefacts and museum collections: Pagan engagements with archaeology in Britain.” In Handbook of Contemporary Paganism, edited by Murphy Pizza and James Lewis, 591–610. Amsterdam: Brill, 2009. Wallis, Robert J., and Jenny Blain. “Sites, sacredness, and stories: Interactions of archaeology and contemporary Paganism.” Folklore 114, no. 3 (2003): 307–321. Walsh, Kevin. The Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the Post-Modern World. London: Routledge, 2002. Walsh, Susan, Lakshmi Chaitanya, Krystal Breslin, Charanya Muralidharan, Agnieszka Bronikowska, Ewelina Pośpiech, Julia Koller, Leda Kovatsi, Andreas Wollstein, Wojciech Branicki, Fan Liu, and Manfred Kayser. “Global skin colour prediction from DNA.” Human Genetics 136, no. 7 (2017): 847–863. Walsh, Susan, Lakshmi Chaitanya, Lindy Clarisse, Laura Wirken, Jolanta Draus-Barini, Leda Kovatsi, Hitoshi Maeda, Takaki Ishikawa, Titia Sijen, Peter de Knijff, Wojciech Branicki, Fan Liu, and Manfred Kayser. “Developmental validation of the HIrisPlex system: DNA-based eye and hair colour prediction for forensic and anthropological usage.” Forensic Science International: Genetics 9 (2014): 150–161. Watkins, Rachel J. “An alter(ed)native perspective on historical bioarchaeology.” Historical Archaeology 54, no. 1 (2020): 17–33. 10.1007/s41636-019-00224-5. Wilkinson, Caroline. “Facial anthropology and reconstruction.” In Forensic Human Identification: An Introduction, edited by Tim Thompson and Sue Black, 231–256. Boca Raton: Florida CRC Press Inc, 2007. Wilkinson, Caroline. Forensic Facial Reconstruction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Yudell, Michael, Dorothy Roberts, Rob DeSalle, Rob, and Sarah Tishkoff. “Taking race out of human genetics.” Science 351, no. 6273 (2016): 564–565.

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11 TRANSFORMING MEMENTO MORI A Contemporary Lens

Charles Clary Introduction Death is a constant reminder of the inevitability and preciousness of life. This journey is one we must all take yet can only experience as a lowly traveler into the great unknown. There are many cultural “answers” as to what comes next, but there are no concrete certainties to answer that ultimate question. It is this uncertainty that makes death and mourning a taboo topic to discuss in many American households. This chapter explores the use of visual arts to assuage grief and convey feeling after a loss by a variety of artists, and concludes with the personal story of the author’s loss and use of his artist practice to process his own grief and bereavement.

Death and Grief in the Visual Arts Artists have explored death and mourning in various iterations throughout history. It has been the subject of fascination and fantastical manifestations from many practi­ tioners. Often works of art about death and dying depict the personification of death, making the intangible tangible. While the Black Death ravaged Europe in the six­ teenth century, Pieter Bruegel explored death through the depiction of the horrors of the human condition and the struggle just to survive by painting The Triumph of Death. His epic depictions confront mortality and the tenuous thread between this life and the next. The painting confronts the inevitability of our own mortality no matter what place we hold in society whether it is young or old, rich or poor, weak or strong, nobility or peasant (see Figure 11.1).1 Keith Haring was a prominent graffiti artist that created playful yet graphic imagery that addressed the Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) pandemic of the 1980s. His work confronted this pandemic in a symbolic way, depicting the figure as an icon, similar to that of bathroom signage, having no gender, race, or persona. This neutralized the argument that this was only a disease of gay men, and it helped to DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-14

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Figure 11.1

The Triumph of Death, oil panel painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted c. 1562.

humanize those who were ill. His art brought much needed awareness to a disease that many did not understand. During his own fight with HIV/AIDS, he became an outspoken advocate for ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), and many other organizations.2 Nan Goldin explored the slippage of one’s life through intimate photography. One of her most emotional works was a series of photographs documenting one couples’ excruciating experience with HIV/AIDS, and the transformation that occurred from the subject’s diagnosis to death. In the poignant image titled Gotscho Kissing Gilles we are witnesses to the passing of Gilles as his partner tenderly kisses him lightly on the forehead for one last goodbye.3 Goldin’s photographs are like frozen moments in time capturing the essence of what it is to love and all that is lost in an instant. Teresa Margolles explores the notion of what it means to be immersed in death through interactive spaces. One of her most powerful works is her installation Vaporized. In this installation, Margolis created a fog-like mist that the viewer becomes enveloped in as they traverse the space. The viewer becomes a ghostly apparition meandering the void as they navigate themselves through the exhibition. This is no ordinary mist however; it is the water that was used to wash corpses from a morgue in Mexico City. In this piece both the living and the dead confront one another in the depths of the unknown, and the installation forces the viewer to confront their own mortality.4 Felix Gonzalez-Torres recalls the loss of his beloved through interactive installa­ tions inviting the viewer to participate in the experience. In Gonzalez-Torres’ 154

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installation piece titled Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) a mound of candy weighing roughly 175 pounds, sits in the corner of the gallery. Viewers of the work are en­ couraged to take a piece of candy, eventually leaving a void within the gallery. This transition represents his partner, Ross Laycock, as well as his experience and inevitable death from HIV/AIDS and the wasting away of oneself as the body slowly succumbs to the disease; at his death Laycock weighed 175 pounds.5 These artists have an immense influence on the way I explore my own work, and they have transformed the way I think about grief and trauma. Their work assisted me through my own traumas and gave voice to my personal struggles. While mourning art has been around for centuries, it has evolved and continues to be a way to remember and carry with us the memory of those we have lost. These tokens of mourning, whatever form they may take, be it a ring, necklace, broach, or piece of cherished art, lighten the load of losing someone dear to us. My work seeks to explore this connection between memory, art, death, and grief; and how it evolves the notion of memento mori.

An Artist’s Inspiration My work deals with the passing of my mother and father in 2013 due to smoking related cancers, and the trauma of my childhood that resurfaced after those events. I grew up in a single-parent broken home after my mother and father divorced when I was quite young. They each suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder; my father’s stimmed from his deployment to Vietnam and my mother’s manifested from unimaginable childhood trauma. To deal with their mutual pain they turned to alcohol. Both became alcoholics and chain-smokers and eventually the stress between them became too much for either of them to bear. As a child, this situation terrified me in ways I can’t begin to describe. My father left when I entered fifth grade and my mother was left to care for myself and my two other siblings, a twin brother and an older sister. Normalcy in our household became a living nightmare, not knowing what to expect from one day to the other. My mother did the best she could but suffered from depression herself and turned to drinking and animal hoarding to cope with her situation. This led to horrible living conditions along with agonizing bullying in school for my clothes and odor. We were very poor, living on an elementary school teacher’s salary to support three kids. My mother often had a second job just to help put food on the table. I still suffer from nightmares, anxiety attacks, and depression from these traumatic experiences and have found it exceedingly difficult to cope with the everyday. However, during these times, I often turned to art as a place of escape and became an obsessive maker of things. Little did I know that this would influence the trajectory of my artistic endeavors. In the summer of 2012 both my parents were diagnosed with various stage four cancers caused by excessive chain-smoking. For my mother, it was stage four small cell carcinoma of the lungs that had already metastasized and spread to her bones, and bone marrow, while my father had been diagnosed with mouth and esophageal cancers. Both were terminal in diagnosis. I was rocked to my core. 155

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How does one even begin to process the inevitability of losing one let alone two parents? My mother, albeit flawed, was one of my best friends. We had our moments just like any son and mother relationship, exacerbated by her failings as a caregiver, but I loved her more than words could describe. She was an anchor in the cataclysmic storm of my youth. She had been a champion of my work and who I had become as a young adult. My father on, the other hand, had been absent most of my life. I knew him in name only and struggled to find any connections worth the effort. He just became a person I knew rather than a real father figure, something he never really owned up to. Watching someone slip away to this horrible disease is like watching the tide slowly wash out to sea. It happens incrementally and painfully slowly. The chemo­ therapy takes an unimaginable toll on the body and psyche as the body begins to wither away and becomes so delicately frail. Grief is a fickle beast. It comes in waves and ebbs and flows over time. It affects us all in the most complicated of ways and is not a one-size-fits-all emotion. For me grief took its time and came in spurts. The day I was informed of my mother’s lung cancer diagnosis was a blur. I remember being at my university taking care of last-minute ordinary duties when the phone rang and the call for me to come home right away was a palpable one. It was as if I was being called up for an epic showdown between my mother and an insurmountable enemy. The next seven months came and went like any other. I would travel every weekend to be with her as she fought this unseen force trying to remain as calm and hopeful as I could for her sake even though I knew the outcome before we had even started this journey. My mother did her best to keep her spirits up but inevitably sank into depression and struggled to come to terms with the eventuality of her fight and the looming mystery of death. Many of our conversations avoided the topic of death all together, as if the mere mention of this certainty would summon Death’s presence and sweep her away to the great beyond. Once the cancer had migrated to the lining of her brain and then the brain itself, we knew that her time was running short, and that chemo and radiation should be stopped so that her quality of life could be maintained for the little time she had left. The day she passed I remember being awoken at 3:30 a.m. to the news from my brother, breaking down, then rushing the three and a half hours home to be with her one last time before her cremation. I remember sobbing uncontrollably at her death bed holding her hand, stroking her hair, reiterating all the while that I would do everything in my power to make her proud. On February 15, 2013, at 4 a.m. my mother took her last breath and lost her battle with cancer. That was the day my world changed forever. Two weeks later my father succumbed to his battle with cancer as well, and in a moment, I was adrift in the world without an anchor. At my mother’s funeral emotions came and went as I navigated the complicated relationships between my brother and sister all the while trying to maintain com­ posure as the stream of attendees kept coming – oh how wonderful it was to see how many lives she had touched! I thought my grief would subside after a year, but it lingered for seven, a constant reminder of all that I had lost with inundations of 156

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memories that inevitably resurfaced things that I had buried deep within my psyche for much of my life. At first, I stopped making art completely; I was so lost in my despair, grief, and personal mourning process I couldn’t summon the courage or energy to do much of anything nor did I really want to. It all seemed so meaningless without her presence. I struggled with the absence of my mother’s complicated comfort yet carried a heavy guilt for feeling nothing, or not allowing myself to feel anything for my father. After a few months, however, the overwhelming urge to make became too strong and I was compelled to re-engage with my studio practice. Little did I know how intrinsically linked my grief and art practice would become. I knew that the first piece I was going to make would be difficult and needed to be a tribute to my mother’s life and all that she went through and how much she meant to me, I also knew that it needed to correlate to my experience of watching her slip away day by agonizing day. As a paper artist I began to draw a connection to the materiality of my medium and the frailty and rigidity of human life. The abstracted forms I began to use in my work resembled that of cancer cells under electron microscopic magnification and without the contextual aspect of the disease the imagery became quite beautiful and mesmerizing. This was going to be a monumental undertaking as I decided I would create a paper construct for every day from my mother’s diagnosis till her death and that they would be of varying sizes. The sizes would mimic each day, however traumatic or mundane, and be a lasting docu­ mentation of her courage and fear. I ended up making 212 pieces: seven 17” x 17” large-scale towers that represented her final months, twenty-six 12” × 12” mediumsize towers that represented her final weeks and 179 smaller towers that represented the days that were left (see Figure 11.2).

Figure 11.2 2013 Memorial Installation, Charles Clary.

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Making the work was a cathartic and memorable experience as I was able to reclaim each day that was lost through the act of creation. I recalled our long talks late at night as I watched over her, I remembered her smile and her laugh, and I ex­ perienced her tears and fearfulness. No matter what her mood, I cherished those days more than any I had in some time. The installation of the piece in the gallery, however, was heartbreaking. I relived each day as each tower was hung in the space, almost as if I was in a secondary countdown of losing her all over again. How does one lose someone twice in one year I thought? The work became an embodiment of her spirit that lived through me! The entirety of the process became my personal remission, something my mother was not afforded, when the project reached its completion; a way in which I could limp forward with my life and try and regain some semblance of happiness. Poignantly it took seven months from start to completion for this installation, almost the exact time frame of my mother’s illness.

Memento Mori My parents’ passing continued to leave a deep void in my life and I knew then that it would affect every aspect of future bodies of work, how could it not. This realization led to my interest in Memento Mori, remembering that one day you will die, and a reinvestigation of my own childhood trauma, abuse, and mortality. Memento Mori is a phrase associated with Julius Caesar of Rome, who is said to have had a person with him on his triumphal marches, whose whole job was to whisper the phrase, meaning, “remember you will die,” to keep him humble and grounded. However, in modern times this has become a standard trope. In fact, no other ancient authors confirm this happened, and it may have been Christian moralizing rather than an accurate his­ torical report.6 During the Renaissance, after and through the horrors of the Black Death, danse macabre and memento mori became associated with Christians, seeking to remember that their journey would end in death, but life everlasting through their religion (Figure 11.3). This was a concept my mother really struggled with in the end the helpless notion of not knowing what or if was to come next Skeletons, skulls, and death motifs remained popular through the ages, and were again re-popularized by the British Queen Victoria. This storied past of Memento Mori and morbid ico­ nography influences the way I think of mortality, death, and living. Through these investigations I came to terms with the trauma of my childhood and the lack of memories I have. Although the entire breath of Memento mori is fascinating, I’m particularly drawn to the Victorian era. Queen Victoria helped popularize the tradition after her husband Prince Albert passed away. She followed traditional mourning customs but was so taken with the loss of her beloved that she stayed in mourning wear for the rest of her life. She also had several mementos and monuments made to commemorate his passing. The trend took off and many began to take part in the practice, especially that of mourning jewelry. These items could take many forms and often contained the hair of the lost loved one. These items became a symbol of their being and a way to keep 158

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Figure 11.3 Dance of Death, from Hartman Schedel’s Chronicle of the World (Nuremberg, 1493) thought to be created by Michael Wolgemut; public domain.

them close even after death. In more recent explorations of mourning jewelry, you can now have your loved one’s ashes compressed through pressure-controlled en­ vironments creating a diamond to remember them by; or encasing their ashes in resin molds creating more contemporary forms of jewelry. See the following sources for more information.7

Memento Morididdle My work focuses on Memento Mori (remember that you [have to] die) and Memento Vivere (remember to live). Pulling from the Victorian fascination and celebration of death and life, I explore these traditions through a contemporary lens. Instead of hair from the deceased I use paper which holds the same quality of fragility, rigidity, and delicacy. It also acts as a catalyst for the memory of my mother as this was the one thing we never argued over and could celebrate together. As I slice through each layer of paper I begin to think about my own mortality; each subtraction becoming, in essence, a loss of oneself to time. I began using paper in 2007 while I was studying for my Master of Fine Arts in Painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I had a residency in New York, and I did not have access to materials as 159

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usual or a functioning woodshop. I chose paper out of necessity and pure happen­ stance; as strange as it may seem for a painter, the dialogue and vocabulary were the same as the act of cutting mimics the motion of the paintbrush. Picture frames are usually reserved for those most cherished memories: a family outing, birthdays, weddings, or holiday get-togethers. They rarely encapsulate the most influential yet traumatic events: a death in the family, trauma, or abuse. As Marianne Hirsch states, “the viewer fills in what the picture leaves out: The horror of looking is not necessarily in the images but in the story we provide to fill in what is left out of the image.”8 My work seeks to investigate these moments as they force us to make decisions, decisions that lead to life-changing events. We either rise to the occasion or sink into despair. My work mimics and encapsulates these traumas within the fragility of paper. I began to collect discarded frames from antique stores, and thrift shops at the beginning of 2016. They felt abandoned and forgotten much like my memories and trauma. I was drawn to their opulence and ornateness, something so grand that it overshadows what it was intended to highlight. They became signifiers of status rather than memorialization of a frozen moment in time. By incorporating my paper sculptures into these frames, they are imbued with new life and become reliquaries for my mental anguish. Each opening resembles a scar, a wound, or even a disease. They challenge the viewer to face the un-faceable and reflect on the past while reorienting their own personal traumas. They are installed in salon style groupings reflecting on the southern United States home and the collection of memories found in hallways or staircases. The overwhelming nature of each installation is purposeful as trauma feels like the heaviest of burdens, something that time often doesn’t heal. But there is a hopefulness with the saturation of color and delicateness of each cut. It is a way for individuals to celebrate one’s life and have a memento of that cherished loved one. My work seeks to continue the tradition by putting a contem­ porary spin on the format and ideation of the memento (see Figure 11.4).

Figure 11.4 2020 Memento Morididdle installation, Charles Clary.

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My process is labor intensive with each layer being cut by hand using only an xacto knife and hundreds of blades. Each piece starts with the selection of an ornate frame that has been scavenged from antique stores, thrift shops, and flea markets. These artifacts of someone’s life used to hold a cherished memory but now sits idle and lost to time; forgotten. My intent is to re-imbue them with a new life, healing the abandonment with delicate paper layers. Once the frame is chosen, I construct the matrix of illustration board, drywall, and wallpaper that the paper will be mounted to. The wallpaper is also sourced from various thrift shops adding to the illusion of a forgotten time period. When this step is completed, I distress the surface as if it were a necrotic flesh wound destroying the pristine nature of the surface creating a wound reminiscent of my childhood trauma and the voids that were left from my parents passing. Once the “wound” is established I begin the healing process with my cut paper sculpture. This process is extremely intuitive allowing each layer to inform the one below it with no real plan or schematic on how it will eventually turn out. I start by tracing in from the original opening about 1/16th of an inch and use that as a starting point for the next layer. The first layer informs the second, the second the third, and so on until I hit the 15-layer threshold for structural rigidity. The paper acts as a beautiful scar that “heals” the original opening reminiscent of the mental and physical scars we collectively share (see Figures 11.5 and 11.6).

Figure 11.5 2020 Memento Morididdle installation detail, Charles Clary.

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Figure 11.6 2022 Memento Morididdle detail, Charles Clary.

Conclusion Trauma is a shared experience we must all partake in. We can’t run or hide from it. It is inevitable. How we deal with these traumas varies widely. We navigate the abyss and do our best to survive the process. Often, grief becomes overwhelming and perceivably insurmountable, but we all find our way through to the other side. Mortality is a constant proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, and we must face it in our own way. The grieving process, like my work, is unique and individualized to the person experiencing the pain. With time the burden lessens, and the pain diminishes but never truly goes away. We cope the best we can and hold onto the memories of our loved ones for comfort and grace. Sometimes those memories can be brutal but without them, we would not be who we are. The good, the bad, and the ugly define our persona and challenge us to be better than we were. I embrace both sides and imbue my work with the serenity that comes from the lived experience. 162

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8

“The Triumph of Death – The Collection,” The Collection – Museo Nacional del Prado. Accessed December 1, 2021, https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/artwork/the-triumph-of-death/d3d82b0b-9bf2–4082-ab04–66ed53196ccc Liz Fields, “Facing Death from AIDS, Keith Haring Kept Creating,” PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, November 30, 2020, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ facing-death-from-aids-keith-haring-kept-creating/16169/# Nan Goldin, Gotscho Kissing Gilles, Paris, 1993. Chloe Aridjis, Mexican Macabre, https://artreview.com/, art review, November 30, 2018, https://artreview.com/ar-summer-2018-feature-mexican-macabre/ “Why Did Félix González-Torres Put Free Candy in a Museum?” Public Delivery, October 18, 2021, https://publicdelivery.org/felix-gonzalez-torres-untitled-portrait-of-ross-in-l-a-1991/ Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London England, 2009), 85–92. See: Marlyn Irvin Margulia, “Victorian Mourning Jewelry,” in Antiques & Collecting Magazine 107, no. 3 (2002): 20; Deborah Lutz, “The Dead Still among Us: Victorian Secular Relics, Hair Jewelry, and Death Culture,” Victorian Literature and Culture 39, no. 1 (2011): 127–142; Trompeteler, H., (2022) “Queen Victoria and the Photographic Expression of Widowhood”, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 2022(33). doi: https://doi.org/10.1 6995/ntn.4717; and Sonia A. Bedikian, “The Death of Mourning: From Victorian Crepe to the Little Black Dress,” Omega: Journal of Death and Dying 57, no. 1 (2008): 35–52. Marianne Hirsch, “Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory,” Discourse 15, no. 2 (1992): 3–29, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389264

Bibliography Aridjis, Chloe. “Mexican Macabre.” Art Review. November 30 2018. https://artreview.com/ ar-summer-2018-feature-mexican-macabre Beard, Mary. The Roman Triumph. Cambridge, Mass., and London England: Harvard University Press, 2009. Bedikian, Sonia A. “The Death of Mourning: From Victorian Crepe to the Little Black Dress.” Omega: Journal of Death and Dying 57, no. 1 (2008): 35–52. Fields, Liz. “Facing Death from AIDS, Keith Haring Kept Creating.” PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, November 30, 2020. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/facingdeath-from-aids-keith-haring-kept-creating/16169/# Goldin, Nan. Gotscho Kissing Gilles. Paris: published by the photographer, 1993. Hirsch, Marianne. “Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory.” Discourse 15, no. 2 (1992): 3–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389264 Lutz, Deborah. “The Dead Still Among Us: Victorian Secular Relics, Hair Jewelry, and Death Culture.” Victorian Literature and Culture 39, no. 1 (2011): 127–142. Margulia, Marlyn Irvin. “Victorian Mourning Jewelry.” Antiques & Collecting Magazine 107, no. 3 (2002): 20–23. “The Triumph of Death – The Collection.” The Collection – Museo Nacional del Prado. Accessed December 1, 2021. https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/artwork/the-triumph-of-death/d3d82b0b-9bf2–4082-ab04–66ed53196ccc Trompeteler, Helen. “Queen Victoria and the Photographic Expression of Widowhood” Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 19, no. 33 (2022). https://doi.org/1 0.16995/ntn.4717 “Why Did Félix González-Torres Put Free Candy in a Museum?” Public Delivery, October 18, 2021. https://publicdelivery.org/felix-gonzalez-torres-untitled-portrait-of-ross-in-l-a-1991/

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12 THE HOLLYWOOD MUSEUM OF DEATH The Commodification of the Maiden, Criminal and the Corpse

Tia Tudor Price This chapter examines “The Hollywood Museum of Death” (hereafter MOD) and how death related articles are represented within this space; this is done with a view to contextualise three areas which demonstrate the theme of “Death and the Maiden.” Firstly, The Charles Manson Room, which displays various items related to, made by, or representing Charles Manson, famous for his role in the orchestration of the Tate LaBianca murders in August 1969. The second study examines an installation featuring a mannequin; this item is placed within a space attesting to the presence of the media, underscoring the spectacular and the chaotic nature of tragedy within Western society. The third analysis centres on The Black Dahlia murder exhibit from which we may read the remains of Elizabeth Short as Death within the Death and the Maiden theme and note the temporal longevity of the Black Dahlia. Herein, the chapter notes what appear to be organic and synthetic examples which create a “fiction of the real”1 and, subsequently, the corpse, as a signifier of death or life, is commercialised and commodified. This chapter aims to illuminate how we memorialise those who die through murder or suicide, the socially bad death,2 within unregulated spaces such as a dime museum. It also endeavours to elucidate how those who commit murder can come to be represented, celebrated, and commodified as a brand within (dime) museum space. Penfold-Mounce suggests that popular culture and its representations of science, specifically forensic science television shows, provides a “softening lens”3 on how we view the corpse which perhaps explains the success of the MOD and Los Angeles “thriving death tourism industry.”4 Walter suggests that the post-modern conquest over death has resulted in consumerism and within Western secular society we are consumers in regards our treatments for disease5; perhaps in our need to consume death, so as to master it, we commodify and own its image through 164

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-15

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objects or images. I argue that this is represented here, further emphasised through our need as consumers to “consume death” through visual representation.

Museum of Death Origins Established in 1995, the original premises had once been a mortuary (though functioned as an art gallery) and thus “of death.” Stone classifies a dark exhibition as: “… manifested within an eclectic product range and [are] often located away from the actual site of death or macabre event.”6 Though the site once functioned as a mortuary, the artefacts within are not directly linked to the mortuary itself. The owners, J.D. Healy and Cathy Schultz, began their project after an art installation piece “Cereal Killers” which sought to demonstrate that commercial advertisers were the cause for much of the violence within America through consumerism. Healy contacted, and eventually represented, well-known convicted serial killers, displaying their correspondence and art work. It seems interesting that this should be the nucleus for the present-day museum which does not act in deference to consumerism, but rather actively encourages members of the public to consume via advertising, sneak peeks, and news reports. By contrast, the Metropolitan Crime museum in the United Kingdom (or Black Museum) which does not permit public access, acts in such a way to instruct, protect the public and maintain the dignity of those deceased whose personal effects, in one form or another, are exhibited within. The MOD leans upon the syllogism of a museum to propagate its educational merit, for example: Museums are educational, this is a museum of death, the museum of death is educational. The website underpins their mission to “fill the void in death education in America.”7 However, the items within are not only contentious, incongruous, or nefarious, they are paired with and displayed in ways which undermine their value as instructive pieces. On arrival to the museum we are confronted with a Memento Mori representation through a large skull out of which grow red bougainvillea flowers. The colour of the flowers are indicative of outpouring blood, thus the macabre, whilst the metal bars act to evoke notions of prison bars and so thoughts may turn to socially bad death.8 Within the museum, various, incongruous objects compete for attention and the space explicitly sensationalises socially bad death9 such as murder or suicide, indeed, the Kevorkian suicide machine, which as the name suggests is designed to assist in the cessation of life, is on display. Original bunk beds which hold the clothing worn by members of “The Heavens Gate” suicides are set up as though the deaths had just occurred, the clothing displayed to appear as though a person were still wearing it. Many items which could be termed “murderabilia”10 fill the walls underpinning the significance of the commodified criminal and the corpse. Objects created or once belonging to notorious American serial killers, such as John Wayne Gacy, whose artwork, letters and even clown shoes, are available to view. Zyklon gas canisters, used by the Germans in the Second World War, are on display and in a viewing room, at the back of the museum, a copy of “Traces not places” plays on repeat; this footage depicts the last moments of various people, from civilians to journalists, immortalising them in their process of tragic death. Some items also, though not examined here, having been 165

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present to a socially bad death or the act of “corpse creation,” could be termed remains by proxy for their abject appeal within certain sub-cultural communities. The Museum entices patrons through Wound Culture, a theory posited by Mark Seltzer whereby people are drawn to view the body “ripped apart.”11 How the items are presented within the museum, I believe, are influenced by the locale and geographical proximity to Hollywood. A gold curtain, for example, frames the display within the viewing room, exuding connotations of vaudevillian theatre, melodrama and the moving image in the golden age of Hollywood. The museum also demonstrates, in extremity, how death can be represented outside of a religious or spiritual framework, and emphasises certain signification which frames the anti-hero within a sub-cultural narrative. The owners could be considered dark fans, a particular and extreme type of sub-culture who “identify with or otherwise celebrate those who have committed heinous acts, such as mass or serial murderers.”12 Their actions are a commitment to dark fan collecting. From inception the museum did not forbid the photography of exhibits, the only caveat being that they were not to be “transmitted.” The taking and “collecting” can be read as a form of voyeurism, to privately gaze over the images of the deceased. However, from October 2017 this was rescinded. The photographs, as a result, will not be printed within this chapter, but many prior to 2017 are still accessible through an online google search, indeed, underscoring the transmission that occurred regardless. At a recent conference an academic questioned, somewhat incredulously, that the MOD was now no longer permitting photography. Reasons for this change have been due to “respect to the victims” so this may demonstrate some progression in regards mass consumption and a sensitivity to the deceased hitherto not seen. But, cynically, one can only think this stems from a need to “contain,” close the curtain, and draw the crowd. The MOD has been temporarily closed since 2020, due to relocation, and the COVID-19 pandemic, and thus the exhibits, as they were and within that space, cannot currently be viewed. However, a sister site in New Orleans, established in 2017, has continued to operate.

The Charles Manson Room The first exhibit to be examined is The Charles Manson room. The use of orange in this space makes the room appear quite claustrophobic and “loud” and is the colour of the clothing worn by inmates within American prisons. “Helter Skelter” is written on the wall, a catchphrase used for an impending race war Manson propagated to his “family” that was to be the catalyst for the murders. The large portrait of Manson dominates the wall and we find ourselves drawn to look continuously at his face, reinforcing his control, almost patriarchal. Jane Caputi undergirds the view that serial killers are representative of the patriarchy and refers to them as “the new founding fathers,”13 indeed much argument within True crime discourse suggests that the modern serial killer is born from the patriarchal family unit within American society.14 The word “Life” is written in red, a cardinal colour and seems a comment on his sentence, what he took from his victims but also a play on Time magazine, 166

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noted for interviewing “people of the moment.” Within the theme of death and the maiden, Manson is the signifier of death, and all-encompassing within this space. Beneath the painting are nine photographs of his victims and each photo is neatly framed. The act of framing suggests some semblance of memorial15 but as they are crime scene and morgue photographs this only emphasises their memorial as victim. Lining the walls are photographs of Charles Manson, in various stages, through his trial and up until his death in November 2017. Our eyeline is taken to the large painting and then to the film poster testifying to his progression from man to criminal to brand and the files of representation16 which have subsequently borne out of this event, beneath which are the eight autopsy images. This is interesting in that it charts Manson’s growth through film, books and further “branding,” and simultaneously the victims who go from murdered to dissected, or medicalised. The use of various media such as newspapers, film and film posters, files of representation demonstrate a celebrity criminal “anatomized through text.”17 Other items create a gothic or horror paratext, the frame around which the main text is placed, providing interpretive information which may determine, and alter, the reception of the display. The use of gothic lamps reinforce the horror genre and a film poster provides additional information for the text of Charles Manson and acts to soften the crime through pop cultural association; this has the effect to make one step back and view again, thus creating a fiction of the real.18 There were in total, nine victims killed by the Manson family, seven of which Charles Manson was held accountable for. The nine pictures depict three of his “famous” victims at different angles, it is thus significant to use a total of nine images with the central image that of the pregnant Sharon Tate.19 The light fleshy tones of her photograph stand out and so we are drawn to look at the woman who appears to have a slight smile on her face. Her continued posthumous work is in the role of victim to Charles Manson and not connected to the identity of the woman she was. For Tate, who worked as an actress, actively working with the gaze in the fictional world of film and photography, the use of these images, emphases the tragedy of her final photograph, at the end of her life, the gaze of the camera would not hold her deliberately constructed image, but the concept of the real.20 We may read Tate as our signifier of maiden, indicative of both vanitas (transient life) and voluptas (earthly pleasure). This is because in her career as an actress she was publicly consumable through the gaze whilst her lifestyle afforded pleasures of material comfort. Pregnant in death, she reinforces that of organic maiden, fertile and overcome by unnatural tragedy. Memorialised and frozen in this state of fecundity impeded, perpetually pregnant she symbolises two deaths, new and established life. As the dead maiden and mother she may never give birth, ensuring her biological immortality through the child and biological transcendence21 is incomplete; instead the possibility of new life, made victim. The images of the victims are at eye level, but those of Manson are eye level and above, so he appears to look down on us, dominating and somewhat patriarchal. Given that eight of his 12 family members were female demonstrates his control and emphasises his power as death over life (vanitas and volupta), so too shall you die. Death and our mortality is what hangs above us. Manson, as the patriarchal figure of 167

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death, further demonstrates a power over Tate, the beautiful female maiden, fertile but subordinate to the inevitable. Jack Denham states Manson has become a brand representing a “counter-cultural narrative” with an embedded sympathy for cultural outsiders22; his use of the cross and swastika reinforce this “mythological” appeal23 potentially placing the display as a form of pilgrimage to sub-cultural groups. The use of a gold frame around the painting of Manson is reminiscent of an image of an icon as one would see in Catholic churches, indicative of a shrine and underpinning a sub-cultural narrative which consumes the serial killer through a “Quasi-religious”24 lens. On the opposite wall are T-shirts printed, and readily available to purchase at the souvenir shop demonstrating the commodification of Charles Manson, and thus Death, as a product whilst emphasising that the victims are the by-product of his fame. As a signifier of death, he becomes conceptual, more like death than the criminal who dealt the blow, as agents acted upon his instruction.

Synthetic Maiden Moving through the museum we find an example of the simulacra of death and consumerism within chaos. In a small room, covering the walls from floor to ceiling, are pages from the Los Angeles Times and The Union Tribune; each page depicting a tragic event or imminent disaster. In the foreground is the bottom-half of a mannequin reminiscent of 1950s store front mannequins used to display lingerie, indicative of a model of repressed and closeted sexuality and the patriarchal system of 1950s America. It also reinforces the connection between sex and death. The first enclosed Mall built was in 1956, the Mall and mannequin are signifiers synonymous with consumerism. In the pelvic area of the mannequin sits a skull, positioned so as to directly block the sexual area; we can read the mannequin as Maiden and the skull as Death. For Freud it is “the eyes” that creates the sense of “uncanny” when we gaze upon a synthetic representation of life such as a doll or mannequin,25 thus the absence of a face causes the viewer to seek features in the skull and thus “Gaze into the real.”26 The absence of distinguishing features provides the maiden with universality, lacking individualism or subjectivity, it is conceptual, highlighting the object devoid of individuality, yet through consumerism a way is provided to forget its ubiquity. As the figure is incomplete, not whole, our thoughts may be led to dismemberment, reinforcing the wound27 through the sexualised, female body. The mannequin or maiden as a “doll” is suggestive of a transitional object over which we may exert control through “an infantile wish”28 over fertility and life through consumption. On the back wall are newspapers taken from specific tragedies such as the September 11th terrorist attacks, celebrity death and an earthquake which hit Taiwan. From one article we note the headline “King of Pop dies,” attesting to the death of public figures; personalities whose images are public property, affirming that death can affect anyone. Though the newspapers are California specific publications, their use of media text emphasises the role of the media in the spectacle and suggests these tragedies are universal, not centred in any one geographic site or any particular date. The 168

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random selection denotes death as chaos: “Any time, any place.” Death is further signified through these other modes: images, printed word, coffin and skull. Maiden, thus fertility and life, is singular and a synthetic mannequin half, thus death is overwhelming and comes in many forms and life is consumption, universal and artificial. Beside the mannequin is an open coffin which acts in this instance as a normative object, which emphasises the human need for ritual.29 In a space which focuses primarily on death either through chaotic, unpredictable tragedy, the coffin acts to reassure and comfort. There will be ritual and life will move on. Death, in this space, thus becomes synonymous with blocking life, or travelling through death to reach life as simulacra, a global problem. The only singular example of life, vanitas and volupta or maiden is the mannequin which is ultimately synthetic and representative of consumerism.

The Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short was an aspiring actress who disappeared on January 9, 1947. She … was found sliced clean in half at the waist by a mother walking her child in an L.A. neighbourhood just before 11 a.m. on January 15. The body was just a few feet from the sidewalk and posed in the grass in such a way that the woman reportedly thought it was a mannequin at first.30 The body was said to have been posed “like a mannequin” and an emphasis is put on the synthetic below the waist, denoting a sexualised reinforcement of the female form in death when represented within the MOD. A journalist coined the term “The Black Dahlia murder” and the media were heavily involved in broadcasting and sensationalising during the aftermath of the crime. As, like Tate, the murder occurred in Los Angeles it is a local crime and thus significant to the MOD. In 1945, there were fewer than 10,000 television sets in America and by 1950 up to six million. This emphasises the emerging power of media and communications as her identity was affected publicly through a moniker and so we may read connotations of death and re-birth through commodification. Black Dahlia is herself both death and maiden. In the displayed pre-mortem photos a vivacious young woman is apparent in large prints, such as headshots, unframed and leaning beneath. The central frame houses two images within different shaped mats. The first photograph shows a group of women featuring the victim dressed in pale colours, in the other, the Black Dahlia. The women appear to be dressed for an event as their clothes suggest finery, material earthly abundance (volupta). The presence of her corpse as signifier of death, poses a threat on three levels: to woman, to sisterhood and to life. A memento mori, “As I am so shall you be.” The body is posed with arms behind the head and legs open; the overtly sexual posing reinforces the link between sex and death.31 The act of framing32 is significant as it contrasts life through maiden (s) and death, the Black Dahlia, unifying the two. Though we cannot enforce Hertz (1909) wet and dry theory,33 through which the removal of the wet medium of the body leaves the dry remains which may then take 169

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on a new identity for the deceased to be reabsorbed into the social group, I posit an amendment. As the body has been tampered with or mutilated, it is no longer whole: through physical mutilation the corpse has a new identity which, with the assistance of broadcasting, became publicly consumable. Elizabeth Short is the girl she was before, whilst the Black Dahlia is more than something other. Like the corpse of the criminal,34 the Black Dahlia is almost sacred in appeal. There are five large prints of the corpse and only two small images of the actress. Our eyeline must travel through Elizabeth Short in the centre, to her body discovered, to her body in the morgue medicalised. We must travel through the living, to reach the commoditised, transcended Black Dahlia. Elizabeth Short was scandalised by the press after her death, suggesting the victim was promiscuous, subtly reinforcing the notion of life and procreation but also that the victim was somehow morally deviant. A blame attributed to her death based on her life, reminiscent of nineteenth-century fiction which configured the “fallen woman” as responsible for their fall.35 The abundance of images of her remains underscore the emphasis; that which is to be consumed is the corpse. The central image seems almost reminiscent of a hunting trophy. The representation also emphasises the power recognised by Foucault of the killer who, in their evading justice, becomes conceptual having enabled the social re-birth through death. It is the killer’s creation that is immortalised, and the criminal is presented as a mystery worth consuming, indeed for Foucault “to be a criminal glorified and immortalised after death … is the exclusive privilege of those who are truly great.”36 The Black Dahlia has led to various forms of representation i.e., the name of a band in the genre “death metal”; TV shows such as “Hunter: The Black Dahlia”37 and American Horror Story: Murder House38; films such as The Black Dahlia39 and simulacra replication through costume and doll. Through Pop culture, the softening lens40 acts to desensitise through the fascination with the wound destabilising the effect of the authentic.41 Hallam and Hockey state: “The corpse is regarded as a material manifestation of death, a body devoid of a self and individuality.”42 In the case of Elizabeth Short, her physical death bore a social life through a new identity: both a material immortality within popular culture and a fame sought by the actress in life; she has achieved immortality, through death. This comes at the cost of being “owned” socially and her previous identity, forgotten. Also on display is a doll in her likeness, we may note the commodification of this timeless, cadaveric identity. The Living Dead Doll company was established in 1998, the company markets itself as “a worldwide phenomenon … officially recognized as the world’s longest series of … {mass produced} … collectible horror themed dolls.”43 Marketed for adults, the Living Dead Doll is an item created from popular culture to replicate fictitious or factual characters of “horror” in the shape of a doll, a symbol of childhood innocence. In a cardboard coffin the Dahlia doll accompanies the display. The eyes are misted referring to the decomposition of the body it aims to connote. Across the torso is painted the jagged line of a deep cut, where Elizabeth Short had been dismembered and it is dressed in 1940s era nightwear, silk shorts and short top, a dressing gown and childlike kitten heels. This lends one to see the doll as oddly sexualised, yet with the chubby feet of a child’s first baby-doll. 170

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The Black Dahlia has travelled temporally to be replicated 50 years after death and much like the mannequin, we may consume death and thus “overcome it” through controlling the doll. The doll can be read as a transitional object and a synthetic “child” in her likeness, born through death. The Black Dahlia replicated through the doll is an example of a fetish embodying the abject44 in being based on a real corpse, but she also fulfils, within the MOD, Karl Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism whereby her value, dead and objectified appeals to capitalist consumers, particularly dark fans, through social relations tied to the object. The doll as fetish or idol reinforces the “brand” borne from this murder, memorialising the crime, and celebrating consumerism through a material immortality. Whilst in historic examples of the Death and the Maiden theme came a warning to live a good life for earthly life is transient, within the Hollywood MOD, the focus is commodify and consume to live “well.” The popularity of the Black Dahlia, broadcast so widely due to its gruesome nature reinforces that we sequester death in the case of illness, but we are drawn to the tragedy of the broken body and the public spectacle of death.

Conclusion The three subjects I have focussed on within the Hollywood MOD are a very small part of the eclectic array within. That which can be read as death and the maiden offer a comment on the authenticity of society, of medicalisation and birth and how we as individuals consume death so as to live. The museum raises many issues about Western secular society, notably how we represent those who have died in difficult and tragic circumstances and those who have had a hand in orchestrating it. In theorising about the victim, one creates another avenue from which to re-frame and commoditise the subject and this author is aware that this may add “the oxygen of publicity”45 to the spectacle of the corpse and the murderer. This is not the intention, instead, through this research, to highlight where these ethical issues arise. I would argue that the manner in which the curators exhibit the artefacts would have to be within a different setting and context to give weight to the notion of educational merit. The museum seems to perpetuate the commodification, commercialisation and sensationalism of the socially bad death46 using “Wound Culture”47 to encourage admittance. The use of certain, incongruous articles, items such as gothic lamps and dollies, acting as paratextual devices, soften the signified, undermine an exhibit that could have a worthwhile message about society, and the individuals within it. These objects may discourage educational value and create a fiction which removes us from authenticity, ultimately destabilising the value of the representation. In over exposure to death, I believe the curators/owners have become desensitised and are thus demonstrating compassion fatigue,48 which exposes itself through their methods of representation.

Notes 1 Ingrid Fernandez, “The lives of corpses: Narratives of the image in American memorial photography,” Mortality 16, no. 4 (November 9, 2011): 343–364, https://doi.org/10. 1080/13576275.2011.613270

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Tia Tudor Price 2 Tony Walter, The Revival of Death, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 1994). 3 Ruth Penfold-Mounce, “Corpses, popular culture and forensic science: Public obsession with death,” Mortality 21, no. 1 (April 22, 2015): 19 https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275 .2015.1026887 4 Kathy Charles, “Horror tourism: Serial killers, murder scenes and pet pigs,” Traveller.com, March 21, 2012, http://www.traveller.com.au/horror-tourism-serial-killers-murderscenes-and-pet-pigs-1vjpr (accessed October 21, 2021). 5 Tony Walter, The Eclipse of Eternity, 1st ed. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 81–87. 6 Philip Stone, “A dark tourism spectrum: Towards a typology of death and macabre related tourist sites, attractions and exhibitions”, TOURISM: An Interdisciplinary International Journal 54, no. 2 (2006): 153, http://works.bepress.com/philip_stone/4/ 7 Museum of Death, available at: http://www.museumofdeath.net/ (accessed October 2021). 8 Walter, Revival, 1994. 9 Walter, Revival, 1994. 10 Brian Jarvis, “Monsters Inc.: Serial killers and consumer culture,” Crime, Media, Culture 3, no. 3 (December 1, 2007): 326–344, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1741659007082469 11 Mark Seltzer, Serial killers, 1st ed. (New York: Routledge, 1998). 12 Ryan Broll, “Dark fandoms: An introduction and case study,” Deviant Behaviour 41, no. 6 (March 26, 2019): 792–804, https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2019.1596453 13 Jane Caputi, “The new founding fathers, the lore and lure of serial killers in contemporary American culture,” Journal of American Culture 13, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 1–12, https://doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1542–734X.1990.1303_1.x 14 Julie B. Wiest, “Applying the model of American culture,” in Creating Cultural Monsters: The Serial Killer in America (Taylor & Francis: Routledge, 2011), 107–152. 15 Elizabeth Hallam and Jennifer Hockey, “Visualizing death: Making memories from body to image,” In Death, Memory and Material Culture, ed. E. Hallam and J. Hockey (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 134–135. 16 Dirk C. Gibson, “The relationship between serial murder and the American tourism industry,” Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing 20, no. 1 (December 22, 2003): 45–60, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J073v20n01_04 17 Mary Ellis Gibson, “The criminal body in Victorian Britain: The case of ’The Ring and the Book,’” Browning Institute Studies 18 (1990): 73–93, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25057863 18 Fernandez, Lives of Corpses, 2011. 19 Interestingly, Polanski directed the film “Death and the Maiden” in 1994. 20 Jaques Lacan, “Le symbolique, l’imaginaire et le réel,” Bulletin de l’Association Freudienne 1(1982): 4–13. 21 David Chidester, “Religion, death and dying,” In Patterns of Transcendence, 2nd ed., ed. D. Chidester (Cape Town: Wadsworth Thomson Learning, 2002), 12. 22 Jack Denham, “The commodification of the criminal corpse: ’selective memory’ in posthumous representations of criminal,” Mortality 21, no. 3 (May 10, 2016), https://doi.org/ 10.1080/13576275.2016.1181329 23 Denham, “Selective Memory,” 2016. 24 Julian P. Hobbs, director, Collectors, 2000. 25 Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (Chicago: Massachusetts, 1919), 1–10, http://web.mit.edu/ allanmc/www/freud1.pdf 26 Lacan, “Le symbolique, l’imaginaire et le reel,” 1982. 27 Seltzer, Serial Killers, 1998. 28 Freud, The Uncanny, 9. 29 Douglas J. Davies, Death, Ritual and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funerary Rites, 2nd ed. (London: Continuum International, 2002). 30 FBI Files, “The Black Dahlia murder,” accessed October 21, 2021, https://archives.fbi. gov/archives/news/stories/2006/october/dahlia_102006

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The Hollywood Museum of Death 31 Christina Welch, “Coffin calendar girls: A new take on an old trope,” Writing from Below 2, no. 1 (2014): 1–29. 32 Hallam and Hockey, Visualising Death, 134–135, 2001. 33 Robert Hertz, “A contribution to the study of the collective representation of death,” In Death and the Right Hand,ed. Rodney Needham and Claudia Needham (New York: Free Press, 1960). 34 Melissa Schrift, “Life after death: An introduction to the criminal body in the West,” Mortality 21, no. 3 (2016): 191–197, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2016.1181318 35 Michael Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 220. 36 Michel, Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975/1977), 69. 37 Michael Preece, director, “Hunter and McCall, Hunter: The Black Dahlia,” 1988. 38 Bradley Buecker, director, “American Horror Story: Murder House,” 2011. 39 Brian De Palma, director, The Black Dahlia, 2006. 40 Penfold-Mounce, Forensic, 19, 2015. 41 Fernandez, Lives of Corpses, 2011. 42 Hallam and Hockey, Visualizing Death, 132, 2001. 43 Living Dead Dolls, http://www.livingdeaddolls.com/, Last modified: 2020–2021, Last accessed: October 2021. 44 Julia Kristeva, “The Powers of Horror: An essay on abjection,” Trans. Leon S. Roudiez, Columbia University Press, 1982. 45 Sarah Tarlow and Emma Batelli-Lowman, “Conclusions: Ethics, Bullet Points and Other ways of telling,” Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse, Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife, Palgrave, 239–266, 2018b. 46 Walter, Revival, 1994. 47 Seltzer, Serial Killers, 1998. 48 Susan Sonntag, On Photography (Penguin, 1977).

Bibliography Broll, Ryan. “Dark Fandoms: An Introduction and Case Study.” Deviant Behaviour 41, no. 6 (March 26 2019): 792–804. 10.1080/01639625.2019.1596453. Buecker, Bradley, director. “American Horror Story: Murder House.” November 21, 2011 in Hollywood, California, FX network. Caputi, Jane. “The New Founding Fathers, The Lore and Lure of serial killers in contemporary American Culture.” Journal of American Culture 13, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 1–12. 10.1111/ j.1542-734X.1990.1303_1.x Charles, Kathy. “Horror Tourism: Serial Killers, Murder Scenes and Pet Pigs.” Traveller.com. (March 21, 2012). Accessed: October 21, 2021. http://www.traveller.com.au/horrortourism-serial-killers-murder-scenes-and-pet-pigs-1vjpr Chidester, David. “Religion, Death and Dying.” In Patterns of Transcendence. 2nd ed., edited by David Chidester. Cape Town: Wadsworth Thomson Learning, 12, 2002 Davies, Douglas J. Death, Ritual, and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funerary Rites. 2nd ed., London: Continuum International, 2002. De Palma, Brian, director. The Black Dahlia. September 15, 2006, Universal Pictures. 122 min. Denham, Jack. “The Commodification of the Criminal Corpse: ‘Selective Memory’ in Posthumous Representations of Criminal.” Mortality 21, no. 3 (May 10, 2016). 10.1080/ 13576275.2016.1181329. FBI Files. “The Black Dahlia Murder.” Last updated: 10/20/2006. https://archives.fbi.gov/ archives/news/stories/2006/october/dahlia_102006

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Tia Tudor Price Fernandez, Ingrid. “The Lives of Corpses: Narratives of the Image in American Memorial Photography.” Mortality 16, no. 4 (November 9, 2011): 343–364. 10.1080/13576275. 2011.613270. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 69, 1975/1977. Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. 1–10. Chicago: Massachusetts, 1919. http://web.mit.edu/ allanmc/www/freud1.pdf Hallam, Elizabeth, and Jennifer Hockey, “Visualizing Death: Making Memories from Body to Image.” In Death, Memory and Material Culture, edited by E. Hallam and J. Hockey. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Hertz, Robert. “A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death.” In Death and the Right Hand, edited by Rodney Needham and Claudia Needham. New York: Free Press, 1960. Hobbs, Julian P., director. Collectors: Making a Killing in the Art World. 2000, The deep South. Collectors (2000) directed by Julian P. Hobbs • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd. Jarvis, Brian. “Monsters Inc.: Serial Killers and Consumer Culture.” Crime, Media, Culture 3, no. 3 (December 1, 2007): 326–344. 10.1177%2F1741659007082469. Kristeva, Julia. “The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.” Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. Columbia University Press, 1982. Lacan, Jaques. Le symbolique, l’imaginaire et le reel. Bulletin de l’Association Freudienne 1, 1982. Living Dead Dolls. http://www.livingdeaddolls.com/. Accessed October 24, 2017. Museum of Death. Museum of Death. Accessed October 20, 2021. http://www. museumofdeath.net/ Parker, Michael. “Serial Killer Secrets: Inside the Museum of Death.” Antidote. October 27, 2015. YouTube, 16.00-16.54, Serial Killer Secrets: Inside the Museum of Death with JD Healy & Cathee Shultz - YouTube. Penfold-Mounce, Ruth. “Corpses, Popular Culture and Forensic Science: Public Obsession with Death.” Mortality 21, no. 1 (April 22, 2015): 19. 10.1080/13576275.2015.1026887. Penfold-Mounce, Ruth. Death, The Dead and Popular Culture. UK: Emerald Publishing, 2018. Preece, Michael, director. “Hunter and McCall, Hunter: The Black Dahlia,” Season 4 Episode 13. January 9, 1988 in Los Angeles, NBC. The Black Dahlia - Hunter | Apple TV. Sappol, Michael. A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth Century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Schrift, Melissa. “Life after Death: An Introduction to the Criminal Body in the West.” Mortality 21, no. 3 (2016): 191–197. 10.1080/13576275.2016.1181318. Seltzer, Mark. Serial Killers. New York: Routledge, 1998. Sonntag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Penguin, 1977. Stone, Philip. “A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a Typology of Death and Macabre Related Tourist Sites, Attractions and Exhibitions.” TOURISM: An Interdisciplinary International Journal 54, no. 2 (2006): 153. http://works.bepress.com/philip_stone/4/ Syfret, Wendy. “LA’s Museum of Death Proves We’ve Always Been Obsessed with True Crime.” Vice (October 30, 2018). (vice.com) Tarlow, Sarah and Emma Batelli-Lowman. “Conclusions: Ethics, Bullet Points and Other Ways of Telling.” Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse. 239–266. Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and Its Afterlife. London: Palgrave, 2018. Walter, Tony. The Eclipse of Eternity. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Walter, Tony. The Revival of Death. London: Routledge, 1994. Welch, Christina. “Coffin Calendar Girls: A New Take on an Old Trope.” Writing from Below 2, no. 1 (2014): 1–29. Wiest, Julie B. “Applying the Model of American Culture.” In Creating Cultural Monsters: The Serial Killer in America. 107–152. Taylor & Francis: Routledge, 2011.

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PART 3

Decolonisation and Shifting the Perspective in Museums and Heritage

13 PAPUAN PASTS The Origins of Papuan Human Remains Collections in the World’s Museums, the Issue of Repatriation, and Telling New Stories with Skeletal Data

Jason Kariwiga, Gabriel Wrobel, and Michael C. Westaway Introduction It is estimated that some 7,000 ancestral remains from New Guinea and Melanesia are currently held in museums in the United States and Europe.1 For the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG), most of these ancestral remains were collected during the colonial period beginning in the latter part of the nineteenth century. With the global push towards recognizing descendent populations and engaging their views on collec­ tions created from their homelands, issues such as ownership, curation, and repatriation, as well as the associated moral and legal consequences of colonialist collecting traditions are once again at the forefront of discussions on the futures of such collections. This chapter seeks to highlight these issues by looking at human remains collec­ tions from PNG currently held in institutions around the world. It looks at the history of collecting, while also focusing on selected museums housing these remains. Specifically, we focus on those human remains collected from the southeastern Papuan coast, a region well represented by museum collections globally.

The Study Area The Papuan coast is the region encompassing the coastline of southeastern New Guinea, from the Gulf of Papua in the west covering the western edge of the Fly River delta, to Milne Bay in the east. This includes the areas of Amazon Bay and Mailu, Port Moresby, and Kairuku and Yule Island, respectively, as well as the immediate hinterlands to the foothills of the Owen Stanley ranges in the east. Politically, the wider region came under British control as a protectorate in 1884 and in 1888 it was annexed, becoming part of British New Guinea. It was around this period that government officials, missionaries, explorers, planters, and collectors began DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-17

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to arrive in earnest. In 1906, control of the colony was transferred to Australia and renamed the Territory of Papua. Australia would administer Papua until 1949, when it joined with the northeastern former German-controlled Territory of New Guinea and became part of the Australian Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Independence was achieved in 1975, at which time the country chose its current name, Papua New Guinea.

Pre-Contact Trade The numerous groups who occupy the Papuan coast and adjacent regions have a long and deep history. Archaeological research shows evidence of well-organized trading networks spanning the entirety of the coastline and predating any outside contact.2 This trade comprised food items but also included many types of valu­ ables. For instance, the much celebrated hiri voyages undertaken by the Motu of Port Moresby to the Papuan Gulf are known chiefly for the exchange of ceramic pots for processed sago (Metroxylon sagu). But the hiri also included the exchange of other valuables such as arm shells (toea), which were significant in negotiating marriage exchanges.3 By the time of sustained European contact in the later nineteenth century, the region’s inhabitants were well-versed in the enterprise of barter.

History of Collecting Human Remains along the Papuan Coast 19th and 20th Century European Collecting Europeans have long held a fascination with acquiring exotic items from nonWestern peoples. Being one of the last regions to be explored by Europeans, New Guinea was a goldmine for collectors. The Papuan coast too played host to a curious assemblage of men and women eager to trade with the different tribes, many of whom had limited contact with Europeans. The motivations behind collecting varied from collector to collector – government officials, museum em­ ployees, missionaries, settlers and traders, and scientists including naturalists and anthropologists were among them. The interest in Papuan coast artefacts was so intense that the administrator and lieutenant governor of British New Guinea from 1888 to 1898, William MacGregor, himself an avid collector, is thought to have avoided collecting in the Gulf and Port Moresby as these areas had already close and continuous contact with collectors since the 1870s and 1880s. MacGregor likely decided it was “too late” to gather artefacts from here as these areas were already well represented in collections.4

Second World War The Second World War in the Pacific lent itself to a new category of collector – the soldier. George Kenneth ‘Ken’ Jackson, an assistant of ethnology at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, enlisted at the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 and eventually 178

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served in New Guinea from 1942 until he was killed in action in early 1943. Jackson was a keen collector, and in his time in New Guinea collected adze blades, bows and arrows, and spears from the Milne Bay area.5 Predictably, war-time collecting by soldiers also extended to human remains. Most of these war trophies come from two conflicts, the Vietnam War, and the Pacific War.6 Trophy hunting was one way of exacting revenge on the enemy but at the same time fulfilling the desire for collecting souvenirs.7 American marines operating in the Pacific theatre were known to collect the skulls, bones, ears, and hands of Japanese dead.8 A photo published in the May 22, 1944 issue of LIFE magazine shows a young woman, chin in her left hand and pen poised in right hand, gazing con­ templatively at a skull on a table. The caption reads: When he said goodby [sic] two years ago to Natalie Nickerson, 20, a war worker of Phoenix, Arizona, a big, handsome Navy lieutenant promised her a Jap. Last week, Natalie received a human skull, autographed by her lieutenant and 13 friends and inscribed: ‘This is a good Jap-a dead one picked up on the New Guinea beach.’ Natalie, surprised at the gift, named it Tojo. The armed forces disapprove strongly of this sort of thing.9 In a diary entry for 14 August 1944, the aviator Charles Lindbergh wrote of American airmen on Noemfoor Island (West Papua) pursuing Japanese soldiers and taking their leg bones to produce letter-openers and pen holders.10 Collections were not just limited to bone; on New Britain, marines tried to remove the gold teeth from Japanese soldiers both living and dead.11

Professional Archaeology Archaeological research along the Papuan coast began towards the end of the 1960s, most notably in the Port Moresby area where expatriate archaeologists including Susan Bulmer12 and Jim Allen13 focused their attentions on trading systems centred on the manufacture of ceramic pots. To the east Geoff Irwin (1977)14 completed his doctoral thesis on sites in the Amazon Bay area and to the northwest, Ron Vanderwal (1973)15 excavated sites on Yule Island and the adjacent mainland. Others like Jim Rhoads and David Frankel (198016; 199417) concentrated their efforts on the Gulf of Papua. The expansion of archaeological research in the following decades since has led to the discovery of human remains. Nebira, a twin peaked hill c. 11 km inland of Port Moresby, was excavated between 1968 and 1969 and 45 individuals dating to c. 720–300 BP were found.18 Another site, Motupore, is an island in Bootless Bay 15 km southeast of Port Moresby and was occupied for 500 years from c. 1200 AD.19 Here, 56 individuals were uncovered from excava­ tions in the 1970s.20 From 2009 to 2010, excavations at Bogi 1 in Caution Bay, 20 km northwest of Port Moresby, documented the remains of an individual dating to between 2900 and 4200 cal. BP.21 While the majority of human remains discovered in archaeological contexts along the Papuan coast have come about through archaeological excavations, increasingly, 179

Jason Kariwiga et al.

Figure 13.1 Excavations for human remains underway at Tubusereia, Bootless Bay. Photo: Jason Kariwiga.

local communities are reaching out to archaeologists. In 2016, members of a Koita clan requested archaeologists survey a rock shelter in their traditional lands outside of Port Moresby. This rock shelter houses the remains of at least 13 individuals and was the traditional location for storing slain enemies.21 In April 2019, the authors were part of a team invited to recover human remains at Tubusereia village in Bootless Bay (see Figure 13.1). The remains were discovered under a house after flooding. In August 2021, several skulls were exposed after king tides hit a beach on Fisherman Island southwest of Port Moresby. Locals contacted the PNG National Museum and Art Gallery (NMAG) and the skulls now remain with the traditional owners while research and management plans are drawn up.22

Human Remains as Artefacts from the Papuan Coast Manufacturing artefacts from human remains was common among New Guinea societies. Soukup categorizes these artefacts into four distinct groups based on type of use – ancestor cults, trophies, everyday items, and body adornment.23 The first two are discussed here. Ancestor cults typically involved acknowledging ancestors through such mediums as ritual ceremonies and it was within this context that some societies preserved heads and possessed skulls. The Anga of the Aseki region in the Owen Stanley ranges mummified their dead in smoking ceremonies and displayed them on platforms built 180

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on ledges.24 Similarly, although not for the same purposes or degree as the Anga, some Koita of coastal and hinterland Port Moresby are recorded as placing their dead on platforms in trees under which fires are lit until the softer parts dry to the point of withering. The bones are then recovered and placed in the home of the deceased or by nearby trees.25 Along parts of the Papuan coast, the heads of enemies were kept as trophies after raids. Headhunting in particular was prevalent among the Papuan tribes of the west and practiced as part of culturally significant ceremonies such as male initiation rituals or to flaunt marriage eligibility. The Kiwai and Suki of the Fly River and its surrounding delta were known to practice headhunting and retain the heads of their victims. Indeed, it is recorded that the Kiwai went to war specifically to return with the heads of the slain.26 Further east towards the Kikori and Omati River deltas, Goaribari islanders displayed skulls of their slain and ofttimes eaten foes in large men’s houses.27 Baxter Riley (1923)28 recounts inter­ viewing two native prisoners from the Fly River area who describe the process of mummifying heads (see Baxter Riley 192329 for a detailed description). Furthermore, burial practices among some tribes also meant human remains were displayed openly. For the Koita and the mountainous Koiari, it was common custom to leave the deceased to the mercy of the elements, after which the bones were collected for secondary burial beneath the ground under houses, or alter­ natively, were placed in caves and rock shelters.30 Understandably, many tribes were at first hesitant at the notion of trading away their prized trophy skulls. Their importance is summarized by the missionary James Chalmers, who, when describing the Kiwai, wrote that the more enemy skulls one acquired, the more honour that individual received.31 In 1875, the Italian naturalist Luigi D’Albertis observed that it was “impossible” to acquire the skulls he observed displayed openly in Mokatta village in the Fly area.32 This prohibition on the part of the natives however did not dissuade some collectors, who, in extreme cases, resorted to coercion and even theft. The same D’Albertis relates the actions of his companion Henry Chester who had a violent altercation with villagers from another settlement. Upon the natives fleeing into bushland, Chester proceeded to loot 14 human skulls from a deserted long house.33 Not to be outdone, D’Albertis himself ransacked the remains of two individuals at another settlement, exclaiming that he was “too delighted with my prize to heed reproof.”34 Nonetheless, by the mid-1800s, hesi­ tation on the part of the natives seems to have given way to active trading of human skulls, including trophy skulls, and it is at locations like Mokatta and other villages of the Fly where this primarily takes place.35

Papuan Collections Held Overseas Given the sheer volume of artefacts acquired from the Papuan coast, it is not sur­ prising that human remains feature prominently among them. Here we list human remains currently held in selected institutions. Note that this is not meant to be a complete listing of Papuan remains (Table 13.1). 181

Jason Kariwiga et al. Table 13.1 Human remains from the Papuan coast housed in selected museums Institution Fly River Field Museum, Chicago, U.S.A

Natural History Museum, London, U.K. Gulf of Papua Duckworth Laboratory, University of Cambridge, U.K.

Field Museum, Chicago, U.S.A Natural History Museum, London, U.K.

J.L. Shellshear Museum, University of Sydney, Australia

Port Moresby Australian National University Milne Bay Duckworth Laboratory, University of Cambridge, U.K.

J.L. Shellshear Museum, University of Sydney, Australia

Locality

Number of Individuals

Notes

Dedikan, Fly River Upper Fly and Strickland Rivers Bihu, east bank Fly River Fly River mouth

3 1

A.B. Lewis collection, “skull/human bone/ hair” (Welsh 1998)

Maipua Pai-i-ara (Purari River) Goaribari Ukiaravi (Purari) Kairu Papuan Gulf (unspecified)

1 1

Urama District, Delta Division Upper Paibuna River, Delta Division Paibuna River, Delta Division Goaribari Purari River headwaters Okearavi village Kairu village, Purari River delta Aird River

1

Motupore Island

56

Excavated in the 1970s and transferred to ANU (Allen 2017)

“Awaiama to Alotau” Daui, Fife Bay

22

All but one are marked “Tawala,” Tawala being a language group “Daui” refers to a people, possibly from Fife Bay

Isudau village, Fife Bay

8

1 8

3 1 1 1

A.B. Lewis collection, “skull/human bone/ hair” (Welsh 1998)

1 1 1 1 43 2 1

6

182

“Pai-i-ara” refers to either a people or a language

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Repatriation and Ownership The question of ownership and repatriation of PNG human remains is a complex and sensitive issue. In the Pacific region, Australia, New Zealand, and the Hawaiian Islands lead the way in prioritizing the repatriation of their ancestral remains as part of broader national conservations relating to tackling historical wrongs and managing Indigenous cultural heritage.36 The repatriation of PNG human remains has been ongoing, albeit at a slow pace. As the state regulatory body, one of the NMAG’s primary responsibilities is to identify objects and collections of national significance and make recommendations to the government for their return. In 2012, the NMAG received into its care five skulls formerly in private hands. These skulls were from various regions including the Sepik, Western (Fly) and Gulf provinces.37 Individually, Papua New Guineans are aware of the cultural and monetary value of their objects. In 2018, Lake Murray villagers at the middle Fly made the call to Australian authorities to consider repatriating their cul­ tural artefacts collected by photographer Frank Hurley in 1922.38 It is worth noting too that not all Indigenous groups in the Pacific are necessarily interested in bringing back their cultural objects and human remains.39 At the other end, the international pressure by Indigenous peoples across the world has seen many institutions becoming more protective of who they share information within relation to their collections.

Discussion An important question that remains is what may be the research potential of remains held in museum collections abroad, most of which consist primarily of crania? The major impediment to research on these extensive collections is the general lack of provenance. Most individuals are only specified as being from New Guinea or Melanesia, or from equally vague geographic areas within PNG like “North Coast” or “Papuan Coast.” The typological approach favoured at the time they were collected did not consider variation within these regions important. Even when collections are associated with specific villages in collections cata­ logues, the general lack of other contextual information leaves significant questions about identity. For instance, as mentioned above, some of these crania were the result of headhunting activities, so that the villages where they were acquired were not necessarily the individuals’ homes. The result of this shortcoming has been that the vast majority of the thousands of individuals stored in museums are largely ignored. Instead, research has focused overwhelmingly on only a small sub-set of the available skeletal material – specifically, discrete collections that have relatively large sample sizes and good contextual data, such as the extensively studied Tolai collection at the American Museum of Natural History. Thus, reestablishing provenance is an essential first step in any efforts to systematically study these remains and would also provide opportunities for museums to identify descendent communities (and vice versa) to engage in discussions about the fate of these collections. In some cases, it may be possible to reconstruct provenance 183

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through painstakingly researching the personal accounts of expedition members who acquired the collections of specific museums (c.f. Ballard 2001).40 DNA studies of modern groups can also provide clues about pre-colonial genetic variability in PNG, and comparisons to DNA from study collections provides another pathway for re­ associating individual crania with their descendant communities. Additionally, studies aiming to map regional strontium isotopic signatures to identify mobility patterns (see work by Shaw et al. 201141 at Nebira) could help to narrow the geographical origin of some remains. Research carried out thus far has focused largely on craniometric variability. Craniometric analysis involves measuring the dimensions of the skull, with variability in measurements taken to estimate a number of features, including ancestry.42 Craniometry offers significant potential to reveal information regarding morpholog­ ical variability between different groups, allowing measures of genetic distance to reconstruct population interactions occurring during the later prehistory of PNG. The limited craniometric research carried out on these series thus far has revealed a great amount of morphological diversity, but the distribution of this variability across PNG is not well understood. With only a few exceptions, previous studies have viewed cranial variation of PNG primarily in the broader context of the Pacific region. The most extensive of these studies are by Pietrusewsky (1973,43 1976,44 1978,45 1979,46 1983,47 198648), who utilized large samples, multivariate statistics, and contextual data from linguistics, geography, and archaeology to reconstruct ancient population movements and interactions throughout Oceania. Pietrusewsky found that coastal PNG samples appear to be relatively distinct from the rest of Melanesia, and also found evidence for gene flow between PNG and some other specific areas in the Pacific, including northern Australia.49 Relatively little work, however, has been focused on identifying and interpreting patterns of morphological variability within PNG, mostly due the problems related to the lack of provenance, as discussed above, as well as a lack of data from the highlands (though see Green 1990,50 Pietrusewsky 1973,51 197652). Other skeletal studies from PNG have focused on cranial and dental nonmetric variation to further explore group affinity, on paleopathology to identify evidence of disease,53 and on reconstructions of mortuary processes.54 Such studies offer great potential for reconstructing the pop­ ulation history of PNG, and the ability to expand data collection by re-establishing provenance to thousands of individuals would be invaluable to researchers. Though these research agendas are of great interest to academics, we should also consider ethical obligations. Unlike some Pacific nations, primarily Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii, there is currently no strong push in PNG to take ownership of these remains, but this does not mean that communities are necessarily uninterested. Human remains are not referred to as “ancestors” by the people and authorities of PNG unless a clear ancestral link is demonstrated with a particular group. Thus, efforts to re-establish provenance of skeletal collections is something that would provide a tangible benefit to local communities. As has happened elsewhere (e.g. Adams et al. 202055), archaeologists and physical anthropologists should make efforts to engage with descendent groups to build research designs that include questions that are relevant to living populations, and may aid in negotiating land rights or reconstructing 184

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histories that were lost as a result of colonialism. The repatriation of human remains is not a key issue at present in Papua New Guinea, but that is not to say it may not become one in the future.

Conclusion Human remains from the Papuan coast of PNG make up a substantial portion of museum collections globally. The height of collecting took place during the colonial period from the late 1800s and continued even into the Second World War with combatants and enemy remains. The research potential that these remains offer is immense. One of the ways re­ searchers can contribute is through undertaking provenance studies on the remains. This is because many of the remains lack context, have been incorrectly labelled or assigned to other tribes. Stable isotope analysis and DNA studies are two such methods that can be applied to determine the origins of remains. Ultimately, prov­ enance studies can lead down the path of repatriation. In addition, the successful application of these and similar methods to provenance unknown remains adds further significance to museum collections, wherein issues relating to storage of unknown or undocumented collections can finally be addressed. This can shift the view of museums as static storage repositories, and not only allows for greater accessibility for stakeholders such as researchers, but also highlights the still relevant work that museums undertake today to address these legacy issues. On the issue of repatriation, there is not a significant push towards repatriation of human remains to PNG; this is unlike other Pacific states such as Australia and New Zealand. However, that is not to say there will be renewed interest in this direction into the future. In the meantime, opportunities should be made available to Papua New Guinean researchers to access and work with human remains from their country so that new stories can emerge.

Acknowledgements J.K. acknowledges the Australian Government’s Research Training Program (RTP) for PhD scholarship funding to attend The University of Queensland, Australia, and also thanks the University of Papua New Guinea’s Archaeology Laboratory Group.

Notes 1 Michael Pietrusewsky, “Multivariate Analysis of New Guinea and Melanesian Skulls: A Review,” Journal of Human Evolution 12, no. 1 (1983): 63. 2 Glenn R. Summerhayes and Jim Allen, “Lapita Writ Small: Revisiting the Austronesian Colonisation of the Papuan Coast,” in Oceanic Explorations: Lapita and Western Pacific Settlement, ed. Stuart Bedford, Christophe Sand, and Sean P. Connaughton (Canberra: ANU Press, 2007), 97–122. 3 Nigel Oram, “Pots for Sago: The Hiri Trading Network,” in The Hiri in History: Further Aspects of Long Distance Motu Trade in Central Papua, ed. Tom Dutton (Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, 1982), 1–33.

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Jason Kariwiga et al. 4 Michael Quinnell, “‘Before It Has Become Too Late’: The Making and Repatriation of Sir William MacGregor’s Official Collection from British New Guinea,” in Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s, ed. Michael O’Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), 88. 5 Geraldine Mate, “Victory in the Pacific,” Queensland Museum Network (blog), August 17, 2020, https://blog.qm.qld.gov.au/2020/08/17/victory-in-the-pacific/ 6 Simon Harrison, “Skull Trophies of the Pacific War: Transgressive Objects of Remembrance,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12, no. 4 (2006): 817–836. 7 Lawrence R. Dahl, “Pillaged Skulls and Looted Gear: The Racialization of the Japanese and Its Effect on United States Trophy Hunting during the Second World War” (MA diss., Middle Tennessee State University, 2021), 42. 8 Walker S. Schneider, “Skull Questions: The Public Discussion of American Human Trophy Collection during World War II,” Penn History Review 25, no. 2 (2019): 125–151. 9 Ibid. 10 Lucas E. Erickson, “Their Flag and Skulls Are Ours: Corporeal Trophy Taking in the Pacific War” (MA diss., University of Oregon, 2012), 132. 11 Harrison, “Skull Trophies,” 826. 12 Susan Bulmer, Archaeological Field Survey and Excavations in Central Papua, 1968 (unpublished manuscript, 1969), typescript. 13 Jim Allen, “Fishing for Wallabies: Trade as a Mechanism for Social Interaction, Integration and Elaboration on the Central Papuan Coast,” in The Evolution of Social Systems, ed. J. Friedman and M.J. Rowlands (London: Duckworth, 1977), 419–455. 14 Geoffrey Irwin, “The Emergence of Mailu as a Central Place in the Prehistory of Coastal Papua” (PhD diss., The Australian National University, 1977). 15 Ronald L. Vanderwal, “Prehistoric Studies in Central Coastal Papua” (PhD diss., The Australian National University, 1973). 16 James W. Rhoads, “Through a Glass Darkly: Present and Past Land Use Systems of Papuan Sagopalm Users” (PhD diss., The Australian National University, 1980). 17 David Frankel and Jim Rhodes, eds., Archaeology of a Coastal Exchange System: Sites and Ceramics of the Papuan Gulf (Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 1994). 18 Jim Allen, Excavations on Motupore Island Central District, Papua New Guinea (Dunedin: Department of Anthropology and Archaeology: University of Otago, 2017). 19 Georgia Stannard, “A Study of Palaeohealth in Precontact Coastal Papua New Guinea” (BA [Hons] diss., The Australian National University, 2008). 20 Ian J. McNiven et al., “New Direction in Human Colonization of the Pacific: Lapita Settlement of South Coast New Guinea,” Australian Archaeology, no. 72 (2011): 1–6. 21 Vincent H. Kewibu and Jason Kariwiga, Report on Ogobunimu and Dunanimu Archaeological Survey, (unpublished manuscript, 2016), typescript. 22 PNG National Museum & Art Gallery, “Skulls Uncovered on Fisherman Island,” Facebook, 9:40 p.m., August 29, 2021, https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid= 4308210155961680&id=417905678325500 23 Martin Soukup, “Second Life of Bodies in New Guinea,” Annals of the Náprstek Museum 39, no. 1 (2018): 6. 24 Ronald G. Beckett, “Smoked Bodies of Papua New Guinea,” in The Handbook of Mummy Studies: New Frontiers in Scientific and Cultural Perspectives, ed. Dong Hoon Shin and Raffaella Bianucci (Singapore: Springer, 2021), 983–1008. 25 William G. Lawes, “Ethnological Notes on the Motu, Koitapu and Koiari Tribes of New Guinea,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 8 (1879): 369–377. 26 Gunnar Landtman, “The Magic of the Kiwai Papuans in Warfare,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 46 (1916): 322–333. 27 Soukup, Second Life, 5–20.

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Papuan Pasts 28 E. Baxter Riley, “Dorro Head-Hunters,” Man, Vol. 23 (1923): 33–35. 29 Baxter Riley, “Dorro Head-Hunters,” 33–25. 30 James Chalmers, “On the Manners and Customs of Some of the Tribes of New Guinea,” Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, Vol. 18 (1887): 57–69; Octavius C. Stone, “Description of the Country and the Natives of Port Moresby and Neighbourhood, New Guinea,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society Vol. 46 (1876): 34–62. 31 James Chalmers, “Notes on the Natives of Kiwai Island, Fly River, British New Guinea,” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 33 (1903): 117–134. 32 Luigi M. D’Albertis, New Guinea: What I Did and What I Saw, Volumes I-II (London: Samson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1880), 10–12. 33 D’Albertis, New Guinea, 38–40. 34 D’Albertis, New Guinea, 102. 35 Susan M. Davies, “Plumes, Pipes and Valuables: The Papuan Artefact-Trade in Southwest New Guinea, 1845–1888,” in Unpacking the Collection: Networks of Material and Social Agency in the Museum, ed. Sarah Byrne et al. (New York: Springer, 2011), 83–115. 36 Natasha McKinney, “Ancestral Remains from Oceania: Histories and Relationships in the Collection of the British Museum,” in Regarding the Dead: Human Remains in the British Museum, ed. Alexandra Fletcher, Daniel Antoine, and J.D. Hill (London: The British Museum, 2014): 34–42. 37 Jos van Beurden, Treasures in Trusted Hands: Negotiating the Future of Colonial Cultural Objects (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2017), 107. 38 Catherine Graue, “Papua New Guinean Lake Murray Villagers Seek Repatriation of LongLost Artefacts from Australia,” ABC News Australia, January 30, 2018, https://www.abc.net. au/news/2018-01-30/png-lake-murray-villagers-seek-repatriation-of-artefacts/9370478 39 McKinney, Ancestral Remains, 34–42. 40 Chris Ballard, “A.F.R. Wollaston and the ‘Utakwa River Mountain Papuan’ Skulls,” Journal of Pacific History 36, no. 1 (2001): 117–126. 41 Ben Shaw et al., “Prehistoric Migration at Nebira, South Coast of Papua New Guinea: New Insights into Interaction Using Isotope and Trace Element Concentration Analyses,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Vol. 30 (2011): 344–358. 42 Angi M. Christensen, Nicholas V. Passalacqua, and Eric J. Bartelink, Forensic Anthropology: Current Methods and Practice (Oxford: Academic Press, 2014). 43 Michael Pietrusewsky, “A Multivariate Analysis of Craniometric Data from the Territory of Papua and New Guinea,” Archaeology in Oceania 8, no. 1 (1973): 12–23. 44 Michael Pietrusewsky, Prehistoric Human Skeletal Remains from Papua New Guinea and the Marquesas (Hawaii: University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1976). 45 Michael Pietrusewsky, “Craniometric Variation in Pleistocene and More Recent Australian and Circum-Australian Populations Studied by Multivariate Procedures,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 48, no. 3 (1978): 426–427. 46 Michael Pietrusewsky, “Craniometric Variation in Pleistocene Australian and More Recent Australian and New Guinea populations Studied by Multivariate Procedures,” Canberra, Occasional Papers in Human Biology, no. 2 (1979): 83–123. 47 Pietrusewsky, “Multivariate analysis,” 61–76. 48 Michael Pietrusewsky, “Human Cranial Collections from the Pacific and Asia Preserved in Dresden, Berlin and Leipzig and Information on Collections Outside the German Democratic Republic,” Abhandlungen und Berichte des Staatlichen Museums für Völkerkunde, Dresden. Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden, no. 42 (1986): 21–52. 49 Pietrusewsky, “Craniometric variation,” 103. 50 Michael K. Green, “Prehistoric Cranial Variation in Papua New Guinea” (PhD diss., The Australian National University, 1990). 51 Pietrusewsky, “A Multivariate Analysis,” 12–23. 52 Pietrusewsky, “Prehistoric Human Skeletal Remains.”

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Jason Kariwiga et al. 53 Stephen Webb, Palaeopathology of Aboriginal Australians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 54 Ben Shaw and William R. Dickinson, “Excavation on Nimowa Island, Louisiade Archipelago, Papua New Guinea: Insights into Cultural Practices and the Development of Exchange Networks in the Southern Massim Region,” The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, Vol. 12, no. 3 (2016): 398–427. 55 Shaun Adams et al., “A Community Bioarchaeology Project in the Flinders Group, Queensland, Australia,” Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress, no. 16 (2020): 436–459.

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Papuan Pasts Davies, Susan M. “Plumes, Pipes and Valuables: The Papuan Artefact-Trade in Southwest New Guinea, 1845–1888.” In Unpacking the Collection. Networks of Material and Social Agency in the Museum, edited by Sarah Byrne, Anne Clarke, Rodney Harrison, and Robin Torrence, 83–115. New York: Springer, 2011. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4419-8222-3_4 Erickson, Lucas E. “Their Flag and Skulls Are Ours: Corporeal Trophy Taking in the Pacific War.” MA diss., University of Oregon, 2012. Frankel, David and Jim Rhodes, eds. Archaeology of a Coastal Exchange System: Sites and Ceramics of the Papuan Gulf. Canberra: Research Papers in Archaeology and Natural History No. 25, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 1994. Graue, Catherine. “Papua New Guinean Lake Murray villagers Seek Repatriation of Long-Lost Artefacts from Australia.” ABC News Australia, January 30, 2018. https://www.abc.net. au/news/2018-01-30/png-lake-murray-villagers-seek-repatriation-of-artefacts/9370478 Green, Michael K. “Prehistoric Cranial Variation in Papua New Guinea.” PhD diss., The Australian National University, 1990. Harrison, Simon. “Skull Trophies of the Pacific War: Transgressive Objects of Remembrance.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12, no. 4 (2006): 817–836. DOI: 10.1111/ j.1467-9655.2006.00365.x Irwin, Geoffrey. “The Emergence of Mailu as a Central Place in the Prehistory of Coastal Papua.” PhD diss., The Australian National University, 1977. Kewibu, Vincent H. and Jason Kariwiga. Report on Ogobunimu and Dunanimu Archaeological Survey. Unpublished manuscript. 2016, typescript. Landtman, Gunnar. “The Magic of the Kiwai Papuans in Warfare.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 46 (1916): 322–333. DOI: 10.2307/ 2843396 Lawes, William G. “Ethnological Notes on the Motu, Koitapu and Koiari Tribes of New Guinea.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 8 (1879): 369–377. DOI: 10.2307/2841079 Mate, Geraldine. “Victory in the Pacific.” Queensland Museum Network (blog). August 17, 2020. https://blog.qm.qld.gov.au/2020/08/17/victory-in-the-pacific/ McKinney, Natasha. “Ancestral Remains from Oceania. Histories and Relationships in the Collection of the British Museum.” In Regarding the Dead: Human Remains in the British Museum, edited by Alexandra Fletcher, Daniel Antoine, and J. D. Hill, 34–42. London: The British Museum, 2014. McNiven, Ian J., Bruno David, Thomas Richards, Ken Aplin, Britt Asmussen, Jerome Mialanes, Matthew Leavesley, Patrick Faulkner, and Sean Ulm. “New Direction in Human Colonization of the Pacific: Lapita Settlement of South Coast New Guinea.” Australian Archaeology, no. 72 (2011): 1–6. DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2011.11690525 Oram, Nigel. “Pots for Sago: The Hiri Trading Network.” In The Hiri in History: Further Aspects of Long Distance Motu Trade in Central Papua, edited by Tom Dutton, 1–33. Canberra: Pacific Research Monograph 8, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, 1982. Pietrusewsky, Michael. “A Multivariate Analysis of Craniometric Data from the Territory of Papua and New Guinea.” Archaeology in Oceania 8, no. 1 (1973): 12–23. Pietrusewsky, Michael. “Craniometric Variation in Pleistocene and More Recent Australian and Circum-Australian Populations Studied by Multivariate Procedures.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 48, no. 3 (1978): 426–427. Pietrusewsky, Michael. Craniometric Variation in Pleistocene Australian and More Recent Australian and New Guinea Populations Studied by Multivariate Procedures. Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies. Canberra, Occasional Papers in Human Biology, no. 2 (1979): 83–123. Pietrusewsky, Michael. “Human Cranial Collections from the Pacific and Asia Preserved in Dresden, Berlin and Leipzig and Information on Collections Outside the German

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Jason Kariwiga et al. Democratic Republic.” Abhandlungen und Berichte des Staatlichen Museums für Völkerkunde, Dresden. Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden 42, (1986): 21–52. Pietrusewsky, Michael. “Multivariate Analysis of New Guinea and Melanesian Skulls: A Review.” Journal of Human Evolution 12, no. 1 (1983): 61–76. DOI: 10.1016/S0047-24 84(83)80013-X Pietrusewsky, Michael. Prehistoric Human Skeletal Remains from Papua New Guinea and the Marquesas. Hawaii: Social Sciences & Linguistics Institute, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1976. PNG National Museum & Art Gallery. “Skulls Uncovered on Fisherman Island.” Facebook, 9:40 p.m., August 29, 2021. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid= 4308210155961680&id=417905678325500 Quinnell, Michael. “‘Before It Has Become Too Late’: The Making and Repatriation of Sir William MacGregor’s Official Collection from British New Guinea.” In Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s, edited by Michael O’Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch, 81–102. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000. Rhoads, James W. “Through a Glass Darkly: Present and Past Land Use Systems of Papuan Sagopalm Users.” PhD diss., The Australian National University, 1980. Schneider, Walker S. “Skull Questions: The Public Discussion of American Human Trophy Collection during World War II.” Penn History Review 25, no. 2 (2019): 125–151. Shaw, Ben, Hallie Buckley, Glenn Summerhayes, Claudine Stirling, and Malcolm Reid. “Prehistoric Migration at Nebira, South Coast of Papua New Guinea: New Insights into Interaction Using Isotope and Trace Element Concentration Analyses.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, no. 30 (2011): 344–358. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaa.2011.05.004 Shaw, Ben and William R. Dickinson. “Excavation on Nimowa Island, Louisiade Archipelago, Papua New Guinea: Insights into Cultural Practices and the Development of Exchange Networks in the Southern Massim Region.” The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, no. 3 (2016): 398–427. DOI: 10.1080/15564894.2016.1188335 Soukup, Martin. “Second Life of Bodies in New Guinea.” Annals of the Náprstek Museum 39, no. 1 (2018): 5–20. DOI: 10.1515/anpm-2018-0002 Stannard, Georgia. “A Study of Palaeohealth in Precontact Coastal Papua New Guinea.” BA (Hons) diss., The Australian National University, 2008. Stone, Octavius C. “Description of the Country and the Natives of Port Moresby and Neighbourhood, New Guinea.” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, no. 46 (1876): 34–62. DOI: 10.2307/1798668 Summerhayes, Glenn R. and Jim Allen. “Lapita Writ Small: Revisiting the Austronesian Colonisation of the Papuan Coast.” In Oceanic Explorations: Lapita and Western Pacific Settlement, edited by Stuart Bedford, Christophe Sand, and Sean P. Connaughton, 97–122. Canberra: ANU Press, 2007. van Beurden, Jos. Treasures in Trusted Hands: Negotiating the Future of Colonial Cultural Objects. Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2017. Vanderwal, Ronald L. “Prehistoric Studies in Central Coastal Papua.” PhD diss., The Australian National University, 1973. Webb, Stephen. Palaeopathology of Aboriginal Australians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Welsh, Robert L. An American Anthropologist in Melanesia: A.B. Lewis and the Joseph N. Field South Pacific Expedition 1909–1013, Vol. 2. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998.

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14 SEARCHING FOR IDENTITIES THROUGH ARCHAEOLOGICAL HUMAN REMAINS IN TURKEY Elifgül Doğan Introduction Situated among the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, Anatolia has witnessed numerous pivotal moments in human history. It served as a conduit for early human societies migrating out of Africa, a home for the first sedentary communities, and a motherland where mighty civilisations, such as the Hittites, the Eastern Romans (Byzantines), and the Ottomans flourished and eventually met their demise. Nevertheless, owing to its geographical positioning, this ancient landmass has also embodied a state of “in-betweenness” for some, where seemingly different cultures and identities have both coalesced and clashed since ancient times.1 Today, Anatolia is part of the modern Turkish Republic, where this same sense of liminality and contradiction permeates every realm of life, including how people perceive their national identity and heritage (Figure 14.1). The Turkish Republic was born in 1923, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. This political transition marked the beginnings of a massive cultural transfor­ mation in the country. Aspiring to step away from the Ottoman legacy, the founders of Turkey swiftly embarked on an ambitious nation-building project through which the former subjects of the Ottoman sultan would be transformed into modern citizens with a new national identity.2 As part of this project, Turkey’s first Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD)3 emerged,4 and provided the Turks with a framework to con­ textualise this profound metamorphosis. To unify new citizens around a common history and identity, those developing the Turkish AHD adopted an ethno-nationalist tone and curated an intriguing selection of ethnogenesis stories, migration myths, and narratives in which archaeological objects were carefully embedded.5 Among the most interesting objects in these narratives were archaeological human remains. Between the 1920s and 1940s, the Turkish AHD instrumentalised human remains that had been recovered from various prehistoric sites and showcased them as the DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-18

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Elifgül Doğan

Figure 14.1 Map showing the geographical location of Turkey at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Asian portion of Turkey is traditionally defined as Anatolia. Source: Created by the author on ArcMap.

“ultimate material evidence” to support claims about the ancestral Turks in Anatolia.6 In doing so, it linked Turkish identity to ancient Anatolian peoples in spite of the fact that no sufficient archaeological or genetic evidence had been found. However, after the 1940s, the meanings attributed to human remains, and the value placed on them changed and became much less significant in the story of Turkish identity. The rise of conservative politics in Turkey since the 1950s shifted the focus of Turkey’s AHD from ethno-nationalism to ethno-religious conservatism.7 This new discourse re­ positioned Turkish identity alongside Islamic and Ottoman heritage by severing previous ties to the ancient Anatolian populations.8 Within this discourse, human remains from pre-Turkic periods lost their potency and status as a link to humanity. No longer considered as the remains of an ancestral people, they became objects belonging to distant and unrelated pasts. Crucially, this shift in the AHD has affected how different collections of human remains are treated and interpreted in Turkey. First, the methods used to study, display, or preserve archaeological human remains with respect vary significantly depending on the chronological origins of these remains. Second, the two conflicting narratives surrounding Turkey’s archaeological human remains not only polarise public understanding of national identity and ancestral roots, but also give rise to more recent versions of ethno-genesis stories written through human bones. This chapter places these issues under a critical heritage lens and investigates how the Turkish AHD has changed the perceived value and treatment of archaeological human remains in 192

Identities through Archaeological Human Remains in Turkey

the country. Drawing upon (1) a historic and contemporary heritage discourse analysis, and (2) recent data on professional and public perception of human remains in Turkey, this chapter demonstrates the ways in which human remains relate to modern Turkish identity today.9

Theoretical Framework: The Authorised Heritage Discourse and Making of Identities The theoretical framework of this research is grounded in critical heritage studies which refrains from confining cultural heritage to simple tangible materials of the past and instead, approaches it as “a political, cultural, and social phenomenon” that shapes and is being shaped by numerous societal dynamics.10 At first glance, archaeological human remains, as seemingly very tangible entities of cultural heritage, might appear to many as nothing more than “just bones.” In actuality, they embody a complex mixture of “political, evidentiary and emotional meanings”11 which transform them from tangible objects into “social beings, capable of being affected by action or discourse in the present.”12 Hence, this research refrains from approaching human remains as ordinary artefacts that exist in the vacuum of museum collections; instead, it views them as social entities that can play various roles both within and outside the museum context. Drawing upon a critical heritage lens, this chapter interrogates the political, cultural, and social roles attributed to human remains within Authorised Heritage Discourses (AHDs), with a focus on Turkey. Before moving into this discussion, it is important to situate archaeological human remains in the history of AHDs. Laurajane Smith defines AHDs as grand hegemonic narratives about heritage which typically ignore “alternative and subaltern ideas” surrounding it.13 AHDs are usually disseminated through in­ stitutionalised efforts such as national education and museum displays.14 In doing so, they reinforce the dominant political and cultural ideals of their time, making them apt weapons in the hands of ideologues. The emergence of AHDs can be traced back to the 19th century, a period in which strong political ideologies grasped the power of heritage to evoke a sense of belonging and identity among emergent nations and peoples.15 Nationalist movements in particular utilised heritage discourses to embolden the idea of the nation state – a monolithic and uniformed political entity built on a sense of belonging to a deeply rooted shared history and an imagined identity.16 The mythicised archaeological objects, places, and stories that were curated as part of these nationalist AHDs acquired cultural status in time, and eventually became symbols of shared national identities.17 Archaeologists unknowingly, and in some cases voluntarily, en­ tangled themselves with nationalistic agendas by overemphasising the national signifi­ cance of the objects they discovered. During the 1930s in particular, archaeological research helped to support nationalist ideology in locations such as Britain, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Turkey, resulting in a seemingly unlimited supply of ammunition that was used to reinforce national AHDs and legitimise various state-building agendas.18 Among the various types of ideological ammunition garnered from excavations, human remains received particular attention in AHDs, as they justified stories of ethnogenesis that linked relatively modern nations to ancient autochthonous peo­ ples.19 By proposing these links, AHDs not only fomented alleged ancestral ties 193

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between modern and ancient populations, but also posited links between people and historical lands, justifying modern territorial claims of ownership.20 Turkey was one of the countries that quickly recognised the unique potential of archaeological human remains to inform a national identity that could be tied to a particular geography: Anatolia. As a result, the Turkish AHD vigorously harvested the power of archae­ ology and archaeological human remains for Turkey’s nation-building enterprise.

A New National Identity Written on Bones: Embracing the Anatolians The history of the entangled relationship between archaeology and Turkey’s nation­ alistic heritage discourse has been extensively studied by various scholars.21 These studies collectively illustrated the ways in which the newly built Turkish state, looking to find its footing in the world, instrumentalised archaeology and anthropology for its nation-building project. This project, at its core, aimed to modernise the country by unburdening the Turks of more than six centuries of cultural and political baggage associated with the Ottoman Empire, and erasing any traces of imperial identity.22 This identity, which had a strong reference to Islam and focused on the dynasty to whom all imperial subjects had to pledge loyalty,23 clashed with the definition of a new national identity that the founders of Turkey had in mind for the Turks. The roots of this new national identity would lie deeper than the layers of the Ottoman past and were tied to Anatolia rather than the Ottoman sultanate.24 The task of uncovering these roots fell on the shoulders of anthropologists and archaeologists who embarked on extensive excavation projects across Anatolia and discovered numerous examples of human remains from prehistoric sites. Subsequent analysis, it was hoped, would reveal the biological and racial origins of the Turkish people.25 Alacahöyük, an Early Bronze Age site in northern Anatolia, was one such excavation. Here, there were findings that came to be known as the “royal Hatti burials,” with the potential, it was argued, to answer questions about the origins of the Turks in Anatolia,26 despite dating to more than 3,000 years before the arrival of Turks in Anatolia. To support these ambitious claims the graves of Muslims from the largest cemeteries of İstanbul were exhumed in order to collect comparative cranial data.27 Simultaneously, a massive study was sponsored by the state, including a survey of the anthropological characteristics of 64,000 citizens, whose measurements would be compared with those identifiable in the remains of ancient Anatolians.28 Based on a series of archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic theories, it was posited that Turks, who once led nomadic lives in Central Asia, migrated to Anatolia in prehis­ toric times and had ancestral relations with certain civilisations found across Asia Minor, including the Sumerians, Hittites, Assyrians, Phrygians, Lydians, and even the Greeks, Etruscans, and Seljuks.29 These peoples were proposed as the true founders of this geography. Although the evidence and logic of this assertion was highly con­ testable, it helped the ideologues of the early Turkish Republic in their endeavours to create an Anatolian identity. By “Turkifying” ancient Anatolia and its peoples,30 they created “an imagination and a myth of a nation stretching from ‘pre’ to ‘post’ history and sharing the same ‘blood’, ‘lineage’, ‘language’, and ‘culture’ … .”31 Subsequently, human remains of this ancient nation from all periods were embraced, and well cared 194

Identities through Archaeological Human Remains in Turkey

for32; they became symbols of “Turkishness” and instruments of the nation-building project. The significant logistical, financial, and intellectual resources committed to these projects demonstrate how seriously the state believed ancient human remains should play a role in the formation of a new Turkish identity.

Rediscovering the Ottoman Roots In the aftermath of the Second World War, the project of building a nation “through bones” was interrupted. The 1950s started with the replacement of the founding secular party with a conservative government, one which expeditiously launched its own cultural reformation project. First, the project cultivated conservatism and endorsed a renewed sympathy and admiration for the Ottomans.33 Second, these nostalgic cultural references eventually pervaded the authorised heritage discourse, shifting its focus from ethnic nationalism to ethno-religious conservatism.34 According to this new discourse, an all-embracing Anatolian Turkish national identity had failed to recognise the Islamic character of the country, which the supporters of the conservative discourse considered an essential part of Turkish identity.35 Concurrently, the Turkish state started to lose interest in the use of anthropology and archaeology to construct new political narratives and identities, and eventually granted these disciplines with greater independence.36 The roots of the Turks no longer had to stretch back to an ancient past. Contrary to the earlier Anatolian-centred discourse, this new conservative dis­ course did not embrace or glorify ancient Anatolian civilisations, and only acknowledged Turkic history which started in the 11th century with the arrival of the Seljuk Turks in Anatolia from Central Asia.37 Anything that pre-dated the Seljuk period was now viewed as unrelated to Turkish heritage. As opposed to the multicultural and multi-religious identity the Republican discourse had once endorsed,38 conservative policies promoted a one-dimensional identity.39 The ripple effects of this shift in AHD intensified in the 1970s and continue to flourish today. Currently, conservative heritage discourse dominates most state-generated heritage interpreta­ tions and purports a polarising view of heritage and identity in Turkey.40 According to Atakuman, this exclusionary heritage view gradually brought about a national “blind spot” towards the pre-Turkic past of Anatolia, increasingly relegating these peoples to mere sources of revenue for the tourism sector.41 Consequently, the state’s diminished interest in the pre-Turkic past, and its decreased efforts to connect Turks to Anatolian civilisations, changed the significance of archaeological human remains in the Turkish AHD. Human remains of ancient Anatolian populations gradually lost both their role as actors in ethno-genesis stories and the accompanying “ideological baggage.” Once viewed as the ancestors of the Turks, they became “ordinary arte­ facts” of an unrelated distant past, in other words, someone else’s heritage.

Current Perceptions Surrounding Archaeological Human Remains in Turkey Considering this summary and analysis of Turkey’s authorised heritage discourses, it is important to ask what this shift means for human remains management in Turkey today. 195

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How do professionals and the public view these collections? Do either relate human remains from different eras of the past to Turkish identity? These are obviously chal­ lenging questions to answer, particularly because research on the management of archaeological human remains in Turkey is very limited.42 However, the data which I collected in a series of semi-structured interviews in Turkish museums,43 and an online visitor survey of 780 participants, offer illuminating insights on the value placed on human remains collections in Turkey today. An in-depth analysis of these data has been published elsewhere,44 but a discussion of some of the results is helpful here.

The “Authorised” View Museums in Turkey have “emerged as a polyvalent institution[s] … that reinforce various narratives of state ideology, heritage and identity construction ….”45 Even though the narratives presented in museums have transformed over time along with the AHD, two things have remained unchanged: museums continue to be centrally administered, and they propagate the authorised heritage interpretation espoused by the Turkish state.46 That is why conversations with museum personnel working in state museums today rarely deviate from official narratives. Discussions surrounding human remains also echo the official rhetoric and reinforce the legal definitions for human remains in Turkey. This official view of human remains classifies these together with ordinary artefacts and current heritage legislation defines them as “state property.”47 This definition which conceptualises human remains as “ordinary artefacts,” reinforces the position of the aforementioned conservative AHD. This stance fails to recognise the unique and sensitive nature of human remains, and encourages some museum professionals to view human remains, particularly those from the pre-Turkic period, as “just another artefact.” As a result, some museum personnel fail to adopt specific care and ethical management strategies for archaeological human remains. Many museum profes­ sionals I interviewed argued that, because most archaeological human remains in Turkey originate from “a distant past” (pre-Turkic periods) with no living descen­ dants, they do not necessarily feel any specific ethical obligations towards these col­ lections. In addition, most have little concern or awareness about the possible controversies that surround the management and display of human remains. As a result, these remains are not always kept in the most suitable environments, and in some cases, are displayed in sensationalised ways with little consideration for ethical issues, the sensitivities of visitors, or the views of other potential stakeholders.48 Finally, the majority of museum professionals interviewed claim that the public is neither interested nor concerned about the management of human remains unless these are from Ottoman or Islamic periods. From the data collected and the state­ ments made by museum professionals, it is apparent that they confine the Turkish identity to one based on an Ottoman and Turkic past. This does not necessarily imply that substantially better practices exist in Turkish museums for the management of Turkic/Islamic human remains. The management of these remains from more recent eras, which are limited in number compared to ancient human remains, can also be problematic. However, the situation is worse for ancient human remains, as their 196

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importance is not appreciated within the AHD. For many museum professionals in Turkey, pre-Turkic human remains constitute “the other”; and are elements of a distant past. This attitude results in a dearth of ethical debate and justification for the insufficient attention and care of these remains. This stance reflects both the prejudices propagated by the conservative heritage discourse, and hints at the diminished value placed on archaeological human remains in Turkey in general.

The Public View In light of this picture, it is important to ask whether the public perception of archaeological human remains parallels this conservative heritage discourse. To answer this question, as part of my PhD research, I conducted an online visitor survey of 780 participants between February 2021 and July 2021.49 Overall, the online survey results show that 76.1% of the surveyed public appear to be in favour (or somewhat in favour) of archaeological human remains displays because of their scientific and educational benefits. However, despite the high approval rates for displaying these remains, 81.3% of the participants stated that “human remains were not ordinary objects and needed special care.” This is a stark contrast to the views expressed by the museum professionals mentioned above, the majority who did not see a need for special attention to be paid to these types of collections. Further, the display of human remains from the Turkic periods and pre-Turkic periods did not elicit vastly different reactions from the visitors (the difference being 9%). However, when visitors were asked about which types of human remains they preferred to view in museums, those from the Turkic and Ottoman periods (49.2%) were far less popular than remains from other periods (ranging between 60.4% and 83.5%). This preference, when considered alongside the answers to the survey’s open-ended questions, can provide some insight into which group of human remains respondents might have most closely identified. Several respondents who elaborated on why they did not want to see Turkic/Ottoman remains in museums, cited religious concerns and felt that the display of human remains of identifiably Muslim individuals was inappropriate. Other studies conducted else­ where to measure public opinion about human remains exhibits demonstrate that visitors’ chronological and cultural proximity to those whose remains are on display impact how they react to these displays.50 As this proximity decreases, visitor sensitivities seem to increase for remains closer to the present day. In Turkey, the potential of museum visitors to identify culturally or religiously with Turkic/Seljuk and Ottoman human remains versus those from pre-Turkic eras might explain why more than half of the respondents felt more apprehensive about viewing Turkic era remains rather than those from more ancient periods. Alternatively, human remains from pre-Turkic periods that are regarded as “other” or “unfamiliar” might have evoked more curiosity among participants. Finally, despite reservations about Ottoman-Turkic human remains, most respondents stated that regardless of the archaeological period from which these remains originate, they “deserve respect from the living.” Some respondents believed that human remains should be buried in a final resting place; others cited humanitarian concerns. Both the interest and thoughtful concern manifested by the survey 197

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participants for human remains from all periods indicate that, contrary to claims made by several museum professionals in Turkey, the public is not only interested in the preservation of Turkic and Ottoman remains, but they also have an affinity for remains from the pre-Turkic “distant past.” However, the general hesitancy of museum visitors in Turkey to see displays of Turkic/Ottoman human remains is an indication that the public continues to be divided on this topic. These data also corroborate a larger public survey conducted in May 2018 by the SARAT Project (Safeguarding Archaeological Assets of Turkey) on the perception Turkish citizens have about their heritage.51 According to the survey results, 46% of respondents expressed that they associated modern-day Turkey and its roots with the ancient civilisations of Anatolia, whereas others attributed the origins of Turkey to specific religious or ethnic groups e.g. Ottoman-Seljuk (27%), Turkish (15%), Muslims (9%). Both the 2018 and 2021 surveys indicate that the ethno-nationalist and ethnoreligious heritage discourses continue to exert varying degrees of influence on public opinion about national identity in Turkey.

Ethno-Genesis Once Again? The legacies of these two conflicting heritage discourses have endured for decades and continue to shape public imagination about human remains in Turkey. Noteworthy, is a newly emerging discourse surrounding human remains: ethno-genesis via ancient DNA (a-DNA) research. It is to this discourse; I turn in my conclusion. In the past decade, the promising collaborations of geneticists, anthropologists, and archaeologists in Turkey have resulted in an upsurge of a-DNA studies on Anatolian populations.52 Despite the immensely valuable insights a-DNA studies provide about the lives of ancient human populations all around the world, these studies also potentially instigate an entirely new wave of micro-nationalism that echoes the racially motivated anthropological research of the 1940s.53 Turkey, with its compli­ cated history of producing ethno-genesis theories, is also following this trend, and the implications can be quite problematic when data are misinterpreted and/or ma­ nipulated for political reasons. Even though Turkish anthropologists no longer contribute to the type of research that aims to instrumentalise human remains data to fuel identity politics, various nationalist groups in Turkey have lately taken advantage of a-DNA data to formulate nationalist ethnogenesis narratives about Turks.54 These narratives show interesting differences depending on the political agendas and particular definitions of Turkish identity with which each group affiliates. For example, some groups seek to use DNA analysis to establish varying degrees of genetic links between modern Turks and Central Asian populations. By relying on limited archaeological data, they attempt to reconstruct Turkic migration stories and make elusive ethnic comparisons between the past and modern Turkish populations.55 On the other hand, Anatolianist narratives are supported by those hoping to establish genetic links between modern Turks and Neolithic Anatolians, relying on a mix of mtDNA, Y-DNA and archaeogenetic data.56 Contrary to the theories promoting Central Asian migration stories, these theories locate Turkish roots in Anatolia, promoting the Turks as the “true” owners of this land. 198

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Although these narratives pose an interesting challenge to the current conservative AHD by reviving the Central Asian and Anatolianist stories, they also repeat some of its mistakes. Based on data obtained from a limited selection of ancient human remains, they try to draw broad conclusions about modern ethnic identities. These conclusions, accompanied by problematic tales of ethnic and cultural purity, have spread across media outlets with unprecedented speed, and intoxicated public imagination about human remains with selective or politically motivated reporting of scientific data.57 The artificial divide established by the conservative AHD between a Turkic and pre-Turkic past of Anatolia is perpetuated in some of these neoethnogenesis narratives, consequently encumbering the process through which Turkish people understand and perceive their heritage and identity.

Conclusion Archaeological human remains, as one of the most captivating, but also contested archaeological finds, have a crucial role to play in the often politically motivated and conflicting heritage discourses in Turkey. Human remains from all periods of Anatolia were first embraced as part of a rigorous nation building project and used as the material evidence of the Turks’ roots in Anatolia. After the rise of conservative politics in the 1950s, the authorised heritage discourse shifted its focus by systematically prioritising Turco-Islamic heritage and identity, marginalising the ancient Anatolians and relegating them to an unrelated and distant past. Today, conservative, and nationalist politics continue to exercise influence on the heritage discourse of Turkey by fomenting new ethnogenesis narratives immersed in aDNA data. The results of my interviews and public survey indicate that professional and public perceptions of different types of archaeological human remains diverge significantly and show traces of each of these discourses to varying degrees. These perceptions dem­ onstrate how the political use of archaeological human remains in AHDs have great potential to shape both pluralistic and divisive understandings of ethnic and national identity. In summary, the case of archaeological human remains in Turkey is a striking example of the exceptional symbolic power embedded in these remains. Although the history presented above draws a rather bleak picture about how this power has been harnessed in Turkey, the future of human remains collections does not look as dark as its past. With an increasing professional concern in Turkey about the ethics of managing human remains and growing public awareness and sensitivity about the proper care for these collections, these collections can now expect to receive the attention they deserve from the living, and hopefully transcend the roles assigned to them as ordinary objects and ideological tools owned by the state.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Jody Joy, Prof. Lucienne Thys-Şenocak and Dr. Trish Biers for their invaluable feedback and guidance on this chapter and my PhD research. Without their endless support and encouragement, this research which explores an admittedly challenging and neglected area of Turkish archaeology, would not come to fruition. 199

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Notes 1 Gökçe Bike Yazıcıoğlu, “Archaeological Politics of Anatolia: Imaginative Identity of an Imaginative Geography,” in Social Orders and Social Landscapes, ed. Laura M. Popova, Charles W. Hartley, and Adam T. Smith (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 240. 2 Mehmet Özdoğan, “Ideology and Archaeology in Turkey,” in Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, ed. Lynn Meskell (New York: Routledge, 1998); Tuğba Tanyeri-Erdemir, “Archaeology as a Source of National Pride in the Early Years of the Turkish Republic,” Journal of Field Archaeology 31, no. 4 (2006); Başak İnce, Citizenship and Identity in Turkey: From Atatürk’s Republic to the Present Day (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012). 3 This term was first coined by Laurajane Smith in her Uses of Heritage (Routledge, 2006). 4 Çiğdem Atakuman, “Cradle or Crucible: Anatolia and Archaeology in the Early years of the Turkish Republic (1923—1938),” Journal of Social Archaeology 8, no. 2 (2008); Çiğdem Atakuman, “Shifting Discourses of Heritage and Identity in Turkey: Anatolianist Ideologies and Beyond,” in In Search of Pre-Classical Antiquity: Rediscovering Ancient Peoples in Mediterranean Europe (19th and 20th c.), ed. Antonino De Francesco (Leiden: Brill, 2017). 5 Wendy M. K. Shaw, Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualisation of History in the late Ottoman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Yazıcıoğlu 2007, “Archaeological Politics of Anatolia”; Çiğdem Atakuman, “Value of Heritage in Turkey: History and Politics of Turkey’s World Heritage Nominations,” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 23, no. 1 (2010). 6 Tanyeri-Erdemir 2006, “Archaeology as a Source”; Yazıcıoğlu 2007, “Archaeological Politics of Anatolia”; Sibel Özbudun-Demirer, “Anthropology as a Nation-Building Rhetoric: The Shaping of Turkish Anthropology (from 1850s to 1940s),” Dialectical Anthropology 35, no. 1 (2011); Handan Üstündağ and Gökçe Bike Yazıcıoğlu, “The History of Physical Anthropology in Turkey,” in Archaeological Human Remains: Global Perspectives, ed. Barra O’Donnabhain and María Cecilia Lozada (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2014). 7 Atakuman 2017, “Shifting Discourses of Heritage.” 8 Atakuman 2008, “Cradle or Crucible”; Atakuman 2010, “Value of Heritage in Turkey”; Wendy M.K. Shaw, “National Museums in the Republic of Turkey: Palimpsests within a Centralized State,” in Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus; European National Museums: Identity Politics; the Uses of the Past and the European Citizen, ed. Peter Aronsson and Gabriella Elgenius (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2011); Atakuman 2017, “Shifting Discourses of Heritage”. 9 This paper forms part of a wider PhD research investigating the treatment of human remains in Turkey. 10 Kynan Gentry and Laurajane Smith, “Critical Heritage Studies and the Legacies of the Late-Twentieth Century Heritage Canon,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 25, no. 11 (2019), 1148. 11 Vicki Cassman, Nancy Odegaard, and Joseph Powell, “Introduction: Dealing with the Dead,” in Human Remains: Guide for Museums and Academic Institutions, ed. Vicki Cassman, Nancy Odegaard, and Joseph Powell, 1–4 (Plymouth: Rowman Altamira, 2006), 1. 12 Sarah Tarlow, “Archaeological Ethics and the People of the Past,” in The Ethics of Archaeology: Philosophical Perspectives on Archaeological Practice, ed. Chris Scarre and Geoffrey Scarre, 199–216 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 202. 13 Smith, Uses of Heritage; Sheila Watson, National Museums and the Origins of Nations: Emotional Myths and Narratives (London: Routledge, 2020), 11. 14 Smith 2006, Uses of Heritage; Atakuman 2010, “Value of Heritage in Turkey.” 15 Brian Graham, Gregory John Ashworth, and John E. Tunbridge, “The Uses and Abuses of Heritage,” in Heritage, Museums and Galleries: An Introductory Reader, ed. Gerard Corsane,

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26–37 (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2005); John Carman, and Marie Louise Stig Sørensen, “Heritage Studies: An Outline,” in Heritage Studies: Methods and Approaches, ed. John Carman and Marie Louise Stig Sørensen, 11–28 (London: Routledge, 2009); Laurajane Smith and Emma Waterton, “Constrained by Commonsense: The Authorized Heritage Discourse in Contemporary Debates,” The Oxford Handbook of Public Archaeology (2012). Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: London: Verso Books, 2006); Siân Jones, “Discourses of Identity in the Interpretation of the Past,” in The Archaeology of Identities: A Reader, ed. Timothy Insoll (Florence, United States: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007); Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Timothy Champion, ed. Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe (Oxon: Routledge, 2015). Smith 2006, Uses of Heritage; Graham, Ashworth, and Tunbridge 2005, “The Uses and Abuses”; Jones 2007, “Discourses of Identity.” Bruce G. Trigger, “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist,” Man 19, no. 3 (1984); D. D. Fowler, “Uses of the Past-Archaeology in the Service of the State,” American Antiquity 52, no. 2 (Apr 1987); Philip L. Kohl, “Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Constructions of Nations and the Reconstructions of the Remote Past,” Annual Review of Anthropology 27, no. 1 (1998); Lynn Meskell, ed., Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (London and New York: Routledge, 1998); Yannis Hamilakis, Lives in Ruins: Antiquities and National Imagination in Modern Greece, The Politics of Archaeology and Identity in a Global Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Jones 2007, “Discourses of Identity”; Atakuman 2008, “Cradle or Crucible”; Díaz-Andreu and Champion 2015, Nationalism and Archaeology. Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Timothy Champion, “Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe: An Introduction,” in Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe, ed. Margarita DíazAndreu and Timothy Champion (Oxon: Routledge, 2015); Liv Nilsson Stutz, “To Gaze Upon the Dead: The Exhibition of Human Remains as Cultural Practice and Political Process in Scandinavia and the USA,” in To Gaze Upon the Dead: The Exhibition of Human Remains as Cultural Practice and Political Process in Scandinavia and the USA (Oxford University Press, 2016). Smith 2006, Uses of Heritage; Comer, Margaret, “Ancient Bodies, Modern Ideologies: Bog Bodies and Identity in Denmark and Ireland,” in Identity and Heritage: Contemporary Challenges in a Globalized World, ed. Peter F. Biehl, Douglas C. Comer, Christopher Prescott, and Hilary A. Soderland (Cham: Springer, 2015), 129–134. Soner Çağaptay, “Otuzlarda Türk Milliyetçiliğinde Irk, Dil ve Etnisite,” in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düșünce 4: Milliyetçilik (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2003); Gül Pulhan, “Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Geçmişini Arıyor: Cumhuriyet’in Arkeoloji Seferberliği,” in Arkeoloji: Niye? Nasıl? Ne İçin, ed. Oğuz Erdur and Güneş Duru (İstanbul: Ege Yayınları, 2003); Tanyeri-Erdemir, “Archaeology as a Source,” 2006; Yazıcıoğlu, “Archaeological Politics of Anatolia,” 2007; Atakuman, “Cradle or Crucible,” 2008; Aydın, “The Use and Abuse,” 2010; Scott Redford and Nina Macaraig, Perceptions of the Past in the Turkish Republic: Classical and Byzantine Periods (Leuven: Peeters, 2010); Özbudun-Demirer, “Anthropology as a Nation-Building,” 2011; Üstündağ and Yazıcıoğlu, “The History of Physical,” 2014; Handan Üstündağ, “Aynı Kemikler, Değişen Anlamlar: Irk Biliminden Biyoarkeolojiye,” Modus Operandi İlişkisel Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, no. 2 (2015); Atakuman, “Shifting Discourses,” 2017. Yazıcıoğlu, “Archaeological Politics of Anatolia,” 2007; İnce, Citizenship and Identity, 2012. F. Asli Ergul, “The Ottoman Identity: Turkish, Muslim or Rum?,” Middle Eastern Studies 48, no. 4 (2012); Feroz Ahmad, Turkey: The Quest for Identity (London: Oneworld Publications, 2014). Özdoğan, “Ideology and Archaeology,” 1998; Tanyeri-Erdemir, “Archaeology as a Source,” 2006; Atakuman, “Cradle or Crucible,” 2008; İnce, Citizenship and Identity, 2012. Wendy M.K. Shaw, “The Rise of the Hittite Sun: A Deconstruction of Western Civilization from the Margin,” in Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction,

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34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47

Commemoration, and Consecration of National Pasts, ed. Philip L. Kohl, Mara Kozelsky, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda (University of Chicago Press, 2008); Aydın, “The Use and Abuse,” 2010; Redford and Macaraig, “Perceptions of the Past,” 2010; Üstündağ and Yazıcıoğlu, “The History of Physical,” 2014. Şevket Aziz Kansu, “Alaca-Höyükte Bulunan İskeletlerin Antropolojik Tetkiki,” Belleten 1 (1937); Yazıcıoğlu, “Archaeological Politics of Anatolia,” 2007; Üstündağ and Yazıcıoğlu, “The History of Physical,” 2014. Şevket Aziz Kansu, Türk Antropoloji Enstitüsü Tarihçesi (İstanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1940). Afet İnan, Türkiye Halkının Antropolojik Karakterleri ve Türkiye Tarihi (Ankara: Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1947). Shaw, Possessor and Possessed, 2003; Tanyeri-Erdemir, “Archaeology as a Source,” 2006; Yazıcıoğlu, “Archaeological Politics of Anatolia,” 2007; Atakuman, “Cradle or Crucible,” 2008; Aydın, “The Use and Abuse,” 2010. Tanyeri-Erdemir, “Archaeology as a Source,” 2006; Yazıcıoğlu, “Archaeological Politics of Anatolia,” 2007; Shaw, “The Rise of the Hittite,” 2008. Özbudun-Demirer, “Anthropology as a Nation,” 2011, 122. Üstündağ and Yazıcıoğlu, “The History of Physical,” 2014. Atakuman, “Value of Heritage in Turkey,” 2010; Shaw, “National Museums,” 2011; İnce, Citizenship and Identity, 2012; Edhem Eldem, “Cultural Heritage in Turkey: An Eminently Political Matter,” in Essays on Heritage, Tourism and Society in the MENA Region (Schöningh: Brill, 2015). Atakuman, “Cradle or Crucible,” 2008; Atakuman, “Shifting Discourses of Heritage,” 2017. Atakuman, “Shifting Discourses of Heritage,” 2017. Özbudun-Demirer, “Anthropology as a Nation,” 2011; Üstündağ, “The History of Physical,” 2014; Üstündağ, “Aynı Kemikler,” 2015. S. M. Can Bilsel, “Our Anatolia”: Organicism and the Making of Humanist Culture in Turkey,” Muqarnas 24 (2007): 223–241; Atakuman, “Value of Heritage,” 2010; Atakuman, “Shifting Discourses of Heritage,” 2017. Mehmet Özdoğan, Arkeolojinin Politikası ve Politik Bir Araç Olarak Arkeoloji (İstanbul: Arkeoloji ve Sanat Yayınları, 2006); Atakuman, “Shifting Discourses of Heritage,” 2017. Atakuman, “Shifting Discourses of Heritage,” 2017. Eldem, “Cultural Heritage in Turkey,” 2015; Atakuman, “Shifting Discourses of Heritage,” 2017. Atakuman, “Value of Heritage in Turkey”. Elifgül Doğan, “Legislative, Ethical and Museological Issues regarding Archaeological Human Remains in Turkey” (MA thesis, Koç University, 2018); Lucienne Thys-Şenocak and Elifgül Doğan, “Archaeology, Museums and Tourism on the Gallipoli Peninsula: Issues of Human Remains, Ordnance, and Local Decision-Making,” in Heritage in Context 2, Miras 4, ed. Burcu Akan et al. (Istanbul: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut 2018); Elifgül Doğan and Lucienne Thys-Şenocak, “Türkiye’de Arkeolojik İnsan Kalıntıları Yönetimi,” in Memento Mori Ölüm ve Ölüm Uygulamaları, ed. Ali M. Büyükkarakaya and Elif Başak Aksoy (İstanbul: Ege Yayınları, 2019). Interviews were conducted between April 2016 and March 2018 with four museums which include archaeological collections that are rich in human remains. Elifgül Doğan, Lucienne Thys-Şenocak, and Jody Joy, “Who Owns the Dead? Legal and Professional Challenges Facing Human Remains Management in Turkey,” Public Archaeology 20, no. 1–4 (2021): 85–107. Shaw 2011, “National Museums,” 942. Shaw, “National Museums,” 2011; Sara Bonini Baraldi, Daniel Shoup, and Luca Zan, “Understanding Cultural Heritage in Turkey: Institutional Context and Organisational Issues,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 19, no. 7 (2013). Handan Üstündağ, “Turkey,” in The Routledge Handbook of Archaeological Human Remains and Legislation: An International Guide to Laws and Practice in the Excavation and Treatment of

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48 49 50

51 52

53

54

55 56 57

Archaeological Human Remains, ed. Nicholas Márquez-Grant and Linda Fibiger (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2011). Doğan, “Legislative, Ethical and Museological,” 2018; Thys-Şenocak and Doğan, “Archaeology, Museums,” 2018; Doğan, Thys-Şenocak, and Joy, “Who Owns the Dead,” 2022. For an extensive analysis of the survey results, see Doğan, Thys-Şenocak, and Joy, “Who Owns the Dead,” 2022. Hugh Kilminster, “Visitor Perceptions of Ancient Egyptian Human Remains in Three United Kingdom Museums,” Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 14 (2003); Mary M. Brooks and Claire Rumsey, “The Body in the Museum,” in Human Remains: Guide for Museums and Academic Institutions, ed. Vicki Cassman, Nancy Odegaard, and Joseph Powell (Plymouth: Rowman Altamira, 2007), 261–291. Işılay Gürsu, Gül Pulhan, and Lutgarde Vandeput, “‘We Asked 3,601 People’: A Nationwide Public Opinion Poll on Attitudes towards Archaeology and Archaeological Assets in Turkey,” Public Archaeology (2020). Aram Yardumian and Theodore G Schurr, “Who Are the Anatolian Turks? A Reappraisal of the Anthropological Genetic Evidence,” Anthropology & Archaeology of Eurasia 50, no. 1 (2011); Can Alkan et al., “Whole Genome Sequencing of Turkish Genomes Reveals Functional Private Alleles and Impact of Genetic Interactions with Europe, Asia and Africa,” BMC Genomics 15, no. 1 (2014); M. Ece Kars et al., “The Genetic Structure of the Turkish Population Reveals High Levels of Variation and Admixture,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 36 (2021); Duygu Kazancı et al., “From Bones to Genomes: Current Research on the Population History of Prehistoric Anatolia,” in The Archaeology of Anatolia, Volume IV, ed. Sharon R. Steadman and Gregory McMahon (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021); Ömer Gökçümen, “The Conceptual Impacts of Genomics to the Archaeology of Movement,” in Homo Migrans: Modeling Mobility and Migration in Human History, ed. Megan J. Daniels (Albany, USA: State University of New York Press, 2022). Ewen Callaway, “Divided by DNA: The Uneasy Relationship between Archaeology and Ancient Genomics,” Nature 555, no. 7698 (2018); Howard Wolinsky, “Ancient DNA and Contemporary Politics: The Analysis of Ancient DNA Challenges Long‐Held Beliefs about Identity and History with Potential for Political Abuse,” EMBO Reports 20, no. 12 (2019); Colleen Gibbs, “Ancient DNA and Modern Identity: The Promise and Pitfalls,” Leviathan 10, no. 2 (2020). Ömer Gökçümen and Timur Gültekin, “Genetik ve Kamusal alan,” Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 49, no. 1 (2009); Elise K. Burton, “Narrating Ethnicity and Diversity in Middle Eastern National Genome Projects,” Social Studies of Science 48, no. 5 (2018). Burton, “Narrating Ethnicity and Diversity,” 2018; Gökçümen, “The Conceptual Impacts of,” 2022. Osman Çataloluk, Türk’ün Genetik Tarihi (İstanbul: Togan Yayıncılık, 2012); Burton, “Narrating Ethnicity and Diversity,” 2018. Burton, “Narrating Ethnicity and Diversity,” 2018; Gökçümen, “The Conceptual Impacts of,” 2022.

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15 ENTANGLED ENTITLEMENTS AND SHUAR TSANTSA (SHRUNKEN HEADS) Laura N.K. Van Broekhoven Introduction Founded in 1884, within an atmospheric building, the Pitt Rivers Museum has more than 50,000 objects on display out of a total of well over half a million objects, photographs, sound recordings and manuscripts. Its unique Victorian lay-out makes the Museum widely loved and regarded as one of the best of its kind. The Museum is, however, also a contested space. Curating the integrity of that space, while ensuring its contemporary relevance, is a challenge that we embrace. Following the post-pandemic reopening of the Pitt Rivers Museum in September 2020, visitors saw changes to some of its most well-known permanent displays, principally the so-labelled “Treatment of Dead Enemies” case. As part of the Museum’s strategic commitment to change following a three-year ethical review. Over the summer of 2020, a team at the Museum carefully removed 120 human remains from open display, including the well-known South American tsantsa (shrunken heads) that by some were considered the most important display in the Museum and arguably also its most significant public attraction. As was to be expected, those changes have been reviewed very positively by many, but negatively by some, and this chapter shares the reasons for the changes and offers an analysis of some of the diverging reactions nationally and internationally.

Tsantsa Shrunken heads, or tsantsa, were made by the Shuar, one of the so-called Jivaroan peoples who live on 7.5 million acres of land between the borders of eastern Ecuador and northern Peru in South America. Tsantsa can be made of human or animal heads. Most museums that hold significant ethnographic collections in Europe and the United States, also hold tsantsas. With a few exceptions (the Mutter Museum in 208

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Philadelphia, the Kunstkammer in St Petersburg, the Náprstek Museum in Prague and the Slovenian Museum of Ethnology in Llubljana) most took the tsantsa off display in the 1990s or before as it was felt to be unethical or inappropriate to keep human remains (other than mummies) on display. Two museums, the Pitt Rivers Museum (in 2020) and the Wellcome collections (in 2022) only recently decided to no longer display tsantsas. In the case of the Pitt Rivers Museum, until July 2020, the tsantsa formed part of a case-display called “Treatment of Dead Enemies.” This display was well-advertised especially in tourist guidebooks and most newspaper articles mentioned the shrunken heads as part of the “charm” of the Museum. There were a number of reasons the human remains were removed from display. Most importantly, for decades, Indigenous peoples have protested against the display of their ancestral remains and given the Museum’s guiding principles 2017–2022 Strategy,1 taking the remains off display was ethically necessary; secondly, we were in breach of UK government and International Council of Museum (ICOM) ethical guidance which stipulates human remains should only be put on display where visitors do not stand the risk of unexpectedly being confronted with them. Thirdly, our audience research had shown visitors often saw the Museum’s displays of human remains, and Shuar tsantsa and Naga trophy skulls in particular, as a testament to other cultures being “savage,” “primitive,” or “gruesome.” Rather than enabling our visitors to reach a deeper understanding of humanities’ many ways of being and knowing, the displays reinforced racist and stereotypical thinking that go against the Museum’s values today and our express wish to becoming a listening, anti-racist institution, that is committed to social justice and cultural care and repair. Clearly, our curation was failing to communicate those values, and therefore needed to change. Apart from ethical considerations, there were also a number of conservation issues that required changes to the display; as a 2017 review showed, the majority of the mounts in the treatment of dead enemies’ case were not supporting the objects and the tsantsa were hanging from their original strings.

The tsantsa in the Pitt Rivers Museum The Museum’s Shuar collection comprises 173 objects, ten of which are tsantsa, six human, two sloth and two monkey. The tsantsa were acquired between 1884 and 1936 from five different collectors and were, as far as we know, added to the original display somewhere before 1944. Previously it was thought that there were 12 tsantsa, but that was due to a misidentification: a Munduruku skull seems to have been misinterpreted as a Shuar tsantsa; and one other tsantsa seems to have never been brought into the collection but at some point was erroneously entered into the databases as a tsantsa acquired by Major Thomas. According to their accompanying documentation, the ten tsantsa are said to have been collected from either Xebaroe or Jivaro peoples along three different rivers where we know Jivaroan peoples were known to have lived. We suspect that these particular tsantsa come from three main Jivaroan peoples: the Untsuri Shuar who lived along the Zamora River; the Achuara from the Pastaza River and the Aguaruna along the 209

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Marañon River. Around the time these tsantsa were collected, the Achuara were regularly raided for heads by the Untsuri Shuar, but further research is required into this and the data that accompanies the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) tsantsa does not provide us with either geographically or chronologically coherent provenance information. According to Pitt Rivers Museum records, the tsantsa came into the collections as follows: • Two of the tsantsa (one sloth and one human) are from the Museum’s founding collection belonging to General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers: the first a sloth tsantsa (1874.115.1) the General indicates was collected by Clarence Buckley from the “Xebaroe.” The second, a human tsantsa (1874.115.2), was probably sold to the General by a person identified as “Jamrach” and possibly collected by the same Buckley. They are amongst the oldest tsantsa recorded in any European museum collection.2 • One “Jivaro” human tsantsa (1911.77.1) bought in 1911 for £3 by a Mrs Sanders in the Peruvian Marañón River district. • One sloth tsantsa (1923.88.364) purchased by Major R. H. Thomas in 1922 when visiting the “Jivaros” of the Upper Santiago River in Ecuador. He also collected a human tsantsa along the Zamora River, Guallaquisa in Ecuador (1923.88.363). • One human tsantsa (1932.32.92) collected by William L. Stevenson Loat in Ecuador along the Upper Santiago River. • In 1936, the aforementioned Major R.H. Thomas acquired two monkey tsantsas in Ecuador along the Pastaza River (1936.53.44 and 1936.53.45). He also collected two human tsantsa along the Pastaza River in Ecuador (1936.53.42 and 1936.53.43). For a number of reasons that will be outlined further in this chapter, until recently it was assumed that several of the Pitt Rivers’ tsantsa were not ceremonial, originally made as part of Shuar cultural practices. They were, instead, thought to be forgeries or fakes. Recent consultations in March 2022, with Shuar delegate Jefferson Pullaguari Acacho and Ecuadorian human remains expert Dr Maria Patricia Ordoñez, showed how many of the assumptions regarding the supposed: “authenticity” and “counterfeit” of the tsantsas in the Pitt Rivers collections, need to be re-thought and that more research is required using more contemporary authentication methods such as CT scanning, ancient DNA and alkaloid sample analysis (see further). For example, while according to Laura Peers, the latter two tsantsa collected around 1936 were considered to be “commercial” or “forgeries” of Shuar tsantsa because pages of a 1936 Ecuadorean newspaper were found “wadded into the crown of the head, where in a real tsantsa, kapok, a cotton-like plant fibre, would have been used.”3 This, however, is not corroborated by more recent research that seems to suggest newspaper was often used as a filler by those that were packing objects for transport to foreign museums to preserve the heads and therefore cannot necessarily be taken on face value as a measure of “fakeness.”4 210

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Taking Heads as Trophies Different peoples distributed throughout the American continent were known to take and display human body parts as trophies.5 Although the Shuar tsantsa are those that most prominently ended up on display in European museum collections, to become object of fascination and later popularised and stereotyped in popular culture6; many Amerindian communities, from very early on practised the taking of skulls or other parts of the human body as part of ceremonial practices and rituals. In the South America tropical lowlands especially peoples in the Amazon and Orinoco River area, such as the Tupinambá, and Munduruku7; and in Colombia, many peoples including in the Cauca valley, Calima, Muisca and Quimbaya were reported to hunt for skulls.8 This echoes a continued practice from well-documented pre-colonial cultural practices illustrated in the archaeological record such as on ceramics, textiles and stonework iconography of Chavín, Paracas, Nazca, Wari and Tiwanaku.9 The tsantsa, however, are quite unique both in their unusual materiality, their interwovenness with coloniality, exploitation and European trade (driven by the greed of museums and collectors) and the way they became portrayed in popular culture through a white gaze of western imagination as gruesome, ghoulish, or freakish: featuring in blockbuster movies such as “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (here the tsantsa is portrayed as a racist caricature with a Jamaican accent, and long dreadlocks, as a rear-view mirror accessory of the “Knight Bus” that picks up Harry Potter) or as part of the souvenir industry: tequila bottles shaped in the form of a tsantsa or rubber rear-view mirror accessories shaped as a tsantsa but with huge bobbing eyes.

Made for Trade? Although Amazonian indigenous communities are often stereotypically portrayed as isolated or disconnected, they were in fact astute traders with extensive trading networks10 and, as Taylor argues Shuar and Achuar were no exception with a constant flow of trade goods between Achuar, Quichua and Shuar neighbours taking place: “based either on a quasi-monopoly over certain natural products with restricted geographic distribution (e.g. specific palms, salt, latex, pigments for ceramics) or on the monopoly of access to certain manufactured goods (steel tools, rifles, shotguns, black powder, shot, and glass beads).”11 Tsantsa, however, only became trade items when from the 1870s as part of the trade with white invaders, they are traded in exchange for guns as they became much sought-after collectors’ items by European and North American collectors and museums. Ultimately, this resulted in the introduction of great quantities of guns among the Shuar. Researchers have argued that much warfare related to head-hunting was driven by this Euro-American Museum and private collectors’ demand for tsantsas.12 Foreign presence in Shuar territories was a novelty, as apart from a very early intrusion in 1549 by a Spanish expedition led by Hernando de Benavente and sporadic contacts after that where the Shuar were described as “very warlike people”13 and the infamous 1599 Shuar uprising reported by Velasco,14 until the middle of the 19th century, there had been little contact between Shuar and whites. 211

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This changed around the 18th century when Spaniards started to migrate in search of gold mining opportunities; however, there is little clear data on this and the contacts seem to have been sporadic. Trading steel machetes for pigs, salt and tsantsa15 contacts were combative, or trade-related exchanges. Rubenstein argues that this trade of tsantsas for manufactured goods in the first half of the 19th century “incorporated Shuar into the world economy.”16 According to Rubenstein, more and more mestizo and European settlers flooded into Shuar lands around the 1880s, in search for cinchona bark, a source of quinine used to treat malaria.17 They “occasionally exchanged manufactured goods such as machetes and shotguns in return for Shuar labour or forest products: pigs, deer, salt – and tsantsas.”18 Not much later, with the introduction of cattle to the region by Jesuit missionaries, incentives for trade changed – pig or deer meat was no longer a scarce good. This is when what Larson calls the “heads-for-guns-trade” starts: “the only way to get a gun was to sell a head.”19 The ensuing colonial reality of violence further shaped the conditions of trade: “Although the Shuar were able to obtain machetes, cloth, and other Western goods more easily from the missionaries than from traders, guns could only be acquired through the illicit head trade.”20 As such, as Ross argues, the advent of firearms “changed the relationship of raiding to the distance factor and to risk. It facilitated long-distance forays through hostile territory, altered the nature of regional commercial transactions, and stepped up the trade in guns and trophy heads.”21 Opinions differ on the percentage of ceremonial versus commercial (also referred to as “trade,” “fake” or “counterfeit”) but it has been postulated that between 80 and 90% of tsantsa currently in Museum collections were mostly made for commercial or trade purposes. Given the historic realities described earlier, this isn’t surprising. Most were made for trade, in particular for the aforementioned Euro-American museum and private collectors’ market. These trade-tsantsa were made from both human and non-human skin: “Non-human counterfeit tsantsa were often made out of goat or monkey skin.”22 Disturbingly, however, human counterfeit tsantsa were frequently sourced from the corpses of unclaimed hospital dead or bodies fraudulently obtained from morgues.23 Research using IRR, CT and microscopic hair analysis of 65 tsantsa from UK and US museums by Houlton and Wilkinson (2016) implied that only 9% could clearly be established to have been ceremonial, 56% were identified as made for trade (commercial); the remaining 35% were ambiguous and could not be classified. The authors outline that their research into SAAWC (Shuar, Achuar, Awajún/Aguaruna, Wampís/Huambisa and Candoshi-Shapra) tsantsa would help museums in their decision-making around returning tsantsa “to their cultural home. Ceremonial tsantsa were likely of SAAWC persons,” they suggest “and thus should be returned to one of the SAAWC authorities. Commercial heads could have originated from anywhere across South and Middle America, potentially complicating their repatriation.”24 More recent research into the genetic characterisation of a collection of tsantsas from Ecuadorian museums, by researchers from USFQ and the University of Oxford, showed that ceremonial tsantsas tend to show remarkable similarities. In this research, the tsantsas of three different museum collections, with very different provenance, 212

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showed all were human with 13 males and one female represented. A total of seven mtDNA haplogroups were found using the mtDNA EMPOP database showing a predominance of the Amerindian mtDNA haplogroups B, C and D.25 Interestingly many tsantsas were not made from humans but from sloths and monkeys, and this was increasingly so as European demand for tsantsa grew. Although it is sometimes claimed all animal tsantsas are “counterfeit,” Houlton26 indicates that accounts of shrinking heads – other than human – include animals such as sloth, jaguars, condors and monkeys and that “these were often revenge killings because the animal had harmed a tribal member (Karsten 1935; Stirling 1938).”27 In that sense, it is pertinent to note that given these particular tsantsa would have been made with similar thought processes in mind of protecting against avenging souls, we should reconsider narratives that qualify animal tsantsa as non-ceremonial. “Uyush” or sloths are considered sacred by Shuar communities. The Shuar Documentation Project documents a Shuar story told by Uwijint, where “Unup,” an elder who performs tsantsa ceremonies, is transformed into an “uyush” or sloth after he became intoxicated with tobacco. The story also explains the origin of the ceremony of tsantsa, head-shrinking and why the Shuar kill “uyush” to perform “tsantsa.”28 As sloths aren’t likely to kill animals, it is unlikely these would be considered revenge killings, and might suggest the more commemorative functions as described by Taylor29 and by present-day Shuar.30

Proyecto Tsantsa In 2017, we started working on a partnership project called “Proyecto Tsantsa,” led by Maria Patricia Ordoñez and Consuelo Fernandez Salvador, at the Universidad de San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador (USFQ). The project brings together four institutions: The USFQ, the Museo Pumapungo (Tamara Landivar), the Pitt Rivers Museum (Laura Van Broekhoven) and the Instituto Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural (INPC) sede Quito (Maria Patricia Ordoñez) by means of their Laboratorio de Quimica. USFQ and INPC approached the Federación Interprovincial de Centros Shuar (FICSH) and the Federación Shuar de Zamora (FESHZ) and has organised multiple conversations with Shuar and Achuar delegates. The USFQ acts as coordinator for the project and provides the project with capacity for CT scanning and ancient DNA analysis; the INPC allowed for DNA and alkaloid testing of samples to be analysed; both museums provide access to the collections and discussions regarding their display and/or preservation methodologies and PRM have reached out to other museums in Europe and elsewhere to identify where Shuar collections are kept so that we can make a mapping for Shuar federations of which Museums they might want to engage with in the future. The first meetings took place in Quito in April and August 2017, followed by a two-day workshop in Cuenca on 22 and 23 March 2018, bringing together all partners, with video conferencing participation from the Pitt Rivers Museum. Our aim was to discuss political aspects of Shuar heritage, sensitivities around presence and absence of tsantsa and other cultural objects from Shuar-led museums currently being established on Shuar land and the sensitivities, limitations and possibilities of cultural 213

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care and representation versus current museum displays. Visits to the United Kingdom were planned for the academic year of 2019–2020 but fell through due to the global pandemic. USFQ and INPC held multiple workshops and individual consultations with members of the FICSH and of the FESHZ throughout 2021 and 2022. In September 2020 and March 2022, the Pitt Rivers Museum held consultations with Jefferson Acacho and Maria Patricia Ordoñez. With partners in Quito, we decided to ensure we were bringing together a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists, anthropologists, museum professionals and biologists with delegates of the Ecuadorian Shuar community to answer a number of key questions of relevance to the different partners in the project. On the one hand, we wanted to better understand the tsantsas’ provenance, individual histories, and assigned significance and representation in museum collections. Using a mix of CT scanning, DNA analysis and further isotope and alkaloid testing, the project has tried to answer questions with regards to the tsantsas ‘authenticity’ or ‘counterfeit, fake or replica-making’ and whether we might identify possible links to specific living Shuar or Achuar peoples. DNA can identify if remains are of human or animal origin; and give an indication of gender, and microsatellite demographic testing can help give an indication whether the remains are of Shuar origin. CT scans help identify constructive elements in more detail, including techniques used to insert ropes, leathermaking processes, cutting of the neck and treatment of the eyes. Isotope and alkaloid analysis of hair samples can provide information on migration and diet, in order to demographically locate within a specific geographical location.31 Several questions are key to the project participants: on the one hand, questions that relate to what future care would look like with regards to the tsantsa; whether they might need to be returned to the community or, if they were to be on display, who should be involved in the curatorial process. And, given the fact that – as far as we know – over half of the tsantsa in Museum collections, are said to be “counterfeit” and/or were made for commercial profit-making, and not originally by Shuar and/or from Shuar or Achuar ancestors, the project wanted to find ways to better identify which tsantsa were Shuar-made, and which not.

How and Why Were Tsantsa Made? Most accounts that refer to tsantsa making, were written by foreigners who did not speak Shuar while the Shuar cosmovision is complex and intricate and can be easily misinterpreted. It has been widely reported by researchers that the heads were taken by and from male members of the Shuar and Achuar and made into tsantsas as part of ceremonial processing of heads taken from enemies slain in combat.32 They reportedly were done away with once the ceremonies had been performed. Thus, the predominant narrative in scholarly literature describes that tsantas were made to acquire the power of a man’s soul, not the physical head. There have, however, recently been some discussion among contemporary Shuar groups, who 214

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remember tsantsas were also made from clan leaders that died from natural causes as part of a process to commemorate and celebrate important individuals, both men and women. In an interview with the Guardian’s journalist David Batty, Jefferson Acacho, a leader of the Shuar federation in Zamora, Ecuador who is working with USFQ and Pitt Rivers Museum, said the authentic tsantsas were not made from the heads of random enemies but clan leaders, some of whom died from natural causes. The objects were believed to contain the soul of the dead man, whose power could be positively harnessed for the community. When a leader died it was a way to show respect for them. The lips and eyes were sewn together because it was thought that a head could still see and eat after death, which would give it more power. This would prevent them from gaining more power and causing harm.33 Current day Shuar, in fact, consider ceremonial tsantsas as objects imbued with power and hold them in great respect but the practice of making tsantsas is no longer practiced today (and hasn’t been for over half a century). Although there remains a lack of clarity regarding the belief systems associated with the tsantsa making, some elements of Shuar cosmovision are key to understanding what the deeper epistemological and ontological concepts are that are associated with tsantsa-making. Harner34 describes how according to the Shuar the “true determinants of life and death are normally invisible forces which can be seen […] only with the aid of hallucinogenic drugs.” Shuar conceptualisations of reality therefore stand diametrically opposite as our waking life is explicitly viewed as “false” or “a lie” and reality only reveals itself in dreams or drug-induced visions and the use of hallucinogens is introduced very early on in life to ensure essential contact with the supernatural.

Contextualising Tsantsa? In other Museums, Shuar representatives on different occasions have argued either for the return, the contextualisation, or the removal from display of the tsantsa.35 PRM lecturer curator, Professor Laura Peers had addressed the discussion in a brief, insightful publication on sale in the Museum Store. “With the human heads that have been shrunk to make tsantsas,” she argued: either we are looking at the faces of murdered people who have had their souls stolen from them – in case of the ritual tsantsas, or we are looking at the faces of people who were too poor to prevent their bodies being used like this after their death – in the case of those produced solely for trade.36 Having described more of the ontological and epistemological context of Shuar tsantsa making socio-political functioning and understanding of their value in Shuar society, one wonders what merit the exhibiting of tsantsas in a university museum of 215

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anthropology and world archaeology like the Pitt Rivers Museum, could have and what narratives we might want to present and how? Interviews with visitors looking at the display carried out in 2003, revealed that many people thought of the display as gruesome, referring to the tsantsa (and or their Shuar makers) as “primitive,” referring to them with words like “bizarre,” “gruesome,” “barbaric” and “freak show.”37 Our curation of the tsantsas as part of a practice of headhunting and treating dead enemies (the case title), instead of achieving a deeper understanding of Shuar society or the practices of tsantsa making, were being interpreted as a metaphor for “savage” and/or “primitive” behaviour. In 2011, then-curator Professor Laura Peers, argued Shuar and Ashuar had on several occasions indicated that they did not want to be continued to be represented through these “powerful visual anchors for stereotyping”38 nonetheless the tsantsa continued on display and under review (nominally) for nearly another decade. In the March 2018 Cuenca workshops Shuar delegates indicated how they would want to be included in the way their cultural practices were represented in museums, and in the decision making around any returns of tsantsa. Later conversations with Jefferson Acacho in 2020 and 2022 confirmed this: As Shuar, we don’t have anything against the world knowing our world, and for museums to have our souvenirs and talk about our cosmovision, our ways of living here. What we ask is that museums involve us Shuar so that it can be us who tell the stories and we can show the world all our instruments and aspects of our attire, the tsantsas. What would be better for a museum than a Shuar to comment on all this, right? How we made tsantsa, how we worked them and how we live, what our way of seeing the world is. Who better than a Shuar who has lived experience, who has felt our world and knows our history from living it, telling the stories of our ancestors and sharing it with the world?39 He continues: Museums like to accumulate all this knowledge, and that is wonderful, but at times the information that was gathered was distorted through history. We are like living books, our grandparents who tell us how they have lived and live, they have passed all this knowledge to us, we now have to share that knowledge at a global level, through Museums. So, this work is what we would want to articulate with Museums how we will do this so we can tell our histories, our ways of living, our way of belonging.40 As Larson puts it: The Shuar have become known to the outside world as those South American head-hunters, as if the identity of the Pitt Rivers Museum has merged with its collections of shrunken heads, that is nothing compared to the way in which an entire people have been typecast by museums displays like these.41 216

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As Jefferson explained in our WhatsApp conversations in September 2020: We would like to have our own museum where we can represent ourselves who we are, showcasing all aspects of our way of being, including music and dance, food and also the history of the tsantsas, but one that tells a fuller story. Now we have tourists who come here and we do not have our own museum, they come with ideas that we are murderers; that we are violent. The Shuar aren’t bad people. We want people to come here and learn through our stories that we tell about ourselves. A place where our grandparents can teach our children, and tourists can understand our world in a respectful way, not how it is being told now, as if we were murderers. Making tsantsas was a sacred practice. Now, foreigners will come here and they say: we’ve been told you guys chopped of peoples’ heads, didn’t matter who they were, you were those murderers.42 Shuar delegates also indicate they would like to be more involved in aspects of representation and preservation: We understand that in your Museums you display the tsantsas behind glass in cases, we would never do that. We would need to undertake a spiritual ritual so that its soul, tsantsas are spirits, gives us the permission for people to get to know it. Those are details that will enrich museums. We ask permission of the spirits, with our own tools, in our own way of opening up and conversing with them.43

Critical Changes in the Museum Late August 2020, I contacted Martin Bailey, from the Art Newspaper to report we had taken all human remains off display Beginning of July 2020, the decision was taken to remove the tsantsa from public display and I indicated that now, I would like to work with him on a story to report back on this ahead of the reopening of the Museum in September. Martin indicated he continued interested only in writing exclusively about the tsantsa; eventually, I worked with David Batty, at the Guardian, to ensure the wider story got into the world. As in 2019, after an initial flurry of interviews with the press, subsequent opinion pieces started coming in: following opinion pieces in the Daily Mail, the Times, the Daily Telegraph and a few particularly outraged pieces in the Oxford Mail, hundreds of people felt compelled to send in their comments. This time, I also received dozens of letters, and our social media saw hundreds of comments, and thousands of reactions. Some were very angry; a couple I had to report as Hate Crimes to Thames Valley Police, those expressed that I should be lynched, others were the archetypical cuttings from papers, and capital-letter threats, or angry tweets or Facebook posts with racist or misogynistic language or images. Forty per cent of the letters concluded we were “erasing history”; 10% disputed that racism played any part in the removed displays; 15% felt we were “pandering to political correctness”; 10% were echoing the Times 217

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article saying we were patronising our audience who should be left to make up their own minds. A few lamented we had “stolen my youth” or that we had “removed the magic or highlights” of the collections. Others felt that removing 120 human remains meant we should take all other 55,000 objects off display too. Several letters made demands to “reinstate,” and it was suggested that we should “learn from history” and not hide the “ugly truths.” Over half threatened they would never come back; some saying they had been generous donors (none of their names were in fact known in our systems and no donations had been received under their names). To better understand these reactions, we commenced a programme of audience research to on the one hand understand how the changes were received by audiences online, and on the other to understand how the new installations were understood by our on-site audiences. Online research by Goldsmith’s graduate student Angela Billings and by Leiden University graduate student Sterre Houtzager showed how a small minority (8%) of our online audience had loudly voiced their anger, while the overwhelming majority of people (92%) showed support. Social network analysis, showed that in 2019 the reactions posted in response to the Daily Mail and Telegraph articles were overwhelmingly negative; while in 2020, the picture was more nuanced: with Facebook comments being the most aggressively negative but reactions overwhelmingly positive44; Instagram representing a more nuanced picture45 and Twitter mostly supportive and positively engaging.46 The reactions in the press and the letters I received, almost exclusively written by UK- or US-based males, also showed it was not appreciated by many commenters that we were listening to Indigenous voices, over more local and national-felt entitlements, confirming impressions of white supremacy being at play here; there was also some misogyny at play: it was not appreciated that a woman, and one considered a foreigner, was leading these changes. Today, instead of human remains, visitors find text panels that engage with the fact that the way human remains ended up in our collections is deeply problematic, how our disciplines enabled racist practices rooted in socio-evolutionism, and how the measuring of skulls and bones provided a scientific aura to theories that upheld racist and sexist views in the entitlement of white people to objectify, own and abuse black, brown and female bodies for labour, learning, research or entertainment. We also speak about how in 1994, Shuar delegates working with the National Museum of American Indian had already indicated they did not want their ancestors to be put on display, and how we are now working with communities to find ways forward and carve out pathways that are steered by and co-curated with Indigenous peoples. The outcome of the different analyses was fascinating, troubling and strangely hopeful at the same time. Angela’s analysis showed that the letters we received and the comments on Facebook were nearly all negative. Often formulated as sharp accusations, they presented a grim and often racist reading of what we had decided. Letters and comments expressed severe disappointment, mixed with threats, accusations and intimidations, often misogynistic; the letters were almost exclusively written by males with 85% from England (mostly South-East and Oxfordshire) and about 10% from the United States. It also was clear that for the social media part of the work, the overwhelming majority (92%) expressed strong agreement, of being pleased, relieved 218

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but those reactions came mostly in likes and hearts and emojis. Because the 8% had, however, posted comments, and the way social media is mostly “read” is very much scrolling through comments Angela concluded that, in this particular case, it seemed important we would ensure we would also hear the quieter voices as those were the voices I wasn’t seeing, or hearing.47 Laia Anquix’ on-site audience research, showed it was the particular wording that we chose to argue the changes that offended the 25% that was not pleased with their visit: the fact that we owed up to our curation being an enabler of racisms and stereotypes and the open acknowledgment of the fact of our Museum and Universities coloniality.48 Many of the angry reactions we received underlined that that is very much a sentiment that still persists among a part of the UK audience in particular and people calling the tsantsa “disgusting” “ugly” and saying that we should not hide the worse of humanity only underlined again that UK audiences were completely missing the ceremonial significance of the tsantsa and lacked ontological and epistemological frameworks and the basic empathy to really understand and one of the questions we need to investigate is if any curation, however careful, can compensate for that? Apart from this critical (sometimes hurtful) feedback, there was also much feedback reflecting admiration for the steps that we have taken. The explicit support from the public in general, and also the scholarly community and Indigenous communities in particular, has been heartening and overwhelming at times bringing us important partnerships with affected descendant communities in different parts of the world.

Next Steps As outlined above the Proyecto tsantsa continues and after a COVID-forced break, activities both in Oxford and Ecuador have intensified. Thanks to the support of PRM curatorial assistant Nicholas Crowe, and Leiden University intern Sterre Houtzager (2022), we were able to locate over 172 tsantsas (over 120 of which in the United Kingdom) in museum collections worldwide and have established contact with collection managers of the largest who seem keen to work with Shuar delegates towards finding the best ways forward for care and potentially the return of tsantsa, if requested, in future years. At the March 2022 Zoom workshop, two of the necessary next steps identified were that we needed to do detailed CT scanning of the PRM tsantsa; and ideally do ancient DNA research on the tsantsa to find more clarity regarding which tsantsa were counterfeit and which were ceremonial. In August 2022, ancient DNA samples were taken of the PRM tsantsa and are now awaiting analysis at the USFQ in Ecuador. In September 2022, working with Dr Fiona Brock at the Cranfield University Forensic Institute and PRM Head of Conservation, Jeremy Uden, we were able to do CT scanning of three of the human tsantsa currently kept in the PRM collections (1874.115.2; 1936.53.42 and 1936.53.43). The XT H 225 scanner allowed for detailed capture and measurement of internal components and identification of making features and exceptional high X-ray and CT imaging resolutions. The analysis of the CT scans and ancient DNA analysis will take place in the next year in Oxford and Ecuador. 219

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As part of the Proyecto Tsantsa, Dr Maria Patricia Ordoñez (USFQ), myself and my ornithologist PhD student Rosa Dyer travelled to Quito, Cuenca, Sucúa, Paquixa and Zamora to meet with Shuar delegates of the Federación Interprovincial de Comunidades Shuar and delegates of the Zamora Chinchipe Shuar Federation and with Jefferson Acacho at the end of August 2022 to discuss next phases for the project. Many issues are at play that merit a separate article, including the lack of institutional representation; lack of financing for Shuar-run local museums; the involvement and cooptation by multinational destructive extractive mining companies; are just some of the concerns that were flagged. But, most importantly all stakeholders are committed to continuing work towards finding ways forward. The federations agreed they would like to continue and intensify the work with USFQ, PRM and other partners of the Proyecto Tsantsa. We held a next in person workshop in Ecuador in April of 2023 to jointly define the outcomes of the next phase of Proyecto Tsantsa. Organised by the USFQ, agreements were signed by representatives of five of largest Shuar federations including David Tankamash, the president of the FICSH in Morona-Santiago; miembros del Directorio de la Federación Shuar - Zamora Chinchipe; and the sindico del Centro Shuar Tsuer Entsa, Guayas Naranjal and the president of the Asociación Shuar de Pastaza. Together, these represent over 200.000 Shuar. From initial conversations it seems likely repatriation requests will be part of the requested outcomes, which is why the research to identify whether the tsantsa currently kept in museums are ceremonial and Shuar made or counterfeit was agreed as a crucial next step; alongside further mapping of collections in Europe, the United States and other possible parts of the world (including Australia, New Zealand and Canada).

Conclusion In the case of the tsantsa, although critiques in letters, social media and press highlighted the sense of “loss” to publics and academia, in fact more research will be done on this topic now than we have ever done while they were on display. It seems remarkable that, even collections that supposedly are “iconic” or considered very important to the Museum, such as the tsantsa, in fact have laid in the Museum’s collections for decades with hardly any (internally or externally led) research done on them and close to no important publications. The same has been the case for several other collections, we have recently commenced working on because a request for collaboration or return was received from originating communities (for example, in the past six years this concerns objects of Benin city, Nigeria; Maasai collections, Kenya and Tanzania; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island, Australia; Evenki collections, Russia; objects from Hawaii, United States). Although by some the process of return has been portrayed as one that involves loss, in reality, more often than not, it is either requests for return, or co-curatorial endeavours, that have signified the start of any serious research, including provenance research. Moreover, because the research starts from a request by an originating community and, therefore, the research is setup collaboratively and jointly, better research questions and more relevant outcomes can be expected leading to deeper insights and understanding, and arguably, research with higher scientific value and certainly more societal impact. One would expect 220

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universities and museums to be chomping at the bit to dedicate more resources to this kind of research than to other components of work that have been considered “core” or “business as usual.” This is not always the case, and at the Pitt Rivers Museum, we are trying to change that. With regards to the tsantsa and other human remains that were on display, or are still kept at the museum, we are reaching out to communities. The programme of work with regards to the tsantsa will continue and we are expanding the network of museums that are to become involved. We are continuing our work with Shuar delegates, and we have reached out to other institutions in the United Kingdom, European Union, United States and Canada, as part of a request by Shuar delegates to map where tsantsa are currently being kept. Hopefully this will help create opportunities for other museums to join in a collaborative research project to find ways forwards with Shuar stakeholders towards redress, be it return or different ways of representation and care. Dozens of questions still need answering, some led by questions of the Shuar, others by those in the United Kingdom, Europe or other parts of the world telling stories with the Shuar. This story is particularly complex, as the different entitlements are entangled ad multiple including entitlements to do with possession and display: who is authoring the stories, where are the stories told and to whom; questions need to be answered regarding who made the objects, and whether they were made by Shuar makers, and in that case, what Achuar involvement will be also in case of return; or whether they were made from bodies stolen from morgues, or from different animals, and how and whether that affects the representational aspects of displaying tsantsa and/or the need for their return. And those tsantsas made from bodies stolen from morgues, what forms of redress are necessary and possible? In the cases where objects were made from animal skin, do other forms of display in Museums become possible or are the stereotypical images implanted in our general audiences’ brains, so powerful that any reading of a tsantsa will be marred by cognitive dissonance or stereotypical portrayals of “others.” Also, what does it say about those commenting in the press, on how they voice their opinions about museums and what their roles are in the future, how do we draw learnings from that with regards to how we communicate in our museums, in our press releases and on our websites? Some entitlements that were voiced in press, and also in interviews with on-site audience members, were deeply troubling. They show how deeply ingrained coloniality sits in our expectations and experiences and make us ponder whether, given the strangely racialised representations of tsantsa in popular culture, it may have become close to impossible to put them on display. Nonetheless, we would like to see whether, working together, we can work towards a mutually agreed co-curated representation of Shuar heritage that helps convey worldviews in their full complexity, nuance and diversity, so that, as Jefferson Acacho argues, Shuar can tell their own stories, from a point of self-determination and as a part of redress.

Notes 1 Pitt Rivers Museum, Strategic Plan 2017–2022. Available online at: https://www.prm.ox. ac.uk/sites/default/files/prm_strategicplan2017-22-foronlineuse-singlepages-ilovepdfcompressed.pdf, accessed August 4, 2022.

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Laura N.K. Van Broekhoven 2 Andreas Schothauer, personal communication and unpublished report after research visit to Pitt Rivers Museum in 2016. 3 Laura Peers, Shrunken Heads (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, 2011), 6. 4 Maria Patricia Ordoñez, personal communication Shuar Tsantsa Workshop 2022. 5 Richard Chacon and David Dye, eds, The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians (New York: Springer, 2007). 6 Sterre Houtzager, The Presence of Absence: Audience Responses to the Removal of the “Shrunken Heads” from Display at the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Role of Popular Culture (Leiden: Unpublished MA thesis Leiden University, 2022). 7 José Savio, Leopoldi, “Aguerra implacável dos Munduruku: elementos culturais e genéticos na caça aos inimigos,” Avá 11 (2007): 171–191. 8 Thomas, Joyce, South American Archaeology: An Introduction to the Archaeology of the South American Continent with Special Reference to the Early History of Peru (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 26; Rahul Jandial, et al. “The Science of Shrinking Human Heads: Tribal Warfare and Revenge among the South American Jivaro-Shuar,” Neurosurgery 55, no. 5 (2004): 1215; Elsa Redmond, Tribal and Chiefly Warfare in South America (Ann Arbor, MI: Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan Number 28, 1994), 36; Pita Kelekna, “War and Theocracy,” in Chiefdoms and Chieftaincy in the Americas, ed. Elsa Redmond (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998). 9 Klaus Haagen and Izumi Shimada. “Bodies and Blood: Middle Sicán Human Sacrifice in the Lambayeque Valley Complex (AD900–1100).” In Ritual violence in the Ancient Andes: Reconstructing Sacrifice on the North Coast of Peru, ed. D. Klaus Haagen and J. Marla Toyne (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016), 125–126; Tung, Tiffany A., “Practicing and Performing Sacrifice,” in Ritual Violence in the Ancient Andes: Reconstructing Sacrifice on the North Coast of Peru, ed. Haagen D. Klaus and J. Marla Toyne (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 368–369. 10 Jimmy Mans, Amotopoan Trails: A Recent Archaeology of Trio Movements (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2012). 11 Anne Christine Taylor, “God Wealth: The Achuar and the Missions,” in Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador, ed. Norman E. Whitten, Jr. (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 656. 12 Steven Rubenstein, “Circulation, Accumulation”; Laura Peers, Shrunken Heads; Frances Larson, Severed. 13 Michael Harner, The Jívaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls (Garden City, New York: Doubleday/Natural History Press, 1972), 17. 14 Juan de Velasco, Historia del Reino de Quito en la América Meridional. Año de 1789. Tomo 3 y parte 3. Quito: Imprenta del Moderno por J. Campusano, 1842. 15 Michael Harner, The Jívaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 25–29. 16 Steven Rubenstein, “Circulation, Accumulation, and the Power of Shuar Shrunken Heads,” Cultural Anthropology 22, no. 3 (August 2007): 379. 17 Steven Rubenstein, “Circulation, Accumulation, and the Power of Shuar Shrunken Heads,” 357–399. 18 Steven Rubenstein, “Circulation, Accumulation,” 366. 19 Frances Larson, Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found (London: Granta Books, 2014), 22. 20 Daniel Steel, “Trade Goods and Jívaro Warfare: The Shuar 1850–1957, and the Achuar, 1940–1978.” Ethnohistory 46, no. 4 (1999). 21 Jane Ross, A balance of deaths: revenge feuding among the Achuarä Jívaro of the northwest Peruvian Amazon (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1988), 208 22 Laura Peers, Shrunken Heads, 5. 23 Matthew Stirling, Historical and Ethnographical Material on the Jivaro Indians: Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 117 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1938); Laura Peers, Shrunken Heads; Frances Larson, Severed.

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Entangled Entitlements and Shuar Tsantsa (Shrunken Heads) 24 Tobias Houlton and Caroline M. Wilkinson, “Recently Identified Features That Help to Distinguish Ceremonial Tsantsa from Commercial Shrunken Heads,” Journal of Cultural Heritage 20 (July-August 2016): 661. 25 Verónica Baquero-Méndez, et al. “Genetic Characterization of a Collection of Tsantsas from Ecuadorian Museums,” Forensic Science International 325, no. 110879 (2021): 1. 26 Tobias Houlton, “Historical Context of Tsantsa (shrunken heads) and Shrinkage Studies Performed Using Pig Heads,” Axis 3, no. 1 (Autumn 2011). 27 Tobias Houlton, “Historical Context of Tsantsa,” 22. 28 Archivo de lenguas y culturas y memorias historicas del Ecuador 2018. 29 Anne Christine Taylor, “Remembering to Forget: Identity, Mourning and Memory among the Jivaro,” Man, New Series 28, no. 4 (1993). 30 Jefferson Acacho, personal communication workshop 2022. 31 Maria Patricia Ordoñez, Tamara Landivar and Laura Van Broekhoven, Putting Heads Together: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Museum Archaeology of the National Tsantsa Collection at the Pumapungo Museum, Cuenca. Paper presented at Presidential Forum of the Society for American Archaeology, Chicago: 87th Annual Meeting, March 30–April 3, 2022. 32 Philippe Descola, The Spears of Twilight: Life and Death in the Amazon Jungle. Translated from the French by Janet Lloyd. New York: The New Press, 1996; Tobias Houlton, “A Morphometric Investigation into Shrunken Heads,” Journal of Cultural Heritage 32 (July–August 2018). 33 Acacho cited in the Guardian by Batty, 2020. 34 Michael Harner, The Jívaro, 134. 35 Steven Rubenstein, “Shuar Migrants and Shrunken Heads, Face to Face in a New York Museum,” Anthropology Today 20, no. 3 (June 2004); NMAI, 1994. 36 Laura Peers, Shrunken Heads, 13. 37 Peter Gordon, Life after Death: The Social Transformation of Tsantsas (Oxford: Unpublished Manuscript MSc - Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, 2003). 38 Laura Peers, Shrunken Heads, 14. 39 Jefferson Acacho, March 2022 workshop. 40 Jefferson Acacho, March 2022 workshop. 41 Frances Larson, Severed, 21. 42 Jefferson Acacho, personal communication, September 2020. 43 Jefferson Acacho, March 2022 workshop. 44 Angela Billings, Critical Changes: Report on Social Media and Written Responses (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, Unpublished Manuscript, 2021). 45 Sterre Houtzager, The Presence of Absence. 46 Angela Billings, Critical Changes. 47 Angela Billings, Critical Changes. 48 Laia Anquix, Critical Change: Evaluation Report (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, Unpublished Manuscript).

Bibliography Anquix, Laia. Critical Change: Evaluation Report. Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, Unpublished Manuscript, 2021. Archivo de lenguas y culturas y memorias historicas del Ecuador. Quito: Flasco, 2018. http:// languages.flacso.edu.ec/handle/57000/197 (consulted 5 February 2021). Baquero-Méndez, Verónica, Karla E. Rojas-López, Juan Esteban Zurita, María Mercerdes Cobo, Consuelo Fernández-Salvador, María Patricia Ordóñez, and María de Lourdes Torres. “Genetic Characterization of a Collection of Tsantsas from Ecuadorian Museums.” Forensic Science International 325, no. 110879 (2021): 1–9. 10.1016/j.forsciint.2021.110879.

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Laura N.K. Van Broekhoven Batty, David. “Off with the Heads: Pitt Rivers Museum Removes Human Remains from Display.” In The Guardian, 13 September 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/ 2020/sep/13/off-with-the-heads-pitt-rivers-museum-removes-human-remains-fromdisplay (consulted 10 February 2022). Billings, Angela. Critical Changes: Report on Social Media and Written Responses. Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, Unpublished Manuscript, 2021. Chacon, Richard J. and David H. Dye, eds. The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians. New York: Springer, 2007. Charlier, P., I. Huynh-Charlier, L. Brund, C. Hervé, and G. Lorin de la Grandmaison. “Forensic Anthropology Population Data. Shrunken Head (Tsantsa): A Complete Forensic Analysis Procedure.” Forensic Science International 222, no. 1–3 (10 October 2012): 399.e1–399.e5. 10.1016/j.forsciint.2012.06.009/ https://www.sciencedirect. com/science/article/pii/S037907381200285X. Descola, Philippe. The Spears of Twilight: Life and Death in the Amazon Jungle. Translated from the French by Janet Lloyd. New York: The New Press, 1996. Gordon, Peter. Life after Death: The Social Transformation of Tsantsas. Oxford: Unpublished Manuscript MSc – Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, 2003. Haagen, D. Klaus and Izumi Shimada. “Bodies and Blood: Middle Sicán Human Sacrifice in the Lambayeque Valley Complex (AD900–1100).” In Ritual Violence in the Ancient Andes: Reconstructing Sacrifice on the North Coast of Peru, edited by D. Klaus Haagen and J. Marla Toyne. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016. Harner, Michael J. The Jívaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984. Harner, Michael J. The Jívaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls. Garden City, New York: Doubleday/Natural History Press, 1972. Houlton, Tobias M. R. “A Morphometric Investigation into Shrunken Heads.” Journal of Cultural Heritage 32 (July–August 2018): 238–247. 10.1016/j.culher.2018.01.004. Houlton, Tobias M. R. “Historical Context of Tsantsa (Shrunken Heads) and Shrinkage Studies Performed Using Pig Heads.” In Axis 3, no. 1 (Autumn 2011): 19–34. https:// docplayer.net/40334704-Historical-context-of-tsantsa-shrunken-heads-and-shrinkagestudies-performed-using-pig-heads.html. Houlton, Tobias M. R. and Caroline M. Wilkinson. “Recently Identified Features That Help to Distinguish Ceremonial Tsantsa from Commercial Shrunken Heads.” Journal of Cultural Heritage 20 (July-August 2016): 660–670. 10.1016/j.culher.2016.01.009. Houtzager, Sterre. The Presence of Absence: Audience Responses to the Removal of the “Shrunken Heads” from Display at the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Role of Popular Culture. Leiden: Unpublished MA thesis Leiden University, 2022. Jandial, Rahul, Samuel A. Hughes, Henry E. Aryan, Lawrence F. Marshall, and Michael L. Levy. “The Science of Shrinking Human Heads: Tribal Warfare and Revenge among the South American Jivaro-Shuar.” Neurosurgery 55, no. 5 (2004): 1215–1221. 10.1227/ 01.neu.0000140986.83616.28. Joyce, Thomas Athol. South American Archaeology: An Introduction to the Archaeology of the South American Continent with Special Reference to the Early History of Peru. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013 [1912]. Kelekna, Pita. “War and Theocracy.” In Chiefdoms and Chieftaincy in the Americas, edited by Elsa Redmond, 164–188. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998. Larson, Frances. Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found. London: Granta Books, 2014. Leopoldi, José Savio. “Aguerra implacável dos Munduruku: elementos culturais e genéticos na caça aos inimigos.” Avá 11 (2007): 171–191. https://www.ava.unam.edu.ar/images/11/ pdf/ava11_07_leopoldi.pdf (accessed 4 February 2021). Mans, Jimmy. Amotopoan Trails: A Recent Archaeology of Trio Movements. Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2012.

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Entangled Entitlements and Shuar Tsantsa (Shrunken Heads) Ordoñez, Maria Patricia, Tamara Landivar, and Laura Van Broekhoven. Putting Heads Together: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Museum Archaeology of the National Tsantsa Collection at the Pumapungo Museum, Cuenca. Paper presented at Presidential Forum of the Society for American Archaeology, Chicago: 87th Annual Meeting, March 30–April 3, 2022. Peers, Laura. Shrunken Heads. Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, 2011. https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/ files/peersshrunkenheadsatprmpdf Pitt Rivers Museum. Strategic Plan 2017–2022. Available online at: https://www.prm.ox.ac. uk/sites/default/files/prm_strategicplan2017-22-foronlineuse-singlepages-ilovepdfcompressed.pdf (accessed 4 August 2022). Redmond, Elsa M. Tribal and Chiefly Warfare in South America. Ann Arbor, MI: Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Number 28, 1994. Ross, Jane Bennet. A Balance of Deaths: Revenge Feuding among the Achuarä Jívaro of the Northwest Peruvian Amazon. PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1988. Rubenstein, Steven Lee. “Chain Marriage among the Shuar.” The Latin American Anthropology Review 5, no. 1 (March 1993): 3–9. 10.1525/jlca.1993.5.1.3 Rubenstein, Steven Lee. “Circulation, Accumulation, and the Power of Shuar Shrunken Heads.” Cultural Anthropology 22, no. 3 (August 2007): 357–399. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/4497778 Rubenstein, Steven Lee. “Shuar Migrants and Shrunken Heads, Face to Face in a New York Museum.” Anthropology Today 20, no. 3 (June 2004): 15–18. Steel, Daniel. “Trade Goods and Jívaro Warfare: The Shuar 1850–1957, and the Achuar, 1940–1978.” Ethnohistory 46, no. 4 (1999): 745–776. Stirling, Matthew W. Historical and Ethnographical Material on the Jivaro Indians: Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 117. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1938. Taylor, Anne Christine. “God Wealth: The Achuar and the Missions.” In Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador, edited by Norman E. Whitten, Jr. Urbana Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1981. Taylor, Anne Christine. “Remembering to Forget: Identity, Mourning and Memory among the Jivaro.” Man, New Series 28, no. 4 (1993): 653–678. Taylor, Anne Christine. “The Marriage Alliance and Its Structural Variations in Jivaroan Societies.” Social Science Information 22, no. 3 (1983): 331–353. Tung, Tiffany A., “Practicing and Performing Sacrifice.” In Ritual Violence in the Ancient Andes. Reconstructing Sacrifice on the North Coast of Peru, edited by Haagen D. Klaus and J. Marla Toyne. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Velasco, Juan de. Historia del Reino de Quito en la América Meridional. Año de 1789. Tomo 3 y parte 3. Quito: Imprenta del Moderno por J. Campusano, 1842.

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16 JULIA PASTRANA’S LONG JOURNEY HOME Laura Anderson Barbata

Julia Pastrana’s First One Hundred and 69 Years Julia Pastrana is believed to have been born in 1834 in Santiago de Ocoroni, a small community in the Northern Sierra Madre in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico. She was born with a congenital condition called hypertrichosis terminalis and gingival hyperplasia which marked her life and defined her destiny from the time of her birth. Her congenital conditions, however, were not the only factors that prompted Pastrana’s exploitation. Rather, it was four intersecting identities – gender (female), race (Indigenous), nationality (Mexican), and congenital conditions (hypertrichosis ter­ minalis with hyperplasia gingival) – that were used to uphold the Victorian pre­ occupation with policing the categories of “human” and “citizen.”1 Little is known of Julia Pastrana’s infancy. Historians in Sinaloa, in particular Gilberto J. López Alanís and Ricardo Mimiaga, continue to conduct research on her early years.2 Mimiaga’s writings suggest that Julia’s mother passed away when she was approximately four years old. Upon her mother’s death, she was taken to live with her relatives, who purportedly sold Julia to a traveling circus.3 By the time Pastrana reached adolescence in the early 1850s, she lived in the home of Pedro Sánchez, the Governor of Sinaloa. It was there that she is reported to have learned to dance and sing, going as far as to become an accomplished mezzo-soprano who could sing in four languages: Cahita, Spanish, English, and French.4 In 1854, Governor Sánchez and Francisco Sepulveda, Mexico’s Head of Customs, organized Pastrana’s first concert in Guadalajara, Mexico.5 News of her performances reached the United States and attracted the attention of Theodore Lent, a white North American man who traveled to Mexico to see Pastrana for himself. After meeting Julia, a business transaction was agreed between the three men, whereupon Julia Pastrana was to be purchased by Theodore Lent.6 Sepulveda traveled to New Orleans with Pastrana to finalize the transaction. Once on United States soil, Lent convinced Pastrana to marry him and used the marriage certificate as evidence to avoid paying Sepulveda. 226

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-20

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Lent became Pastrana’s manager and billed her as the Nondescript, the Hirsute, the Ape Woman, the Female Hybrid, the Wonderful Hybrid, Bear-woman, and Baboon Lady, among other sobriquets that questioned her humanity and problematized her gender.7 Lent also obtained certificates from doctors who had allegedly inspected Pastrana to provide descriptions, testimonies, and theories to support his claims, which were then used in promotional materials for her exhibitions. From 1845 to 1857, Pastrana sang and danced for audiences across North America, from New York to Cleveland to Canada. According to Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, in Victorian America, disciplines such as ethnography, anthropology, museum culture, anatomy, [ … ] circuses, musical reviews and beauty pageants [ … ] can be sorted into two broad, competing cultural discourses that controlled the extraordinary body: entertainment—a popular, commercialized discourse—and science—the more elite, authoritative narrative of such bodies. Entertainment trafficked mainly in the rhetoric of the marvelous and wondrous, while science enlisted the logic of rationality, mas­ tery, authority, and pathology.8 To promote the exhibition of Julia Pastrana, Lent utilized language that appealed to both discourses. On the one hand, Pastrana was a gifted singer and dancer who was always elegantly dressed; on the other, she was an Indigenous woman from a foreign country with a rare medical condition. Julia Pastrana boldly embodied perceived contradictions that the Victorian era was trying to define and differentiate, her ex­ istence threatened and blurred the boundaries of what was considered normative (Figure 16.1). At the peak of the Victorian era, Lent and Pastrana moved from the United States to Europe, and Julia Pastrana held her first performance at London’s Regent Gallery in the summer of 1857. Posters promoting her performance described Julia as “Miss Pastrana ‘The Nondescript!’” and “The Wonder of the World!” (Figure 16.2). Her exhibition was promoted as a “Grand and Novel Attraction. Just in from the United States and Canada, where she has held her levees in all the principal cities, and created

Figure 16.1

Julia Pastrana featured in the New York Times entertainment section (“Amusements”), December 27, 1854.

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Figure 16.2 Advertisement for exhibition at Regent Gallery, London, 1857, woodcut.

the greatest possible excitement being pronounced by the most emanate naturalists and physicians” (Figure 16.2). Mass-produced posters, brochures, and lyrics of her songs were sold as souvenirs after Pastrana’s performances propagated fear and wonder.9 Lent and Pastrana traveled throughout Europe performing in England, Germany, Poland, and Russia, presenting shows in which Julia danced and performed opera arias. While in Europe, she was examined by doctors and was written about by naturalists Francis T. Buckland and Charles Darwin.10

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In 1857, the Gartenlaube newspaper in Leipzig, Germany, published the only known purported interview with Julia Pastrana, titled Julia Pastrana, ein Menschenungeheuer.11 The interview consisted of a sensationalized description of Julia Pastrana’s physical appearance, and placed her exhibition within the expanding Victorian practice of presenting human beings from colonial empires as spectacle: It has been a few years since the different parts of the world have begun to send examples of their strange racial developments: Negros and mulattos, morons and Hottentots, and, as a curiosity of odd malformation, the Aztecs with their grotesque ugliness …12 In 1859, Pastrana became pregnant. On March 20, 1860, Julia was hospitalized in Moscow and delivered a son who was diagnosed with the same condition as his mother. Tragically, the infant died 35 hours later, and complications during childbirth kept Pastrana hospitalized. Meanwhile Lent peddled tickets to view Julia in her hospital bed. On March 25, 1860, Julia Pastrana passed away from puerperal me­ troperitonitis.13 Lent immediately sold the deceased bodies of his wife and child to Dr. Sokolov of the University of Moscow, who had developed embalming tech­ niques and wanted to test them on human beings.14 Two years later, Lent visited the hospital of the University of Moscow, and upon inspecting the results of Sokolov’s embalming, demanded that his wife and child be returned to him.15 Having regained control of their embalmed bodies, he then placed them inside a glass case and began to exhibit them again. In this new spectacle, Lent enlisted the participation of doctors to corroborate Julia and her baby’s identity, question their origins and humanity, and authenticate their embalming. The attraction and novelty of the embalmed Julia Pastrana and her infant child was short-lived. Lent, the consummate showman, needed to add something new to attract audiences once more. In 1864, Lent learned of Marie Barthel, a young bearded woman from Karlsbad, Germany, and set off to meet and marry her. Shortly thereafter, Marie Barthel became part of the exhibition by introducing herself as Julia’s sister before presenting Pastrana and the infant on stage. The introduction of Barthel onto the same stage with Julia built further on the rhetoric of the marvelous and wondrous while at the same time invoked the authority of science. Upon Lent’s death, Barthel continued exhibiting Pastrana and infant throughout Europe. By 1921, the bodies of Pastrana and her child were transitioned from in­ dividuals who were part of stage presentations for entertainment, to objects in a larger “Chamber of Horrors” collection.16 They continued to be exhibited in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway from the 1940s to the 1970s.17 Between 1971 and 1972, the bodies of Julia Pastrana and her son were taken on tour through the United States and exhibited as part of the Million Dollar Midways fair.18 Upon their return to Oslo, Pastrana and her infant were placed in a storage facility along with furniture and relics from the traveling fair.19 In 1976 and 1979, thieves broke into the facility and the bodies of Julia Pastrana and her son were vandalized and severely damaged. Julia’s arm was found in a 229

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dumpster and taken to the police, and it is believed that the infant was abandoned in a field and destroyed by rodents. During the second break-in, Julia Pastrana’s mutilated body disappeared from the warehouse. It was not until 1988 that Julia Pastrana was “found” by Dr. Jan Bondeson in a janitorial closet in the basement of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the Rikshospitalet in Oslo, Norway.20 Dr. Bondeson had written extensively on Julia Pastrana, and was interested in determining her exact condition.21 He restored her severely-damaged body, reattached her arm, and safely protected her at the institute. When the University of Oslo and other organizations met in 1994 to discuss the future of Pastrana, all voted in favor of burying Pastrana, with the exception of Dr. Per Holck, the curator, and director of the Schreiner Collection. It was his wish to add Pastrana to their collection. The following day the Royal Ministry of Health and Church Affairs of Norway intervened and ordered that Julia Pastrana be kept at the Schreiner Collection in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Oslo for research purposes, and stored away from the public’s view under Dr. Per Holck’s care.22

Changing the Narrative to Restore Julia Pastrana’s Rights and Memory It was in 2003 that I first learned about Julia Pastrana. Amphibian Stage produced The True History of the Tragic Life and the Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World, a play by Shaun Prendergast, in New York City. The script recounts – in complete darkness and from her perspective – Pastrana’s life and fate up until she was incorporated into the Schreiner Collection. Amphibian Stage circulated a petition for repatriation and gathered hundreds of signatures from audience members, including my own, which was sent to the Mexican Consulate in Norway.23 As fate would have it, the following year I was invited to visit the north of Norway to meet with indigenous Sami artists and intellectuals. The Schreiner Collection included hundreds of Sami skulls, for which the Sami were demanding repatriation.24 In 2005, I began correspondence with the curator of the Schreiner Collection, Dr. Per Holck. My intention was to understand with absolute clarity the motives and justifications that allowed the institution to keep Pastrana in their collection. I believed that if I articulated my questions in the right manner, it would allow Dr. Holck and his department to see Julia in a new light – through an empathetic lens, as a human being with rights beyond a purely scientific value. Holck’s answers to my queries were curt and vague, and it became clear that she only represented an object of study in their collection. In response, I approached the Norwegian National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (NESH), where I met people working in the fields of justice, law, ethics, and human rights. They advised me on the procedures and arguments to request the removal of Julia Pastrana from the anatomy collection. In the interim, I felt there were things I could do immediately to publicly acknowledge Pastrana’s humanity, unrestrained by official protocols – actions that could shift the perception of Pastrana from an artifact, destined to remain a part of an 230

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Figure 16.3 Obituary announcement. Aftenposten, Oslo, Norway, 2005.

institutional collection, to a human being with rights. I knew that after she died in Moscow in 1860, she had been immediately mummified, almost certainly without a religious ceremony. Also, I could not find an obituary published after her death. With this in mind, on September 10, 2005, I published an obituary for Julia Pastrana in the local newspaper, Aftenposten (Figure 16.3), which also announced a memorial mass at St. Joseph’s Chapel, the Catholic church in Oslo, to be celebrated two days later. The day after the mass was held, VG newspaper in Oslo published a full-page article about the memorial that featured a half-page close-up of Julia’s face in a mummified and damaged state, a large photo of Julia and her baby inside the glass case in which they had been exhibited. There was also a photo of Father Iru (who had officiated the mass) and me with the church behind us, lit as if in flames with a bloodred sky above us with the heading “Viser ‘apekvinnen’ den siste ære.”25 The morbid display and language replicated the exploitive lens through which she had been depicted throughout her life and death. Yet on the day of the service, the general mood was positive, and those who attended the mass expressed gratitude for the opportunity to join in this moment to recognize Julia’s humanity.

Julia Pastrana’s Ten Year Repatriation Journey Once back in New York and Mexico, I continued exchanges with the National Committee for Research Ethics on Human Remains (NESH) on a regular basis. And in 2008, following their counsel, I presented a petition for the committee to consider the repatriation of Julia Pastrana for burial. Their letter of response was lost for almost a year by the US Postal Service. When it finally reached me, it was torn and badly damaged, inside a plastic bag with a note of apology from the USPS. The document stated that even though the committee agreed that Pastrana most likely would not have chosen to be kept in a collection, I did not have familial ties to her and thus could not petition for her burial. The Schreiner Collection had claimed that their principal motive for keeping Pastrana’s body was to contribute to science and genetic research. No requests, however, had ever been received to study her,26 and no DNA samples had been taken.27 Without access to Pastrana’s DNA, finding kinship would be impossible. 231

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It is important to note that the Mexican Constitution grants Mexican citizens who die in foreign lands the right to be repatriated and buried in Mexico.28 Nonetheless, there were significant challenges to overcome. For example, in order to begin a petition for repatriation, one must provide proof of kinship; a death certificate with the cause, place, and date; a permit for international transport by the Department of Health stating the final destination; a certificate of embalming or cremation, signed by the embalmer or cremator with their license number.29 None of these documents were available, and without them, Pastrana could not legally be treated as a human being by any authority, funerary service, or repatriation service company, nor could she cross any international border. At this point, it was clear that the justification to request Julia Pastrana’s repatriation had to be founded on an ethical, moral, and human rights perspective. In 2011, the newspaper Reforma in Mexico had published several articles on Pastrana by the journalist Silvia Gamez, gaining coverage and interest on a national level, which I was able to use as proof of public opinion in Mexico in support of Pastrana’s repatriation. By 2012, with my final petition drafted to NESH, I met with Mario López Valdez, the Governor of Sinaloa (Julia Pastrana’s birthplace). I presented the case of Pastrana as one of national and international humanitarian importance. I specifically drew parallels to the case of the South African Khoikhoi woman Sarah Baartman (1789–1815), who was repatriated from the Musée de l´Homme in Paris and buried in South Africa in 2002 through the efforts of President Nelson Mandela. After our meeting, Governor López Valdez initiated a formal government petition to be executed by the Department of Foreign Affairs of Mexico and the State of Sinaloa, which was submitted to authorities at the University of Oslo and government agencies of Norway. After much dialogue between institutions, both in Mexico and Norway, the Schreiner Collection agreed to transfer custody of Pastrana to Mexico for repatriation, with the condition that she never be exhibited again, and that she receive a Catholic funeral and burial. These were welcome conditions that acknowledged Julia’s rights and humanity after many years of neglect in their care. Careful and complex planning followed, with numerous representatives from Norway, England, France, and Mexico assigned to facilitate the process. Dr. Nicholas Márquez-Grant, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Oxford, and I were witnesses when Julia’s body was removed from the storage box where she had been kept and placed in a sealed zinc-lined white coffin at the Ullevål University Hospital in Oslo, Norway. On February 7, 2013, the University of Oslo officially transferred custody of Julia Pastrana to Mexico. Ambassador Martha Barcena Coqui of the Mexican Embassy in Denmark represented Mexico, and I represented the State of Sinaloa. The University of Oslo held a private service for Pastrana at the chapel at Rikshospitalet, Oslo University Hospital, with speeches by Vice-Rector Ragnhild Hennum, Dr. Jan G. Bjaalie, head of the Institute of Basic Medical Science, Ambassador Martha Barcena Coqui, and me. Among the guests were scholars, members of the press, and the curator of the Schreiner Collection, Dr. Per Holck. After the ceremony, Julia was taken to Oslo International Airport and transported on a series of commercial flights: Oslo to Paris, Paris to Mexico City, and Mexico 232

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Figure 16.4 Catholic mass for Julia Pastrana, Church of San Felipe y Santiago, Sinaloa, Mexico. February 12, 2013.

City to Culiacán, the state capital of Sinaloa. At every city and at every border crossing, there were representatives to expedite the travel process of this undocumented celebrity. In Sinaloa, Julia Pastrana was received with ceremonies and upon arrival in Sinaloa de Leyva, the city closest to the site of her birth. Julia’s closed coffin was taken in a procession to the cathedral, where a mass was offered (Figure 16.4). After the mass, the procession continued to the Panteón Histórico cemetery accompanied by traditional tambora music and mariachis. Hundreds of people from neighboring villages, and as far as Santiago de Ocoroni, held signs in defense of human rights, against violence toward women, and to demand rights for indigenous people. Thousands of white flowers had been sent from all over the world. To protect her from further violations, the plot was carefully prepared in advance. Once her casket had been lowered into the ground and partially covered with white flowers, it was covered with concrete. After the burial, in a final gesture to recognize Julia Pastrana’s humanity, the Registro Civil30 of Sinaloa issued her death certificate, and for which I signed as a witness (Figure 16.5). Julia Pastrana is now buried and her body will never again be exhibited or exploited. The removal of Julia Pastrana from the Schreiner Collection in Oslo and her repatriation and burial in Mexico is an act of decolonizing a European collection, but it is also an act of restorative justice and of human rights, owed to Julia Pastrana and to all individuals whose bodies and lives have been exploited by institutions throughout the world. Decolonizing collections and museums is a collective action that requires 233

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Figure 16.5 Julia Pastrana’s death certificate, February 11, 2013.

the participation of institutions working in collaboration with civil society to restore the dignity denied to all who have been deprived of their human rights, who have been dehumanized and objectified to promote the colonial ideology of white racial supremacy. If there is any possibility for a more humane, just, and respectful society for all people everywhere, we must examine the past in order to identify the ways in which we are still immersed in it, and with that information initiate – and change – policies through action. 234

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Notes 1 Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Making Freaks: Visual Rhetorics and the Spectacle of Julia Pastrana,” in Thinking the Limits of the Body, ed. Jeffery Jerome Cohen and Gail Weiss, 130–142. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 2 “In Sinaloa, it is necessary to recover and reconstruct the first 20 years of Julia´s life. Given the apparent lack of documentary sources, the void is filled by oral history.” Mimiaga, 2013. Email correspondence with the author, August 2013. 3 Ricardo Mimiaga, El orígen y entorno social de Julia Pastrana, 2013. Unpublished text shared by author. 4 Ibid. 5 Kathleen Godfrey, “[untitled],” Julia Pastrana Online, 2020, http://juliapastranaonline. com/items/show/63 6 Ireneo Paz, Algunas campañas: Memorias escritas por Ireneo Paz (México: Dirección General de Bibliotecas. Ed. Fondo Nacional de Cultura Económica, 1997). 7 Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Making Freaks: Visual Rhetorics and the Spectacle of Julia Pastrana” (essay), in Thinking the Limits of the Body, ed. Jeffery Jerome Cohen and Gail Weiss (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 130–142. 8 Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, “Julia Pastrana the ‘Extraordinary Lady,’” in The Eye of the Beholder: Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home (Seattle: Lucia | Marquand, 2017). 9 Izabela Kopania, “In the Footsteps of Julia Pastrana. Cultural Responses to an ApeWoman’s Stay in Warsaw in 1858 and Reaction of Polish Press to Her Extraordinary Body,” Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 64, no. 1 (2019): 39–65, accessed November 29, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1556/02202019.64.1.4 10 “Julia Pastrana, a Spanish dancer, was a remarkably fine woman, but she had a thick masculine beard and a hairy forehead … [] From the redundancy of the teeth her mouth projected, and her face had a gorilla-like appearance.” 11 Der Gautenlaube, Julia Pastrana, a Human Monster, trans. Maj Britt Jensen, 1857. 12 Ibid. 13 The year of Pastrana’s death, New York´s Married Women’s Property Act of 1860 passed, which granted married women the right to control their own earnings and declared to be the joint guardian of her children, with her husband, with equal powers, rights, and duties. Two years later, it was amended and women lost equal guardianship of their children. 14 Also spelled Sukolov (Bondeson-Miles). 15 The University of Moscow denied his petition, after which Lent contacted the United States Consulate to request their assistance in reclaiming ownership of Julia Pastrana and the infant. 16 Håkon Jaeger Lund, a Norwegian collector, purchased the bodies of Pastrana and the child and displayed them in Oslo at his amusement park. Upon his death, his son Hans Jaeger Lund toured the bodies as part of his Tivoli Fair. 17 J. Bondeson and A.E. Miles, “Julia Pastrana, the Nondescript: An Example of Congenital, Generalized Hypertrichosis Terminalis with Gingival Hyperplasia,” American Journal of Medical Genetics 47 (1993, August 15): 198–212, doi: 10.1002/ajmg.1320470213. PMID: 82139606. 18 Jan Bondeson, “My Quest for Julia Pastrana’s Mummy,” in The Eye of the Beholder: Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home (Seattle: Lucia | Marquand, 2017), 69. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 J. Bondeson and A.E. Miles, “Julia Pastrana,” 198–212. 22 Founded by Alette and Kristian Schreiner who in the late 1920s opposed the notion of a Nordic master race, but did not dismiss the basic concept of superior and inferior races (Kyllingstad, 2012). 23 The Consul General claimed in a conversation with the author that they never received the petition from Amphibian Stage Productions.

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Laura Anderson Barbata 24 Schreiner, indicated that the Sami were an ancient, “unspecialized,” and “infantile” race. He also claimed that their “primitive” physical traits correlated well with the mental characters of a typical Sami individual, which was described as carefree, joyful, shy, and simpleminded (Schreiner 1931–1935: 276–288). The same descriptions of an “infantile” and “primitive” Sami psychology can be found in Alette Schreiner’s works on the living Sami populations (A. Schreiner 1932: 13). 25 “Show the ‘ape woman’ the last honor,” VG, Oslo, Norway, September 12, 2005. 26 Email correspondence with Dr. Per Holck, September 2, 2005. 27 It was only after the date was confirmed for her repatriation that the university of Oslo obtained a DNA sample for their archives. 28 Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores. Normas para la ejecución consular del programa de protección consular a personas mexicanas en el exterior (Versión 3). VI. Repatriación de restos de personas mexicanas fallecidas en el exterior. Mayo, 2017, p. 28. 29 Ibid. 30 Office of Vital Records,

Bibliography Berger, Maurice. “Are Art Museums Racist?” ARTnews.com. ARTnews.com, June 3, 2020. https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/maurice-berger-are-art-museumsracist-1202682524/ Bondeson, Jan. A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities. London: I.B. Tauris, 1997. Bondeson, Jan. “My Quest for Julia Pastrana’s Mummy.” Essay. In The Eye of the Beholder: Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home, 32, 67–77. Seattle: Lucia | Marquand, 2017. Bondeson, Jan. The Two-Headed Boy, and Other Medical Marvels. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Bondeson, J. and A. E. Miles. “Julia Pastrana, the Nondescript: An Example of Congenital, Generalized Hypertrichosis Terminalis with Gingival Hyperplasia.” American Journal of Medical Genetics 47, no. 2 (August 15, 1993): 198–212. doi: 10.1002/ajmg.1320470213. PMID: 8213906. Buckland, Francis. “The Female Nondescript Julia Pastrana and Exhibitions of Human Mummies, etc.” In Curiosities of Natural History. Third Series, 40–48. London. Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1868. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome and Gail Weiss. “Making Freaks: Visual Rhetorics and the Spectacle of Julia Pastrana.” Essay. In Thinking the Limits of the Body, 129–143. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Compilación de tratados internacionales. Minorías y Pueblos Indígenas. Secretaría de Gobernación Pública. Dirección General de Política Pública de Derechos Humanos. México, 1989. Artículo 12.1-2 p. 46. https://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/attachment/ file/181508/XII__MINORIAS_Y_PUEBLOS_INDIGENAS.pdf Crenshaw, Kimberle. Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum. Vol. 1989: Issue 1, Article 8. http://chicagobound.uchicago.edu/uclf/ vol1989/iss1/8 Darwin, Charles. “Laws of Variation, Continued. Correlated Variability.” Essay. In The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, Volume One and Two, 328. London, John Murray, 1868. Der Gartenlaube. Julia Pastrana, a Human Monster. Translated by Maj Britt JensenLeipzig, Germany: Die Gartenlaube, 1857. Deutscher Museumsbund e.V. [German Museums Association], 2013. Edited by Deterts, Dorothea and Wesche Anne. Recommendations for the Care of Human Remains in Museums and Collections.

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Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home Durbach, Nadja. “‘Skinless Wonders:’ Body Worlds and the Victorian Freak Show.” Academic.oup.com, June 2012. https://academic.oup.com/jhmas/article/69/1/38/734372 Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Julia Pastrana the ‘Extraordinary Lady.’” Essay. In The Eye of the Beholder: Julia Pastrana’s Long Journey Home, 31–60. Seattle: Lucia/Marquand, 2017. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. United States: Columbia University Press, 1997. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Making Freaks: Visual Rhetorics and the Spectacle of Julia Pastrana.” Essay. In Thinking the Limits of the Body, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Gail Weiss, 130–142. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Godfrey, Kathleen. “[Untitled].” Julia Pastrana Online, 2020. http://juliapastranaonline.com/ items/show/63 Gylseth, Christopher Hals and Lars O. Toverud. Julia Pastrana: The Tragic Story of the Victorian Ape Woman. History Press, 2001. Kopania, Izabela. “In the Footsteps of Julia Pastrana. Cultural Responses to an Ape-woman’s Stay in Warsaw in 1858 and Reaction of Polish Press to Her Extraordinary Body.” Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 64, no. 1 (2019): 39–65. Accessed November 29, 2021, 10.1556/ 022.2019.64.1.4 Kyllingstad, Jon Røyne. “Norwegian Physical Anthropology and the Idea of a Nordic Master Race.” The University of Chicago Press Journals, 2022.April 2012. Accessed October 14, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/662332%20Consulted%20October %2014 Mimiaga, Ricardo. El orígen y entorno social de Julia Pastrana, 2013. Unpublished text shared by author. Mimiaga, Ricardo. “Julia Pastrana Una Sinaloense Extraordinaria.” La Voz Del Norte. December 12, 2010. “Office of Vital Records,” February 12, 2013. Date reflects the day it was sourced. Paz, Ireneo. Algunas Campañas: Memorias escritas por Ireneo Paz. Tomo II. Dirección General de Bibliotecas. Ed. Fondo Nacional de Cultura Económica, 1997. México, p. 239. oai:­ mexicana.cultura.gob.mx:0009833/0000277 Rules for Consular execution of the Consulate Program for the protection of Mexican persons abroad. § (2017). Section VI: Repatriation of the remains of Mexican citizens who have died abroad. Secretariat of Foreign Affairs. Rules for Consular Execution of the Consulate Program for the Protection of Mexican persons abroad. (Version 3). VI. Repatriation of the remains of Mexican citizens who have died abroad. May 2017, p. 28. Accessed October 14, 2021, https://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/attachment/file/444502/Normas_para_la_ejecuci_ n_de_los_programas_de_protecci_n_a_mexicanos_en_el_exterior.pdf “Show the ‘Ape Woman’ the Last Honor.” VG Newspaper. September 12, 2005. Young, Hilary. The Right to Posthumous Bodily Integrity and Implications of Whose Right It Is. 14 MarquetteElder’s Advisor 197 (2013).

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17 EGYPTIAN MUMMIFIED REMAINS Communities of Descent and Practice

Heba Abd el-Gawad and Alice Stevenson Introduction Research in the UK has reported that the general public are used to seeing human remains in museums, that Egyptian mummified remains are of particular interest, and that such material is of limited ethical concern to visitors.1 However, these results are limited in their context and reach, and the histories and experiences that inform such views need further interrogation. In the last few decades, professionals have increasingly recognised that museum visitors bring their own experiences, histories, and concerns into dialogue with museum displays, rather than passively receiving knowledge from them.2 For these surveys, it is a majority white, European audience that makes up the largest proportion of respondents, whose viewing expectations are a product of centuries of exhibition strategies that have normalised attitudes and es­ tablished particular ways of seeing. Yet other communities with historically limited or else vexed relationships with museums and archaeology may not share these norms. In this chapter, we consider mummified human remains from Egypt, whose presence is ubiquitous in the world’s museums. We challenge assumptions that ancient Egyptian “mummies” are uncontested remains of an “orphaned culture” or that Egyptians have cared little for such bodies. We do so by considering Egyptian views as a community of descent connected through land, lived geo-political ex­ perience, and a perceived genealogy to their ancient Egyptian ancestors. We also examine Egyptian communities of practice whose professional privilege and responsibilities affords them a closer and purposefully different attitude towards these remains. In both cases, we emphasise the difference between Egyptian State pre­ sentations of human remains, and those of wider society whose attitudes are con­ spicuously shaped by social, cultural, emotional, and religious convictions and histories. We consider Egyptian perspectives from both inside the country and in the diaspora, with examples drawn from the April 2021 “Golden Mummies Parade” and the “Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage” (EDH) project. Throughout, we try to avoid the 238

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-21

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term “mummy” in favour of the admittedly more cumbersome, but consciously disruptive phrase “Egyptian human mummified remains.”3 This is a deliberate attempt to transcend some of the cultural baggage with which these bodies are freighted. It acknowledges their cultural specificity and the evidence that wrapping transformed them into and delineated their remains as sacred.4 One final note is that we employ a strategy widely used by Egyptians in transliterating Arabic with the English alphabet in digital personal communications. This is to prioritise regional inclusivity over strict academic rules which often do not acknowledge the local, personal, and emotional weight wording carries.

Framing Considerations It is evident that there is a greater sensitivity towards how Egyptian remains are presented in the 21st century compared to the late 20th century. These developments are usually framed with reference to wider museum sector developments that since the 1990s – as a result of the activism of Indigenous groups in settler contexts of North America and Oceania – have codified within museum ethics and policies the imperative to proactively and sensitively address a range of different needs in relation to ancestral remains. Among the most influential have been the United States 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the 1989 Vermillion Accord on Human Remains.5 In the UK, a working group was established at the beginning of the 21st century to review institutional practices around human remains, with the resulting report published by the Department for Culture Media and Sport.6 Most UK museum policies are based on this latter guidance and the document has influenced frameworks in other countries.7 A common refrain across such ethical guidance is “respect for the dead.” How that is interpreted for ancient Egyptian remains has varied, although it is normally focussed upon exhibition practices.8 At Manchester Museum a brief and controversial attempt was made to cover the remains9 and in the Petrie Museum’s Digging for Dreams temporary exhibition a curtain was erected to give visitors the choice whether to view a mummified body.10 The Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, Munich removed ancient Egyptian bodies entirely from their galleries, while the Rijksmuseum van Oudehed, Leiden only removed unwrapped individuals.11 At the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, coffins were closed to conceal the dead inside.12 Jenkins has argued that such moves are motivated by curatorial insecurity rather than public good.13 To some extent, there is a grain of truth here since the reasons why Egyptian remains need to be treated with sensitivity are rarely addressed spe­ cifically, rather it is bound up with a generalised concern for “the other.” Yet the imposition of one cultural approach onto another – a creep towards an uncritical “new objectivity”14 – is just as unethical. For some groups, display and interaction with the dead is an important part of their cultural traditions and political identity, as in central Mexico.15 Thus, while initial moves to disrupt long-standing narratives and generate dialogue around bodies in museums is vital and welcome, it is important to ask who that respect is cognisant of and what information is made available to inform decisions. Egyptian opinions are rarely sought and debates on decolonising museums 239

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often overlook views from the Middle East.16 In the examples mentioned earlier, the Egyptian diaspora were rarely consulted despite the large proportion of Egyptian migrants within Europe particularly in the UK, Germany, and Netherlands.17 Much of the concern over display strategies has been expressed in terms of the unsettling nature of human remains themselves and approaches to their “respectful” rehumanisation. Yet other troubling histories are frequently left obscure to the visiting public. The acquisition of human remains was not infrequently clandestine and illegal,18 the subsequent unwrapping events brutal,19 and interpretation sensationa­ lised and racialised.20 The extent to which public reception of display of mummified remains might shift after exposing such problematic practices remains to be tested. Perhaps before embarking on visitor surveys regarding displaying mummified remains, museums initially need to introduce the public critically and openly to colonial histories. Moreover, in approaching Egyptian perspectives, we contend that immediately opening discussion with diametrically opposed questions – a “yes or no” debate – through which mummified human bodies and body parts are generally introduced by museum surveys, media stories, or social media threads, is unhelpful. The advice offered by collaborative psychology is to avoid “yes” or “no” questions as they can encourage respondents to unconsciously match the views of others in one’s current social environment.21 Such responses may replicate existing colonial models of decision making within museums, a form of strategic narcissism; a tendency to define the world only in relation to the West.22 It does not take into consideration the agency, influence, and the authorship of others. Instead, case-by-case solutions defined by “strategic empathy” can offer a more balanced solution. While rooted in the field of political and international relations,23 strategic empathy can be useful for museum practices. It pays particular attention to the ideology, aspirations, and emotions that drive and constrain the other, and is empathetic to how others view themselves and the world around them. The primary means of applying strategic empathy is through small group framing rather than assuming the other as a homogenous collective. In this chapter, we attempt small group-framing by introducing views from Egypt based upon ICOM’s People-Centred Approaches to Cultural Heritage.24 This approach is not intended to be a passive engagement with community, but an understanding of community as living with and within heritage. Secondly, in recognition of Egyptian communities’ right to self-representation, we conducted community peer-review,25 incorporating Simpson’s concept of ethnographic refusal.26 This involved one-to-one meetings, EDH social media accounts, and WhatsApp groups to discuss themes in this chapter to gauge signs of refusal or approval. Crucially, although we were keen to include all voices, we were also aware that speaking up is a privilege which not all can afford. We thus ensured all requests to remain anonymous were followed and all quotes or comments are used with permission.

Defining Source Communities: A View from Egypt In the context of museums, source communities have been defined as any cultural group from whom artefacts were collected in the past and their descendants today.27 240

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Who constitutes a source community for the ancient dead can be considered prob­ lematic, but it is only rendered so by colonial legacies. Modern Egyptians have long been dislocated from narratives concerning ancient material, a product of centuries of appropriation of ancient Egypt to Western ideologies of “civilization’s progress” and modern Egypt an Orientalised East.28 These are ongoing legacies, with some Egyptologists still asserting today that “any claim of modern Egyptians to ‘their’ cultural heritage seems just as doubtful.”29 The applicability of the concept of source community in these cases has been hampered by a misplaced emphasis upon genea­ logical descent as the sole legitimator of community relationships to heritage. However, many communities around the world construct profound relationships, identity formations, and moral claims to material based on shared spatial experience, whereby histories of belonging are grounded in the world around them.30 This is one basis for “imagined communities” upon which modern nation states are predicated31 whose right to ancient material culture within their contemporary borders has been questioned by those championing the model of the “universal museum.”32 However, it is not just national identities that derive from a shared sense of place as local conceptions of identity and belonging are equally and powerfully forged. The term “source community,” mogtama3 el masdar, does not translate well into Egyptian Arabic, nor is it one that resonated among Egyptian colleagues we spoke to. A better translation might be “communities of descent” or “ancestry,” mogtama3 el2aSl/nasab, whereby Egyptians define themselves as the grandchildren of the phar­ aohs, a7fad el far3nah/el 2aslaf, but “ancestry” itself has particular meanings outside of Egypt in the context of DNA studies that render this term problematic. Instead, we develop an understanding of contemporary Egyptians as a community of descent based upon the work of renowned Egyptian scholar Gamal Hamdan (1928–1993), the founder of the science of political geography in Egypt. In his seminal Personality of Egypt, he warned of the danger of Western-led scholarship stripping contemporary Egyptians of their ancestral and land-rooted links to ancient Egyptian history.33 In his attempt to define the personality of Egypt, he envisioned Egypt as a living geo­ graphical entity with a soul, what is known as genius loci. In Hamdan’s view, Egypt constitutes contradictions, crystalising multiple aspects in a single locality, always emergent between continuity and change. In this respect, it is the “possessor of middle ground,” malekat el-7ad el-Awsat; it cannot fit in a single “race” or culture as it belongs to many cultures, given the long history of colonialism which has shaped today’s multi-layered identity.34 Connection to place equally conforms to Egyptian emotional and ideological perceptions since the land and its soil are the roots from which everything grows.35 The land is the foundation of honour and pride; losing one’s land equates to a loss of honour, a notion confirmed by Article 86 of Egypt’s 2019 constitution.36 This further corresponds with Mohammed Hussein Heikal’s (1888–1956) attempt to theorise Egyptian identity. Descent and Egyptian identity, he argues, is defined by birth and lived experience, the land upon which an individual is born, raised, and shares a lived experience with a past and contemporary collective regardless of strict Eurocentric definitions of race.37 241

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In summary, speaking of Egypt only with regard to its ancient or modern layer distorts the whole. One layer is the basis of the other and neither can be presented in isolation. Egypt has a complex identity given its diverse geography stretched between East, West, North, and South. Religion, language, and geography are all facets of Egypt’s constantly changing complex, it is not solely Arab, African, Islamic, or Coptic but a mix; a “possessor of middle ground.”38

Egyptian Perspectives on Displaying “Mummies” The display of Egyptian mummified remains in Egypt has long been subject to political posturing. In 1980, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (1970–1981) decried the broadcast of the bodies of American soldiers, only to find his own country subject to criticism for displaying the ancient Egyptian dead for touristic gain. Sadat subse­ quently ordered the closure of the mummy hall in the Cairo Museum, but his stated reasons for doing so differed depending on the target audience. Within Egypt, Sadat adopted a religious public image and was hailed as “the devoted president” with numerous photo sessions of him praying or reading the Quran.39 He used the 1279 fatwa issued by Gad El Haq, Grand Mufti of Egypt 1976–1982, to ban the public display of mummified human remains based upon the Islamic beliefs of honour and inviolability of the dead. In contrast, in an interview with the vice president of the US publication Reader’s Digest, he stated that his rejection of the display of royal remains was due to their lack of proper interpretation, using the body of Ramesses II (dated to c.1213 BC) as an example and stating “it is unfitting for Egypt’s royal figures.”40 In 1993, the remains were reinstated back at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in a des­ ignated room that stayed open until their transfer to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (NMEC) in 2021. It is worth noting that the initial fatwa was revised and refuted by later Muftis. A statement by the Egyptian House of Fatwa on 2 February 2021 via its official Facebook page confirmed that “mummified human remains can be researched, cared for, and displayed as long as the dead’s remains are honoured and respected by experts and audiences.”41 Following the 2011 Egyptian revolution, a cross-class and cross-cultural public redefinition of Egyptian identity occurred via social media.42 Numerous Egyptian Facebook groups and pages on ancient Egyptian heritage were established, led by members of the public and mainly using international museum collections as their departure points given the lack of online collections databases within Egypt. Most are intended for public discussion on the history and archaeology of ancient Egypt as defined by the “West,” but some sought to affirm Egyptian identity and direct descent from ancient Egypt, such as the Facebook group “Guardians of the Egyptian Identity.” Through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Egyptian discussions of mummified human remains on 74 heritage-related, publicly open Facebook pages, we observed three main narratives. The first concerned the 1976 royal reception of Rameses II’s remains for scientific analysis in France, most frequently illustrated with a photoshopped passport of Rameses II, used as a signifier of Egyptian dignity. Egypt had, for much of the 20th century, been accustomed to a superior, globally dominant position within Middle East and the Gulf region, yet experienced political and economic decline from 242

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the 1980s onwards. An appropriation of “ancient Egypt” is therefore a common defence to reclaim regional status. The second narrative is also associated with Rameses II, focussing on the many attempts to link his human remains to Moses’ pharaoh of the Quran. This controversy was reignited by Maurice Bucaille, the French doctor in charge of examining Rameses’ II body in France, who claimed that sea salt (often reported as seaweed) had been found in his remains. Based on this evidence, it was claimed that the pharaoh had died by drowning, but that his body had remained intact as per the Quran.43 The controversy re-emerged in 2020 when Ali Gomaa, Egypt’s Grand Mufti (2003–2013), reasserted those claims in an interview for Egypt’s National TV Channel One programme Egypt: The Land of Prophets on 12 May 2020. Given Gomaa’s religious prestige among the Egyptian public, the story gained considerable traction prior to the Golden Parade in April 2021. Connecting mummified human remains with the pharaohs of the prophets is a narrative strongly refuted by archaeological authorities who released statements warning against conflating archaeology and religion.44 The third most popular post concerned the remains of Queen Tye and the exceptional state of preservation of her hair, evidence used by some Egyptians to boast of the advanced intellect of their ancestors. Most social media users, prior to the opening of the new royal human remains gallery at the NMEC, do not seem to be strongly opposed to having mummified human remains displayed within Egyptian museums. However, these attitudes should be reexamined to assess if the new display and public debates on the subject has led to a shift in attitudes. One notable rejection concerns photography with the dead, as evident from two incidents in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo when a Libyan visitor took a selfie and an Algerian visitor made a video in the royal “mummies” gallery in October 2017 and July 2019, respectively. This was met with public outrage on social media leading to a ministerial press release condemning the act and promising stricter security measures since photography was already banned at the royal mummies’ galleries.45 In contrast, online responses to the display of mummified human remains outside of Egypt seem to spark far more anger than those within Egypt. Posts concerning such displays are deeply emotional and lean towards expressions of humiliation. For ex­ ample, one Facebook user upon observing images of mummified human remains in the British Museum, responded in Egyptian Arabic with “how humiliating for us,” while an Egyptian bioarchaeologist lamented the display of remains at the Petrie Museum commenting, “One of our grandmothers currently at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology of the Badari culture from the predynastic period between 4000–4400 BC, I do sympathise with her!”46 Another Egyptian archaeologist re­ sponded to a post by Ulster Museum encouraging audiences to respond to their survey on display of human remains while exposing examples in the tweet’s attached image stating “as an Egyptian archaeologist and researcher I am strictly against display of human remains in museums.”47 The image of Egyptian human remains far from home can also evoke feelings of colonial insult and exploitation. For instance, it has contemporary resonance, since having one’s body buried at home is a wish most Egyptian immigrants instruct in their wills even if they never return.48 In a similar vein, some social media users have called for a ban on foreigners researching Egyptian human remains deeming it exploitation. 243

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Such responses echo an incident in the UK in 2009, when Moamen Mohammed Ahmed El Dessouky, an Egyptian IT consultant for HSBC undertaking a consultancy trip to Sheffield, encountered mummified Egyptian remains in the local museum.49 El Desouky was moved by the sight and contacted the Egyptian embassy in London and the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to repatriate the human remains. He negotiated with the museum to return 1500 objects to Egypt including the two sets of mummified remains in the collection.50 The authorities handed the request to the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities who responded that Egypt does not hold a blanket right to return Egyptian objects and that foreign museums should only consider requests directly submitted by the Supreme Council.51 It is a reminder that repatriation does not necessarily address grassroots concerns. Current policies, par­ ticularly in highly state-regulated heritage management contexts, as is the case with Egypt, mean that the multiplicity of community views rarely have a part to play in discussions or decision-making processes. Blogging is another digital space within which mummified human remains have been used to interrogate Egyptian modern identity. In a provocative blog piece, popular writer Naji questioned if “contemporary Egyptians truly believed the ancient Egyptians were their ancestors, how could they accept having their ancestor’s bodies displayed to the public for 50 Egyptian pounds?”52 The blog hints at the conflicting relationship Egyptians have with their past. Naji believes that Egyptians boast about their past only to cover for their contemporary feelings of self-defeat; only the past can help Egyptians retain a positive self-image in the world. He compared the treatment of contemporary Egyptian human remains with ancient Egyptian ones, noting that while Muslims venerate prophets and Copts their saints, neither would put their remains on display. His argument, though, does not consider the history of colonial practices from which current displays stem or replicate. Similarly, he ignored the fact that ac­ cording to Islamic traditions all bodies, be they of prophets or members of the public, should be treated equally and not mummified, but rather left to decompose. They should be purified as soon as possible after death, wrapped in linen, and buried straight in underground shafts in designated tombs. Thus, there are no preserved remains in the first place to be put on display. Even the earlier tradition of venerating certain individuals by burying them within mosques is currently refuted and banned by higher Islamic authorities based on the Islamic teaching of equality among all humans. Meanwhile, the Coptic church retains the bodies of its ven­ erated saints and may have them on display in glass showcases so that visitors can seek their blessings, according to each church’s traditions and teaching. Earlier Coptic priests saw this as a continuation of ancient Egyptian traditions and modern priests see it as integral for the blessings process.53 A recent example is the body of Pope Shenouda III, which was embalmed in preparation for the three-day farewell sighting before his official burial. The farewell sighting of the Pope’s embalmed body, displayed dressed in his ceremonial robe and seated on the Orthodox Pope seat of Alexandria, was streamed live on national Egyptian TV in accordance with the three days of state mourning. 244

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The Golden “Mummies” Parade: Counter Public Debates A defining moment in Egyptian public discourse on this topic was the Golden “Mummies” Parade (Mawkeb el mummiawat el malakiah) on 3 April 2021. The extra­ vagant event celebrated the transfer of 22 royal mummified remains from the Egyptian Museum to the NMEC. It was aired live to millions around the world, facilitated by the pandemic’s embrace of the digital. Its reception oscillated between awe and dispar­ agement given the lavish spending entailed while the World grappled with COVID-19. While the bodies were completely invisible throughout the event, transported inside their coffins with protective conservation measures in place, the parade nonetheless spurred foreign media interest in the ethics of displaying such remains.54 Although this is a welcomed change, paving the way for wider public discussions, it occasionally remains framed by an unconscious bias that Egypt (mis)handles heritage and its safety, a long­ standing Western perspective with colonial roots.55 While analysts and academia focused on the political motivation of the event,56 wider Egyptian publics sought to decentre state intentions and refocus upon their interests (Figure 17.1). Debates took a variety of forms on social media from memes to polls and from users’ posts stating their opinions to the ensuing discussions between followers and friends.57 This was coupled with increased interest among Egyptians in visiting the Egyptian Museum at Tahrir, which peaked three weeks prior to and in the month after the parade, reaching up to 1000 visitors per day.58 The parade also led to the revival of Egyptian Egyptologist and tour guide Bassam El Shamaa’s call for the reburial of the mummified human remains, a “return to eternity,”

Figure 17.1

An Egyptian family waving the flag as they watch the Golden Parade from their balcony.

245

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or al3awda ela al2abadiyah.59 Based upon his experience as a tour guide, he concluded that displaying remains brought little benefit to tourists who, he observed, seemed uninterested in visiting the royal “mummies” gallery at Egyptian Museum in Cairo. El Shamaa also called for the return of the Gebelein man from the British Museum whose “display is unacceptable for our ancestors.”60

Figure 17.2

An Egyptian family performing one of the five Muslim daily prayers nearby ancient Egyptian coffins during their visit to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

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A heightened sense of belonging dominated Egyptian social media before the event. Many of the pages devoted to ancient Egypt, for instance, posted infor­ mation on the royal “mummies” and the journeys they have witnessed since their discovery. Two photographs that were shared are of particular interest. One was an image of the wooden cases within which the coffins would rest during transfer, wrapped in the Egyptian flag, a scene reminiscent from reporting of post-2013 security and military victims of attacks at checkpoints. For the opposition this was immediately condemned as nationalistic propaganda. What is interesting here is the symbolism of the flag as an affirmation of the identity of the remains and their continuity with the present. Responses also reveal the dangers of making inter­ pretations solely through a political state lens and ignoring the meanings com­ munities draw into heritage. The second image portrays a museum visitor praying in front of an ancient coffin at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, a common scene at most Egyptian Islamic and Coptic funerals today61 (Figure 17.2). Although intended as a humorous take in the weeks leading up to the Golden Parade, social media commentaries revealed that many do in fact pray, each according to their religious beliefs, once they are in the company of mummified human remains. It is an indication of how remains are, to a certain extent, more humanised in the Egyptian public eye than they are in many other countries.

Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage: Human Remains in Comics Between 2019 and 2021, we undertook an initiative to enfranchise Egyptian views on collections held by British institutions. Initially titled Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage (EDH), its translation into Egyptian Arabic saw it being referred to instead as “Our Displaced Heritage,” Atharna el Metgharaba, a term that better represented Egyptian agency and its emotional resonance. One of the strategies adopted was the devel­ opment of a series of comics posted on social media, which allowed difficult topics to be addressed in an approachable format.62 Two such comics tackled the issue of mummified remains using collections and archives from London’s Horniman Museum and Gardens as a departure point. One presented mummified remains as red-carpet celebrities posing for photographs hinting at the popularity of “mummies” within museums but equally how human remains can be perceived as displaced in­ dividuals (Figure 17.3). The second responded to sensational media reports relating to ethically dubious research on mummified human remains which made the headlines around February–April 2020 provoking a call for an ethical review by the UK’s Museum Association (Figure 17.4).63 The comic represented a mummified human on a medical examination table looking terrified as she listens to two White scholars discussing if she should be unwrapped or CT scanned while avatars of project researcher, Heba, and the comic artist, Nasser, struggle to interject. The comic re­ ferenced a famous Egyptian meme from the Egyptian movie, Great Fava Beans of China, used by Egyptians to denote being ignored in discussions. Every comic was accompanied by an introduction to colonial practices and their legacies today, to provoke conversation. One user stated: 247

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Figure 17.3

Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage project comic on mummified human remains as celebrity museum objects.

I am against that any mummy is exposed or displayed in museums! The museum interpretation makes us forget that these are human being who have their sanctity, and that this is literally digging up graves! We need to think about it as if someone is currently going to dig up the soil and put a body in a museum. The whole topic is disturbing, and I don’t understand how no one discussed this in relevance to their own family before!64 Another stated that “no single institution has the sole right of decision making,” while one reflected that Egypt is orphaned with others claiming heritage as their own; “you need to get a genealogy certificate confirming that your eighth grandfather wasn’t Turkish or that the eleventh was not related to the Arab tribes in the Arabian pen­ insula.” Others asserted that both opinions in terms of display or not are valid and each has a point “making a single decision that fits all situations is impossible.” One user affirmed that “this is our heritage, it’s only up to us to decide.”65 The EDH project also hosted social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook, through which followers have reached out either for encouragement or criticism. Of particular note are the Egyptian immigrants who contacted us to identify the legality 248

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Figure 17.4

Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage project comic on Egyptian struggle to be heard in ethics of mummified human remains debates.

of Egyptian collections in their country of residence. One moving message was from an Egyptian unaccompanied minor immigrant in Pisa, Italy, who sought help to identify human remains at the University Museum of Human Anatomy. He wanted the remains to be returned as he was concerned that they were lonely and forgotten, just like him, struggling to survive in the cold winters of Italy compared to Egyptian warm dry winter: “when I first saw the remains, I apologised to them for how we, contemporary Egyptians, forgot them and promised them I will do my best to take them home.”

An Internal Conflict: Egyptian Community of Practice Peace be upon you. Do I have your majesty’s permission to operate? This is how Mostafa Ismail, the head conservator who led the team in charge of the conservation of the 22 royal mummified remains prior their transfer to NMEC, greeted them every day since he was assigned the task in 2017 (Figure 17.5).66 Moramem el melouk, “the conservator of the kings,” was the title given to him by the 249

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Figure 17.5

Mostafa Ismail, the head of the Golden Parade mummified human remains conservation team.

public and the media amid the Golden Parade. Having the kings’ permission before conducting any conservation work on them each day was an essential protocol for the whole Egyptian conservation team. The idea of source communities might presuppose a binary between museums and the communities they represent, but this is challenged when community members themselves work in museums. In these contexts, best practice has advocated that museum staff should not objectify bodies or body parts as “scientific objects or data.”67 Within the Egyptian museum sector, however, dedicated protocol or leg­ islation for the treatment of human remains is absent apart from generally accepting ICOM’s general ethical guidelines. Requests for interventions, such as sampling, CT scans, and carbon dating, are processed by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (MoTA) permanent committee. Museum display protocols are, at the time of writing in 2022, formulated through the ministerial office through two posts – the Minister Assistant for Exhibition Displays and the Councillor Adviser for Museum Displays – directly supervised by the ministry through a steering committee appointed by the minister to oversee works in each museum. In this respect, museum curators and conservators have little influence when it comes to decision-making. Yet, as the aforementioned quote shows, these professionals nevertheless interpret respect for their ancestors, agdadohom, in very heartfelt ways, as they keenly feel that both the legacy of their ancestors and their successors lies in their hands. It was a responsibility to their honour and their land, Egypt. This signifies how the practical, ethical, and emotional obligations for looking after human remains has far more 250

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significance and weight for Egyptian conservators than foreign specialists. This should, in turn, accord them more rights in both discussions and decisions regarding such engagements than what is, at the time of writing, offered internationally. Egyptian conservators often hold more responsibility than rights, since while the international community pays great attention to the quality of their performance in persevering Egypt’s “Universal heritage,” as the 2015 case of the beard of Tutankhamun reminds us,68 little does it care to include them in discussions concerning the ethics of display. Our dialogue with 21 conservators and curators from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Grand Egyptian Museum revealed that the common emotion that binds them all in relation to human remains is internal conflict. While they understand growing concerns on this topic, they are worried that discussions leading towards the removal of remains out of the public eye would be a considerable risk for the tourist economy or be seen as motivated by religious extremism. Tourism continues to be one of the main sources of income in Egypt,69 and entry tickets to sites and museums are the main source of income for the MoTA. Moreover, despite growing Egyptianising of teams on the ground, methods adopted continue to follow and seek European validation, and are reproduced uncritically in university programmes and professional training. The same internal conflict characterises responses to the Netflix documentary Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb (2020). While Egyptians were proud that finally an all-Egyptian team led a documentary on ancient Egypt, the handling of human remains presented was, for them, problematic. However, there was particular applause for the representation of Egyptian bioarchaeologist, Amira Shaheen, stressing the emotional bond she had with the mummified remains and their human nature. On 28 April 2021, an open Twitter discussion was held between 10 Egyptian heritage professionals and wider Twitter users about displaying mummified human remains. One point of consensus was that a policy on the treatment and display of remains was vital. However, some of the participants feared that such protocols could be used by conservative religious groups to denounce archaeological excavations or have them labelled “tomb robbery.” Those with connections to the tourism sector opposed any idea of displaying remains without exposing the bodies since, in their opinion, this is a significant attraction that tourists expect. What was also clear was the generational gap between conservative and radical opinions. This was particularly the case with accusations of religious conservatism against younger audiences, who were largely opposed to the display of remains. Elder audiences experienced first-hand the ban on the display of remains due to religious fanaticism in the 1970s to 1990s and so in their collective memory any opposition to display must be due to religious conservatism. Younger audiences, on the other hand, lean more towards wider concepts of consent and bodily respect given growing anti-sexual harassment, wo­ men’s, and minorities’ rights movements by and among the youth. Overall, there was clear hesitancy for Egyptian museums to take initial steps to make changes to how mummified human remains are displayed. Perhaps the only commonality among those we spoke to was a provocation to the rest of the world: how would you feel if these were your family members? It is a reminder that in those debates often framed under the question of “who owns antiquity,” that it is not a matter of property, but of social and emotional relationships. 251

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Conclusion In many parts of the world, the public are used to seeing mummified human remains in museums, but museums are often blind to how they have produced ways of seeing them. The question, however, is not whether human remains should be displayed or not, since no single ethical solution can be applicable all over the world or even over a single territory.70 Moreover, this binary thinking coupled with the oversight of Egyptian voices and histories of acquisition reinforces and replicates colonial practices. To refuse a general consensus is in itself an approach, which recognises personal and collective emotional implications will continue to change alongside socio-cultural and socio-political shifts. The questions to be continuously asked (and themselves to be re-examined) are: what impact did/do these displays have on ancient and contemporary Egyptians? To what extent might they be considered dehumanising, both for those who produced these sacred remains and those who identify with them? What does the continued disregard of contemporary Egyptian voices within these debates say about current practices? How can we develop more ethical policies centring communities of descent and ensuring accountability towards past and present societies? As a possible way forward, we have sketched out some of the contours and issues at stake for Egyptian publics with a view to engendering strategic empathy so as to understand some of the contexts that inform Egyptian perspectives. The challenge is to create multi-directional representations and collection protocols that are able to accommodate and respond to such a diversity of views and emotions.

Acknowledgements The Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage project was funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), project number AH/S004580/1, and conducted in compliance with UCL’s ethical guidance, project id 14901/001.

Notes 1 Hugh Kilmister, “Visitor Perceptions of Ancient Egyptian Human Remains in Three United Kingdom Museums,” Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 14 (2003): 57–69; Jasmin Day, The Mummy’s Curse: Mummymania in the English-Speaking World (London and New York: Routledge, 2006); English Heritage, Research into Issues Surrounding Human Bones in Museums (London: ICM Reports, 2009). 2 John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2000). 3 Charlotte Parent, “Other Peoples’ Secrets and the All-Seeing Eye of the Conservator,” News in Conservation 83 (2021): 52–55. 4 Christina Riggs, Unwrapping Ancient Egypt: The Shroud, the Secret and the Sacred (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). 5 Cressida Fforde, “Vermillion Accord on Human Remains (1989): Indigenous Archaeology,” in Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, ed. Claire Smith (New York: Springer, 2014). 6 Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums (London: DCMS, 2005).

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Egyptian Mummified Remains 7 Larissa Förster, Sarah Fründt, Dirk Preuß, Katharina Schramm, Holger Stoecker, and Andreas Winkelmann, “A Good Starting Point? Critical Perspectives from Various Disciplines,” Historisches Forum 21 (2017): 9–20. 8 Samuel J.M.M. Alberti, Piotr Bienkowski, Malcolm J. Chapman, and Drew Rose, “Should We Display the Dead?” Museum and Society 7, no. 3 (2009): 133–149. 9 Karen Exell, “Covering the Mummies at the Manchester Museum: A Discussion of Individual Agendas within the Human Remains Debate,” in Archaeologists and the Dead: Mortuary Archaeology and Contemporary Society, ed. Howard Williams and Melanie Giles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 233–250. 10 Sally MacDonald, “Owning Ancient Egypt,” The Museum Archaeologist 27 (2002): 9–16. 11 Lara Weiss, “Aesthetics and Science: The New Permanent Egyptian Galleries in the Leiden National Museum of Antiquities,” Aegyptiaca. Journal of the History of Reception of Ancient Egypt 2 (2018): 213–234. 12 David Batty, “Off with the Heads: Pitt Rivers Museum Removes Human Remains from Display,” The Guardian, September 13, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/ 2020/sep/13/off-with-the-heads-pitt-rivers-museum-removes-human-remains-fromdisplay 13 Tiffany Jenkins, Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections: The Crisis of Cultural Authority (London and New York: Routledge, 2011). 14 Anjalie Dalal-Clayton and Ananda Rutherford, “Against a New Orthodoxy: Decolonised ‘Objectivity’ in the Cataloguing and Description of Artworks,” Paul Mellon Centre Blog, https://photoarchive.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/groups/against-a-new-orthodoxy 15 Lisa Overholtzer and Juan Argueta, “Letting Skeletons Out of the Closet: The Ethics of Displaying Ancient Mexican Human Remains,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 24, no. 5 (2018): 508–530. 16 Heba Abd el-Gawad and Alice Stevenson, “Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage: Using Comic Art for Multidirectional Storytelling,” Journal of Social Archaeology 21, no. 1 (2021): 121–145. 17 Muhammed Al-Kashef and Marie Martin, EU-Egypt Migration Cooperation: At the Expense of Human Rights (Brussels: EuroMed Rights, 2019). 18 Campbell Price, Golden Mummies of Egypt. Interpreting Identities from the Graeco-Roman Period (Manchester: Manchester Museum, 2020). 19 Gabe Moshenska, “Mummy Unwrappings,” in Mummies Around the World: An Encylopedia of Mummies in History, Religion, and Popular Culture, ed. Matt Cardin (Santa Barbara: ABCCLIO, 2015), 299–304. 20 Christina Riggs, Unwrapping Ancient Egypt: The Shroud, the Secret and the Sacred (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). 21 Eleanor Putnam-Farr and Jason Riis, “‘Yes/No/Not Right Now’: Yes/No Response Formats Can Increase Response Rates Even in Non-Forced-Choice Settings,” Journal of Marketing Research 53, no. 3 (2016): 424–432. 22 Herbert Raymond McMaster, Battlegrounds: The Battle to Defend the Free World (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2021). 23 McMaster, Battlegrounds. 24 People-Centred Approaches to Cultural Heritage Resolution (ICOMOS 20th General Assembly/19). 25 Max Liboiron, Alex Zahara, and Ignace Schoot, “Community Peer Review: A Method to Bring Consent and Self-Determination into the Sciences,” Preprints 2018, 2018060104. 26 Audra Simpson, “On Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘Voice’, and Colonial Citizenship,” Junctures 9 (2007): 67–80; Audra Simpson, “Consent’s Revenge,” Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 3 (2016): 326–333. 27 Laura Peers and Alison Brown, eds., “Introduction,” in Museums and Source Communities (London: Routledge, 2003): 1–16. 28 Elliot Colla, Conflicted Antiquities. Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007).

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Heba Abd el-Gawad and Alice Stevenson 29 Thomas Gertzen, “Some Remarks on the ‘De-colonization’ of Egyptology,” Göttinger Miszellen 261 (2021): 194. 30 Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London and New York: Routledge, 2000): 132–151. 31 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 32 James Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 33 Gamal al-Din Hamdan, Shakhsiat Misr (The Personality of Egypt) (Cairo: Kitab al-Hilal, 1967) [in Arabic]. 34 Hamdan, Shakhsiat Misr, 34. 35 Mohammed El Mahdy, The Geniusity of the Egyptian Revolution. A Social and Emotional Analysis of the State of Egyptians before 25th January Revolution (Cairo: Dar El Shorouk, 2011) [in Arabic]. 36 Egyptian Constitution 2019, Act 86. 37 Ahmed Zakaria El Shalaq, On the Egyptian Identity and the Egyptians (Cairo: The General Authority of Cultural Palaces, 2021) [in Arabic]. 38 Hamdan, Shakhsiat Misr, 34. 39 Faten Awad, Al Sadat: 35 Years for Camp David (Amman: Dar Al Manhal Publishers, 2015): 314 [in Arabic]. 40 Anwar Sadat, “Interview with the Vice President of American Readers’ Digest,” 2 July Transcript. Anwar Sadat Digital Archive (Alexandria: Bibliotheca Alexandrina,1976). 41 Loaai Aly, “The Egyptian House of Fatwa Ends the Debate by Confirming Researching and Displaying Mummified Human Remains Is Legally Permissible,” Al Youm 7, February 2, 2021. 42 Marwa Ahmed Hafez, The Impact of Social Media on the Social Identity of Egyptian Youth, Unpublished Master’s Thesis (Cairo University, 2019); Farid Shirazi, “Social Media and the Social Movements in the Middle East and North Africa: A Critical Discourse Analysis,” Information Technology & People 26, no. 28: 35. 43 Maurice Bucaille, The Bible, the Qur’an, and Science: The Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of Modern Knowledge (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1976); Maurice Bucaille, Mummies of the Pharaohs. Modern Medical Investigations (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990). 44 Sherine El Kurdy, “Archaeology Experts Refutes Accusations of Ramesses II Being Moses’ Pharaoh,” Akhbar el Youm, March 28, 2021 [in Arabic]. 45 Mahmoud Abd el Baqi, “Youth Violates Egyptian Museum Regulations and Takes a Selfie in the Royal Mummies’ Gallery,” Veto gate October 26, 2017 [in Arabic]; Mohammed Al Bodaly, “An Algerian Insult, an Egyptian Pharaoh and the Egyptian Authorities Open Investigations,” Cawalisse el Youm, July 23, 2019 [in Arabic]. 46 Zeinab Hashesh [@Zeinab Hashesh], “One of Our Grandmothers Currently at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology of the Badari Culture from the Predynastic Period” [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter, August 17, 2020 [in Arabic]. 47 Radwa Farouk, “Before the Parade Tomorrow, Why Did Sadat Oppose Display of Mummies in Museums,” Al Masry Al Youm, April 2, 2021 [in Arabic]. 48 Samuli Schielke, Egypt in the Future Tense: Hope, Frustration, and Ambivalence Before and After 2011 (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2015), 158. 49 Ahmed Hassan Bakr “Antiquities Authorities Refuse to Return Artefacts from UK’s Sheffield Museum,” Al Mesryoon, May 26, 2009 [in Arabic]. 50 Bakr, “Antiquities Authorities Refuse to Return Artefacts from UK’s Sheffield Museum.” 51 Letter from Zahi Hawass, Secretary General Supreme Council of Antiquities, to Nick Dodd, Director Sheffield Museums, April 3, 2009. Copy held in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology. 52 Ahmed Naji, “Why Egyptians Hate the Pharaohs But Love Their Images?” Al Masry Al Youm, March 12, 2017 [in Arabic].

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Egyptian Mummified Remains 53 Shafik Alam, “The Secrets of Retaining Saints Remains in Coptic Churches,” Youm 7, July 6, 2019 [in Arabic]. 54 Doug Struck, “The Thorny Ethics of Displaying Egyptian Mummies to the Public,” Undark, June 23, 2021, https://undark.org/2021/06/23/thorny-ethics-displayingegyptian-mummies/ 55 See discussions in William Carruthers, “What We Are Talking about When We Talk about Tutankhamun’s Beard?” The Max Weber Programme Blog, January 29, 2015, https://blogs. eui.eu/maxweberprogramme/what-we-are-talking-about-when-we-talk-abouttutankhamuns-beard/ 56 Hussein Omar, “Pharaohs on Parade,” London Review of Books, LRB Blog, April 6, 2021, https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2021/april/pharaohs-on-parade 57 Nayera Abd el Aziz, “Memes from Egyptians’ Celebrations of Golden Parade,” Scoop Empire, April 4, 2021 [in Arabic]. 58 Mohammed Ezz el Din, “Egyptian Museum in Cairo: A Significant Increase in Visitors’ Numbers after the Golden Parade,” El Watan News, April 8, 2021 [in Arabic]. 59 Radwa Hashem, “A Researcher Calls for Reburial of Royal Mummies: Tourists Do Not Want to See Them,” El Watan, December 27, 2020 [in Arabic]. 60 Dalia Assem, “Archaeology Expert Inaugurates Initiative to Rebury Mummies,” Al Sharq al Awsat, February 2, 2015 [in Arabic]. 61 Mostafa Aly, “Did You Recite el Fatiha for the Pharaoh Roday?” Zat Masr Researches and Media, April 13, 2021 [in Arabic]. 62 Heba Abd el-Gawad and Alice Stevenson, “Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage: Using Comic Art for Multidirectional Storytelling,” Journal of Social Archaeology 21, no. 1 (2021): 121–145. 63 Rebecca Atkinson, “New Research into Egyptian Mummies Leads to Calls for Major Ethical Review,” Museums Journal, January (2020). 64 Users’ commentaries quoted here are responses to Mohammed Nasser and Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage, “Egyptian Mummified Human Remains Are at the Centre of Western Museums’ Debates But Where Are We from All This?” Facebook, March 13, 2020 [in Arabic], https:// www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10216010337311944&set=a.10215709888360908 65 Ibid. 66 The conservation process and protocol used by the Egyptian team on the 22 royal mummified remains transferred from Egyptian Museum in Cairo to NMEC are detailed in Mahmoud Abd el Baqi and Mahrous Hindawy, “The Conservator of the Kings. The Story of the Egyptian Who Brought the Royal Mummies to Life,” Veto Gate, March 24, 2021 [in Arabic]. 67 Daniel Antoine, “Curating Human Remains in Museum Collections. Broader Considerations and a British Museum Perspective,” in Regarding the Dead: Human Remains in the British Museum, ed. Alexander Fletcher, Daniel Antoine, and J.D. Hill (London: British Museum, 2014), 3–9. 68 Carruthers, “What We Are Talking about.” 69 Ahmed El Nagar and Abd El Qader Derbali, “The Importance of Tourism Contributions in Egyptian Economy,” International Journal of Hospitality and Travel 1, no. 1 (2020): 45–52. 70 Trish Biers, “Rethinking Purpose, Protocol, and Popularity in Displaying the Dead in Museums,” in Ethical Approaches to Human Remains: A Global Challenge in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology, ed. Kirsty Squires, David Errickson, and Nicholas Márquez-Grant (New York: Springer, 2006), 239–263.

Bibliography Abd el Aziz, Nayera. “Memes from Egyptians’ Celebrations of Golden Parade.” Scoop Empire, April 4, 2021 [in Arabic]. Abd el-Gawad, Heba and Alice Stevenson. “Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage: Using Comic Art for Multidirectional Storytelling.” Journal of Social Archaeology 21, no. 1 (2021): 121–145.

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Heba Abd el-Gawad and Alice Stevenson Alam, Shafik. “The Secrets of Retaining Saints Remains in Coptic Churches.” Youm 7, July 6, 2019 [in Arabic]. Alberti, Samuel J. M. M., Piotr Bienkowski, Malcolm J. Chapman, and Rose Drew. “Should We Display the Dead?” Museum and Society 7, no. 3 (2009): 133–149. Abd El Baqi, Mahmoud. “Youth Violates Egyptian Museum Regulations and Takes a Selfie in the Royal Mummies’ Gallery.” Veto Gate, October 26, 2017 [in Arabic]. Abd el Baqi, M. and M. Hindawy. “The Conservator of the Kings. The Story of the Egyptian Who Brought the Royal Mummies to Life.” Veto Gate, March 24, 2021 [in Arabic]. Al Bodaly. Mohammed. “An Algerian Insult, an Egyptian Pharaoh and the Egyptian Authorities Open Investigations.” Cawalisse el Youm, July 23, 2019 [in Arabic]. Al-Kashef, Muhammed and Marie Martin. EU-Egypt Migration Cooperation: At the Expense of Human Rights. Brussels: EuroMed Rights, 2019. https://euromedrights.org/publication/ eu-egypt-migration-cooperation-where-are-human-rights/ Aly, Loaai. “The Egyptian House of Fatwa Ends the Debate by Confirming Researching and Displaying Mummified Human Remains Is Legally Permissible,” Al Youm 7, February 2, 2021. Aly, Mostafa. “Did You Recite el Fatiha for the Pharaoh Today?” Zat Masr Researches and Media, April 13, 2021 [in Arabic]. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Antoine, Daniel. “Curating Human Remains in Museum Collections. Broader Considerations and a British Museum Perspective.” In Regarding the Dead: Human Remains in the British Museum, edited by Alexander Fletcher, Daniel Antoine, and J.D. Hill, 3–9. London: British Museum, 2014. Assem, Dalia. “Archaeology Expert Inaugurates Initiative to Rebury Mummies.” Al Sharq al Awsat, February 2, 2015 [in Arabic]. Atkinson, Rebecca. “New Research into Egyptian Mummies Leads to Calls for Major Ethical Review.” Museums Journal, January (2020). Accessed October 2, 2020. https://www. museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/analysis/2020/01/30012020-new-researchinto-egyptian-mummys-leads-to-calls-for-major-ethical-review/ Awad, Faten. Al Sadat: 35 Years for Camp David. Amman: Dar Al Manhal Publishers, 2015 [in Arabic]. Bakr, Ahmed Hassan “Antiquities Authorities Refuse to Return Artefacts from UK’s Sheffield Museum.” Al Mesryoon, May 26, 2009 [in Arabic]. Batty, David. “Off with the Heads: Pitt Rivers Museum Removes Human Remains from Display.” The Guardian, September 13, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/ 2020/sep/13/off-with-the-heads-pitt-rivers-museum-removes-human-remains-fromdisplay Bucaille, Maurice. The Bible, the Qur’an, and Science: The Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of Modern Knowledge. Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1976. Bucaille, Maurice. Mummies of the Pharaohs. Modern Medical Investigations. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Biers, Trish. “Rethinking Purpose, Protocol, and Popularity in Displaying the Dead in Museums.” Ethical Approaches to Human Remains: A Global Challenge in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology, edited by Kirtsy Squires, David Errickson, and Nicholas MárquezGrant, 239–263. New York: Springer, 2006. Carruthers, William. “What We Are Talking about When We Talk about Tutankhamun’s Beard?” The Max Weber Programme Blog, January 29, 2015. http://blogs.eui.eu/ maxweberprogramme/2015/01/29/what-we-are-talking-about-when-we-talk-abouttutankhamuns-beard/ Colla, Elliot. Conflicted Antiquities. Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007.

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Egyptian Mummified Remains Cuno, James. Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Dalal-Clayton, Anjalie and Ananda Rutherford. “Against a New Orthodoxy: Decolonised ‘Objectivity’ in the Cataloguing and Description of Artworks.” Paul Mellon Centre Blog. https://photoarchive.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/groups/against-a-new-orthodoxy Day, Jasmin. The Mummy’s Curse: Mummymania in the English-Speaking World. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. El Kurdy, Sherine. “Archaeology Experts Refutes Accusations of Ramesses II Being Moses’ Pharaoh.” Akhbar el Youm, 28 March, 2021 [in Arabic]. El Mahdy, Mohammed. The Geniusity of the Egyptian Revolution. A Social and Emotional Analysis of the State of Egyptians Before 25th January Revolution. Cairo: Dar El Shorouk, 2011 [in Arabic]. El Nagar, Ahmed and Abd el Qader Derbali. “The Importance of Tourism Contributions in Egyptian Economy.” International Journal of hospitality and Travel 1, no. 1 (2020): 45–52. El Shalaq, Ahmed Zakaria. On the Egyptian Identity and the Egyptians. Cairo: The General Authority of Cultural Palaces, 2021 [in Arabic]. English Heritage. Research into Issues Surrounding Human Bones in Museums. London: ICM reports, 2009. Exell, Karen. “Covering the Mummies at the Manchester Museum: A Discussion of Individual Agendas within the Human Remains Debate.” In Archaeologists and the Dead: Mortuary Archaeology and Contemporary Society, edited by Howard Williams and Melanie Giles, 233–250. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Ezz el Din, Mohammed. “Egyptian Museum in Cairo: A Significant Increase in visitors’ Numbers after the Golden Parade.” El Watan News, April 8, 2021 [in Arabic]. Falk, John H. and Lynn D. Dierking. Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Makingof Meaning. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2000. Farouk, Radwa. “Before the Parade Tomorrow, Why Did Sadat Oppose Display of Mummies in Museums.” Al Masry Al Youm, April 2, 2021 [in Arabic]. Fforde, Cressida. “Vermillion Accord on Human Remains (1989): Indigenous Archaeology.” In Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, edited by Claire Smith. New York: Springer, 2014. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_23 Förster, Larissa, Sarah Fründt, Dirk Preuß, Katharina Schramm, Holger Stoecker, and Andreas Winkelmann. “A Good Starting Point? Critical Perspectives from Various Disciplines.” Historisches Forum 21 (2017): 9–20. Gertzen, Thomas. “Some remarks on the ‘De-colonization’ of Egyptology.” Göttinger Miszellen 261 (2021): 189–203. Hafez, Marwa Ahmed. The Impact of Social Media on the Social Identity of Egyptian Youth. Unpublished Master’s Thesis. Cairo University, 2019. Hamdan, Gamal al-Din. Shakhsiat Misr (The Personality of Egypt). Cairo: Kitab al-Hilal, 1967 [in Arabic]. Hashem, Radwa. “A Researcher Calls for Reburial of Royal Mummies. Tourists Do Not Want to See Them.” El Watan, December 27, 2020 [in Arabic]. Hashesh, Zeinab. [@Zeinab Hashesh]. “One of our grandmothers currently at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology of the Badari culture from the predynastic period.” [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter, August 17, 2020 [in Arabic]. Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Jenkins, Tiffany. Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections: The Crisis of Cultural Authority. London and New York: Routledge, 2011. Kilmister, Hugh. “Visitor Perceptions of Ancient Egyptian Human Remains in Three United Kingdom Museums.” Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 14 (2003): 57–69. Liboiron, Max, Alex Zahara, and Ignace Schoot. “Community Peer Review: A Method to Bring Consent and Self-Determination into the Sciences.” Preprints 2018, 2018060104.

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Heba Abd el-Gawad and Alice Stevenson MacDonald, Sally. “Owning Ancient Egypt.” The Museum Archaeologist 27 (2002): 9–16. McMaster, Herbert Raymond. Battlegrounds: The Battle to Defend the Free world. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2021. Moshenska, Gabe. “Mummy Unwrappings.” In Mummies Around the World: An Encylopedia of Mummies in History, Religion, and Popular Culture, edited by Matt Cardin, 299–304. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2015. Naji, Ahmed. “Why Egyptians Hate the Pharaohs But Love Their Images?” Al Masry Al Youm, March 12, 2017 [in Arabic]. Omar, Hussein. “Pharaohs on Parade.” London Review of Books, LRB Blog, April 6, 2021. https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2021/april/pharaohs-on-parade Overholtzer, Lisa and Juan Argueta. “Letting Skeletons Out of the Closet: The Ethics of Displaying Ancient Mexican Human Remains.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 24, no. 5 (2018): 508–530. Parent, Charlotte. “Other Peoples’ Secrets and the All-Seeing Eye of the Conservator.” News in Conservation 83 (2021): 52–55. Peers, Laura and Alison Brown. “Introduction.” In Museums and Source Communities, edited by Laura Peers and Alison Brown, 1–16. London: Routledge, 2003. People-Centred Approaches to Cultural Heritage Resolution. ICOMOS 20th General Assembly/19. https://www.icomos.org/images/DOCUMENTS/Secretariat/2021/ OCDIRBA/Resolution_20GA19_Peolple_Centred_Approaches_to_Cultural_ Heritage.pdf Price, Campbell. Golden Mummies of Egypt. Interpreting Identities from the Graeco-Roman Period. Manchester: Manchester Museum, 2020. Putnam-Farr, Eleanor and Jason Riis. “‘Yes/No/Not Right Now’: Yes/No Response Formats Can Increase Response Rates Even in Non-Forced-Choice Settings.” Journal of Marketing Research 53, no. 3 (2016): 424–432. Riggs, Christina. Unwrapping Ancient Egypt: The Shroud, the Secret and the Sacred. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Sadat, Anwar. “Interview with the Vice President of American Readers’ Digest.” 2 July Transcript. Anwar Sadat Digital Archive. Alexandria: Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 1976. http://sadat.bibalex.org/ Schielke, Samuli. Egypt in the Future Tense: Hope, Frustration, and Ambivalence Before And After 2011. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2015. Shirazi, Farid. “Social Media and the Social Movements in the Middle East and North Africa: A Critical Discourse Analysis.” Information Technology & People 26, no. 28 (2013). doi: 10.1108/09593841311307123. Simpson, Audra. “On Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘Voice’, and Colonial Citizenship.” Junctures 9 (2007): 67–80. Simpson, Audra. “Consent’s Revenge.” Cultural Anthropology 31, no. 3 (2016): 326–333. Struck, Doug. “The Thorny Ethics of Displaying Egyptian Mummies to the Public.” Undark. June 23, 2021. https://undark.org/2021/06/23/thorny-ethics-displaying-egyptianmummies/ User comment responses to Mohammed Nasser and Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage. “Egyptian Mummified Human Remains Are at the Centre of Western Museums’ Debates But Where Are We from All This?” Facebook, March 13, 2020 [in Arabic]. https://www. facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10216010337311944&set=a.10215709888360908 Weiss, Lara. “Aesthetics and Science: The New Permanent Egyptian Galleries in the Leiden National Museum of Antiquities.” Aegyptiaca. Journal of the History of Reception of Ancient Egypt 2 (2018): 213–234.

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18 THE CURATED OSSILEGIUM Museum Practices as Death and Mourning Rituals

Evi Numen Eternal Rest on Display In Occidental societies, the expectation of “eternal rest” for the dead is culturally ingrained and rarely questioned. Consequently, the removal of human remains from a burial ground or other culturally designated site is an interruption in their expected and predetermined course of history. This act may be the first such disruption, or it may follow a series of known or unknown interventions occurring in the distant or recent past. Site excavations for construction, archaeological digs, culturally sanc­ tioned removals of remains for the purpose of cleaning and reburial, exhumation for forensic research or for transference of the remains to a different burial site, or simply economising space in a congested metropolitan cemetery, all constitute potential causes of disturbance of the prescribed Requiescat in Pace. As historian Thomas W. Laquer asserts, “Bones and bodies over the millennia have seldom been left in peace for very long.”1 In a fraction of cases, such disruptions of the preordained final resting place of the remains result in museum placement. These remains, taken out of the an­ ticipated timeline from burial to memorialisation to oblivion that demarcates the typical postmortem script, exist in a state of extended or revived memorialisation beyond the 80, 100, or 125 year span dictated by academic conceptualisations of living memory.2 The individuals in question become known by virtue of the continued display of their remains. Conversely, the extravagance of even the grandest mausoleums of a metropolitan cemetery doesn’t ensure the preservation of the memory of the buried and entombed, if said memory is not shared through retelling, or doesn’t flow beyond the cemetery. The visible mausoleum of the museum gallery serves as the vehicle of persistent memorialisation and thus ensures the “afterlife” of its occupants for as long as they are displayed and visited. The conceptually eternal afterlife of the displayed dead is amplified by the inherent power that remains hold. Unlike portraits and statues, skulls and skeletons command DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-22

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respect and reverence in and of themselves. Beyond their specific identity, they represent an encounter with mortality, and a confrontation with the sheer fragility of the human condition.

As Above, So Below Is displaying the dead disrespectful in itself, and if so, why? The deeper one delves into cultural mores surrounding this question, the more elusive the answer becomes, provoking more questions than it settles. In a western contemporary context, the most common convention dictates that burial is the proper and societally sanctioned way to dispose of human remains. The shift of museum practice towards the inte­ gration of decolonising initiatives in curation and retention of human remains with indigenous ties has sparked generalised calls for reburial for human remains in museums, and further questioning of the value of displaying such collections. The reburial “solution” to collections perceived as controversial by the general public, can potentially be as problematic as the failure to confront colonial legacies adequately. Remains with unknown or scant provenance are liable to fall prey to biased as­ sumptions as to their manner of disposal. Why do we choose burial as the default manner? And whose temporal and cultural traditions do we follow to make that choice? Is it more appropriate to enforce the contemporary prevailing religious customs to individuals who may have lived one or two or three centuries ago? Or a continent away? Isn’t the enforced application of contemporary culture norms dis­ respectful in turn? Let’s examine the burial option. While ground internment is now the pre­ dominant dictum of modern Judeo-Christian traditions, that was not always so. Beyond that lies the issue of the contradictory ways religious authorities view human remains. In the Catholic tradition, the current practice is to bury the dead, following a funerary ceremony. But the same tradition historically venerates the most important of its faithful with the retention and public display of their remains, as is the case with bone relics of saints, and mummified catacomb inhabitants. These spiritually elevated bodies are to be visited and cared for as a practice of faith and veneration. In other Christian traditions, osteological remains are collected in sanctified spaces and displayed. From 30 B.C. to early modern times,3 “ossilegium,” has persisted, being the practice of collecting the bones of the dead body following decomposition above4 or below ground, with the purpose of excarnating, cleaning, and either displaying the remains in a public or private ossuary or keeping them in a designated container, which then may be buried or entered into a sanctified space. Effectively, ossilegium prescribes not one, but two acts of inhumation, which do not always involve burial. The practices of secondary burial and ossilegium are historically found in Jewish traditions, as well as Roman Catholic and Christian Orthodox traditions. In con­ temporary Greek Orthodox traditions, ossilegium is still commonly practiced through familial, communal, or professional agents. In congested metropolitan cemeteries, it is directed by both tradition and necessity. With cremation being discouraged by church authorities, urban cemeteries simply do not have the space to accommodate the dead. 260

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Figure 18.1 Left: a Mt. Athos monk holding an open “osteofilakion” with the bones of a deceased brother, Simonopetra, Mt. Athos, Greece, 1982. James Stanfield /GEO Images Collection/Art Resource, NY. Right: A modern ossuary space containing stored ossuary containers. Source: Photo by Tom Oates, 2008.

Gravesites are not guaranteed to the interred or the family in aeternum, but are typically leased for a three to five years period, following which the body is exhumed and de-fleshed if necessary, by cemetery workers.5 The workers proceed to wash the skeletal remains with red wine, an allusion to the covenant of communion, and replace them in a metal or wooden container, the size and shape of a large shoebox. That box is ultimately placed in an ossuary built for the purpose on cemetery grounds, as the law dictates (Figure 18.1).6

Greeting the Skull In rural communities, the practice is shaped by local traditions rather than necessity. The rites of the second funeral are performed by the village parish, as opposed to professional cemetery workers. Loring M. Danforth relates the attitudes and beliefs surrounding funerary customs in the rural village of Potamia, numbering 600 inhabitants: At the end of the month Eleni would be exhumed. According to custom, this had to be done before she had completed five full years in the ground. She would be exhumed because her family wanted to see her for the last time and because she should not have to bear the weight of the earth on her chest for eternity. She would be exhumed so that she could see once more the light of the sun.7 In communities like Potamia, the ossilegium process is an event that is not relegated to professionals, but one the deceased’s family and their wider community are active participants in. The immediate family is not only present but responsible for ex­ huming the body themselves. Danforth notes that the performance of this rite “is an attempt to mediate the opposition between life and death by asserting that death is an integral part of life,”8 and signals the reunion of the deceased with the community. 261

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Indeed, following the exhumation of the now skeletal remains, the skull is “greeted” by the family: Then they handed it across the open grave to Eleni’s father, who greeted his daughter’s skull as the others had before him. It was then passed down the side of the grave to be greeted by sisters, brothers, cousins, and others.9 The participants pay special attention to the condition and “cleanliness” of the skull and bones, as they are when exhumed. A dark and not fully de-fleshed skull is associated with unforgiven sins, while a clean one signifies the acceptance of the soul of the deceased to heaven. As Danforth observes, “When the remains of the deceased are exhumed, the reduction of the body to pure white bones, compact and immutable, offers visible evidence that the soul of the deceased has entered para­ dise.”10 Cleanliness is ensured further by the ritualistic washing of the remains with red wine and perfume by the parish priest. The verses he recites as part of the funeral service that accompany this process, reflect this custom: You shall sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be clean. You shall wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and all that dwell therein. You are dust, and to dust you will return.11 The failure to participate or merely be present at the exhumation rite is seen as indicative of lack of care, affection, or respect for the deceased. It is also important to note that the

Figure 18.2 Ossuary of Monastery of Grand Meteora, Greece. Source: Photo by Vasileios Garganourakis, 2016.

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preferred final resting place of the metropolitan dead in Greece is nearly universally above ground in the designated ossuaries mentioned above. The far less desirable alternative is the chemical disolution of the bones and their disposal in mass burial sites. The famed monasteries of Mt. Athos, in Greece, houses a more traditional style of ossuary, than the storage-like spaces you would find in metropolitan areas, named the “κοιμητήριο” (the “sleeping hall”), filled with tidy rows of the exposed skulls of monks that have “gone to sleep.” Some skulls have their owner’s name inscribed on their frontal bone in inked capitals. Others are accompanied by a picture of the deceased. Separate shelves below the ones holding skulls contain bundles of com­ mingled limb bones, parts of the body that are not readily associated with the soul, unlike the skull, called “cara” (κάρα) in an ecclesiastic context. The cara of monks and saints are afforded special care and placed in precious reliquaries in the case of the latter. Meaning is ascribed to the cross-like forms created by the cranial sutures which further sanctifies the skull over the rest of the skeleton (Figure 18.2). An ocean away, in contemporary Japan, families are also called to interact with their loved one’s remains in a different but parallel manner. Unlike the Christian Orthodox Greeks, Japanese families almost exclusively opt for cremation in their funerary practice. However, unlike the use of a cremulator to reduce the cremains to fine ash prevalent in Europe and America, the cremains are collected from the crematory chamber and given to the family to practice the traditions of kotsuage. The relatives are called to shift

Figure 18.3

Bone-picking cremation ceremony (“kotsuage”) at the Doi Saien crematorium in Shikokuchuo, Ehime Prefecture, Japan.

Source: Photograph by Autumn Snake, 2006.

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through the cremains with a pair of special chopsticks and pick out the larger bone fragments that remain among ashes following cremation. This hands-on confrontation with the remains of a loved one’s body may allow the mourner to enter a contemplative space while engaging in a physical activity that feels both caring and useful. Similarly to the greeting of the skull described in Potamia, the family members may pass the larger bones among them before placing them in an urn (Figure 18.3).12

Defining Respectful Care While the method of body disposal may differ around the globe, most societies perform rites of preparation and disposal of the body of the deceased that typically involve levels of confrontation and interaction with the remains, followed by ex­ pressions of mourning and commemoration. For remains that reside in museums, the performance of funerary rites is not absent, but it is significantly coloured, if not obstructed, by conventions of professionalism and medicalisation. The Code of Ethics of The International Council of Museums stipulates that human remains “should be acquired only if they can be housed securely and cared for respectfully.” In practice, museum workers are more often faced with having to ensure that the human remains their predecessors acquired are properly cared for than to make decisions on new acquisitions. In doing so they are called to define what is deemed respectful care for each instance of remains in their custody. In recent years, with the decolonisation movement gaining momentum in the museum world, museum professionals are urged to reconsider the methods they employ for preservation, safe-keeping, and display according to the beliefs and cus­ toms of the peoples whose artefacts and remains they hold in trust. Under the guidance of representatives of indigenous communities, collections care can be cus­ tomised in accordance with the people’s customs and traditions, as in the case of Blackfoot cultural items in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History.13 Collaboration of museum staff with Blackfoot elders and knowledge keepers in­ formed the storage and exhibition parameters of their cultural objects, which were contrary to industry-wide conventions.14 In other cases, the most respectful care of the items in collection calls for their repatriation and safe-keeping in community institutions.

Caring for the Unknown Dead While there are initiatives on how to address the respectful care of remains with known identities and cultural and spiritual affiliations, more often than not, large parts of the collections of medical museums have a dearth of provenance one could use to ascertain appropriate respectful care. If we are willing to modify practices for remains of known individuals according to their assigned beliefs, how are we to treat those whose names, places of origin, or backgrounds are entirely or partially unknown? It can be argued that this is a question that has been already answered through various publications on the care of human remains in collections by museum associations and common museum policies. These guidelines prescribe the storage conditions and 264

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protection of the remains, but do not address the metaphysical or psychological as­ pects of this particular type of death care work. Museum workers are simply expected to maintain a level of professional distance from the culturally and emotionally charged objects in their care. If we were to simplify, generalise, and distill funerary practices, we would arrive at the following stages: tending, placing, memorialising, and remembering. The shapes these stages take vary wildly across cultural and temporal spaces, and are not necessarily sequential, but do share some defining characteristics through which we can draw parallels to museum practices in the care of human remains. Tending encompasses the preparation of the body of the deceased for disposal, whatever form that may take. It can involve the washing, grooming, and dressing of the body, or cleaning, de-fleshing, and adorning the remains, in preparation for its intended final or temporary placement. Washing and cleaning the dead is a ritualised practice imbued with meaning. It is an act of care and respect that may be performed by the family as a final token of affection. In a museum setting, this process can take the form of specimen preparation and conservation practices, as the carer is tasked to conserve the accessioned item by performing a series of consecutive tasks. The first of those, in most contexts, is the simple act of dusting and cleaning. The conservator carefully dusts, brushes off, wipes, the skeletal specimen to remove centuries of dust, loose debris, soil from excavation, and in some cases the failed, detrimental, or poorlyaged attempts of past conservation efforts. Such a process lends itself by its very nature to slow careful movements and attentive handling, forming a practiced choreography that if we were not professionally averse to sentimentality we could readily call intimate. Cleaning one’s bones is a palpably intimate act in a spiritual setting and that intimacy carries in their conservation, eliciting a sense of familiality, even though the carer could never have known the individual in their care during the latter’s lifetime. Placing denotes the spatial assignment of the remains, following their dissolution through burial, cremation, or simply the passage of time. In the museum space that typically occurs in three inherently transitional places; in storage, in an exhibition case for display, or in the lab to undergo conservation. As Elizabeth Hallam notes in Anatomy Museum, Death is not always the end for the social life of bodies. Preserved in parts, and their treatment now regulated by law, many continue to have presence and purpose in the museums or collections of medical schools, colleges, and hospitals.15 Bodies in museums do not only have presence but like skulls in monastic ossuaries, they are continuously interacted with, cleaned, moved, talked about. They travel spatially and contextually. They are “greeted” and passed around by a larger com­ munity than their immediate relatives or compatriots. Their afterlife is public in a more equanimous sense than afforded the remains of known individuals in private care, as they come to represent not only their owners in life, but humanity and health in the abstract (Figure 18.4). 265

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Figure 18.4

Above: The ossuary of the New Monastery of Chios, Greece. Below: The Hyrtl Collection display at the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Source: Photo by Mariza Georgalou, 2016.

Memorialising and remembering is an integral stage of museum funerary care. By re­ searching, educating, and displaying their remains, we ensure the persistence of memory of an individual. To avoid reducing the associated individual to a pathological specimen for example, we must strive to present holistic narratives based on the provenance we have. Where did this individual come from and how? What were their background and life likely to be, based on their origin and health? What age and sex are they? Everevolving technology in archaeoforensics can help us fill in those blanks. 266

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Building Connections with the Displayed Dead When we do have more complete stories, it becomes easy to see how a skeleton of someone becomes synonymous with them, their presence evident in the gallery, felt as the presence of an individual in a more palpable sense than perhaps a mourner would feel at the grave site. The skeleton of Irish giant Cornelius Magrath (1736–1760)16 under our care in the Old Anatomy Museum Collection becomes synonymous with “Cornelius” the person, as the narrative act of display and interpretation leads to a perceived con­ nection between the carer and the individual they belonged to. That level of connection varies along with the level of familiarity, as well as with the measure of inherent objecthood in museum remains. Language gets tricky when it pertains to describing human remains in museums, as they exist in the liminal space between object, “item,” and subject. What we mean by objecthood in this context is more about the relationship of the remains to the collection or the museum than any inherent “thingness” of the remains. Expected to maintain professional objectivity and emotional distance, I struggle between using accurate language to refer to the skeleton of Cornelius as opposed to simply Cornelius as if the person himself was present in the museum gallery. The tendency to refer to the person whose bones you care for is not an indication of conflating their anatomy with their personhood. It is rather the opposite; the inability to disregard their perceived presence brought forth by research and storytelling. The conjuring of a ghost, so to speak, every time you refer to an individual whose remains and history you are responsible for. It is a heavy responsibility and one that feels profound, if not sacred. Cornelius’s skeleton along with his life story, painted and engraved portrait and articles of clothing paint a complete image of a man one could relate to, have a conversation with, befriend, care for, mourn, and reminisce about. A solitary femur on the other proverbial hand, with no provenance beyond a place name is harder to connect to an individual and even harder to connect to as an individual. The femur lies closer to objecthood in the subject/object spectrum than the skull, the very scaffold of one’s face, the part of the person that inescapably encapsulates their individuality. This connection to individuals in museum collections is not by any means superficial. Working in a medical museum is not a terribly profitable job, nor an easy one to stumble on, but a vocation, one you pursue because you’re not only comfortable with the subject but called to it. As such we are predisposed to connect to the “inhabitants” of our galleries. Anecdotally speaking, it is not uncommon for people in similar positions of care of human remains to “converse” with the skulls or skeletons that reside in the collection. The conjured dead in collections are part of our daily working lives and in our efforts to communicate their histories and familiarise visitors with them we become entangled in their familial spaces. They become our honorary family members as we become intimate with the layers of their existence from their case histories to their very bones. The connection between carer and the displayed dead persists through time, with the former possibly overshadowing the latter especially when provenance is scant and the custodian professionally renowned.17 Other times, the carer is responsible for restoring both the remains in question and the story of the individual they carried. 267

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Figure 18.5

Left: The Giant Magrath by Pietro Longhi in Ca‘ Rezzonico Venice, oil painting, 1760. Right: The skeleton of Cornelius Magrath in the Old Anatomy Museum, Trinity College Dublin.

Source: Photo by the author.

Such is the case of Dr Daniel J. Cunnigham (1850–1909) and the skeleton of Cornelius Magrath (Figure 18.5). Dr Cunningham, as the Anatomy professor at the School of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin, also held the position of the Curator of the school’s medical heritage collection, one of the inhabitants of which is Cornelius Magrath’s skeleton. The seven-foot-six-inch skeleton entered the collection in 1760 following Magrath’s death. In 1886, due to his age, location changes, and use for medical education, Cunningham found the skeleton to be in poor condition and in dire need of resto­ ration. While researching Magrath’s condition and life history, he cleaned and restored his skeleton by commissioning a woodworker to create painstakingly accu­ rate replicas of his absent bones. Cunningham engaged in not only studying Magrath’s remains out of scientific interest but also out of respect for the man’s life and indi­ viduality, beyond his status as a “Giant.” In researching and piecing together his story, as he did his skeleton, Cunningham honoured a connection with the remains in his care and the man he had learned so much from, despite never having met him.18 In doing so, he exemplified the primary duty of the curator – care. Notably, the term curator comes from the Latin word curare meaning the care and tending of a pastor to his spiritual flock, his parishioners.19 In the secular arena of museum work, curators and conservators act in place of that spiritual overseer, providing care for the dead in their trust, during their carnal afterlife (Figure 18.6). 268

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Figure 18.6

Left: Portrait of anatomy professor and museum curator Daniel J. Cunningham. Right: Detail of the skeleton of Cornelius Magrath showing the wooden replicas of his missing bones.

Source: Photograph by the author. Courtesy of the Old Anatomy Museum, Trinity College Dublin.

Towards a Continuum of Death Care Outside the museum doors, there is a perception of museum representatives “ex­ ploiting” individuals by putting their bodies on display, an act perceived to simulta­ neously commodify and objectify. People, represented through their bodies, become “features,” artefacts, and collection objects. This perception is further amplified by practical features of museum management; the accession number on the skull, or their inked name and illness or origin on the metopic bone. The practice of numbering and labelling remains as means of differentiating and tracking them has a direct parallel in the realm of funerary care. Even in the most sacred of contexts, like in that of monastic ossuaries, one finds inscriptions of names and numbers on remains, skulls especially, that serve as a tether to the individuality of the person they belonged to. As Hallam notes, “Anatomy museums operate in social and cultural contexts where prevalent cultural conventions and regulations guide their treatment of bodies.”20 The resulting practices are directly informed and derived from these cultural conventions. However, these methods of care operate in a conceptual space set apart from the continuum of funerary care. I posit that this separation is caused by both the professionalisation of museum custodians and the directive and need to maintain emotional distance for the purposes of staying intellectually objective and protecting our own mental health from the inevi­ tably heavy arising issues of loss, disease, and human suffering that one is bound to encounter in human remains collections. The potential danger of this emotional distance is the blanket assignment of museum practices that may be in fact biased, imposed, and ultimately disrespectful. Keeping remains in conditions that do not allow visitation, light, or air, and resulting in burial as the default means of disposal may not be appropriate as blanket guidelines, as argued above. Reuniting museum care with funerary care can both enhance our 269

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connection to the remains in our care and dispel the public perception that retention and display are inherently disrespectful. If we are to consider museum care of the dead as an alternative to typical funerary care, how do we individuate that care? How do we perform rites that are appropriate to each individual’s cultural, spiritual, and temporal background? The answer can be found in qualities inherent and required in the practice of every conservator, every curator, and every death care worker; attentiveness, presence, and reverence. The work of caring for human remains requires one to slow down, be careful, and stay present. It requires the orchestration of measured and carefully choreographed actions and movements to prevent and anticipate any jeopardy to the process that may damage the remains. The universality of this attentiveness in conservation work may allow museum workers to provide meaningful funerary care for individuals whose remains do not come along with enough provenance or biographical information to determine the appropriate practices with more specificity. But we should not rest in this knowledge. To appreciate and benefit from the continuum of death care, we must be deliberate in pursuing education on death care practices beyond the gallery and museum spaces to learn from the lessons provided in hospice and funerary care. It is only by conscious effort that we can begin to bridge the divide created by institutionalisation and provide holistic care for all remains in our trust, known and unknown.

Notes 1 Thomas W. Laquer, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton University Press, 2015), 336. 2 “From an ethnological perspective, memories of a deceased person fade after approximately four to five generations. This equates to approx. 125 years, thus providing a period of time which can also serve as a guide from a physical-anthropological perspective.” Recommendations for the Care of Human Remains in Museums and Collections, Deutscher Museumsbund e.V. 2013, p. 11. 3 Jodi Magness, “Ossuaries and the Burials of Jesus and James,” Journal of Biblical Literature 124, no. 1 (2005): 121–154, https://doi.org/10.2307/30040993 4 The dead may be deposited in a charnel house, or a section of the church for the purpose of decomposition, as opposed to buried in the ground. Thomas W. Laquer, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton University Press, 2015). 5 Constantine Eliopoulos, Konstantinos Moraitis, Federico Reyes, Chara Spiliopoulou, and Sotiris Manolis, “Guidelines for the Recognition of Cemetery Remains in Greece,” American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 32 (2011): 153–156, 10.1097/PAF.0b013e3182156405. 6 Chloe Hatzimatheou, Why Greeks Are Exhuming Their Parents, 26 November 2015, BBC, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34920068. 7 L. Danforth and A. Tsiaras, The Death Rituals of Rural Greece (Princeton University Press, 2020). Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1644746/the-death-rituals-of-ruralgreece-pdf (accessed 29 August 2022). 8 L. Danforth and A. Tsiaras, The Death Rituals of Rural Greece (Princeton University Press, 2020). Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1644746/the-death-rituals-of-ruralgreece-pdf (accessed 29 August 2022). 9 Ibid., 9. 10 Ibid., 11. 11 Ibid., 9. 12 Y. Tsuji, “Mortuary Rituals in Japan: The Hegemony of Tradition and the Motivations of Individuals.” Ethos 34 (2006): 391–431, https://doi-org.elib.tcd.ie/10.1525/eth.2006.34.3.391.

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The Curated Ossilegium 13 G.A. Flynn and D. Hull-Walski, Merging Traditional Indigenous Curation Methods with Modern Museum Standards of Care, Museum Anthropology 25 (2001): 31–40, https:// doi.org/10.1525/mua.2001.25.1.31. 14 Hallam, Elizabeth, Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), 8. 15 Elizabeth Hallam, Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), 8. 16 Magrath suffered from acromegaly and gigantism during his life, owing to a tumour in his pituitary fossa, as Dr. Daniel J. Cunningham discovered. D. J. Cunningham, “The Skeleton of the Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath,” The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy 29 (1887): 553–612, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30078824. 17 “Often (although now always) without name museum specimens have come to be asso­ ciated not with those within whom they developed throughout life, but with those who acquired, preserved, dissected, collected, and exhibited them after death,” Elizabeth Hallam, Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed (London: Reaktion Books, 2016). 18 D. J. Cunningham, “The Skeleton of the Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath,” The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy 29 (1887): 553–612, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30078824. 19 In the late 14 c., curator translates to ”spiritual guide, ecclesiastic responsible for the spiritual welfare of those in his charge; parish priest, “from Medieval Latin curatus one responsible for the care (of souls),” Online Etymology Dictionary. 20 Elizabeth Hallam, Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), 31.

Bibliography Cambell, Haley. All the Living and the Dead: A Personal Investigation into the Death Trade. London: Raven Books, 2022. Cavicchioli, Silvia and Luigi Provero, eds. Public Uses of Human Remains and Relics in History. 1st edn. Taylor and Francis, 2019. Cunningham, D. J. “The Skeleton of the Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath.” The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy 29 (1887): 553–612. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30078824 Danforth, L. and A. Tsiaras. The Death Rituals of Rural Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1644746/thedeath-rituals-of-rural-greece-pdf (Accessed: 29 August 2022). Eliopoulos, Constantine, Konstantinos Moraitis, Federico Reyes, Chara Spiliopoulou, and Sotiris Manolis. “Guidelines for the Recognition of Cemetery Remains in Greece.” American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 32 (2011): 153–156. 10.1097/ PAF.0b013e3182156405 Flynn, G. A. and D. Hull-Walski. “Merging Traditional Indigenous Curation Methods with Modern Museum Standards of Care.” Museum Anthropology 25(2001): 31–40. 10.1525/ mua.2001.25.1.31 Hallam, Elizabeth. Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed. London: Reaktion Books, 2016. Laquer, Thomas W. The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains. Princeton University Press, 2015. Lohman, Jack and Katherine Goodnow, eds. Human Remains and Museum Practice. London: UNESCO and the Museum of London, 2006. Magness, Jodi. “Ossuaries and the Burials of Jesus and James.” Journal of Biblical Literature 124, no. 1 (2005): 121–154. 10.2307/30040993 Tsuji, Y. “Mortuary Rituals in Japan: The Hegemony of Tradition and the Motivations of Individuals.” Ethos 34 (2006): 391–431. 10.1525/eth.2006.34.3.391

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PART 4

Deathscapes and Heritage

19 FROM DEAD PLACES TO PLACES OF THE DEAD The Memorial Power of Battlefields, Ruins, and Burials in the Warscapes of Spain and the Western Front

Dacia Viejo-Rose, Layla Renshaw, and Paola Filippucci Introduction One of the challenges of remembering modern warfare is the scale, intensity, and duration of the destruction and loss. Wars entail the displacement and mobilisation of thousands of people, mass casualties, the reconfiguration of the land through military installations and bombardment, and the destruction or abandonment of whole settlements. The complexity of warfare is difficult to encapsulate in any single site. The term warscape is utilised here to capture this complexity and to move beyond an understanding of landscape as a simple backdrop to war. As an analytical tool, it focuses on the experiential encounters, agency and shifting identities of those caught up in war, with an emphasis on navigating a landscape and concomitant fluidity, mobility and connection this implies, rather than a sequence of discrete historical events occurring at bounded locations.1 Four types of site that may constitute part of the warscape will be analysed: battlefields, cemeteries, ruined settlements, and mass graves. The particular mnemonic and memorial affordances of each site will be considered. As each affords a partial representation of war and war dead, the sites gain some of their meaning in relation to each other,2 with those encountering the sites finding contrast or affinity between them. This discussion will draw on examples of warscapes from the Civil War in Spain, and the Western Front of World War I. Although considering these two historical contexts in a broad sense, the specific examples of Verdun, Fromelles, and the Red Zone in France, and Belchite, and the Valle de los Caídos in Spain will be referenced in greater detail.3 The physical encounter with these sites for the visitors, local inhabitants, and relatives of the dead who navigate and create meaning from them, may vary with some following designated routes between battlefields and cemeteries, and other traversing these places as part of their daily lives. On the Western Front, the structured DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-24

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encounter of the battlefield tour has existed for close to a hundred years.4 From the British Legion’s first published pilgrimage in 1928 to more recent centenary additions to the Australian Remembrance Trail,5 and the British government-funded First World War Centenary Battlefields Tour Programme,6 sites have long been connected in formalised itineraries designed to bind the sites together and mediate the experience of each one. Similarly in Spain, tourist visits were organised by the Francoist side before the war had even ended, while in recent years tours by former International Brigaders and their families have been in demand. As well as being affirmation of familial identity narratives, these pilgrimages also enable a cumulative building up of meaning and emotion, shaping the landscape in narrative and emotional arcs to leave a specific historical representation of the past and achieve forms of catharsis or resolution. In the more contested memorial landscape of Spain’s Civil War, where commemoration was highly controlled under the dictatorship, memory of the defeated Republicans was systematically erased, and the existence of certain sites was suppressed.7 In this context, the dialogue between contrasting memorial sites, such as a clandestine Republican mass grave and a Francoist military cemetery, persisted on a more affective and figurative level. Only with the resurgence of Republican memory from 2000 has the entirety of Spain’s warscape been acknowledged in public discourse and opened up for investigation and commemoration.8 This chapter outlines different ways that death and war inhabits the landscape. The sites under discussion here vary in the kind of representations of war, commemorative acts, and affective relationships to the dead, which they elicit and enable. The materiality of these sites can be assessed to consider the physical traces of war, and the new material forms constructed as monuments. The physical traces of war are characterised by varying degrees of preservation, visibility, legibility, and meaning for visitors. A key aspect of the materiality of these sites is the presence/absence of the dead. The presence of the dead encompasses physical human remains, and other material indices such as headstones or monuments. Even in the absence of physical and material traces, the dead may be present through their affective or imaginative evocation, called forth by certain places. Materiality also shapes the temporal affordances of a site. Does the site commemorate a single cataclysmic event, a significant date, or the entire duration of the war? Has it visibly decayed or changed over time, or does it aspire to permanence, and even eternity? The presence of the dead also shapes the political or ideological significance of a site. This includes the question of whose experience of war is foregrounded, and whose is absent. What kind of representations and narratives around war, loss, and sacrifice are encoded at the site? Who has authored these and who is the intended visitor or audience that engages with the site? This informs the extent to which visitors perceive a site as mediated and managed, and whether they detect an official history or ideology associated with a site, as opposed to more vernacular or personal forms of memory and commemoration. By looking more precisely at the varying mnemonic and memorial properties of these sites, the importance of considering the warscape in its totality can be appreciated. 276

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Battlefields The idea of a battlefield as a memorial space emerged in the 19th century in relation to Waterloo9 but crystallised after the First World War, especially in relation to the Western Front.10 The various battlefields along the frontline were known to the general public from the extensive media coverage of the war, and after the conflict became “emotional landscapes,”11 holders of memories for veterans but also for mourners and for tourists seeking to see or “feel” the war.12 Battlefield visits were historically framed as “pilgrimages” in relation to the idea of the soil rendered “sacred” by the blood of fallen soldiers and the remains of the missing: the unprecedented number of missing bodies, caused by the extreme violence of new armaments, was widely understood through the idea of the landscape of the battlefield as a vast, diffuse cemetery.13 In the 21st century, the legacy of this history makes the Western Front very overdetermined symbolically, through a huge network of cemeteries and monuments, but at the same time visitors are presented with a space that is materially empty. Following its interwar reconstruction, traces of battle and war are not immediately obvious, so it is hard to decipher and experience as a “battlefield” imaginative work is needed.14 Battle is notoriously chaotic: even when the traces have not been erased on purpose for political reasons, as for example in the case of the Spanish civil war,15 narratives about its unfolding are usually created retrospectively and read onto the landscape as much as out of it, selectively preserving traces of combat to confirm the “mythohistory” of a battle or war.16 In some parts of the Western Front, such as the Argonne and Verdun, remains of the battlefield survive beyond the managed space of memorials, as the battle unfolded in rough forested terrain that was not fully cleared after the war: this lies beyond the main visitor trail and is only really legible to groups of “passionnés,” amateurs who have been exploring and recording the traces of battle for decades. More casual visitors experience and map the battlefield through tourist signposting and trails which include historical reconstructions and images, guiding the eye and mind of the visitor towards the past in structured, historically “approved” ways. Even a century after the war however, many visitors reclaim the emotional potential of these warscapes by bringing with them family memories, sometimes supplemented by documents such as diaries and letters and genealogical research. Such visitors self-consciously retrace the steps of an ancestor in what becomes once again a heartfelt “pilgrimage,” bringing to mind and body their relatives’ experiences and suffering.17 For others, a visit to the battlefield triggers a search of their family memory and history for a link to the war, suggesting that people take away from their visit a desire to empathise and even identify with the past. As Iles explains, the current landscape plays a role in this, negatively: the peaceful rural setting of most of the Western Front battlefields today acts as a striking foil to the knowledge of the chaos, carnage, and violence of combat, paradoxically making it seem more real and poignant.18 It also makes tangible the idea, central to the memory of the First World War, that the real horror of the war cannot be known except by those who lived it.19 277

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Cemeteries The most visible and iconic type of cemetery associated with modern warscapes is the military cemetery: civilian victims are usually buried in “ordinary” cemeteries (when their bodies can be found), more rarely in specially designated cemeteries (with some notable exceptions such as the Heidenfriedhof in Dresden for the civilian victims of the 1945 bombings, the cemeteries at Fosse Ardeatine and Marzabotto in Italy for victims of Nazi massacres during World War II, and the cemetery at SrebrenicaPotocari for the 1995 genocide victims). Modern military cemeteries are characterised by order and uniformity. Particularly since the First World War, a bid to commemorate all fallen soldiers (not just higher ranks) has gone hand in hand with the idea of equality in death, materialised by rows of identical headstones, bearing only (when known) a name, a date, regiment.20 This corresponds to a vast “bureaucracy of death” which crystallised at the First World War, in which the memory of “every man” is the gift given back by the grateful nation to the soldiers and their families, in exchange for sacrificing their life for the “imagined community” (see e.g. https://www.everyoneremembered.org for a recent initiative).21 The modern effort to bury every soldier and remember every name materialised in war cemeteries and other burial forms such as memorials to the missing (see below) shows the ideological appropriation of the war dead as exemplars of citizen virtue and sacrifice, central to the symbolic construction of the nation and of state sovereignty.22 This aspect is signified through the symbolism attached to these places: alongside religious symbols associated with burial (crosses, Islamic crescent, Star of David) are national flags and planting evocative of homelands (such as Gertrud Jekyll’s planting in Commonwealth War Graves cemeteries, evocative of English country cottage gardens).23 The ideological role of cemeteries is shown by the fact that their very maintenance, a key expressive and symbolic aspect of burials crossculturally,24 is entrusted to national bodies such as the British Commonwealth War Graves Commission or the German Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge. The ideological project materialised through military cemeteries entails the sublimation of violence: death may be verbally rendered as “sacrifice” or iconographically as sleep, the soldier’s body depicted in its lifelike integrity or gracefully dying.25 Violence is also arguably denied materially by the solid, tidy, aesthetically pleasing, landscaped spaces and textures of the cemeteries, designed as a dignified resting place for the dead and a place of contemplation and consolation for the living. In the case of the First World War, graves and cemeteries could also be said to act as enduring material surrogates for the shattered or missing bodies of the fallen: this can include the massive monuments bearing the names of the missing and the ossuaries holding unidentified remains.26 The power of cemeteries to affect exceeds any ideological agendas that might lie behind their original creation and subsequent rhetorical use. Burials and cemeteries are central to the social handling of death, helping to “settle” the dead into their proper place.27 In the case of the battlefield dead, the order, elegance, and solidity of burials and cemeteries can be seen as a way to counter the manner of their “bad” death: untimely, undignified death and occurring away from home.28 Historically, 278

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these spaces help survivors to mourn by providing places to “find” one’s dead or missing, as was the case for the Western Front after the First World War. Even long after a conflict people can visit individual graves to remember and honour relatives or ancestors by depositing commemorative objects (e.g. the British memorial poppies, flowers, photos, or familial/personal mementoes). Ancestors’ graves are often key stages in battlefield “pilgrimages” and can help individuals to materialise family memories or genealogies reconstructed via archival documents, grounding personal and familial identity into kinscapes that join disparate points in time and space.29 Graves can also assist the wider “ethics of memory”30: even casual visitors can relate feeling drawn to, or affected by, a grave bearing their own surname or personal name or date of birth, and may “adopt” it as their own to visit and cherish through subsequent visits. This suggests that above and beyond their ideological role, war cemeteries help survivors, descendants, and others to forge a relationship with the dead, lending affectivity to more abstract memory or knowledge of a conflict (e.g. book knowledge). Especially when a conflict is now beyond living memory, such as the First World War, these emotional and social affordances generally overcome now largely obsolete original ideological messages.31 The ideological connotations that are set in stone through these sites can persist beyond living memory: as recent research has found in First World War cemeteries on the Western Front visitors can pick up on implicit aspects of the military symbolism, commenting that moving through the rows of graves one has the impression of “rows of marching soldiers.”32 There are also echoes of national symbolism (or stereotype) when people praise the “peaceful” allure of the British and Commonwealth cemeteries, the “brightness and polish” of the US cemeteries “un peut Disney” according to one research participant during ethnography conducted by Filippucci in Argonne, or the “sombre,” atmosphere of German cemeteries (whose grave markers are of dark wood or stone).33 Lastly, awareness of the ideological, mystifying import of cemeteries is perhaps implied when on the Western Front monuments and cemeteries are compared to ruins and remains of the battlefield as less authentic, less “real” representations of the war, the “dead places” and the battlefields.

Ruined Settlements and Dead Places The idea of a dead place suggests ruins and abandon perhaps but above all absence of life. As a result, it is not only because of their ruins but also their surroundings that places like Chernobyl come to mind. A comparable state was evoked during and after World War I in response to the devastation of the battlefields, when the destruction wrought by modern armaments seemed to many to have terminally damaged places and landscapes, leading to their “death.” In the devastated areas of Eastern France, many damaged settlements were designated as “martyr” towns, and many villages were deliberately left unpopulated and decorated militarily as having “died for France” like soldiers, their ruins and sites preserved as memorials to the fallen and evidence of the enemy’s barbarity, for example, at Verdun.34 The evidential power of “dead places” to display the enemy’s brutality also led after the Second World War to the preservation of the ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane, destroyed by German troops in 279

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1944 after the massacre of several hundreds of its inhabitants.35 The ruins stand next to a new village that was reconstructed after the war and are maintained as a permanent memorial and monument. The ruins include objects that ostensibly “freeze” and materialise the moment of the massacre, most famously the remains of a car said to have been parked by the village doctor moments before becoming engulfed in the massacre. This attribution of the car has recently been disputed but its lingering iconic power illustrates how the remnants of “dead places” do not only testify to past events but also help to narrativise and construct memories of them.36 The opening sequence of the film Pan’s Labyrinth, an exploration of post-Civil War Spain, follows the flight of a story-tale princess from a subterranean space filled with what appear to be relics and monuments of a mythical kingdom up winding stairs carved into the rock towards the light of the surface and the “reality” of a world in ruins where the abuse of power reigns. As she escapes, the viewer is told, she forgets who she is and where she has come from. The ruins on the surface are those of Belchite, site of intense battles during the war both on the ground and on the propaganda frontlines. The ruins of this Aragonese town of mudejar architecture became instrumental in the Francoist imaginary of reconstruction often used to signify the “phoenix rising from the ashes” metaphor favoured in the regime’s post-war rhetoric. The ruins of old Belchite became a proto-martyr town spawning legends that were repeated in the media and in popular culture, intended for public consumption. They served to inscribe selective narratives into the landscape thus turning the town’s ruins into an artefact, or specimen, of the Francoist narrative of the war. In post-war Spain, ruins were used by the Francoist regime in several ways: to justify the expropriation of lands, as evidence of the “red barbarism,” as a juxtaposition to the order that the regime proposed to impose over the chaos of the war. In the case of Belchite the ruins acted as a monument, a memorial and constant reminder of what had been lost, and a warning of what might come if Spaniards didn’t fall into line with the new order. Next to this reminder of the chaos and messiness of war, the Francoist regime’s dedicated department of state for reconstruction (Dirección General de Regiones Devastadas) set out to build a “new” Belchite that would be the very epitome of order and rationality in urban planning, in the vein of Albert Speer’s projects in Germany but without the grandeur. In a recent meeting organised by the Secretaría de Estado de Memoria Democrática (Department of State of Democratic Memory) dedicated to how to manage old Belchite and a possible project for an interpretation centre there, what came out was a tension between the urgency to consolidate the existing ruins before they disappear entirely and the need to have an interpretation plan for the site that will justify an investment in preserving ruins. In Belchite, battlefield and ruined settlement come together but there are other dimensions to the site: those that were deliberately neglected and silenced and those added by decades during which the symbolic uses of the site in political rhetoric and in popular culture added meaning. The untold stories are those of the penitentiary camp, the forced prison labour used to build “new” Belchite next to the ruins and a mass grave, and the resistance of locals to leave their destroyed town with many living among the ruins for several years.37 The symbolic dimensions – the juxtapositions and phoenix metaphors, the references in popular 280

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culture ranging from appearances in films to comic books, but also the salience of Belchite on tourist trails of sites related to the civil war and “ghost tours” – all served to turn Belchite into a Spanish lieu de mémoire,38 a reference point that elicits a set of cultural memories39 that are a challenge to resignify when it becomes clear that a presumed “dead place” is anything but that. The photographer Humberto Rivas published a book entitled Huellas that documents the traces of the civil war on places and people.40 The ruins of Belchite, Corbera d’Ebre, Figueres, bullet holes on facades of buildings in Barcelona, remains of the war and bunkers in Portbou, Isil and many other sites are juxtaposed with portraits of people who lived through the war and the traces of this experience on their faces and wounded bodies. The silences are eloquent: these “dead places” are very much alive.

Mass Graves While battlefields become the object of pilgrimage, cemeteries settle, and the remains of ruined settlements come to eloquently communicate mnemonic and memorial affordances, mass graves can do all or none of these things, largely dependent on whether they are marked and acknowledged, or not. In the warscapes under discussion here, the mass grave site may take several different forms. In the context of the Western Front, the category commonly includes ad hoc battlefield burials. For example, some bodies are accidentally buried or concealed as part of the death event, in explosions and collapsed trenches, while others are expedient burials by one’s own comrades, when military action means there is no possibility to transport the body to a more permanent or formal resting place. These were often conceived of as temporary, with the dead to be rediscovered and recovered by more burial parties in the future. Some soldiers are buried behind enemy lines by enemy combatants, as in the case of the Pheasant Wood graves from the 1916 Battle of Fromelles in Northern France.41 Soldiers often invested considerable time and care in marking, describing, and reporting the precise location of these battlefield burials, although the sheer volume of death and destruction, the extreme transformation of the landscape, and stretched communication methods of the period, often meant that these intentions were not enough to preserve the location of the grave and the bodies were lost.42 They became incorporated into the battlefield until adventitious discoveries or intentional searches revealed the dead, often decades later.43 In sharp contrast to the efforts of soldiers to mark the sites where comrades or adversaries had fallen amidst the chaos of battle, is the calculated and grandiose project of the Francoist Valle de los Caídos. A monumental site carved into the granite of the Guadarrama mountains outside Madrid, personally envisioned, commissioned, and carefully monitored by the dictator personally the site encapsulated a strain of fascist ideology that exalted death and martyrdom. Combining a basilica and an ossuary among its many structures, the Valle was both a cemetery and a mass grave with the only marked graves being that of the ideological leader and proto-martyr of Spanish fascism, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, and eventually of Franco himself while the mortal remains of thousands of people were dumped in ossuaries, invisible and inaccessible where they remained unnamed and unknowable. Here the cemetery was 281

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not used to “settle” the dead nor to bring resolution to the living but rather as both a glorification of violence with its Basilica lined with armed archangels and tapestries depicting the battles of “good over evil.” With working beginning on 1 April 1940, on the anniversary of the “Victory,” and inaugurated on the same day in 1959 the sites represents nearly two decades of punitive policies against the defeated as it was prisoners of war at first and then political prisoners whose forced labour was used to build the site, an estimated 20,000 passed through here. Once inaugurated, the official criteria for being buried there included being Catholic and patriotic thus requiring the adhesion of the dead to both the Church and the regime.44 And not having enough bodies for the ossuary the regime set out looking for them, exhuming bodies from cemeteries throughout Spain often without informing or despite opposition from family members and transporting them to the ossuaries of the Valle. In contrast to military remains that become concealed through the chance circumstance of chaotic battlefields or mass graves such as the Ossuary at Verdun or the Valle de los Caídos, the unofficial and largely unmarked mass graves that resulted from the Spanish Civil War are primarily filled with the civilian victims of political killings. The victims were rounded up in their communities and disappeared, the victims of massacres by militia and irregular forces, or sentenced to death in highly politicised, quasi-legal trials that characterised wartime justice, particularly in the Francoist zones of control. These clandestine graves range in scale from single victims to multiple hundreds at notorious massacre sites such as Badajoz.45 Given the scale and terror associated with some of these killings, there is a certain ambivalence around the terms “clandestine,” and concomitantly around describing the dead as missing or “disappeared.”46 Even if the location of a grave was visible and widely known during the war however, the extreme political repression exerted by Franco after the war prohibited all attempts at recovery and commemoration.47 Dead in mass graves have a collective identity, united by the nature of their deaths. The civilians of the Spanish Civil War have a complex negative or marginalised identity in relation to the state, in that they have been denied full recognition and funerary rites.48 The dead in mass graves have an identity that is under-determined compared to the bodies lying in official military cemeteries. By contrast, the dead in military cemeteries have become bodily incorporated into state narratives.49 The discovery and exhumation of a mass grave opens up a new representational space, creating an opportunity for new accounts of the past to be made and contested, and for both the biological and social identities of the dead to be investigated, before they become fixed.50 The exhumation of bodies from clandestine graves and their reburial in cemeteries alters the symbolic and political significance of the dead, and their deaths.51 There are a number of affordances associated with battlefield and clandestine graves that vary from more formal burials. They represent a more extreme form of violence and a symbolic overkill, with their associations of both a social and a physical death. The mass grave is a form of double violence, depriving the victim of life and of normal funerary rites and structured mourning. In the case of civilians murdered in the Spanish Civil War, the mass grave is conceptualised as a degrading and dehumanising space.52 The dead in these kinds of burials are not truly at rest and their relatives are denied resolution and closure.53 For the military dead, battlefield burials 282

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are invested with highly charged emotions due to the mutual commitment between soldiers not to leave injured, or dead, comrades behind. Ad hoc graves are more closely associated with violence in that they are often the place of death, as well as the place of the dead. Bodies may be deposited immediately at massacre sites, or lay where they fell in combat. Considering the brutal extrajudicial killing of civilians in Spain, the mass graves are also historic crime scenes.54 The ad hoc or clandestine grave may be messy or chaotic in nature with bodies in close proximity, or co-mingled together, which is very different from the bounded nature of the individual body in a single grave. Individual graves assert the dignity and primacy of an individual human life. Due to the hurried or careless deposition of bodies in some mass graves, they may appear to be in contorted positions, suggesting pain or the moment of death, even if the physical positioning of the body occurred postmortem. Bodies and objects may be in disarray, with human remains mixed with personal possessions, clothing, and battlefield detritus and materiel. However, because of their chaotic appearance, the mass grave may also be experienced as a moment frozen in time, conveying an intense immediacy. This immediacy also confers a type of authenticity, in contrast to the carefully managed and aestheticised representation of the dead in military cemeteries.55

Discussion: Materiality, Identity, and Temporality The different types of sites discussed here vary markedly in terms of how the dead materialised or rendered imaginatively and affectively present at a site. This includes the varying degrees to which any physical traces of the dead persist, and whether these traces are known, visible, and legible to the visitor. The presence/absence of the dead and their material form strongly determines the affective power of a site and its mnemonic affordances for the living. The presence of human remains shapes a site, but so does the precise material condition of those remains. The dead may be intact bodies, in single burials that foreground their individual identities, or disarticulated remains co-mingled in ossuaries that merge the dead into a collective burial. The different postmortem fates that may befall war dead are reflected in different material registers and materials used as indices for the dead, depending on whether their remains are ever recovered or identified. The category of war dead includes bodies without names and names without bodies, and the memorial forms in cemeteries may need to accommodate both. Cemeteries strive for a precise accounting of the identity and location of the dead, but the battlefield is characterised by a lingering uncertainty and instability around the presence/absence of the dead.56 In both the Western Front and Spain, the volume of death that occurred means there are still human remains lying unrecovered and human bodies have decomposed into the ground becoming part of the landscape where they lie. This is reflected in the observation that the landscape at Verdun was “A third soil, a third iron, a third flesh: it’s what my grandfather used to say to me about the land of the battlefield.”57 The battlefields can be an important site for connecting with the dead, as visitors may have some knowledge of the events that took place there, and descendants of the dead may know the places their relatives 283

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fought and even where they died. This means they can retrace the steps of those who fell in battle, and occupy the same physical space as the dead, gaining a sense of proximity even after decades have elapsed. For the missing dead, whose remains are never recovered, the battlefield has a particular mnemonic force, as the place of their last hours and as the likely resting place of their remains. This significance is clear in the way battle names and battlefield soil is used in memorials. The Australian War Memorial in London does not include the names of individual soldiers, but instead, the granite stones are inscribed with the names of 23,844 towns in which the Australian soldiers were born, in Australia, the UK, and elsewhere. Parts of some town names are picked out in bolder type, creating the names of 47 pivotal battles in which Australians fought.58 In this way, the place of birth and place of combat or death represents the biography of thousands of soldiers. In the ossuary at Verdun, the caskets are inscribed with the names of 46 localities or landmarks from the battlefield. “Caskets stood in for places, places stood in for the missing bodies, and together they assembled a ‘proper’ burial.”59 The massed ranks of headstones manage the tension between the individual and collective identities of the dead soldiers, holding the two in a kind of equilibrium. An example of how this tension is contained can be seen in the selection of personalised inscriptions, and different religious symbols, for the bodies of identified soldiers, as opposed to a standard form of words for the graves of the unknown. The uniformity of headstones and regimented layout not only communicates the ideal of equality in death, but it contributes to the sense of massive scale with the cumulative effect of individual but identical headstones forming a composite whole. This conveys the scale of the loss. It also lends visual support to a politically promulgated vision, certainly in the case of the First World War and later by Franco in Spain with the Valle de los Caídos, of soldiers sharing a kinship beyond the opposed entities that they might have been fighting for due to their shared experience of war. Typically, violence is sublimated and denied here in comparison to the other sites in the warscape. Again, the case of the Valle goes against the grain here for by making the incarcerated defeated build, through forced labour, a funerary monument to those fallen on the side of the victorious. The Valle de los Caídos prolonged the war-time violence for decades through a punitive policy that cemented social injustices and created long-term resentment. The location of military cemeteries, both of World War I and the Spanish Civil War, in locations that are physically distinct from the place of death, but nevertheless in close proximity, is important to reflect upon. The cemeteries are situated in the landscape of the battle but at a safe distance, referencing the trauma of battle but also moving on from it. The creation of cemeteries close to battlefields serves to consecrate a wider landscape and claim more terrain for memorial purposes. Moving the bodies away from where they fell is part of the work of reparation and healing. These sites are designed to convey both eternal rest for the dead and the enduring commitment of future generations to remember and honour the fallen. A further layer to the semiotics of these sites however, is that, as in the case of postwar Francoist Spain, imbedded in the official cemeteries, memorials, and commemorative ceremonies dedicated to those “Fallen for God and for Spain” can be a 284

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lesson about who ultimately has the right to mourn, and which dead has the right to be remembered. Proximity to human remains is not the same as an emotional or imaginative closeness to the past. Some sites where the dead are evoked through their absences can have a stronger affective hold than the places where their mortal remains are buried. Abandoned and ruined settlements are characterised by the intense sense of lives interrupted and the inhabitants of buildings and owners of possessions who are either dead or displaced. With their recognizable order, the identifiable outlines of streets and buildings, reduced to rubble, these ruined settlements can have both the landmark effect of cemeteries and the unsettling effect of the disorderly mass graves. The ruined homes of “dead places” have complex temporal associations. Mundane and domestic buildings and objects are highly relatable to most of us as civilians, and may be more emotionally affecting than materiel or military ephemera. As Shanks et al. describe, seeing mundane objects in association with death and destruction very effectively communicates the power of violence to tear the fabric of normal lives, and triggers strong levels of recognition, empathy, and fear for the contingent nature of our own lives.60 Ruined towns and villages convey the moments of devastation that produced them with a powerful immediacy, and allow the visitor insights into the extreme force required to destroy walls and ceilings, and the frighteningly arbitrary violence that allows some furniture and household possessions to remain intact among ruins. It is jarring and unsettling to see ruination of modern places, because ruination is normally associated with long timeframes and antiquity. The temporal affordances of battlefields are similarly complex. As Carman and Carman note, the battlefield is initially created by the historic event of battle, and the specific day of a battle event, such as the launch of an offensive, or a victory, may persist as a day of commemoration.61 The time frame of these events can vary from just 24 hours in the case of Fromelles to months, or even years for the entrenched battle lines of the Somme. Yet, the battlefield is also created by much longer decisions on preservation, commemoration, and changing uses of the terrain. It is also shaped by longer processes of environmental change and plants and wildlife reclaim damaged and abandoned landscapes. The resurgence of nature on historic battlefields evokes the passing of time since the war, and references longer, non-human timeframes. In contrast, the environment of the military cemetery is maintained in stasis to evoke an eternal present. Likewise, the ruins of Belchite in their crumbling demand that a choice be made about whether and how to maintain them. Paradoxical situation that a state of ruination normally caused by the passing of time is being held in stasis and further ruination held at bay.

Conclusion The sites considered here can act as indices of the multiple facets of war, allowing the representation of both military and civilian experiences, and of violence and destruction, as well as healing, mourning, and reconstruction. These sites also vary by the presence or absence of surviving material traces, and the degree to which these traces are visible and legible to those who encounter them. This determines the type 285

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of imaginative or mnemonic work that the visitor has to put into the site and the degree to which their experiences are mediated by expert interpretation or aesthetic. On first sight, it would appear that the presence or absence of human remains is of overwhelming importance in characterising these sites, determining the forms of memory and mourning enacted there. Even those sites devoid of the biological traces of the dead however afford a form of proximity to the dead and are full of alternative indices for them. Some of these can be subtle and unexpected, activated by a forceful absence, in the case of “dead places.” In these abandoned settlements where the streets, buildings, and surviving material culture indicate that people should be there, the absence of these people can be experienced as a powerful index for the dead. Where the remains of the dead are present, mass graves that are officially designated such as the Ossuary at Verdun can be sites of pilgrimage, they can share some of the settling capacity of cemeteries in anchoring mourning, they can also be eloquent communicators of official discourse and platforms for its contestation. Ad hoc or clandestine mass graves are very different: often avoided as “haunted” parts of a landscape, they unsettle, they are markers of silenced voices, uncertain memories, suppressed emotions. In landscapes saturated with loss of life, not only with the dead, but specifically with those missing without trace and unidentified bodies without names, there is a pervading instability about where the dead have ended up and where to connect with them. It is unsurprising that physical places and the missing dead elide in complex and layered ways. Depending on how death is marked or memorialised, it inhabits the landscape in different ways, in terms of its affective and semiotic resonances for the living. Dead settlements are ascribed a form of personhood, characterised as killed, becoming a ghost (rather than inhabited by ghosts), landscapes are anthropomorphised as “wounded” by battle. In the end whether in battlefields, cemeteries, ruined settlements, or mass graves, absences become embodied in the monuments and rubble while bodies come to signify absences through their dislocation. Mass death, through its scale and violence, seems to always exceed the capacity of survivors to fully process it or “settle” the dead even when people are “properly” buried in cemeteries. As a result, the presence of absence lingers.

Notes 1 Benedikt Korf et al. “The geography of warscape,” Third World Quarterly 31, no. 3 (2010); Carolyn Nordstrom, “War on the front lines,” in Fieldwork under Fire, ed. Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius C.G.N. Robben (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal, The Archaeology of the Spanish Civil War (London: Taylor and Francis, 2020). 2 Layla Renshaw, “Forensic archaeology and the production of memorial sites: situating the mass grave in a wider memory landscape,” in The Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place, ed. Sarah de Nardi, Hilary Orange, Steven High, and Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto (London: Routledge, 2019). 3 Paola Filippucci, “‘These battered hills’: landscape and memory in Verdun (France),” in Places of Memory: Spatialised Practices of Remembrance from Prehistory to Today, ed. Christian Horn, Gustav Wollentz, Giampiero di Maida, and Annette Haug (Oxford: Archeopress, 2020); Bruce Scates, “The unquiet grave: exhuming and reburying the dead of Fromelles,”

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4 5

6

7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

in Battlefield Events: Landscape, Commemoration and Heritage, ed. Keir Reeves, Geoff Bird, Laura James, Birger Stichelbaut, and Jean Bourgeois (London: Routledge, 2016); Dacia Viejo-Rose, Reconstructing Spain: Cultural Heritage and Memory after the Civil War (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2011). David W. Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia, and Canada, 1919–1939 (Oxford: Berg, 1998). Shanti Sumartojo, “Anzac kinship and national identity on the Australian Remembrance Trail,” in Nation, Memory and Great War Commemoration: Mobilizing the Past in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. ed. Shanti Sumartojo and Ben Wellings (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang Publishing, 2014). Catriona Pennell, “‘To leave a wooden poppy cross of our own’: First World War battlefield spaces in the era of post-living memory,” in Commemorative Spaces of the First World War: Historical Geographies at the Centenary, ed. James Wallis and David Harvey (London: Routledge, 2017). Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust. Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain (London: Harper Press, 2012). Francisco Ferrándiz, “Exhuming the defeated: Civil War Mass Graves in 21st century Spain,” American Ethnologist 40, no. 1 (2013); Gonzalez-Ruibal, The Archaeology; Salvatore Garfi, Conflict Landscapes: An Archaeology of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2019). Ann Rigney, “Reframing Waterloo: memory, mediation, experience,” in The Varieties of Historical Experience, ed. Stephan Palmie and Charles Stewart (London: Routledge, 2019). Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism. Alain Denizot, Douaumont. Vérité et légende (Saint-Amand-Montrond: Éditions Perrin, 2008). David J. Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Thomas W. Laqueur, “Among the graves,” London Review of Books, 30, 24, 18 December 2008). Filippucci, “These battered hills.” Jennifer Iles, “Recalling the ghosts of war: performing tourism on the battlefields of the Western Front,” Text and Performance Quarterly 26, no. 2 (2006). Gonzalez-Ruibal, The Archaeology. Paul Gough, “Sites in the imagination: the Beaumont Hamel Newfoundland memorial in the Somme,” Cultural Geographies 11 (2004); Sherman, The Construction; cf. Mads Daugbjerg, “Not mentioning the nation: banalities and boundaries at a Danish war heritage site,” History and Anthropology 22, no. 2 (2011). Filippucci, “These battered hills.” Iles, “Recalling the ghosts.” Sherman, The Construction. David Crane, Empires of the Dead: How One Man’s Vision Led to the Creation of WWI’s War Graves (London: William Collins, 2013); Thomas W. Laqueur, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Laqueur, The Work; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). Finn Stepputat, “Introduction,” in Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies, ed. Finn Stepputat (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014). Crane, Empires. Robert Hertz, Death and the Right Hand (Aberdeen: Cohen and West, 1960 [1907]). Stephan Goebel, The Great War and Mediaeval Memory: war, remembrance and medievalism in Britain and Germany, 1914–1940, (Cambridge: Cambridge Universityt Press, 2007); Alex King, “Remembering and forgetting in the public memorials of the Great War,” in The Art of Forgetting, ed. Suzanne Kuchler and Adrian Forty (Oxford: Berg,1999); Mike Rowlands, “Remembering to forget: sublimation as sacrifice in war memorials,” in The Art of Forgetting, ed. Suzanne Kuchler and Adrian Forty (Oxford: Berg, 1999).

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Dacia Viejo-Rose et al. 26 Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Filippucci, “These battered hills.” 27 Hertz, Death. 28 Heonik Kwon, After the Massacre: Consolation and Commemoration at Ha My and My Lai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry, eds., Death and the Regeneration of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Laqueur, “Among the graves.” 29 Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey, Death, Memory and Material Culture (New York: Routledge, 2020); Stephan Feuchtwang, After the Event: the transmission of grievous loss in Germany, China and Taiwan (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011); Janet Carsten, Ghosts of Memory: Essays on Remembrance and Relatedness (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007). 30 Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002). 31 Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 1914–1918: Understanding the Great War (London: Profile Books, 2002). 32 Paola Filippucci, “Life and death in a conflict landscape: visitor and local perspectives from the Western Front,” in Conflict Landscapes: Materiality and Meaning in Contested Places, ed. Nicholas J. Saunders and Paul Cornish (London and New York: Routledge, 2021). 33 Filippucci, “Life and death.” 34 Paola Filippucci, “‘Dead for France’: things and memory in the ‘destroyed villages’ of Verdun (France),” in The Surviving Thing: Personal Objects in the Aftermath of Violence, ed. Zuzanna Dziuban and Eva Stanczik, Special Issue, Journal of Material Culture 25, no. 4 (2020). 35 Helen Farmer, Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 36 Farmer, Martyred Village. 37 Stéphane Michonneau, Fue ayer Belchite. Un pueblo frente a la cuestión del pasado (Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2017). 38 Pierre Nora, “Between memory and history: les lieux de mémoire,” Representations 26 (Spring 1989). 39 Astrid Erll, Memory in Culture (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011). 40 “Huellas” means traces or tracks, also used in Spanish with reference to footprints or fingerprints. See Humberto Rivas, Huellas (Barcelona: Ediciones Anómales, 2006). 41 Robin Corfield, Don’t Forget Me Cobber: The Battle of Fromelles (Victoria, Miegunyah Press, 2009). 42 Winter, Sites of Memory. 43 Scates, “The unquiet grave”; Layla Renshaw, “Forensic science as right and ritual in the recovery of World War I soldiers from the mass graves at Fromelles,” in Un siècle de sites funéraires de la Grande Guerre. De l’histoire à la valorisation patrimoniale. Sous la dir. de Annette Becker et Stéphane Tison (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2018). 44 Daniel Sueiro, El Valle de los Caídos: Los secretos de la cripta franquista (Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros, 2006), 228. 45 Preston, The Spanish Holocaust. 46 Layla Renshaw, “Missing bodies near at hand: the dissonant memory and dormant graves of the Spanish Civil War,” in An Anthropology of Absence, ed. Mikke Bille, Frida Hastrup and Tim Flohr Sorensen (London: Springer, 2010). 47 Ferrandiz, “Exhuming.” 48 Emilio Silva and Santiago Macías, Las Fosas de Franco: Los Republicanos que el Dictador Dejó en las Cunetas (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2003). 49 Renshaw, “Forensic science.” 50 Renshaw, “Missing bodies.” 51 Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 52 Renshaw, “Missing bodies.”

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From Dead Places to Places of the Dead 53 Caroline Steele, “Archaeology and the forensic investigation of recent mass graves: ethical issues for a new practice of archaeology,” Archaeologies 4 (2008). 54 Ferrandiz, “Exhuming”; Silva and Macias, Las Fosas. 55 For both images and critical reflections upon images of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War, see Francesc Torres, “The images of memory: a civil narration of history. A photo essay,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 9, no. 2 (2008); Ofelia Ferrán, “Grievability and the politics of visibility: the photography of Francesc Torres and the mass graves of the Spanish Civil War,” in Memory and Postwar Memorials: Confronting the Violence of the Past, ed. Marc Silberman and Florence Vatan (New York: Palgrave, 2013). 56 Renshaw, “Forensic archaeology.” 57 Research participant cited in Filippucci, “These battered hills,” 90. 58 Richard Alleyne, “The Queen unveils tribute to Australia’s fallen,” The Telegraph, 12 November 2003. 59 Filippucci, “These battered hills,” 85. 60 Michael Shanks, David Platt, and William Rathje, “The perfume of garbage: modernity and the archaeological,” Modernism/Modernity 11, no. 1 (2004). 61 John Carman and Patricia Carman, “The intangible presence: investigating battlefields,” in Heritage Studies: Methods and Approaches, ed. Marie-Louise Stig Sørensen and John Carman (London and New York: Routledge, 2009).

Bibliography Alleyne, Richard. “The Queen unveils tribute to Australia’s fallen.” The Telegraph, 12 November 2003. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane and Annette Becker. 1914–1918: Understanding the Great War. London: Profile Books, 2002. Bloch, Maurice and Jonathan Parry, eds. Death and the Regeneration of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Carman, John and Patricia Carman. “The intangible presence: investigating battlefields.” In Heritage Studies: Methods and Approaches, edited by Marie-Louise Stig Sørensen and John Carman, 292–315. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Carsten, Janet. Ghosts of Memory: Essays on Remembrance and Relatedness. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Corfield, Robin. Don’t Forget Me Cobber: The Battle of Fromelles. Victoria: Miegunyah Press, 2009. Crane, David. Empires of the Dead: How One Man’s Vision Led to the Creation of WWI’s War Graves. London: William Collins, 2013. Daugbjerg, Mads. “Not mentioning the nation: banalities and boundaries at a Danish war heritage site.” History and Anthropology 22, no. 2 (2011): 243–259. Denizot, Alain. Douaumont. Vérité et légende. Saint-Amand-Montrond: Éditions Perrin, 2008. Erll, Astrid. Memory in Culture. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011. Farmer, Helen. Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Ferrán, Ofelia. “Grievability and the politics of visibility: the photography of Francesc Torres and the mass graves of the Spanish Civil War.” In Memory and Postwar Memorials: Confronting the Violence of the Past, edited by Marc Silberman and Florence Vatan, 117–136. New York: Palgrave, 2013. Ferrándiz, Francisco. “Exhuming the defeated: Civil War mass graves in 21st century Spain.” American Ethnologist 40, no. 1 (2013): 38–54. Feuchtwang, Stephan. After the Event: The Transmission of Grievous Loss in Germany, China and Taiwan. New York: Berghahn Books, 2011.

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Dacia Viejo-Rose et al. Filippucci, Paola. “‘These battered hills’: landscape and memory in Verdun (France).” In Places of Memory: Spatialised Practices of Remembrance from Prehistory to Today, edited by Christian Horn, Gustav Wollentz, Giampiero di Maida, and Annette Haug, 82–96. Oxford: Archeopress, 2020. Filippucci, Paola. “‘Dead for France’: things and memory in the ‘destroyed villages’ of Verdun (France).” In The Surviving Thing: Personal Objects in the Aftermath of Violence, edited by Zuzanna Dziuban and Eva Stanczik. Special Issue. Journal of Material Culture 25, no. 4 (2020): 391–407. Filippucci, Paola. “Life and death in a conflict landscape: visitor and local perspectives from the Western Front.” In Conflict Landscapes: Materiality and Meaning in Contested Places, edited by Nicholas J. Saunders and Paul Cornish, 163–179. London and New York: Routledge, 2021. Garfi, Salvatore. Conflict Landscapes: An Archaeology of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2019. Goebel, Stephan. The Great War and Mediaeval Memory: War, Remembrance and Medievalism in Britain and Germany, 1914-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Gonzalez-Ruibal, Alfredo. The Archaeology of the Spanish Civil War. London: Taylor and Francis, 2020. Gough, Paul. “Sites in the imagination: the Beaumont Hamel Newfoundland memorial in the Somme.” Cultural Geographies 11 (2004): 235–258. Hallam, Elizabeth and Jenny Hockey. Death, Memory and Material Culture. New York: Routledge, 2020. Hertz, Robert. Death and the Right Hand. Aberdeen: Cohen and West, 1960 [1907]. Iles, Jennifer. “Recalling the ghosts of war: performing tourism on the battlefields of the Western Front.” Text and Performance Quarterly 26, no. 2 (2006): 162–180. King, Alex. “Remembering and forgetting in the public memorials of the Great War.” In The Art of Forgetting, edited by Suzanne Kuchler and Adrian Forty, 147–169. Oxford: Berg, 1999. Korf, Benedikt, Michelle Engeler, and Tobias Hangmann. “The geography of warscape.” Third World Quarterly 31, no. 3 (2010): 385–399. Kwon, Heonik. After the Massacre: Consolation and Commemoration at Ha My and My Lai. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Laqueur, Thomas W. “Among the graves.” London Review of Books 30, no. 24 (18 December 2008): 3–9. Laqueur, Thomas W. The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Lloyd, David W. Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia, and Canada, 1919-1939. Oxford: Berg, 1998. Margalit, Avishai. The Ethics of Memory. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002. Michonneau, Stéphane. Fue ayer Belchite. Un pueblo frente a la cuestión del pasado. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2017. Nora, Pierre. “Between memory and history: les lieux de mémoire.” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7–24. Nordstrom, Carolyn. “War on the front lines.” In Fieldwork under Fire, edited by Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius C. G. N. Robben, 129–153. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Pennell, Catriona. “‘To leave a wooden poppy cross of our own’: First World War battlefield spaces in the era of post-living memory.” In Commemorative Spaces of the First World War: Historical Geographies at the Centenary, edited by James Wallis and David Harvey, 173–189. London: Routledge, 2017. Preston, Paul. The Spanish Holocaust. Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain. London: Harper Press, 2012.

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From Dead Places to Places of the Dead Renshaw, Layla. “Missing bodies near at hand: the dissonant memory and dormant graves of the Spanish Civil War.” In An Anthropology of Absence, edited by Mikke Bille, Frida Hastrup, and Tim Flohr Sorensen, 45–61. London: Springer, 2010. Renshaw, Layla. “Forensic science as right and ritual in the recovery of World War I soldiers from the mass graves at Fromelles.” In Un siècle de sites funéraires de la Grande Guerre. De l’histoire à la valorisation patrimoniale. Sous la direction de Annette Becker et Stéphane Tison, 205–225. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2018. Renshaw, Layla. “Forensic archaeology and the production of memorial sites: situating the mass grave in a wider memory landscape.” In The Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place, edited by Sarah de Nardi, Hilary Orange, Steven High, and Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, 99–108. London: Routledge, 2019. Rigney, Ann. “Reframing Waterloo: memory, mediation, experience.” In The Varieties of Historical Experience, edited by Stephan Palmie and Charles Stewart, 121–139. London: Routledge, 2019. Rivas, H. 2006. Huellas. Barcelona: Ediciones Anómales. Robben, A. and Nordstrom, C. (1995) ‘The anthropology and ethnography of violence and sociopolitical conflict’, in Robben & Nordstrom (Eds) Fieldwork under Fire. Rowlands, M. (1999) ‘Remembering to forget: sublimation as sacrifice in war memorials’. In S. Kuchler and A. Forty (eds) The Art of Forgetting. Oxford: Berg, pp. 129–145. Scates, B. (2016) “The Unquiet Grave: Exhuming and Reburying the Dead of Fromelles”, in Battlefield Events: Landscape, Commemoration and Heritage, Reeves K., Bird G., James L., Stichelbaut B. & Bourgeois J., London: Routledge p. 13–27. Shanks, M., Platt, D. and Rathje, W. (2004) The perfume of garbage: Modernity and the archaeological. Modernism/Modernity 11(1): 61–83 Sherman, D.J. (1999) The Construction of Memory in Interwar France. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Silva, Emilio and Santiago Macías. Las Fosas de Franco: Los Republicanos que el Dictador Dejó en las Cunetas. Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2003. Steele, Caroline. “Archaeology and the forensic investigation of recent mass graves: ethical issues for a new practice of archaeology.” Archaeologies 4 (2008): 414–428. Stepputat, Finn. “Introduction.” In Governing the Dead: Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies, edited by Finn Stepputat, 3–10. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014. Sueiro, Daniel. El Valle de los Caídos: Los secretos de la cripta franquista. Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros, 2006. Sumartojo, Shanti. “Anzac kinship and national identity on the Australian Remembrance Trail.” In Nation, Memory and Great War Commemoration: Mobilizing the Past in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, edited by Shanti Sumartojo and Ben Wellings, 291–306. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang Publishing, 2014. Torres, Francesc. “The images of memory: a civil narration of history. A photo essay.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 9, no. 2 (2008): 157–175. Verdery, Katherine. The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Viejo-Rose, Dacia. Reconstructing Spain: Cultural Heritage and Memory after the Civil War. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2011. Winter, Jay. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

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20 FROM TRAUMA TO TOURISM Balancing the Needs of the Living and the Dead

Joanne Mather Sites of death form part of the wider landscape of tourism that is commonly known as dark tourism. Though this is a concept with much gradience, it is used here to refer to the darker end of the spectrum in relation to tourism at sites of traumatic death. Dark tourism is not a new phenomenon; it is one which has grown with globalisation and the development of mass media and international travel. This growth led to people who are unconnected to the events of the sites still wanting to consume the site. An example of this is international visitors with no personal connection to the events of September 11, 2001 in the United States wishing to see Ground Zero and those with no connection to the Holocaust wishing to engage with Auschwitz-Birkenau. Negotiating the path between the living and the dead at sites of dark tourism is a complex one but it is something that needs to be considered by those developing these sites as well as those visiting. This is because western society can be interpreted to sequester or even deny death and as such dark tourism acts as a gateway for the living to investigate death and understand the dead in a way everyday life protects from. Karen Till in 2012 suggested that these spaces should “be seen as thresholds through which the living can connect to the voices, imprints and inheritances of those who have gone before.”1 These sites should be considered as something very different to the usual tourist attractions. At the core of the Nazi Parties Final Solution policy were the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camps. Auschwitz is situated within Oświęcim, Poland and three kilometres from the small village of Brzezinka is Birkenau.2 Auschwitz-Birkenau has been classified as the “epitome of a dark tourism destination”3 and the “spot that symbolizes the pinnacle of European dark tourism.”4 Visitation to this site can lead people to widely divergent experiences, inclusive of a fulfilling personal heritage experience, school education visits and wider educational accomplishment, a part of a tour itinerary or just satisfaction of a curiosity about bizarre and extreme human behaviour.

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Ground Zero is a term that relates to an explosion; it is the position on the Earth’s surface where the bomb is detonated, and survival chances are measured in relation to this point.5 It was a name given to the site of the World Trade Center in New York City, United States by the media within 24 hours of the Twin Towers falling, and the name stuck.6 On September 11, 2001, as part of a larger, co-ordinated terrorist attack, two planes flew directly into the twin towers of the World Trade Center causing the complete collapse of both buildings.7 Memorialisation happened at the site, and connected sites such as firehouses, with great speed through impromptu shrines and tributes. In addition to this, the New York Historical Society and the National Museum of American History began “collecting” the site almost immediately.8 There was much debate around various designs inclusive of, rebuilding the tower, creating a memorial and letting the site go to ruin. This meant the collection of artefacts was broad and raised several issues around representation and inclusiveness when exploring material memorialisation.9 Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland and Ground Zero in the centre of New York City provide two contrasting approaches of moving from sites of trauma to sites of tourism that highlight the impact of different methods. At Auschwitz I, the site was reconstituted at several points throughout history in line with different political agendas which manipulated the site impacting the interaction between the living and the dead. However, this is contrasted at Birkenau (Auschwitz II) which portrays a site of absence, untouched by the drive of managerial intervention; it was left for many years and so provides a quieter place where some argue that the voices of the dead can be heard more clearly. Ground Zero is a site of destruction where heritage management began even as rescue was still underway. This means that the time lapse between the event and conservation that appears at Auschwitz-Birkenau is not present at Ground Zero. The process of moving from an area imbued with trauma to a space of tourism is complex and difficult to manage. It can be difficult to balance the living who are personally impacted by the trauma, society, wider tourism and the needs of the dead. Heritage management acts almost as a diplomat within this negotiation. It is important for all involved in these sites, the families of the deceased, the developers, the visitors and the dead, to get the balance between the living and the dead correct to allow both voices to be heard and experienced.

The Need for Social Consensus Clashes occur in places of darkest tourism because they become symbolic of further meaning and events. Wright argued in 2009 that when the memory of an event that holds special importance for a social group is linked to a specific place, that place takes on additional meaning.10 They are often referred to as being “hallowed,” meaning they are perceived as sacred. When the site’s history and purpose is in disagreement, it can lead to misrepresentations which then impact the voices of the dead. The ethical obligations surrounding the heritage management of dark tourist sites require at least a degree of social consensus. The idea of memorialising the dead is hampered where there is a lack of social consensus around the site as differing interpretations can impact negatively on authenticity at a darkest tourism site. 293

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Tunbridge and Ashworth state that a “common justification for preserving artefacts and sites relating to the past is the contribution these make to the construction of an accurate record of what has occurred.”11 If this is the case, then the absence of authenticity can make a site of darkest tourism worthless when providing a narrative between the living and the dead. The impact of absence of authenticity and negative impact can be seen through the Auschwitz I site. In the early 1990s, a group of international visitors converged at AuschwitzBirkenau. For many communities, it was the first opportunity to mourn lost friends and family. What they discovered was that the camps were far removed from what they had lived through as survivors, or what they had learnt through sources such as family members or the media.12 When Primo Levi, who spent 11 months at Auschwitz prior to liberation and is well known for his autobiographical writings about the camp, returned to Auschwitz, he found the site to be “static, rearranged and contrived.”13 The contrived feeling that Levi experienced when visiting Auschwitz was caused by the management of the site by the Auschwitz State Museum (ASM). The ASM was established by the Polish Government in 1941 and was charged with the creation of a museum at Auschwitz I that would predominantly commemorate the “martyrdom” of the Polish nation and its people.14 Due to limited funds, the ASM converted existing structures at Auschwitz I to house exhibitions. In addition to this, Auschwitz II, Birkenau, fell into disrepair due to the implementation of a nondisturbance policy by the Polish government at the Birkenau site which meant it could not be conserved or used. This resulted in the focus being placed on Auschwitz I, which was transformed to act in the place of Birkenau, with their histories becoming muddled.15 Also, the creation of a mixed history of the Auschwitz site itself, the reality of the different communities who were imprisoned or executed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, especially the Jewish community, were either not presented or were marginalised.16 This misrepresentation of communities led to friction both around Auschwitz and globally, an example that demonstrates this is that of the Carmelite Nuns. In 1984 Cardinal Macharski, Archbishop of Krakow, made the decision to move a Carmelite convent to a building on the periphery of Auschwitz known as the Old Theatre. This building had originally been a theatre but was repurposed as a storeroom during World War II for Zyklon B gas.17 The Old Theatre did not constitute a part of the Auschwitz Museum and so, not foreseeing any legal issues surrounding Auschwitz as a monument of world heritage, the ASM granted the nuns a 99-year lease to convert the buildings into a convent.18 The controversy around the Auschwitz Convent first stems from an announcement made by the organisation Kirche in Not (Church in Need) in May 1985. This organisation, among others, had expressed a wish to help make some necessary repairs to the building chosen for the convent. The organisation placed a statement into a bulletin that read that the convent was to be “a spiritual fortress” and a “guarantee of the conversion of many stray brothers.”19 This was interpreted by Jewish organisations in Western Europe, Israel and America as an attempt at converting Jews and to de-Judaise Shoah and instead Christianise it.20 The Jewish organisations stressed that 294

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while they did not object to a convent dedicated to the memorial of Catholic suffering in Auschwitz, it should not be situated in the boundaries of the camp.21 The Jewish aspect of Shoah was already scarcely mentioned in the official communist-era descriptions on this site at this time and so it was felt that the presence of a convent would contribute to minimising this even further.22 The Polish response to Jewish objections was a serious one that involved two Geneva conventions in 1986 and 1987 with a Catholic delegation headed by four cardinals present and representatives of the Jewish organisations. Chrostowski, a Polish Catholic Priest, who in the post-Communist era worked for a time in Catholic-Jewish relations, lays claim to the fact that it was not a simple controversy around the space itself but something much more.23 He claims that the convent debate came to symbolise the fact that Jews and Christians or more specifically Jews and Poles were still unable to cope with the difficult past they had shared.24 The controversy around the convent laid open the latent stereotypes and prejudices of communities who were only in the infancy of rebuilding. Interwoven throughout the controversy at the convent, there appears desire for ownership and conflicting claims of identity. According to the Jewish Virtual Library in 2008, when Jews heard the word Auschwitz they automatically thought of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as this is the symbolism that is tied to their collective unconscious. They thought of Auschwitz purely in Jewish terms as the death camp where Jews were either worked to death or sent to the gas chambers. Poles on the other side of the controversy had a different collective unconscious around Auschwitz which was centred around Auschwitz I.25 Poles of a certain generation had been taught that Auschwitz I was a site of Polish martyrdom where 4 million had died, 50% of which were Poles.26 This understanding of the Auschwitz site occurred due to the mismanagement of statistics by the chief historian of the Auschwitz Museum to reflect the communist party dialogue.27 The impact of this understanding of Auschwitz was Poles feeling confident in allowing the Carmelite convent here and having it as a Christianised site.28 These conflicting interpretations of the site, caused by the misrepresentation of the history of Auschwitz-Birkenau, show the importance of understanding shared narratives at sites of darkest tourism as well as ensuring that the voices of the dead are portrayed accurately and are not forced to submit to the narratives of the living. Despite the need to reach social consensus at sites of darkest tourism to allow the dead to speak, conflict of interest and fight of ownership is something that is unavoidable. This is due to the different needs of those invested in the management of a darkest tourist site. Those connected in a personal way to the dead are going to want their individual stories and messages to come through, whereas those connected to managing the site are going to look at connecting the site to a wider audience by fitting the tragedy into a wider context. It is therefore necessary to look at ways of balancing all the needs of those invested in the sites as they are developed as darkest tourism attractions. The heritage management of Ground Zero attempted this through the development of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to work with the private investors and act as a voice for those who had lost loved ones in the 9/11 World Trade Center attack. This attempt was not as successful as the 295

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initiators had hoped, possibly due to the proximity of the event; those who were personally invested voiced the view that the site was a graveyard and should be developed for memorialisation only. From September 12, 2001, once it was clear that there were no survivors at the site, rescue teams aimed to separate the structure from the dead.29 Authorities made a decision to reopen Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island to aid in the process of sorting and clearing the Ground Zero site. Debris from the World Trade Center was sent by dump truck and barge to Fresh Kills. Upon arrival it was separated by size and material. It was then processed and sorted into human remains, evidence and personal belongings that could be returned to relatives and other objects.30 There was some criticism of the movement of debris to Fresh Kills. It was felt that the dead had been cast aside to allow for the living, especially the companies involved in the ownership of Ground Zero, who wanted the site cleared so they could rebuild. Horning, whose son died in the attacks stated, “they can gift-wrap it all they want. They still put them on top of garbage.”31 These criticisms are based on the approach taken to the dead once the recovery was deemed complete in July 2002. In total, 4,257 human fragments were found at Fresh Kills, most of which were so small they were only found in a second round of sorting just before the site was closed.32 Three hundred new victims were identified from these remains, but there were many families who by July 2002 had recovered nothing of their loved ones. Despite this, once Fresh Kills was closed, the debris was considered landfill waste. The treatment of the human remains upon the closing of Fresh Kills was perceived to be profane. To not be able to lay to rest the deceased causes an emotional tension and many families of those who died in 9/11 have not been able to undertake this act. Horning founded a non-profit organisation to fight for a resifting of the debris. She argued that parts of the rubble had not been screened properly and that the finer particles, or dust, should be removed from the landfill to a more appropriate location as they likely contained cremated remains of the victims.33 As part of the court case, Beck, a senior supervisor for Taylor Recycling Facility, gave a statement under oath regarding the treatment of this dust. He stated that some of the finely sifted debris, which may have contained the cremated remains of human victims, was taken away to be used for paving and filling at other jobs being done by the private contractor used at Fresh Kills.34 Horning lost the court case as it was stated, there was no proof her son’s remains were in the dust and as such she could claim no property rights.35 In relation to the site of the World Trade Center, memorial designs began being posted on the Internet from September 12, 2001 with ideas ranging from leaving the ruins as a site of absence, much like Birkenau, to rebuilding the World Trade Center.36 Symbolism began immediately at the site when it was redefined in the media as Ground Zero, suggesting an annihilation and need to start from scratch.37 However, despite the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers the site was not emptied, there were other surviving structures in the vicinity that would feed into the management and redevelopment of the site.38 This contrast of annihilation and survival led to obvious conflict in the management of the site very early on as sacred and commercial interest clashed. 296

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In terms of land ownership, the situation should have been surprisingly straightforward. The land was owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and property developer Larry Silverstein had signed a 99-year lease over the 10 million square foot of the World Trade Center just weeks before the event.39 This meant Silverstein had the rights to decide how to rebuild, and as he had to pay the lease, his concern was to rebuild as much office and commercial space as swiftly as possible.40 While the rebuilding of this site should technically fall to these parties as theirs was the legal right, Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani decided that planning business as usual was not a viable option for the site due to the events that had occurred there. As a response to this, Pataki and Giuliani set up a public organisation called the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to work with the two parties with legal ownership of the site so that the redevelopment of Ground Zero was an open process where the many sensitivities surrounding the site were considered.41 However, in its first press release just two months after the 9/11 attack, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation stated that it aimed “To work closely with the private sector to determine a proper market-driven response to the economic and infrastructure needs of Lower Manhattan.”42 They made no reference to the interests of community groups, survivors or the families of victims, which was one of the main priorities of the group when it was set up. This led to the development of 9/11 family groups such as the Coalition of 9/11 Families, Give Your Voice, September’s Mission and Take Back the Memorial.43 This memorial discourse highlighted the need to move carefully, there were several stakeholders, legitimised through legal claim and through claim of sacred ground, who had the right to speak on the development of the site. The importance of reaching a social consensus at sites of dark tourism is clear from these case studies. When the site’s history is in disagreement, it leads to a misrepresentation of what has occurred at the site, again silencing the stories of the deceased. The way to achieve this is beyond the scope of this work. However, it is possible to see from the case studies of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ground Zero that clarity of purpose, honest use of figures and understanding the potential for mixed investment at the site should play a role.

Consumerism and Kitschification Duncan and Wallach argued in 1980 that the way in which land and architecture are used demonstrates something about the belief systems of the societies in which the darkest tourist site exists.44 Ground Zero can be used as an example of this; some of the most irreconcilable differences occurred between those who had commercial interests in the site and those who understood it as having become a community of the dead. Ground Zero became a sight of dark tourism from the moment the event that decimated the area took place. As the world watched the planes hit the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, followed by their collapse, Ground Zero’s fate as a site of dark tourism was sealed. The first movement towards dark tourism at this site through formalised heritage management came nearly four months after the events of 9/11 297

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when a public-viewing platform (as well as a private one for Port Authority) was opened around the edge of Ground Zero.45 Tourists were regulated to the edge of the site where the viewing platform was set up. The viewing platform was 5-metre high, made of plywood and could hold 300 people; it was designed to make the taking of photographs easy.46 At its opening ceremony on the December 30, 2001, Mayor Guiliani stated: We decided to put up these platforms because there’s been so much of an interest in seeing this site … People from all over the world want to come here, for I think the most appropriate of reasons … Because they realise that something very horrendous and very magnificent happened here. It’s going to be part of our history forever.47 The issue with Ground Zero as a site of dark tourism at this time was that it was reactionary. The implications of the viewing platform were not considered, meaning that in some instances the living felt that the dead were being disrespected. For the families of the dead, Ground Zero was an open grave. One woman who lost her daughter on 9/11 explained, “it is supposed to be a sacred place now … My child’s body is all over that place.”48 After 9/11, there was a downfall in tourism to New York but once the platform was opened visitors came in mass. By the end of 2002, 3.5 million out of town visitors had been to the site, exceeding the 1.8 million that the viewing platform within the World Trade Center used to receive in a year.49 The viewing platform very swiftly became an addition to New York’s attractions list. Despite the popularity of the viewing platform, questions were raised almost immediately over whether having a viewing platform constructed so soon after the event, while clean-up was still underway, was appropriate. Many referred to it as an inadequate and inappropriate response to the tragedy that had occurred.50 The mayors’ speech at the viewing platform opening ceremony had an almost sensational element to it where he called people to prayer, but not for the dead. He stated, “it has to become a place in which anybody who comes here immediately they’re going to feel the great power and strength and emotion of what it means to be an American.”51 This initially appears to feed into concerns of inappropriate responses to the Ground Zero site that are not focused on the deceased. However, it could be argued that this is using only one very specific analysis of what was a national, media saturated event, above a singular personal loss. The issue with the Ground Zero viewing platforms, when compared to somewhere like Auschwitz, is that the unspoken rules that build up over time at a site of darkest tourism, such as levels of volume or if it is respectful to take photographs, had not had a chance to occur. One rescue and recovery worker who was working at the site argued “it’s appalling. All these people coming to look, to stare. I don’t like it … The tourists come and they mill around and then say, you know, ‘let’s get lunch,’ or whatever, and sometimes I can’t stand it.”52 The residents of New York felt that Ground Zero was not ready to become an attraction; it was a graveyard and should be treated as such, especially as the remains were still at the site as part of the rubble. 298

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The New York Office of Emergency Management disputed claims that they had turned Ground Zero into a tourist attraction. They claimed that they simply wished to provide a solution to the safety and security of those coming in to see Ground Zero.53 However, Diller, one of the architects of the platform stated, “if we’d known just how many people were going to use it, I’m not sure we would have done it.”54 Much of the anger of the tourism surrounding the viewing platform was based on the idea of Ground Zero as hallowed grounds and the assumption that there was a correct way to pay respect. The heritage management of the Ground Zero viewing platform failed to compel the majority of tourists to abide by this. In the rush to create a place for the dead and living to meet the dead was cast aside and lost in the rhetoric of tourism. Later on, as part of the permanent memorial, a museum was opened. The existence of a gift shop within the museum causes particular concerns when addressing the commercialisation of Ground Zero. Some visitors found the idea of a gift shop too crassly commercial.55 They argue that death is sold and packaged in a way that is kitsch and could lead to the softening of 9/11 for consumption. This commodity culture around the site of Ground Zero did not start at the 9/11 museum gift shop, but with street vendors selling trinkets and souvenirs, running across a spectrum of taste from framed photos of the burning towers to Osama Bin Laden toilet paper.56 The souvenir economy of Ground Zero provides an example of the extreme commodification that death and tragedy can face. However, around the time that the viewing platform was opened police began tightly monitoring the sale of commemorative objects by vendors, effectively drawing a line separating the sacred space of Ground Zero from the mundane and commercial space.57 The creation of the gift shop in the 9/11 museum allowed for these lines to be erased once again. Sturken refers to this as the “teddy-bearification” of 9/11 where a form of comfort culture is created in order to smooth over tragedy.58 This commercialisation of Ground Zero as a memorial represents a sphere of memory referred to by Burgoyne as commercial culture. This is where emotions surrounding the concept of turning tragedy into triumph are not only highly redemptive but extremely marketable.59 Burgoyne argues that “commercial culture engages the discourses of memory by invoking commercial products and representations as an aspect of national heritage.”60 As seen throughout this chapter, Ground Zero has been subject to a significant degree of commercialisation, shown in the disagreements surrounding the management and purpose of this site. Heller explains that: In the weeks and months following 9/11, the market for goods representing American patriotic unity and pride expanded dramatically. American consumers both participated in, and bore witness to, a rapid transformation of the World Trade Center attacks into commodities aimed at repacking turbulent and chaotic emotions, reducing them to a pious, quasi-religious nationalism.61 This commercial culture of memory was a collective ritual, which is seen in the purchase of kitsch Americana (teddy bears, fake dollar bills, etc), where marketers promote the promise of closure through consumption.62 The 9/11 Memorial Museum and its gift shop exemplifies this commercial culture of attempting to 299

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counter loss by promoting memorabilia as a way of drawing solace. Heller argues Ground Zero “has attained the cultural function of a trademark, one that symbolises a new kind of national identification – or national branding awareness, to adopt the jargon of advertising – alongside the almost sublime spectacle of national trauma.”63 At Auschwitz-Birkenau, there is evidence of commercialisation in the cost of entrance and guided tour, educational workshops and there is a small shop where books and postcards are available. However, this has not been met with the same level of discord as the commercialisation at Ground Zero. The reason for this is that the commercialisation at Auschwitz-Birkenau has not led to the mistreatment of the dead through the creation of kitschification. The commercialisation at Auschwitz-Birkenau is focused on the factual; you can’t stop and pick up a meal here or buy an Auschwitz snow globe, the focus remains on allowing the dead to share their stories with the living through books and imagery. Ground Zero’s commercialism, however, has moved beyond this and has allowed for the stories of the dead to be smoothed over so that the regular life of the tourist does not become disrupted. The gift shop, while containing some educational material, does not have the same focus as Auschwitz-Birkenau. During 9/11, 412 emergency service personnel lost their lives, with that number increasing due to post event health issues.64 As a memorial to this, you can purchase a cuddly German Shepherd search and rescue dog or a NYPD dog coat. It is this level of commercialism that should be avoided at sites of darkest tourism as it leads to the dead and their stories being packaged in a way that leads to the softening of tragedy for consumption.

Something Other There should be considerations of these sites as something very different to the usual tourist attractions due to them acting as a meeting place for the living and the dead. This concept of “other” is more visible at Birkenau than at Auschwitz I or Ground Zero. The idea of sites of darkest tourism as a threshold is evident in the absence of development at Birkenau. Due to the lack of heritage management of the site during the ownership of the ASM, it is a collection of remains that allows an undisrupted perception of what occurred there. It has been allowed to retain its identity as a place of death and as such provide the living with a greater connection to the imprints of the deceased. On one side of the railway are original red brick barracks, some still standing, some held up with makeshift scaffolding; on the other a forest of chimneys that stretches as far as the eye can see – former wooden prisoner barracks.65 Beyond the visible horizon, what Mendelsohn calls “a vanishing point that was indeed a vanishing point,” is the grown-over Field of Ashes and the ruins of four crematoria. The alternative aesthetic of Birkenau, as a state of semi-ruin, compared to Auschwitz I, offers a representational purpose, as Mendelsohn explains: When you … wander the enormous, vertiginously broad plain where the barracks once stood, and trudge over the great distance to the place where the crematoria were … it begins to be possible to understand how many people could have passed through there.66 300

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Birkenau provides a sense of relief for those who are grappling with emotions or are struggling with the state of preservation at Auschwitz I.67 It is an experiential experience of absence rather than informative in the traditional sense of presentation of information. Van Pelt and Dwork suggest that this less artefact-reliant approach at Birkenau, where the site has not been “museumified,” has allowed it to retain its identity as a Jewish space; “the bleakness of Birkenau fits the Jewish memory of the genocide as Shoah: total devastation and ruin.”68 The enormity of Birkenau stuns most visitors, unlike at Auschwitz I there is limited interpretation outside of information boards containing historical photographs. To walk alone at the camp can be a profound experience which provides a desolate space where people can remember, grieve or reflect upon what happened here.69 Ground Zero is a direct contrast to this; it’s a mixed site of commerce, memorial, museum and relaxation which has led to uncertain reactions among both loved ones of the deceased and tourists themselves. This is evident in the issues around tourist behaviour at the viewing platforms where, as just another part of a tourist itinerary, behaviour occurred that was upsetting to those connected personally to the site. For many, this was a site of fresh and traumatic death on a wide scale: parts of the deceased were still being recovered and the families were fresh in their grieving as tourists came and took photos and made lunch arrangements alongside them. The dead ought to be at the forefront of darkest tourism to allow the visitation and caring of these sites to create “an ethical relationship with spectral traces and recognise how these past presences occupy the realities of our lived worlds – even while we also understand them as existing elsewhere, beyond the realm of the living.”70

Concluding Thoughts In conclusion, there are three main lessons that can be drawn from the heritage management of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ground Zero to aid in managing the needs of both the living and the dead at sites of darkest tourism within contemporary western society. The first of these is to be aware of consumerism at the site and the purpose it serves. While consumerism is unavoidable due to needing finance for conservation of the sites it should be done in a way that avoids kitschification. This is because it focuses on the living being able to consume tragedy in a way that softens and detracts from the death that has occurred at the site and the message this brings. The second lesson is the need to reach a social consensus at sites of dark tourism. When the site’s history is in disagreement it leads to a misrepresentation of what has occurred at the site, again silencing the stories of the deceased. The final lesson is the idea that sites of darkest tourism should be perceived and managed as something different to regular tourist attractions. They should act as spaces where the dead are at the forefront allowing the living to connect with the stories of the deceased in a meaningful way.

Notes 1 Karen Till, Mapping Spectral Spaces (Virginia: Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Spaces, 2010).

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Joanne Mather 2 Katie Young, “Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Challenges of Heritage Management Following the Cold War,” in Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with ‘Difficult Heritage,’ ed. William Logan and Keir Reeves (Oxon: Routledge, 2009), 50. 3 Philip Stone and Richard Sharpley, “Consuming Dark Tourism: A Thanatological Perspective,” Tourism: An Interdisciplinary International Journal 52, no. 2 (2008): 587. 4 Peter Tarlow, “Dark Tourism: The Appealing ‘Dark’ Side of Tourism and More,” in Niche Tourism: Contemporary Issues, Trends and Cases, ed. Marina Novelli (Oxford: Elsevier, 2005), 45. 5 Jenny Edkins, “Ground Zero: Reflections on Trauma, In/Distinction and Response,” Journal of Cultural Research 8, no. 3 (2004): 249. 6 Ibid. 7 Haidy Geismar, “Building Sites of Memory: The Ground Zero Sonic Memorial Sound Walk,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 15, no. 2 (2005): 1. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Craig Wright, “Contested National Tragedies: An Ethical Dimension,” in The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism, ed. Richard Sharpley and Phillip Stone (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2009), 136–137. 11 Gérôme Truc, “Ground Zero: Between Construction Site and Mass Grave. On the Relationships Between Scattered Human Remains, Memory and Place,” Cairn International Edition 41 (2011): 3, accessed November 29, 2021, https://www.cairn-int.info/journalraisons-politiques-2011-1-page-33.htm 12 Ruth Gruber, Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Central and Eastern Europe (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1992), 38. 13 Ibid. 14 Deborah Dwork and Robert Van Pelt, Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present (New York: Norton, 1996), 364. 15 Ibid. 16 Jonathan Heuner, Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979: Polish and Polish-American Studies Series (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003), 53. 17 Jewish Virtual Library, “Auschwitz-Birkenau: Auschwitz Convent,” 2008, https://www. jewishvirtuallibrary.org/auschwitz-convent 18 Avi Weiss, “Auschwitz Is a Sacred Place of Jewish Memory. It’s No Place for a Catholic Church,” The Washington Post, January 28, 2015. 19 Waldemar Chrostowski, “Controversy Around the Auschwitz Convent,” Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 10, no. 3 (1990): 16, accessed November 20, 2021, https:// digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1498&context=ree 20 Ibid. 21 Jewish Virtual Library, “Auschwitz-Birkenau: Auschwitz Convent.” 22 Ibid. 23 Chrostowski, “Controversy Around the Auschwitz Convent,” 17. 24 Ibid. 25 Jewish Virtual Library, “Auschwitz-Birkenau: Auschwitz Convent.” 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Mark Schaming, “From Evidence to Relic to Artefact: Curating in the Aftermath of 11 September 2001,” in Death Tourism: Disaster Sites as Recreational Landscape, ed. Brigitte Sion (India: Seagull Books, 2014), 140. 30 Ibid. 31 Petr Svab, “The City’s Other 9/11 Burial Ground Welcomed as Park,” The Epoch Times, October 10, 2014.

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From Trauma to Tourism 32 Truc, “Ground Zero: Between Construction Site and Mass Grave,” 7. 33 Svab, “The City’s Other 9/11 Burial Ground Welcomed as Park.” 34 Anemona Hartocollis, “Landfill Has 9/11 Remains, Medical Examiner Wrote,” New York Times, March 24, 2007. 35 Svab, “The City’s Other 9/11 Burial Ground Welcomed as Park.” 36 Lucy Bond, Frames of Memory After 9/11: Culture, Criticism, Politics and Law (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 80. 37 Maarten Hajer, “Rebuilding Ground Zero: The Politics of Performance,” Planning Theory and Practice 6, no. 4 (2005): 464, doi: 10.1080/14649350500349623 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Theresa Donofrio, “Ground Zero and Place Making Authority: The Conservative Metaphors in 9/11 Families’ Take Back the Memorial‘ Rhetoric,” Western Journal of Communication 74, no. 2 (2010), doi: 10.1080/10570311003614492. 43 Hajer, “Rebuilding Ground Zero: The Politics of Performance,” 451. 44 Laurie Clark, “Ethical Spaces: Ethics and Propriety in Trauma Tourism,” in Death Tourism: Disaster Sites as Recreational Landscape, ed. Brigitte Sion (India: Seagull Books, 2014), 12. 45 Debbie Lisle, “Gazing at Ground Zero: Tourism, Voyeurism and Spectacle,” Journal for Cultural Research 8, no. 1 (2004): 3, doi: 10.1080/1479758042000797015 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 BBC, “Outrage at Ground Zero Visitor Platform,” BBC News, January 17, 2002. 49 Lisle, “Gazing at Ground Zero: Tourism, Voyeurism and Spectacle,” 9. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Deyan Sudjic, “Can Anyone Do Justice to Ground Zero?” The Observer, January 27, 2002. 54 Ibid. 55 Stephen Farrel, “9/11 Museum Opens to a Sombre Crowd,” New York Times, May 21, 2014. 56 Richard Sharpley and Philip Stone, “Representing the Macabre: Interpretation, Kitschification and Authenticity,” in The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism, ed. Richard Sharpley and Philip Stone (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2009), 125. 57 James Trimarco and Molly Depret, “Wounded Nation, Broken Time,” in The Selling of 9/ 11: How a National Tragedy became a Commodity, ed. Danna Heller (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 48. 58 Tracey Potts, “Dark Tourism and the Kitschification of 9/11,” Tourist Studies 12, no. 3 (2012): 234, doi: 10.1177/1468797612461083. 59 Bond, “Frames of Memory After 9/11,” 77. 60 Robert Burgoyne, “From Contested to Consensual Memory: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum,” in Memory, History, Nation: Contested Pasts, ed. Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone (London: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 211. 61 Dana Heller, “Introduction,” in The Selling of 9/11: How a National Tragedy became a Commodity, ed. Dana Heller (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 6. 62 Bond, “Frames of Memory After 9/11,” 77. 63 Heller, “Introduction,” 3. 64 Rosa Prince, “9/11 Death Toll Rises as Cancer Cases Soar Among Emergency Workers,” The Telegraph, July 27, 2014. 65 Katie Young, “Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Challenges of Heritage Management Following the Cold War,” in Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with ‘Difficult Heritage,’ ed. William Logan and Keir Reeves (Oxon: Routledge, 2009), 55.

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Joanne Mather 66 Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (London: Harper Perennial, 2008), 112. 67 Young, “Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Challenges of Heritage Management Following the Cold War,” 57. 68 Dwork and Van Pelt, “Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present,” 367. 69 Young, “Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Challenges of Heritage Management Following the Cold War,” 57. 70 Till, “Mapping Spectral Spaces,” 1–2.

Bibliography BBC. “Outrage at Ground Zero Visitor Platform.” BBC News, January 17, 2002. Bond, Lucy. Frames of Memory After 9/11: Culture, Criticism, Politics and Law. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Burgoyne, Robert. “From Contested to Consensual Memory: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.” In Memory, History, Nation: Contested Pasts, edited by Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone, 208–220. London: Transaction Publishers, 2006. Chrostowski, Waldemar. “Controversy Around the Auschwitz Convent.” Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 10, no. 3 (1990): 15–29, 16. Accessed November 20, 2021. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1498&context=ree Clark, Laurie. “Ethical Spaces: Ethics and Propriety in Trauma Tourism.” In Death Tourism: Disaster Sites as Recreational Landscape, edited by Brigitte Sion, 9–35. India: Seagull Books, 2014. Donofrio, Theresa. “Ground Zero and Place Making Authority: The Conservative Metaphors in 9/11 Families’ Take Back the Memorial’ Rhetoric.” Western Journal of Communication 74, no. 2 (2010): 150–169. doi: 10.1080/10570311003614492 Dwork, Deborah and Robert Van Pelt. Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present. New York: Norton, 1996. Edkins, Jenny. “Ground Zero: Reflections on Trauma, In/Distinction and Response.” Journal of Cultural Research 8, no. 3 (2004): 247–270. Farrel, Stephen. “9/11 Museum Opens to a Sombre Crowd.” New York Times, May 21, 2014. Geismar, Haidy. “Building Sires of Memory: The Ground Zero Sonic Memorial Sound Walk.” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 15, no. 2 (2005): 1–13. Gruber, Ruth. Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Central and Eastern Europe. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1992. Hajer, Maarten. “Rebuilding Ground Zero: The Politics of Performance.” Planning Theory and Practice 6, no. 4 (2005): 445–464. doi: 10.1080/14649350500349623 Hartocollis, Anemona. “Landfill Has 9/11 Remains, Medical Examiner Wrote.” New York Times, March 24, 2007. Heuner, Jonathan. Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979: Polish and Polish-American Studies Series. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003. Jewish Virtual Library. “Auschwitz-Birkenau: Auschwitz Convent.” 2008. https://www. jewishvirtuallibrary.org/auschwitz-convent Lisle, Debbie. “Gazing at Ground Zero: Tourism, Voyeurism and Spectacle.” Journal for Cultural Research 8, no. 1 (2004): 3–21. doi: 10.1080/1479758042000797015 Mendelsohn, Daniel. The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. London: Harper Perennial, 2008. Potts, Tracey. “Dark Tourism and the Kitschification of 9/11.” Tourist Studies 12, no. 3 (2012): 232–249. doi: 10.1177/1468797612461083 Prince, Rosa. “9/11 Death Toll Rises as Cancer Cases Soar Among Emergency Workers.” The Telegraph, July 27, 2014.

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From Trauma to Tourism Schaming, Mark. “From Evidence to Relic to Artefact: Curating in the Aftermath of 11 September 2001.” In Death Tourism: Disaster Sites as Recreational Landscape, edited by Brigitte Sion, 139–166. India: Seagull Books, 2014. Sharpley, Richard and Philip Stone. “Representing the Macabre: Interpretation, Kitschification and Authenticity.” In The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism, edited by Richard Sharpley and Philip Stone, 109–112. Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2009. Stone, Phillip and Richard Sharpley. “Consuming Dark Tourism: A Thanatological Perspective.” Tourism: An Interdisciplinary International Journal 52, no. 2 (2008): 574–595. Sudjic, Deyan. “Can Anyone do Justice to Ground Zero?” The Observer, January 27, 2002. Svab, Petr. “The City’s Other 9/11 Burial Ground Welcomed as Park.” The Epoch Times, October 10, 2014. Tarlow, Peter. “Dark Tourism: The Appealing ‘Dark’ Side of Tourism and More.” In Niche Tourism: Contemporary Issues, Trends and Cases, edited by Marina Novelli, 47–57. Oxford: Elsevier, 2005. Till, Karen. Mapping Spectral Spaces. Virginia: Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Spaces, 2010. Trimarco, James and Molly Depret. “Wounded Nation, Broken Time.” In The Selling of 9/11: How a National Tragedy became a Commodity, edited by Danna Heller, 27–53. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Truc, Gérôme. “Ground Zero: Between Construction Site and Mass Grave. On the Relationships Between Scattered Human Remains, Memory and Place.” Cairn International Edition 41 (2011): 33–49. Accessed November 29, 2021. https://www. cairn-int.info/journal-raisons-politiques-2011-1-page-33.htm Weiss, Avi. “Auschwitz Is a Sacred Place of Jewish Memory. It’s No Place for a Catholic Church.” The Washington Post, January 28, 2015. Wright, Craig. “Contested National Tragedies: An Ethical Dimension.” In The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism, edited by Richard Sharpley and Phillip Stone, 129–144. Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2009. Young, Katie. “Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Challenges of Heritage Management Following the Cold War.” In Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with ‘Difficult Heritage,’ edited by William Logan and Keir Reeves, 50–67. Oxon: Routledge, 2009.

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21 DEATH, MEMORY, AND POWER Public Memorial Culture of Moscow Necropolises

Maria Kucheryavaya Introduction Memorial spaces play a special role in the social and cultural life of societies. Memorials provide both a legitimate space for grief and mourning, a place for the expression of strong collective emotions, and symbols for communities’ representation of their sig­ nificant images and of themselves. Such places become both sites for the performance of rituals and the subject of conflicting interpretations. A cemetery serves as such an important memorial place, a space of remembrance. The most famous study of the cemetery as an object of material memorial culture in a sociological focus is William Lloyd Warner’s work as part of the Yankee City series published between 1941 and 1959.1 Warner showed that the cemetery (the world of the dead) mirrors the com­ munity (the world of the living) itself, and that memorial culture reflects the existing social order of the community. The living fills the cemetery with symbols referring to their lives, and the cemetery performs an important function of uniting the living and their deceased ancestors. Warner was one of the first to set this research focus, pointing out that the structure of commemoration rituals directly reflects the structure of community life, making it possible to study memorial culture (and its material mani­ festations) in the context of the representations it generates. Despite the persuasiveness of the symbolic approach described, a limitation exists. In Warner’s classic representational logic, the cemetery is a replica of the community of the living and therefore reflects that community as a whole, allowing parallels to be drawn between the urban setting and the layout of the cemetery, highlighting chains of relationships and tracing family dynamics. However, some cemeteries cannot meet this criterion of completeness of representation, as they were originally created as cemeteries for a certain group of buried people. Such a statement does not apply to, for example, ethnic cemeteries, which demonstrate the link between an alien and a local community, but to cemeteries created specifically for the burial of citizens who have 306

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received special merit for the state (i.e. celebrities or the elite). It is then no longer an inverted world of the living, shaped by the need to bury citizens near the settlement, but a representation of one narrow group chosen by someone for a special burial. This chapter is dedicated to the study of one of the Moscow necropolises where many famous people are buried – Novodevichy Cemetery. The subject of its interest is how the necropolis embodies the specifics of contemporary public memorial cul­ ture in Russia, using the concepts of hero and decent burial. The aim of this chapter is to provide a brief outline of a possible approach to the study of celebrity cemeteries from within the cultural context in which they emerged. As stated previously, this chapter is built on the case studies of Novodevichy Cemetery that was founded in the USSR and became the first celebrity cemetery.

Cemetery Research Approaches The cemetery as a memorial space is analysed mainly in two fields: death studies and memory studies. Death studies are mainly represented by anthropological works that consider the cemetery as a space of memorial activity. These works focus on the handling and interacting with graves,2 identification of the cemetery as a site of emotion and solidarity,3 and exploration of the intersection between private grief and public space.4 Architecture in the study of cemeteries is seen as a layout of community arrangement5 or as an element reflecting cultural categories.6 Numerous works are devoted to historical studies of cemetery architecture – how cemeteries have changed over the particular historical period; what limitations this has brought; how archi­ tectural models of cemeteries influenced commemoration activity.7 Individual tombstones are considered mainly in the context of their symbolism.8 In this way, studies of death and dying position the cemetery as a space of grief, in which the materiality of the cemetery influences the expression of commemoration – the presence or absence of a monument, the way it is made, affects the visitor’s perception and relationship with death. Memory studies, in turn, focuses on cemeteries within memorial studies, defining the cemetery as a memorial site expressing cultural or national identity9 and used as a resource for symbolic politics. The main focus of these works is on war memorials or war cemeteries.10 A memorial in these works is a static embodiment of memory, a way of commemorating an event or person through a material medium. The work of memory researchers focuses on the notion of trauma as a cultural event, determining how the event will be represented. Less attention has been paid by researchers to “everyday” memory of non-traumatic events, which leaves, for example, urban cemeteries outside the scope of research. The papers mentioned earlier define the architecture of cemeteries and gravestones as a dependent variable: materiality is either dependent on the perception and interpretation of visitors, or pre-determined by the architectural intent around which the main narratives and symbolic actions unfold. In doing so, these papers employ the theoretical logic of a reductionist understanding of architecture. This chapter proceeds with an opposite model of explanation, based on a pro­ cessual approach to the study of architecture as an object of social science research.11 307

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The emphasis is on the parallelism of the formation of the architectural and the social as intermingling processes. This approach allows us to see architecture not as a means, but as a site within which the different representations that architecture conveys conflict or cooperate. The authors in this approach move away from an essentialist description of the architectural object, insisting that architecture is never static, but always shaped and redefined in the process of interaction. Returning to cemeteries, this approach captures the monumental dimension of the cemetery, showing how architecture (in the case of the cemetery, its tombstones, its and physical arrangement) becomes a key element in transmitting and establishing representations. Cemetery will be defined as an architectural object, which implies its description as a material object in relation to which agreement or conflict is achieved. It is a field of interaction within which the techniques of distinguishing individuals and orders of their coexistence unfold.12 Speaking of the state, it is important to define it as an agent involved in the institutionalisation of the cemetery and tomb­ stones. Through the establishment and design of such national cemeteries, the state seeks to create cultural traditions and discourses that also address the notion of time as an important constitutive element of social life.13 The cemetery exists in a historical and cultural setting, mediating representations around buried celebrities, memories, tombstones, and the cemetery itself as a whole.

Cemeteries and Mortal Culture in the USSR To understand the peculiarity of the emergence of the Novodevichy Cemetery, it is important to understand the general mortal context common to the early Soviet era. The formation of the communist regime and the Soviet Union was associated with reforms in the funerary sphere that allowed the management of the dead to be aligned with the new ideology. Before the revolution, the funeral sphere was subject to the logic of religious laws. The distribution of burials was dominated by the social class principle, governed by the regulations of the Russian Orthodox Church. This, firstly, meant restrictions in ritualism: funerals could not take place without the Orthodox rites of burial and a priest regulating the burial procedure. Secondly, it indicated the rigid subordination of rituals to the social structure of society, “in pre-revolutionary society, which was strictly divided into ranks and classes, the rules for burial corre­ sponded to the place of the deceased in the social structure of society.”14 The change of power required a revision of current rituals and rules concerning the dead. For the culture of the first Soviet decade, “rituals of symbolic burial of the ‘old world’ and its representatives, the ‘enemies,’ or rituals of their ‘symbolic destruction’ were important.”15 The cemetery begins to be understood as an obsolete mechanism that reproduces the old order and categories that have no place in the new political and social order. At the same time, cemeteries experience organisational collapse: burial places become insufficient and there is a need to find new ways of burying people from the new era. Thus, in 1918, the first institutional steps were taken to desacralise cemeteries and funeral culture in general. The Decree on Cemeteries and Funeral Services of 7 December 1917 issued by the Bolshevik government proclaimed an “equal” funeral rite for every citizen: the 308

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division of funerals into categories of citizens was abolished; instead, all citizens were given the same funeral.16 This was followed by the Decree on Separation of Church from State and School from Church of 20 January 1918, which marked, at the level of official ideology, the final break between church and civil life, between the sacred and the secular. Official discourse thereby openly manifests its independence in the conduct of citizens’ lives, which is no longer subject to the supremacy of church authorities. However, the mortal sphere proves unable to exist without ritual elements marking its boundaries as a particular experience. Curiously, therefore, such an attempt to abandon sacred ri­ tuals leads to the invention of new secular rituals based not on religious foundations, but on the principles of civil communist society. Thus, in the 1920s, an attempt was made to establish a new type of memorial ritual – a red funeral. Instead of a priest and clergy, citizens and party members attend the funerals, instead of crosses there appear red flags. As Anna Sokolova notes in her paper on the evolution of funeral rites, the invention of red rituals (in addition to red funerals, red weddings and red christenings also appeared) was aimed at developing a new anthropological type of person: “new rites were necessary in order to constitute not just a different status for a person, but to proclaim the creation of a new, hitherto unseen person – a person born of revolu­ tion.”17 Red funerals therefore not only fixed a new type of symbolism18 but also acted as a political tool to reinforce the ideology of the new regime. Cremation took on the same role in the 1920s and began to emerge as a response to two problems at once: the collapse of the funeral industry and the search for a new mortal discourse. Cremation, titled a fiery burial, actively responded to the atheistic needs of the communism being built, allowing final demoralisation of the church and making it possible to talk of completely eliminating cemeteries as burial sites. In practice, however, the communist dream of a fiery burial proved difficult to achieve: crema­ toriums turned out to be difficult and expensive to build, and the first crematorium in Moscow was only opened in 1927.19 However, the very development of this idea laid down an important opposition for Soviet culture between the crematorium and the cemetery as between the new and old culture of death.20 As history will then reveal, the cemetery won this confrontation. Still, an important step was taken: the longstanding hierarchical funeral system was abolished.21 The emergence of a new death culture was linked to two parallel tendencies. On the one hand, there was the routinisation of death, its declassification, and the desire to make it handy. On the other hand, there was its active symbolisation, linked to the idea of heroes and nation’s chiefs.22 With the advent of communism, the concept of the hero became a significant cultural type for Soviet society at that time. The basis for the flourishing of heroic discourse was the cult of the fallen soldiers of the First World War: a symbolic transfer of heroic sanctity from the victims of the war to the chiefs of communism took place.23 The heroisation of communist leaders led to symbolic inequalities, manifesting themselves both at the level of discourse and in the material infrastructure. In this way, the tendencies of the death culture were also divided by the groups for which they proved to be foundational: “pathos was for leaders and revolutionaries, pragmatism was for ordinary citizens.”24 309

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The idea of heroic death applied to party leaders served not simply as a declarative assertion supporting the pathos of building a new world but served as an important tool in consolidating the hierarchy (even posthumously) within the new community. Moreover, the important role of the idea of the hero was to anchor the symbolic immortality that heroes were awarded: “the revolutionary authorities were in charge of deciding (both in a very real and symbolic sense) who should die and who should remain ‘alive.’”25 The symbolic inequality that had emerged (and was growing) reached its peak with the death of Vladimir Lenin, the leader and symbol of the revolution, whose stone mausoleum still stands in Moscow’s central square, Red Square. This hierarchisation, the desire to separate ordinary citizens from immortal leaders, also found expression in material culture: soon after the revolution a number of its participants, as well as party and military officials, were buried in a necropolis near the Kremlin wall. Thus, the Red Square, the physical and symbolic centre of the capital, became the country’s main and most prestigious cemetery: “being laid to rest near the Kremlin wall beside the Lenin Mausoleum was like being buried ad sanctos.”26 However, the resources of the Kremlin Wall Necropolis alone were not enough. As a result, cemeteries of a lower rank emerged in Moscow for those Communist comrades who had distinguished themselves in life but were unworthy of burial in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. The Novodevichy and Vagankovskoye cemeteries became such elite cemeteries.27 Death culture has thus come full circle: in an attempt to move away from the hierarchical social class principle of burial, it has once again come to the idea of statusbased ranking of burials, with the cemetery acting as a core material representation of merit and status. The cemetery finally put an end to the idea of a crematorium: “the space of death was gradually, if not sacralised, then at least distanced, separated from the world of the living – physically (in the late 1920s and early 1930s, cemeteries were seriously taken care of and surrounded by fences) and symbolically.”28 The desire for posthumous hierarchisation was rapidly overcoming the official ideology of an equal burial. It was on the edge of this contradiction that Novodevichy Cemetery emerged as one of the first elite cemeteries in Russia.

Novodevichy Cemetery: A Story of the Country’s First Elite Cemetery So, what role did Novodevichy Cemetery play within such a complex and contra­ dictory context? Let us turn to the analysis of social and cultural conditions of the origins of Novodevichy Cemetery. The Novodevichy Cemetery initially appeared as part of the Novodevichy Convent churchyard. It was a small churchyard where nuns and later members of the noble and boyar families were buried. The present cemetery, which is called Novodevichy Cemetery, dates to 1904, but the history of the monastery and its churchyard begins in 1524. In 1898, it was decided to expand the existing churchyard and to build an additional territory attached to the monastery. In 1904, a new part of Novodevichy Cemetery was officially opened, but after the revolution this part of the cemetery was taken away from the monastery and became the urban cemetery. The monastery itself was closed in 1922. A series of funeral reforms and the abolition 310

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of the role of religion took place at the same time: cemeteries were handed into state ownership; the role of religious influence in conducting burials was eliminated and the right to equal burial for all citizens was established. During this period, the Novodevichy Cemetery becomes open for any burial: it is proclaimed that any citizen, regardless of his or her status or merit, may be buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery. During the same period, the cult of the hero built around Communist leaders begins to gain strength, and cemeteries suffer difficult times of crisis: Novodevichy Cemetery also suffered devastation and many burials were eliminated. The cemetery was taken under control by the 1930s: in 1927, the cemetery by a special order was declared a place for burial of persons with social status. At the same time, in the 1930s, many famous people’s burials were gradually being relocated from other cemeteries to the Novodevichy Cemetery. From this moment begins the history of Novodevichy Cemetery as an elite cemetery of the Soviet Union and later Russia. Moscow cemetery researchers explain one process by the other (the cemetery received special status because famous people were reburied there, and vice versa), but the process of obtaining elite status by Novodevichy Cemetery remains unclear. The question here is why was Novodevichy Cemetery chosen as a burial place for heroes and political leaders? How can the elitism of the cemetery be explained? Two strategies of cemetery legitimisation as an elitist space stand out. The first – religious – is associated with Christian Orthodox teaching. The second – secular – is associated with the status regalia of the buried. Both lines were seamlessly connected in the preliminary stage of the cemetery’s history: the stage of monastery existence and its churchyard existence. Since its foundation, the Novodevichy Convent has served as an elite burial place, including first the burial of royal tombs, then the burial of boyar families and the Moscow nobility, and later including the graves of merchants, people of culture. In this way, the monastery united two directions that formed the specifics of the memorial culture of that time: religious and status affiliation. The status affiliation formed a community around the monastery: in addition to the church members, it was made up of patrons of art and rich nobility. Religion defined who from this community would be buried – usually it was the nobility that was related to the monastery (spiritually or financially). The same idea (a combination of social class and Christianity) is maintained with the expansion of the cemetery in 1904: burials of this period were carried out based on confession. Accordingly, before the revolution, Novodevichy Cemetery is understood as a special elite cemetery because the spiritual nobility close to the monastery is buried there. In 1927, however, the religious line of legitimisation disappeared – probably due to the anti-religious communist sentiments that prevailed in the mortal culture of that period. However, there remains a strong secular legitimisation. As a result, Novodevichy Cemetery begins to be understood in the categories of the state national cemetery of outstanding people, heroes, and leaders. An important event here was Lenin’s death and funeral, which fixed the matrix of Soviet leaders’ commemoration in the Soviet mortal culture.29 Lenin’s death created a necessity to find a burial place for heroes and communist comrades – due to the symbolic status of a decent cemetery, this role was given to Novodevichy Cemetery. Lenin’s status as a state leader in culture gave rise to 311

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the distinction of “leader – people,” “special dead – ordinary dead” – Novodevichy Cemetery also served as a tool for fixing this distinction at the level of memorial culture. From that moment on Novodevichy Cemetery became an instrument of constructing the heroic (communist and after the military hero) identity of the Soviet Union. It transmits the immortal image of the national Soviet elite, becoming a symbol of immortality and pride: Novodevichy Cemetery since this period is called the pantheon of the era, and to be buried there is the greatest reward. The burials are now divided not by confessional, but by professional zones: politicians, military leaders, scientists, and cultural figures. This redefinition brings a political dimension to Novodevichy: since it becomes mainly a cemetery for burials of party and state leaders, its further history can also be linked to key state burials. In 1971, Nikita Khrushchev (the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery – this event creates a powerful resonance because for the first time the state leader was not buried near the Kremlin wall – certainly the most symbolically important necropolis. At that time, Novodevichy Cemetery became closed to visitors, the en­ trance was possible only by special passes. The problem of vandalism at Khrushchev’s grave was cited as the reason for this sudden shutdown of the cemetery. After Khrushchev’s burial, Novodevichy Cemetery remained closed for almost 30 years: it was only in the early 2000s that entry to the cemetery became free again. However, soon another important event for the history of the Novodevichy Cemetery takes place. In 2007, Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation, died and Novodevichy Cemetery is again closed because of his funeral. This time the cemetery was closed for a few days only, not for a few years. This event raised questions about where and how to bury new government leaders, as the state has en­ tered a new stage of its development, it has literally become another political unit. Soviet mortal traditions and the model of the Soviet hero was no longer suitable for the current memorial culture: the bright communist times are over and the search for a new cultural model for the new now Russian citizen has become necessary. Khrushchev and Yeltsin’s funerals added to Novodevichy’s symbolic field the understanding of the cemetery not as a reward, but as a punishment: burial in the Novodevichy Cemetery for these politicians meant that it was impossible to recognise their merits in terms of heroism, which would have allowed them to be buried near the Kremlin wall. Burial at Novodevichy Cemetery was interpreted as a deliberate “lowering” of their merit and status (at the same time, they still remained within the elitist cemetery discourse). Currently, Novodevichy Cemetery is divided into the old, new, and newest sections. The old part of the cemetery (divisions 1–4) was established the very first, when the cemetery was founded. It contains the oldest graves, including those re­ located from other cemeteries. Burials of a Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol and of a Russian playwright and short-story writer Anton Chekhov are located in this section of the cemetery. The gravestones in this part look rather traditional and rarely feature distinctive architectural solutions. A new section of the cemetery (divisions 5–8) appeared during the next expansion of the cemetery. There are a lot of party burials of various statesmen. This part contains the graves of Nikita Khrushchev, Boris Yeltsin, and Mikhail Gorbachev. 312

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Also, burials of famous Soviet cultural workers are located here. It is in this part that fresh burials are most often made. The area of divisions 5 and 6 along the main pathway is one of the most symbolically important parts of the cemetery – the graves of the most famous and important people are located there. The newest section of the cemetery (divisions 9–11) is the most recent. It contains the graves of Soviet and Russian entertainers, for example, the grave of a Soviet and Russian actress Lyudmila Gurchenko. There are also some burial places of the heroes of the Second World War. Architecturally, this is one of the most interesting sections, as a significant number of monuments are made in the form of full-fledged monu­ ments, which are more like statues than gravestones (Figure 21.1).

Figure 21.1 Map of the Novodevichy Cemetery.

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Conclusion Novodevichy Cemetery was an important element of Soviet culture. The process of creating the Novodevichy Cemetery and establishing it as an elite burial place went hand in hand with the processes of the hierarchisation of society and the consolidation of cultural models for defining a decent person. To this day, the Novodevichy Cemetery remains a pantheon of great people and plays a key role in cementing a celebrity’s posthumous elite status. The cemetery’s special status is also evident in its architecture. Gravestones at Novodevichy Cemetery are full-fledged monuments, due to which it is sometimes difficult to understand whether you are in a cemetery or in a museum: “the Novodevichy Cemetery, which has gained a special status in memorial culture, has more notable and unusual tombstones than anywhere else.”30 The construction of an immortal ideal is typical for the Soviet mortality culture. Historically, this construction is based on the reconstruction and maintenance of the concept of the hero, which emerged from the communist ideal. The transition from Soviet to Russian mortal culture required the revision of the established forms of commemoration of cultural heroes. It is possible to identify a change of representation from a communist hero to a celebrity hero, a routinisation of the hero as a cultural figure. In this logic, the cemetery is a pantheon of celebrities who are not, however, immortal leaders. Such an assumption would be interesting to examine through the study of the successor of Novodevichy Cemetery – Troekurovskoye Cemetery. The cemetery as a symbolic object receives an additional meaning: the cemetery is assigned to a person as a posthumous reward. To be buried in Novodevichy Cemetery is a sign of respect and recognition on a national level. The other elite cemeteries also present themselves as different levels of rewards that the deceased may receive according to their merits by being given a place in the cemetery.

Notes 1 William Lloyd Warner, The Living and the Dead: A Study of the Symbolic Life of Americans (Yale University Press, 1959). 2 Doris Francis, Leonie Kellaher, and Georgina Neophytou, “Sustaining Cemeteries: The User Perspective,” Mortality 5, no. 1 (2000); Jack Goody and Cesare Poppi, “Flowers and Bones: Approaches to the Dead in Anglo-American and Italian Cemeteries,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 1 (1994). 3 Susan Buckham, “Commemoration as an Expression of Personal Relationships and Group Identities: A Case Study of York Cemetery,” Mortality 8, no. 2 (2003); Doris Francis, “Cemeteries as Cultural Landscapes,” Mortality 8, no. 2 (2003); Kate Woodthorpe, “Sustaining the Contemporary Cemetery: Implementing Policy Alongside Conflicting Perspectives and Purpose,” Mortality 16, no. 3 (2011). 4 Grete Swensen, Helena Nordh, and Jan Brendalsmo, “A Green Space Between Life and Death – A Case Study of Activities in Gamlebyen Cemetery in Oslo, Norway,” Norwegian Journal of Geography 70, no. 1 (2016). 5 Richard V. Francaviglia, “The Cemetery as an Evolving Cultural Landscape,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 61, no. 3 (1971). 6 Gary S. Foster, Richard L. Hummel, and Donald J. Adamchak, “Patterns of Conception, Natality, and Mortality from Midwestern Cemeteries: A Sociological Analysis of Historical

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7

8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Data,” The Sociological Quarterly 39, no. 3 (1998); Casey Golomski, “Urban Cemeteries in Swaziland: Materialising Dignity,” Anthropology Southern Africa 38, no. 3–4 (2015). Stanley French, “The Cemetery as Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mount Auburn and the ‘Rural Cemetery’ Movement,” American Quarterly 26, no. 1 (1974); DeMond Shondell Miller and Jason David Rivera, “Hallowed Ground, Place, and Culture: The Cemetery and the Creation of Place,” Space and Culture 9, no. 4 (November 2006); Grete Swensen and Jan Brendalsmo, “Churchyards and Cemeteries Throughout the Centuries – Praxis and Legislation,” Landscape History 39, no. 1 (2018); Sarah Tarlow, “Landscapes of Memory: The Nineteenth-Century Garden Cemetery,” European Journal of Archaeology 3, no. 2 (2000); Laura Verdi, “The Garden and the Scene of Power,” Space and Culture 7, no. 4 (November 2004). Frances Clegg, “Problems of Symbolism in Cemetery Monuments,” Journal of Garden History 4, no. 3 (1984); C. D. Abby Collier, “Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Symbolism of Death,” The Sociological Quarterly 44, no. 4 (Autumn, 2003). Elizabeth Buettner, “Cemeteries, Public Memory and Raj Nostalgia in Postcolonial Britain and India,” History and Memory 18, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2006); Karen D. Shelby, “National Identity in First World War Belgian Military Cemeteries,” First World War Studies 6, no. 3 (2015); Meredith G. Watkins, “The Cemetery and Cultural Memory: Montreal: 1860–1900,” Urban History Review 31, no. 1 (2002). Nataliya Danilova, The Politics of War Commemoration in the UK and Russia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Nurit Schleifman, “Moscow’s Victory Park: A Monumental Change,” History and Memory 13, no. 2 (2001). Heike Delitz, “Architectural Modes of Collective Existence: Architectural Sociology as a Comparative Social Theory,” Cultural Sociology 12, no. 1 (March 2018); Paul Jones, “Architecture, Time, and Cultural Politics,” Cultural Sociology 14, no. 1 (March 2020); Albena Yaneva, Mapping Controversies in Architecture (Routledge, 2012). Heike Delitz, “Architectural Modes of Collective Existence: Architectural Sociology as a Comparative Social Theory,” Cultural Sociology 12, no. 1 (March 2018): 44. Paul Jones, “Architecture, Time, and Cultural Politics,” Cultural Sociology 14, no. 1 (March 2020): 62. Anna Sokolova, “Nel’zya, nel’zya novyh lyudej horonit’ po-staromu,” Otechestvennye za­ piski 5, no. 56 (2013). Svetlana Malysheva, “Krasnyj Tanatos: nekrosimvolizm sovetskoj kul’tury,” Arkheologiya russkoj smerti, no. 2 (2016): 29. More on the early Soviet funeral reforms and their impact on Moscow’s cemeteries, see Anna Sokolova, “Soviet Funeral Services: From Moral Economy to Social Welfare and Back,” Revolutionary Russia 32, no. 2 (2019). Anna Sokolova, “Nel’zya, nel’zya novyh lyudej horonit’ po-staromu.” A compelling study of the hybrid identity of the Soviet man that emerges in the mixing of religious and communist symbols; see Svetlana Malysheva, “Soviet Death and Hybrid Soviet Subjectivity: Urban Cemetery as a Metatext,” Ab Imperio, no. 3 (2018). Anna Sokolova, “Soviet Funeral Services: From Moral Economy to Social Welfare and Back,” Revolutionary Russia 32, no. 2 (2019): 11. Svetlana Malysheva, ‘Na miru krasna’: instrumentalizatsiia smerti v Sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: Novyĭ khronograf, 2019): 108. Sokolova, “Nel’zya, nel’zya novyh lyudej horonit’ po-staromu.” Malysheva, “Na miru krasna,” 94. Svetlana Malysheva, “The Russian Revolution and the Instrumentalization of Death,” Slavic Review 76, no. 3 (2017): 648. Malysheva, “The Russian Revolution and the Instrumentalization of Death,” 650. Malysheva, “Na miru krasna,” 94. Malysheva, “The Russian Revolution and the Instrumentalization of Death,” 650.

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Maria Kucheryavaya 27 The Troekurovskoye Cemetery (opened in the 1970s, positioned as a branch of Novodevichy Cemetery) and the Federal Military Memorial Cemetery (opened in 2013, a new burial place for national dignitaries) will later be added to this list of elite cemeteries). 28 Malysheva, “Na miru krasna,” 109. 29 Malysheva, “Na miru krasna,” 103. 30 Olga Matich, Muzei Smerti. Parizhskie i moskovskie kladbishcha (Moscow: NLO, 2021): 183.

Bibliography Buckham, Susan. “Commemoration as an Expression of Personal Relationships and Group Identities: A Case Study of York Cemetery.” Mortality 8, no. 2 (2003): 160–175. doi: 10.1080/1357627031000087406 Buettner, Elizabeth. “Cemeteries, Public Memory and Raj Nostalgia in Postcolonial Britain and India.” History and Memory 18, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2006): 5–42. doi: 10.2979/ his.2006.18.1.5 Clegg, Frances. “Problems of Symbolism in Cemetery Monuments.” Journal of Garden History 4, no. 3 (1984): 307–315. doi: 10.1080/01445170.1984.10444102 Collier, C. D. Abby. “Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Symbolism of Death.” The Sociological Quarterly 44, no. 4 (Autumn, 2003): 727–749. doi: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.2003. tb00533.x Danilova, Nataliya. The Politics of War Commemoration in the UK and Russia. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Delitz, Heike. “Architectural Modes of Collective Existence: Architectural Sociology as a Comparative Social Theory.” Cultural Sociology 12, no. 1 (March 2018): 37–57. doi: 10. 1177/1749975517718435 Foster, Gary S., Richard L. Hummel, and Donald J. Adamchak. “Patterns of Conception, Natality, and Mortality from Midwestern Cemeteries: A Sociological Analysis of Historical Data.” The Sociological Quarterly 39, no. 3 (1998): 473–489. Francaviglia, Richard V. “The Cemetery as an Evolving Cultural Landscape.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 61, no. 3 (1971): 501–509. Francis, Doris. “Cemeteries as Cultural Landscapes.” Mortality 8, no. 2 (2003): 222–227. Francis, Doris, Leonie Kellaher, and Georgina Neophytou. “Sustaining Cemeteries: The User Perspective.” Mortality 5, no. 1 (2000): 34–52. doi: 10.1080/713685994 French, Stanley. “The Cemetery as Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mount Auburn and the ‘Rural Cemetery’ Movement.” American Quarterly 26, no. 1 (1974): 37–59. doi: 10.2307/2711566 Golomski, Casey. “Urban Cemeteries in Swaziland: Materialising Dignity.” Anthropology Southern Africa, 38, no. 3–4 (2015): 360–371. doi: 10.1080/23323256.2015.1087322 Goody, Jack and Cesare Poppi. “Flowers and Bones: Approaches to the Dead in AngloAmerican and Italian Cemeteries.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 1 (1994): 146–175. Jones, Paul. “Architecture, Time, and Cultural Politics.” Cultural Sociology 14, no. 1 (March 2020): 61–79. doi: 10.1177/1749975520905416 Malysheva, Svetlana. “Krasnyj Tanatos: nekrosimvolizm sovetskoj kul’tury.” Arkheologiya russkoj smerti, no. 2 (2016): 23–46. Malysheva, Svetlana. “The Russian Revolution and the Instrumentalization of Death.” Slavic Review 76, no. 3 (2017): 647–654. Malysheva, Svetlana. “Soviet Death and Hybrid Soviet Subjectivity: Urban Cemetery as a Metatext.” Ab Imperio, no. 3 (2018): 351–384. doi: 10.1353/imp.2018.0066 Malysheva, Svetlana. ‘Na miru krasna’: instrumentalizatsiia smerti v Sovetskoi Rossii. Moscow: Novyĭ khronograf, 2019. Matich, Olga. Muzei smerti. Parizhskie i moskovskie kladbishcha. Moscow: NLO, 2021.

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Death, Memory, and Power Miller, DeMond Shondell and Jason David Rivera. “Hallowed Ground, Place, and Culture: The Cemetery and the Creation of Place.” Space and Culture 9, no. 4 (November 2006): 334–350. doi: 10.1177/1206331206292450 Schleifman, Nurit. “Moscow’s Victory Park: A Monumental Change.” History and Memory 13, no. 2 (2001): 5–34. doi: 10.2979/his.2001.13.2.5 Shelby, Karen D. “National Identity in First World War Belgian Military Cemeteries.” First World War Studies 6, no. 3 (2015): 257–276. doi: 10.1080/19475020.2016.1174589 Sokolova, Anna. “Nel’zya, nel’zya novyh lyudej horonit’ po-staromu.” Otechestvennye Zapiski, no. 56 (2013). Sokolova Anna. “Soviet Funeral Services: From Moral Economy to Social Welfare and Back.” Revolutionary Russia 32, no. 2 (2019): 251–271. doi: 10.1080/09546545.2019.1687188 Swensen, Grete and Jan Brendalsmo. “Churchyards and Cemeteries Throughout the Centuries – Praxis and Legislation.” Landscape History 39, no. 1 (2018): 87–102. doi: 10.1080/01433 768.2018.1466551 Swensen, Grete, Helena Nordh, and Jan Brendalsmo. (2016). “A Green Space Between Life and Death – A Case Study of Activities in Gamlebyen Cemetery in Oslo, Norway.” Norwegian Journal of Geography 70, no. 1 (2016): 41–53. doi: 10.1080/00291951.2015.1102169 Tarlow, Sarah. “Landscapes of Memory: The Nineteenth-Century Garden Cemetery.” European Journal of Archaeology 3, no. 2 (2000): 217–239. doi: 10.1179/eja.2000.3.2.217 Verdi, Laura. “The Garden and the Scene of Power.” Space and Culture 7, no. 4 (November 2004): 360–385. doi: 10.1177/1206331204266194 Warner, William Lloyd. The Living and the Dead: A Study of the Symbolic Life of Americans (Yankee City Series, Vol. 5). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959. Watkins, Meredith G. “The Cemetery and Cultural Memory: Montreal: 1860–1900.” Urban History Review 31, no. 1 (2002): 52–62. Woodthorpe, Kate. “Sustaining the Contemporary Cemetery: Implementing Policy alongside Conflicting Perspectives and Purpose.” Mortality 16, no. 3 (2011): 259–276. doi: 10. 1080/13576275.2011.586125 Yaneva, Albena. Mapping Controversies in Architecture. Routledge, 2012. doi: 10.4324/97813155 93807

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22 NOT THEIR HERITAGE THEME PARK Honouring the Outcast at Crossbones Graveyard

Lucy Coleman Talbot Inside the Gates of Crossbones Graveyard Until now, academic research has typically focused on what happens outside the gates1 of Crossbones Graveyard,2 Redcross Way, London SE1 (OS Grid Ref TQ 32432 80048). Most commonly on the Vigil for the Outcast Dead, a ritual initiated by poet and playwright John Constable, which has taken place at 7 pm on the 23rd of each month since 2004. This act of street communion has an important place at the heart of Crossbones’ contemporary story. Constable’s discovery of Crossbones during a psychedelic vision on 23 November 1996, and his mythical reimagining of the burial ground, are documented in articles,3 academic works,4 interviews, and personal accounts.5 Therefore, this chapter shifts in focus to examine Crossbones within the context of heritage management. It will begin by reviewing previously published academic research, to situate this study and provide important context about Crossbones. It will then move into an assessment of the role of decay and ruin at Crossbones, in which it will be argued that maintaining the grunge is essential to protecting the site’s integrity. This chapter then extends into the politics of curation at Crossbones by analysing four items of material culture and their placement. This will demonstrate the complexities in managing the burial ground and show that even within heritage spaces that form from below, there must be a process of assessment when considering how marginalised groups and individuals are represented. From here the term outcast, so entangled in Crossbones’ contemporary identity, will be contemplated. This will aid in advocating for leaseholders to work directly with marginalised individuals and groups. It will be argued that while the archetype of outcast can be adopted by anyone it resonates with, leaseholders at Crossbones have a responsibility to consider the intragroup differences of community members and those buried at the ground. This chapter calls for an intersectional approach to both Crossbones’ curation and community engagement. Overall, and more broadly, this chapter invites those involved with managing heritage projects to avoid participating 318

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-27

Not Their Heritage Theme Park

in palatable heritage. This refers to acts of solidarity or engagement that have surfacelevel value but constitute to performative or generalised notions of the people represented. Constable’s vision of the Goose brought Crossbones back into public memory. The Goose, a Medieval sex worker, revealed Crossbones as her place of burial after leading Constable on a pilgrimage around Bankside.6 Through his subsequent ritual and literary work, Crossbones is most commonly understood as a burial ground for sex workers, a connection first documented in 1795.7 There is a widely held belief that the ground was originally used for the burial of sex workers in the Bishop of Winchester’s Liberty of the Clink.8 Often referred to as Winchester Geese or Single Women, their memory is central to Crossbones’ contemporary construction. Through Constable’s ritual and literary work, Crossbones has become known as the Graveyard of the Outcast Dead, a memorial for all outcasts dead and alive. Therefore, it is crucial that the poor and working-class people known to be buried at the ground from the 1700s9 onwards are also represented in retellings of Crossbones’ history. Crossbones is a pauper burial ground, which St Saviour’s Parish Church, Southwark used for the burial of its poorest inhabitants until its closure in 1853. Fundamental information such as who is buried at the ground was not recorded in their burial registers; which was not an uncommon practice for parishes using multiple sites for burial during this time. However, there is a wealth of documentation available in public archives detailing the management and con­ ditions at Crossbones. These records bring crucial dimension to the dead at Crossbones because through identification of just a few of their names, issues of social disparity, poverty, racism, ableism, mental health, and violent death are evidenced. A series of archaeological excavations carried out at Crossbones during the 1990s resulted in a monograph which provides a detailed historiography of the burial ground and archaeological insight into the nineteenth-century burials at Crossbones.10 This chapter does not present the documented history of this burial ground due to its focus on Crossbones’ future curation and management; how­ ever, it is important to note that nuance for the poor and working-class people buried at the ground does exist. This discussion comes ahead of the Liberty of Southwark Development,11 which will see Crossbones undergo enhancement as part of a wider regeneration project. Current leaseholders, Bankside Open Spaces Trust (BOST),12 have secured a thirty-year lease, from landowners Transport for London (TfL) and commercial developers U+I, to continue managing the memorial garden which has been under their stewardship as a publicly accessible greenspace since 2015. With formal approaches to the management of Crossbones ever increasing, it is of note that the Goose herself warns against the theme parking of heritage: How could they ever think they could sanitise me, Dress up my Clink13 to decriminalise me?14 Turn me into their Heritage Theme Park?15 319

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In his 2006 article for The Independent, author John Walsh coins this analogy too; he writes “for heaven’s sake go and see them before the whole thing becomes a scrubbed-up theme park, and the Cross Bones is full of buxom actresses selling nosegays of lavender”.16 Importantly though, Walsh’s article retells Crossbones’ history with numerous errors and fabrications presented as historical fact. For ex­ ample, Walsh alleges that the burial of sex workers at Crossbones ceased in the 1850s, which is presumably a reference to the ground’s formal closure by the Board of Health in 1853, bearing no specific relevance to the Single Women mythos. He also refers to Crossbones as “the largest prostitutes’ graveyard in London, the final, unconsecrated resting-place of umpteen thousand London hookers over three centuries”.17 Again, these are claims that have no documented basis, drawing focus away from the poor and working-class people known to be buried at the ground during this period of time. In 2014, archaeologist Don Henson rightly defines Crossbones as a locally gen­ erated site yet to face commercial exploitation,18 but his assessment neglects the difficulties local stakeholders faced at the time, by claiming that there is “no site ownership or even management; there are merely acts of commemoration”.19 The current memorial garden was not established at the time Henson’s research took place, but ownership and management were still core issues for members of the Friends of Crossbones20 and the Save the Crossbones campaign21 from the mid-1990s onwards. They objected to planning applications, challenged site usage, and fought for site access. Similarly to Walsh, Henson also misrepresents the people buried at Crossbones by calling it a “Victorian prostitutes’ cemetery”22 and by stating as fact that Crossbones is first mentioned by historian John Stow in 1598.23 By the Victorian period, Crossbones was a known pauper burial ground for men, women, and children in the local area; and Stow never provided any geographical information other than “far from the parish church” when he wrote of “a plot of ground called the Single Woman’s churchyard”.24 Unlike Henson, anthropologist Sondra L. Hausner does consider the challenges faced by campaigners in relation to landownership. However, presents the acquisition of the memorial garden lease in 2015 as a final step in the interpretation and man­ agement of Crossbones. Hausner implies that the hard work has been completed and the Friends of Crossbones can now focus on the garden exclusively, claiming that “all that remains is to watch the grass grow”.25 While obtaining the lease and establishing the ground as a community space remains a cause for celebration, this idealised perspective neglects reality. In her conclusion, Hausner argues that establishing a garden at Crossbones contributes more to the local community than “determining whether older bones might be lying under ground or drawing precise lines between what is history and what is myth”.26 There is an inevitable and anthropological truth in this statement, as this study recognises the importance of Crossbones as a com­ munity resource and agrees that collective expressions and social agency should be prioritised. After all, what is written and recorded is not always a full or accurate representation of the past.27 That said, Hausner’s study focuses on Crossbones through the mythic lens, without exploring the site’s documented history in any great depth. Her argument, as with Henson’s, marginalises the social history of those buried from 320

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the post-medieval period onwards, grouping them into the category of pauper or outcast, without any further investigation or critique. Literary scholar Claire Nally addresses this issue, stating that: Persistent analogy between Cross Bones and sex work is effective and emo­ tionally charged, it also foregrounds but one thread of a larger historical nar­ rative (not all those buried at the site were sex workers, nor would they necessarily identify themselves as such), [highlighting] the partial nature of appropriating marginalized and lost voices.28 This critique of the representation of those buried at Crossbones, and more specifi­ cally sex workers,29 extends beyond academic perspectives too; highlighted here, by one respondent to an online survey created to gather wider public perspectives re­ garding Crossbones: My only worry about the whole Crossbones endeavour is that it risks con­ firming in many people’s eyes a rather one-dimensional view of sex work and sex workers. There is a world of difference between the economic and social circumstances of the Winchester Geese and many of today’s more empowered and very articulate sex workers. In today’s terms we need to acknowledge both “universal credit survival sex workers” along with those for whom it is a more considered business enterprise.30 It is important then that not everyone buried at Crossbones is considered a sex worker, but also that the representation of sex workers is also nuanced – a point which this chapter will return to when considering the politics of curation and the archetype of outcast. Examining the physical site itself is also a crucial aspect of study that has previously received some academic attention. Religious studies scholar Kim Knott interprets the “locked gate” as an “impenetrable boundary”.31 It is the restrictive boundary that Knott deems highly potent; she states that “the gate, itself symbolic, permits glimpses of the graveyard beyond, and together they constitute both shrine and portal to an unrecorded past and the spirit world of the outcast dead”.32 This is an important point because even though access to Crossbones is now permitted, the monthly vigils remain outside on the street. This is highly symbolic because being outside of Crossbones is representative, not only of the community’s battle to reclaim the burial ground from the outside but also of their status as outsiders. Knott describes the shrine as a portal, a term of phrase used by many of the Friends of Crossbones to describe the gates. Ethnographer Steph Berns examined how Crossbones became defensible through the combined efforts of both people and things.33 The gates themselves, adorned with ribbons and mementos, are defined by Berns as a form of resistance and a symbol of protest, a material representation of campaigners handcuffing themselves against the ground’s development.34 Berns suggests that “the capacity of a graveyard to resist threats (such as demolition) requires both human labor and the endurance of matter”.35 So for Berns, it is the repeated act of ritual and replenishment that creates a form of protective boundary around Crossbones. 321

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Maintaining the Grunge Anthropologist Shannon Lee Dawdy argues that “the contradictory senses of modern time as both exceptional and routine are paralleled by contradictory senses of modern space as both emancipated and dystopic”.36 At Crossbones, what from the bottom up is understood as precious and free of conformity is seen from the top down as derelict and in need of enhancement. This default position of understanding “young ruins”37 as requiring regeneration neglects then “what they tell us about the downturns of economic cycles, the social life they generate, or the politics of their creation”.38 This is certainly the case at Crossbones, where the site’s identity has become an expression of the sacred through the profane, a place where broken and abandoned material culture is reimagined and retained. Where participation does not require membership, wealth or status, a place of community where people celebrate marginality, and where the very act of creating a memorial on a commercially owned site highlights the hypocrisy of institutions and society’s disregard for its dead. Berns describes the burial ground itself as “a toxic cocktail of contaminants, including lead, mercury and asbestos”.39 Referencing archaeological advice against any ground disturbance at Crossbones,40 Berns suggests that this toxicity creates a form of boundary that not only restricts development opportunities but also protects the burials. Effectively, the contamination acts as a kind of seal which allows the dead to remain untouched.41 Above ground, the broken and patched concrete, remains of toilet pipes and floor tiles, a repurposed industrial storage cupboard, and the remnants of archaeological trenches from excavations carried out in the 1990s are understood as important features, symbolic of Crossbones’ reclamation. Archaeologists Cornelius Holtorf and Sarah May argue that “uncertainty, in our framing, allows for freedom and creativity, for broad participation and engagement, and for exploiting favourable circum­ stances”,42 which links with human geographers Caitlin DeSilvey and Tim Edensor’s view that “the unstructured exploration of possible pasts, and the encounter with involuntary memories, can perhaps occur more readily in ruins that remain ‘open’ – managed lightly, if at all, still caught up in dynamic processes of decay and un­ making”.43 In this sense, Crossbones’ unique identity and function has only been possible through its physical decay, uncertain future, and contested status. So, what then, if Crossbones’ future is no longer uncertain, or at least not for the next thirty years? How does this change the heritage narrative? Protecting the site moves from traversing its boundaries and fighting against commercial development, into protecting its integrity and function. Although TfL owns the ground, the Liberty of Southwark Development has not yet been established, therefore, Crossbones still currently stands as a singular site with its own identity. Maintaining the grunge refers to preserving Crossbones’ DIY bricolage aesthetic, a concept that runs counter to the expectations of traditional commercial development. The term grunge has been adopted because it has a subcultural connotation relating to dirt and grime. Material culture at Crossbones is commonly retained regardless of its state or appearance. This does not mean the site is unloved or uncared for, quite the opposite, the retention of items that may be considered cheap, or of little value, regardless of their condition is understood by the community as a potent expression of the sacred through the 322

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profane. From the outside, within the wider history and heritage sector, Crossbones may be understood as “Gothicized heritage” or as dark tourism.44 On deeper inspection though, the ground’s grunge aesthetic is rooted in healing and collective acts of remembrance and mourning. Crossbones has evolved into a heritage site that defies normative and commercial approaches to curation, and management, so could its grunge be lost through the site renovation? At present, plants grow through the cracks and the textured ground embodies a ruin-esque canvas that invites the kind of capabilities that DeSilvey and Edensor describe. In a sense, the current topography shows over a century’s worth of attempts to conceal the burial ground and erase the public memory of a site deemed of prime location and great commercial value. Of course, there is merit in enhancement and renovation. Removing trip hazards, building more raised beds for planting, providing more shelter, improving water and power supply, ensuring health and safety com­ pliance, and improving accessibility will all help ensure that Crossbones is a functional and safe environment for visitors. It will also arguably help in keeping the burial ground as a community garden for future generations. Still, it is undeniable that even the removal of the worn and weathered commercial hoarding that currently sur­ rounds the western and northern boundaries of Crossbones will have an impact, because these walls provide surfaces that visitors feel able to interact with. This highlights the tension between conforming to a standard that will aid in preserving Crossbones and compromising its from below construction. Although the full impact that this regeneration will have in terms of its countercultural sanctity remains to be seen, this question feeds into another important consideration: what role and responsibility do leaseholders have when it comes to curating Crossbones?

The Politics of Curation BOST’s project management commenced with a landscaping phase. With the aim of establishing an accessible memorial garden, this involved enhancing what had pre­ viously been established by Andy Hulme, the original creator of a garden at Crossbones.45 The Friends of Crossbones had also created shrines onsite, so their input was central to the garden’s design. The group did not want much change to take place, so Project Manager Helen John adopted an ethos of working with what already existed. This involved erecting beds above ground, clearing and cleaning, introducing a pond and where possible adding more foliage and flower beds.46 During this process, Museum of London Archaeology facilitated the necessary measures to protect the burials; orange mesh was laid to ensure the bones were not disturbed during garden works and any bones found lying around the ground were collected up for reburial. “Some of the pieces of concrete [had] human bones cast within them”47 which required careful removal. BOST set up a community forum to engage with local stakeholders and groups, and also started a volunteer program. Their involve­ ment at Crossbones allows for exploration of a more formalised form of heritage curation that already exists. To consider the role leaseholders play in curation, four items of material culture will be considered: two items that have been created and placed by BOST (Figure 22.1) and two items that have been created and placed by visitors 323

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Figure 22.1

Left: wicker hearts with memorial ribbons, 2016. Right: timeline on the western exterior hoarding, 2018.

(Figure 22.2). The aim here is not to suggest that there are clearly defined right and wrong ways to interact with Crossbones, more to recommend an intersectional approach to its curation which ensures that intragroup identity politics are considered in the decision-making process. To begin, it must be considered how and to what extent leaseholders should work with the ground’s aesthetic and identity, because at what point is this commodifying Crossbones’ organic formation? At a forum meeting held on 19 September 2017, a volunteer suggested that a selection of ribbon was kept onsite, as people who came across Crossbones unexpectedly often asked if there were any available to tie onto the gates. It was thought that maybe a small donation could be given in return. This would not have been an entirely new venture, as BOST had run a fundraising project in 2015 whereby people could purchase a ribbon and write a message in memory of someone who had died, these were then hung from a tree in a wicker heart (Figure 22.1, left). The forum discussed this and initially people were open to the idea, but as the discussion deepened it was agreed that the shrines at Crossbones are created through pilgrimage, vigils, and personal intention. Making ribbons available would over time, no doubt, turn this into a formalised heritage experience or an activity. The anti-structure and spontaneity that makes Crossbones authentic would be compromised and invite the “theme parking” of heritage that both Constable and Walsh warn against. Due to the limited historic information available to visitors, it is essentially the site’s material culture that holds the role of narrator at Crossbones. Perhaps the introduction of site resources would nuance the identity politics of singular objects and provide an 324

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Figure 22.2

Left: Barbie in birdcage with pebbles, 2018. Right: Close up of Gabriela Silva Leite tribute, 2018.

informed understanding of its history. This, though, raises again the point of Crossbones’ function, as it cannot solely be understood as a site of heritage and history. This tension between traditional approaches to heritage management and the role of mystery at Crossbones is evidenced through the hoarding project, which resulted in a timeline being installed on the exterior western boundary, next to the gates in 2018 (Figure 22.1, right). The project, which was funded by Southwark Council was conceived by BOST in an effort to draw attention to Crossbones, en­ couraging passers-by to engage with its history and learn more about the site. Due to the garden being open for just a few hours on select days because of a reliance on volunteers, they felt that this would make Crossbones’ story accessible, anytime, day or night. This was met with some reservation by the Friends of Crossbones because as Constable himself notes, the site is understood as “a portal between the worlds, a place of magic and mystery, where we can perceive and create new patterns and stories to challenge the narratives of the dominant culture”.48 The process was challenging for both leaseholders and the community, with communications strained, ideas and approaches differing greatly and several local residents feeling excluded from the project. To install the timeline, the hoarding was repainted covering graffiti which read “Crossbones Graveyard”. Some members of the community expressed their feelings that these words had more impact than the formal timeline and that covering them to mount something so corporate went against the ground’s aesthetic. Constable took issue with its proximity to the gates too, feeling it clashed with the ritual work and the integrity of the shrine, as such he requested that a buffer zone be honoured between the gates and the timeline. Once it 325

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was installed, the consensus was that although the timeline was useful, particularly for volunteers to signpost visitors towards should they want to learn more, the design was too generic and felt out of place. Imposing a more formalised heritage approach neglects the dialogical components needed to curate a site with multiple layers of function and meaning. The hoarding project was an opportunity to work with a local artist or graphic designer whose body of work and creative ethos corresponds with Crossbones’ identity, to play with the ground’s mystery through poetry and prose, and potentially link to digital spaces. Within this discussion, it is important though to consider occasions in which it might be necessary to intervene with Crossbones’ bottom-up formation. A small white cage containing a dismembered Barbie doll was left in the Goose Wing49 in July 2018 (Figure 22.2, left). The doll’s head was shaved and the cage was filled with pebbles, the legs and arms were positioned to poke outwards and a small key with a skull on it adorned the edge. Because the item was hung inside the Goose Wing, as opposed to on the gates, it presented as a singular object and attracted attention from volunteers and visitors. Regardless of the maker’s intention, the item caused some concern and distress. During warden duties, Friend of Crossbones Jennifer Cooper found it so offensive that she removed it from public view, explaining that she found it “too much like real life”.50 At Crossbones, there are memorials tied to the gates in memory of murdered sex workers, including and perhaps pertinently a memorial for Nasra Ismail whose body was dismembered and dumped in a London canal.51 Features of this object also reflect historical abuse too; in the Liberty, women would be subjected to heads shaving as a form of punishment. As sex workers struggle to survive under laws that fail them and a society that marginalises them, the presence of an object like this raises an important point regarding the fetishisation and objectification of their lives. The decision was made that the object would be moved to the gates, where it would no longer attract so much attention and sit within a context that would not make such a bold statement. Although Crossbones is an organic space, it is also a place publicly accessible and as such leaseholders do have a responsibility to consider the intragroup experiences of not only those visiting but also those it represents. Onsite there is a shrine for those that have died by suicide, and a laminated picture of Gabriela Silva Leite, the Brazilian sex worker rights activist who died of cancer in 2013, has been hung on it for some time now (Figure 22.2, right). Originally, the memorial was tied to the gates to honour her memory, and its placement raises a key question regarding curation at Crossbones. Leite did not die by suicide so her pres­ ence there may mislead visitors to assume that she did. It is “unregulated freedom that has allowed this community to blossom”,52 therefore, determining where the line is between allowing Crossbones to exist without intervention or restraint, but still ensuring that individuals and groups are not objectified or misrepresented leaseholders with a challenge. While the site’s materiality forms through an organic process of offerings, should Leite be replaced on the gates as originally intended? Who decides? Does her placement mislead visitors in thinking that Leite died by suicide? How involved should site managers be in the ground’s material offerings? The answer is not straightforward, and it lies in intersectional heritage praxis, in that understanding the heterogeneous nature of groups and communities will aid in making decisions that are 326

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sensitive to the dialogical nature of memory. Community consultation and feedback then is essential to effective decision-making and management.

Outcast Dead (and Alive) At the Southwark Council Planning Committee meeting on 15 June 2020, U+I rep­ resentative Tom Edgerley expressed his view that the Liberty of Southwark would “enable more Londoners to appreciate [Crossbones as a] garden of remembrance to The Outcast Dead”.53 By adopting the community’s language, U+I echoed the site’s grassroots ethos and demonstrated a respect for their construction of those buried at the ground. This does not mean though that the commercial stakeholders share the same notion of what it means to be outcast. Focus on the site’s remembrance and greenspace capabilities should not negate Crossbones’ presence as an anticapitalistic symbol of reclamation and social justice. As anthropologist Nikki Cox states, “popularity is often the initial stage of destruction for sacred, unique, or culturally significant places”,54 meaning that the idealised version of Crossbones as seen from above, as a bohemian memorial and community garden, is at odds with the site’s less mainstream and socially palatable dimensions. There is of course an irony in naming the development The Liberty of Southwark. Though it references the area’s history, it also represents profit, power, and oppression, which likely resonated with the concerns of some members of the local community, regarding the economic priorities of the developers, when they announced that “The Liberty lives on”.55 The branding for this new name draws on the romanticised notions of “Londinium’s wild side”.56 By referencing “rave culture” alongside “pleasure seekers”,57 their marketing draws on Southwark’s contemporary history as a place of counterculture during the late 1980s and 1990s. It is important to keep in mind then that the memorial at Crossbones developed due to the neglect and erasure of sex workers in the Liberty of the Clink, but also that countercultural movements are being used to market a commercial venture. This juxtaposition between their memory and U+I’s branding is a prime example of palatable heritage. On 3 March 2021, Sarah Everard was abducted and murdered by a serving Metropolitan police officer in London. This sparked public outrage, with an outcry for women’s safety and male accountability at the forefront of online discussions and protests. At the margins of this discourse, questions were raised around why Everard’s death received such exposure when the murder of Black women58 rarely receives media or public attention. The phrase “she was only walking home”59 became central to the construction of Everard’s memory, but this raises a critical question regarding who is deemed socially and collectively acceptable to mourn. What if Everard had not only been walking home? What if she had been working as a sex worker, would this have made what happened to her any less grievable? Journalist Ellie Redpath reflected on this at the time, she stated that: Between 1990 and 2016, 180 sex workers were murdered in the UK, and 85 of them were street-based sex workers. Women of colour and transgender women are also at increased risk of being attacked or harassed but are also less likely to receive attention from the media after they disappear or are subject to violence.60 327

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Since the late 1990s, from below acts that challenge the mainstream memorialisation of sex workers have been taking place at Crossbones. Murdered sex workers reduced to stereotypes in the British media have been regularly honoured on the gates. Crossbones exists within a wider, growing context of sex worker heritage, making it both a rare and important public memorial at local, national, and international levels. This also highlights the functionality of Crossbones; in that it is an active place of ritual and mourning. It is crucial that a romanticised notion of outcast does not replace the raw and unfiltered expressions currently possible at the burial ground. One Friend of Crossbones, a trans man, explains why he feels such a deep con­ nection with the Crossbones dead, and makes an important point about what it truly means to be outcast; he says: I identify strongly with the people who are namelessly buried in this graveyard, you know, because that’s what happens to trans people. Also, I feel strongly that a lot of those people under there, well a number of them, will be trans-people at that time. Perhaps not through surgery but identified as trans and ended up living these, you know, very difficult lives. Whether it was women who passed as men or men who passed as women to survive, you know some of them would have ended up doing sex work because they were living on the fringes. They would have been lesbians and gay men and non-binary people … People like me, unfortunately, and I wish it wasn’t so, we are pretty much outcast every single day, we can’t opt in and then opt out. That’s it we are outcasts. Like within my family, there’s a lot of pain attached to that. Outcast from my family.61 Understanding that Crossbones is a place of importance to people that struggle for acceptance and protection in their daily lives must be at the heart of any formalised initiatives. An important step towards this took place on 20 November 2021. The Outside Project62 hosted a service at Crossbones for Trans Day of Remembrance, a newly formed tradition for Crossbones that will happen annually going forward (Figure 22.3, left).63 For Crossbones to be a place of refuge for those that struggle to find it in wider society, engagement with those directly affected must continue. An example of why this is so important is evidenced by a survey respondent, who shared their personal experience of visiting the “For All Suicides” shrine: My best friend died by suicide and his parents didn’t have a funeral for him. Myself and his other best friend felt no closure and that we had no place to mourn or have a physical representation of our grief, and that there was no sign of the significance of his passing. Crossbones allowed us to feel like we could go in, add to the everchanging gates and memorials, and contribute something passionate, personal and something that he would love, and it felt very punk and grassroots, and this fitted in so well with his spirit. He was trans and always an outsider in many other ways as a lot of my friends feel, and this felt like the perfect setting for a tribute to him and his spirit. It was a really important distinction from other cemeteries to me that I could go in and make a contribution to the existing memorials without it having to be formal, and the freedom to do that when I do not have his ashes or 328

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Figure 22.3

Left: trans flag hanging on the gates, 2021. Right: “Paul and El were raped and murdered” written on the gates, 2018.

bones, means that myself and my friend now have somewhere to visit to pay tribute to him. When we went to add to the gate and the garden it felt like we had finally been to a funeral for him. It made me think heavily about how important ritual is, because we had that unfulfilled need to make a mark in the physical world in his honour.64 Once the Liberty of Southwark is established will the essence of Crossbones be compromised through censorship? Will declarations such as “El and Paul were raped and murdered” (Figure 22.3, right) written on the gates be seen as at odds with the new development? Without these unfiltered expressions of loss and injustice, the deep and profound sense of community experienced by visitors at Crossbones could be lost. Whether these kinds of offerings will be complained about when new people are drawn into the area by the new development remains to be seen. It does, though, raise a critical question about expressions of freedom and social injustice in public spaces. In art galleries and museums, content and exhibits often deal with difficult and pro­ vocative subjects and stories; they are usually wardened spaces with an entry and exit point. This is not to suggest that Crossbones should be understood as public art, but this does lend to the point that framing Crossbones solely as a community green space and memorial erases the very core of its contemporary reconstruction as a sacred place of reclamation and resistance. At present, there is profane, cautionary language on display inside the garden. These statements feature on what was the back panel of the original entrance door on to 329

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Crossbones pre-2015. These statements were written as a deterrent against antisocial behaviour at Crossbones prior to BOST signing as leaseholders and a formalised garden project beginning. Although the panel does not predate the 1990s, it is a contemporary historical artefact. The panel constructs the Goose and her Outcast Dead as entities with agency and protectors of the burial ground. The Friends of Crossbones’ part in Crossbones’ history and their beliefs are an important part of this community’s story. The value of this object can be understood through archaeologist Cornelius Holtorf’s argument that assessing the worth of an item by its age restricts the true understanding of its worth. Instead, he advocates for an assessment of its pastness, explaining that: Authentic archaeological objects are simultaneously of the past and of present. Their authenticity is both culturally situated and firmly connected to their materiality. Instead of asking how old a given archaeological object may be, it seems more appropriate to enquire which past it represents in human perception and experience.65 Which past, and thus whose past, must be central to the process of curation at Crossbones?

Intersectional Heritage Spaces Psychologist Doyin Atewologun defines intersectionality as “a critical framework that provides us with the mindset and language for examining interconnections and in­ terdependencies between social categories and systems”.66 Intersectionality is con­ cerned with the heterogeneous nature of groups with emphasis on “individual experiences” and “within-group differences”.67 This acknowledges the ‘‘individuals’ and groups’ multiple positionality at micro (individual) and macro (sociostructural) levels”.68 Atewologun notes that while broadly, intersectionality is a practice for “interrogating interdependent categories and systems of power/penalty”,69 there is debate as to what the term actually equates to, which she suggests attests “to the flexibility, breadth, and complexity of the term on one hand, but also reflect its status as a relatively recent conceptual framework”.70 The term was coined in 1989 by critical race scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who used it to demonstrate the disparity experienced by Black women in legal cases. Her model highlights the identity politics within wider groups, informed by intragroup differences such as race, class, and gender. She writes that “the problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite – that it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences”.71 At Crossbones, this means acknowledging the intragroup differences of the dead, by engaging with their memory through a broader lens than the ground’s mythic origins. Site managers can achieve this by consulting the historical sources publicly available, and through proactive engagement with communities represented at Crossbones, crucially sex workers. As historian Kate Lister states, there are no personal accounts recorded of how sex workers in the Liberty felt about their lives72; however, Crossbones presents an 330

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opportunity for important engagement, working “with current sex workers, [so that] we can start to reclaim the agency and voices of individuals that have at times been lost from [historical] records”.73 The experiences of individuals and groups who live in vulnerable circumstances and under the threat of violence or neglect must be consulted in the management and curation of a site that honours the outcast. Only through an intersectional approach to heritage spaces can the stigma and discrimi­ nation that marginalised people continually face be challenged. The directive must be led by those represented, inclusion or acknowledgement of their struggles and ex­ periences is not enough. Crossbones is a rare example of a public memorial for sex workers too, and its relevance as a tangible site of remembrance both in a historic and contemporary sense is therefore of great social importance. Even within heritage that forms from below, heritage managers have a responsibility to critically evaluate their spaces. Aside from considering the retainment or framing of assets, the heritage sector needs to consider its participation in palatable heritage.

Notes 1 The gates are known as the shrine, the people’s shrine, the memorial gates, the red gates, and the portal; there is no fixed or official name for them. They are on the western boundary of Crossbones, accessible day, or night on Redcross Way. 2 Historically, the site has been referred to as the New Churchyard, St Saviour’s Burying Ground, Cross Bones, Cross Bones Yard, Cross Bones Burying Ground, Crossbones Graveyard, and Crossbones. 3 John Constable, “23 and Me,” Psychedelic Press XXIII (2018): 17–25. 4 Adrian Harris, “Cross Bones Graveyard: Honouring the Outcast,” Fieldwork in Religion 8, no. 2 (November 2013): 156–174; Sondra L. Hausner, The Spirits of Crossbones Graveyard: Time, Ritual, and Sexual Commerce in London (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016); Claire Nally, “‘The Outcast Dead’ Performance, Memory and Sites of Mourning at Cross Bones Graveyard,” in Contemporary Gothic Drama: Attraction, Consummation and Consumption on the Modern British Stage, ed. Kelly Jones, Benjamin Poore, and Robert Dean (London: Palgrave, 2018): 181–200. 5 John Higgs, Watling Street: Travels Through Britain and its Ever-Present Past (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2017); Paul Slade, “The Outcast Dead,” Planet Slade, 2013, http://www.planetslade.com/pdf/crossbones.pdf 6 Bankside refers to the area along the south bank of the River Thames in the London borough of Southwark. 7 Matthew Concanen and Aaron Morgan, The History and Antiquities of the Parish of St. Saviour’s Southwark: Illustrated with plates (London: J. Parsons, 1795): 271. 8 Area of Southwark under the Bishop of Winchester’s jurisdiction (1161–1889). 9 It is possible, though not certain, that Crossbones was also used during the Great Plague of London, 1665. 10 Megan Brickley, Adrian Miles, and Hilary Stainer, The Cross Bones Burial Ground, Redcross Way, Southwark, London: Archaeological Excavations [1991–1998] (London: Museum of London Archaeological Service, 1999). 11 The Liberty of Southwark is a commercial development, originally called Landmark Court. It means that new office space, shops, restaurants, and homes will be built on the land next to Crossbones adjoining its northern boundary. Crossbones forms part of this regeneration but will be retained as a memorial garden. 12 Registered environmental and volunteering charity based in London SE1. 13 The Clink was a prison in Southwark (1144–1780).

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Lucy Coleman Talbot 14 Here, references to dressing up and decriminalising highlight the way in which marginalised history is too often sanitised and commodified for heritage spaces. 15 John Constable, The Southwark Mysteries (London: Oberon Books, 1999), 22. 16 John Walsh, “Tales of the City,” The Independent, March 14, 2006, https://www.independent. co.uk/voices/columnists/john-walsh/john-walsh-tales-of-the-city-5335618.html 17 Walsh, “Tales of the City.” 18 Don Henson, “Finding People in the Heritage of Bankside, Southwark,” in Who Needs Experts? Counter-Mapping Cultural Heritage, ed. John Schofield (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 159. 19 Henson, “Finding People in the Heritage of Bankside, Southwark,” 161. 20 Constable and his wife, Katy Nicholls, founded the Friends of Crossbones in 2004. 21 Led by local resident and artist Zanna, this campaign started in the mid-1990s. 22 Henson, “Finding People in the Heritage of Bankside, Southwark,” 149. 23 Henson, “Finding People in the Heritage of Bankside, Southwark,” 160. 24 John Stow, A Survey of London, ed. W.J. Thoms (London: Chatto and Windus, 1876 [1598]), 151. 25 Hausner, The Spirits of Crossbones Graveyard: Time, Ritual, and Sexual Commerce in London, 201. 26 Hausner, The Spirits of Crossbones Graveyard: Time, Ritual, and Sexual Commerce in London, 200. 27 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press Books, 2015 [1995]). 28 Nally, “‘The Outcast Dead’ Performance, Memory and Sites of Mourning at Cross Bones Graveyard,” 194. 29 Claire Nally, “Cross Bones Graveyard: Excavating the Prostitute in Neo-Victorian Popular Culture,” Journal of Victorian Culture, 23, no. 2 (March 2018): 247–261. 30 Anonymous survey respondent, July 16, 2019. 31 Kim Knott, “Walls and Other Unremarkable Boundaries in South London: Impenetrable Infrastructure or Portals of Time, Space and Cultural Difference?” New Diversities 17, no. 2 (June 2015): 26. 32 Knott, “Walls and Other Unremarkable Boundaries in South London: Impenetrable Infrastructure or Portals of Time, Space and Cultural Difference?” 26. 33 Steph Berns, “In Defense of the Dead: Materializing a Garden of Remembrance in South London,” Material Religion 12, no. 2 (July 2016): 171. 34 Berns, “In Defense of the Dead: Materializing a Garden of Remembrance in South London,” 171. 35 Berns, “In Defense of the Dead: Materializing a Garden of Remembrance in South London,” 172. 36 Shannon Lee Dawdy, “Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity,” Current Anthropology 51, no. 6 (December 2010): 770. 37 Dawdy, “Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity,” 770. 38 Dawdy, “Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity,” 772. 39 Berns, “In Defense of the Dead: Materializing a Garden of Remembrance in South London,” 176. 40 Laura O’Gorman, Crossbones Burial Ground, Redcross Way, Southwark SE1 (London: Museum of London Archaeology, 2013). 41 Berns, “In Defense of the Dead: Materializing a Garden of Remembrance in South London,” 176. 42 Holtorf and May, “Uncertainty, Collaboration and Emerging Issues,” 337. 43 Caitlin DeSilvey and Tim Edensor DeSilvey, “Reckoning with Ruins,” Progress in Human Geography 37, no. 4 (November 2012): 472. 44 Claire Nally, “‘The Outcast Dead’ Performance, Memory and Sites of Mourning at Cross Bones Graveyard,” in Contemporary Gothic Drama: Attraction, Consummation and Consumption on the Modern British Stage, ed. Kelly Jones, Benjamin Poore, and Robert Dean (London: Palgrave, 2018), 181.

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Not Their Heritage Theme Park 45 Hulme’s role in creating a garden is not commonly featured in contemporary accounts of the site’s evolution. Often referred to as the Invisible Gardener, a name given to him by Constable, Hulme is responsible for creating the first garden at Crossbones during the mid2000s, this was an unofficial act of care for the site, prior to its official opening as a memorial garden. 46 Interview with Helen John, July 9, 2018. 47 O’Gorman, Crossbones Burial Ground, Redcross Way, Southwark SE1, 1. 48 Interview with John Constable, July 6, 2018. 49 The Goose Wing is a carved wooden shelter which leads visitors up from the main en­ trance, located on Union Street, into the memorial garden at Crossbones. The roof is shaped like a goose’s wing and its structural posts create a cloister. Inspired by the ground’s mythic origins, this entrance visibly constructs the Winchester Geese’s memory onsite. Unlike a display board or plaque, the Goose Wing uses symbolism and hidden details to tell a story. It was commissioned by BOST and created by artist Arthur DeMowbray. 50 Interview with Jennifer Cooper, July 6, 2018. 51 The Guardian, “Murder Verdict for the ‘Predator’ Who Dissected Prostitute,” November 23, 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/nov/23/ukcrime1 52 Nikki Cox, “Tangible Communitas: A Folkloric Investigation of the Los Angeles Wisdom Tree” (PhD diss., California State University, 2015), 101. 53 Southwark Council, “Southwark Council Planning Committee meeting 15 June 2020 2 pm,” YouTube Video, June 19, 2020, 1:39:37, https://youtu.be/l9Rsu1FWw4k 54 Cox, “Tangible Communitas: A Folkloric Investigation of the Los Angeles Wisdom Tree,” 3. 55 U+I, “The Liberty of Southwark,” 2021, https://thelibertyofsouthwark.com 56 U+I, “The Liberty of Southwark.” 57 U+I, “The Liberty of Southwark.” 58 Habiba Katsha, “I’m a Black Woman like Blessing Olusegun. Would Anybody Care If I Went Missing?” Independent, March 26, 2021, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ blessing-olusegun-sarah-everard-black-woman-b1821959.html; Mariam Khan, “To Make a Difference after Sarah Everard’s Death, You Must Stand Up for Women of Colour Too,” I News, March 19, 2021, https://inews.co.uk/opinion/difference-sarah-everards-deathstand-up-for-women-of-colour-914457 59 Shana Lynch, “‘She Was Only Walking Home’: The Most Powerful Messages from the Vigil Honouring Sarah Everard,” Grazia, March 15, 2021, https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/ in-the-news/sarah-everard-vigil-signs 60 Ellie Redpath, “Sarah Everard’s Case Is a Wake-up Call – Violence Against Women Needs to End,” The Oxford Blue, March 15, 2021, https://www.theoxfordblue.co.uk/2021/03/ 15/sarah-everards-case-is-a-wake-up-call-violence-against-women-needs-to-end 61 Anonymous interview with Friend of Crossbones, August 14, 2020. 62 LGBTIQ+ community shelter, centre, and domestic abuse refuge based in London. 63 The Outside Project commissioned a statue which was unveiled at Crossbones for Trans Day of Remembrance 2022. Made of steel and cement, TRANS – ANGEL was created by Svar Simpson and assistant Lola Lancaster. 64 Anonymous survey respondent, May 3, 2018. 65 Cornelius Holtorf, “On Pastness: A Reconsideration of Materiality in Archaeological Object Authenticity,” Anthropological Quarterly 86, no. 2 (March 2013): 427–443. 66 Doyin Atewologun, “Intersectionality Theory and Practice,” Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Business and Management, 2018: 1. 67 Atewologun, “Intersectionality Theory and Practice,” 1. 68 Atewologun, “Intersectionality Theory and Practice,” 3. 69 Atewologun, “Intersectionality Theory and Practice,” 3. 70 Atewologun, “Intersectionality Theory and Practice,” 3. 71 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Standard Law Review, 43, no. 6 (1991): 1242.

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Lucy Coleman Talbot 72 Kate Lister, “The Bishop’s Profitable Sex Workers,” Wellcome Collection, June 5, 2018, https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/WxEniCQAACQAvmUE 73 Victoria Iglikowski-Broad, “Archives and Agency: Sex Work and the State,” The National Archives, July 22, 2020, https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-and-agency-sexwork-and-the-state

Bibliography Atewologun, Doyin. “Intersectionality Theory and Practice.” Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Business and Management, 2018. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190224851.013.48 Berns, Steph. “In Defense of the Dead: Materializing a Garden of Remembrance in South London.” Material Religion 12, no. 2 (July 2016): 165–188. doi: 10.1080/17432200.2016. 1172762 Brickley, Megan, Adrian Miles, and Hilary Stainer. The Cross Bones Burial Ground, Redcross Way, Southwark, London: Archaeological Excavations [1991–1998]. London: Museum of London Archaeological Service, 1999. Concanen, Matthew and Aaron Morgan. The History and Antiquities of the Parish of St. Saviour’s Southwark: Illustrated with Plates. London: J. Parsons, 1795. Constable, John. “23 and Me.” Psychedelic Press XXIII (2018): 17–25. Constable, John. The Southwark Mysteries. London: Oberon Books, 1999. Cox, Nikki. “Tangible Communitas: A Folkloric Investigation of the Los Angeles Wisdom Tree.” PhD diss., California State University, 2015. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Standard Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–1299. Dawdy, Shannon Lee. “Clockpunk Anthropology and the Ruins of Modernity.” Current Anthropology 51, no. 6 (December 2010): 761–793. doi: 10.1086/657626 DeSilvey, Caitlin and Tim Edensor. “Reckoning with Ruins.” Progress in Human Geography 37, no. 4 (November 2012): 465–485. doi: 10.1177/0309132512462271 Harris, Adrian. “Cross Bones Graveyard: Honouring the Outcast.” Fieldwork in Religion 8, no. 2 (November 2013): 156–174. doi: 10.1558/firn.v8i2.156 Hausner, Sondra. The Spirits of Crossbones Graveyard: Time, Ritual, and Sexual Commerce in London. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016. Henson, Don. (2014) “Finding People in the Heritage of Bankside, Southwark.” In Who Needs Experts? Counter-mapping Cultural Heritage, edited by John Schofield, 147–164. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. Higgs, John. Watling Street: Travels Through Britain and Its Ever-Present Past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2017. Holtorf, Cornelius. “On Pastness: A Reconsideration of Materiality in Archaeological Object Authenticity.” Anthropological Quarterly 86, no. 2 (March 2013): 427–443. doi: 10.23 07/41857332 Holtorf, Cornelis and Sarah May. “Uncertainty, Collaboration and Emerging Issues.” In Heritage Futures: Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices, edited by Rodney Harrison, Caitlin DeSilvey, Cornelius Holtorf, Sharon Macdonald, Nadia Bartolini, Esther Breithoff, Harald Fredheim, Antony Lyons, Sarah May, Jennie Morgan, and Sefryn Penrose, 336–343. London: UCL Press, 2020. Iglikowski-Broad, Victoria. “Archives and Agency: Sex Work and the State.” The National Archives, July 22, 2020, https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-and-agency-sexwork-and-the-state Katsha, Habiba. “I’m a Black Woman like Blessing Olusegun. Would Anybody Care if I Went Missing?” Independent, March 26, 2021. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ blessing-olusegun-sarah-everard-black-woman-b1821959.html

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Not Their Heritage Theme Park Khan, Mariam. “To Make a Difference after Sarah Everard’s Death, You Must Stand Up for Women of Colour Too.” I News, March 19, 2021. https://inews.co.uk/opinion/ difference-sarah-everards-death-stand-up-for-women-of-colour-914457 Knott, Kim. “Walls and Other Unremarkable Boundaries in South London: Impenetrable Infrastructure or Portals of Time, Space and Cultural Difference?” New Diversities 17, no. 2 (June 2015): 15–34. http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/80507/1/Walls_and_other_unremarkable_ boundaries.pdf Lister, Kate. “The Bishop’s Profitable Sex Workers.” Wellcome Collection, June 6, 2018. https:// wellcomecollection.org/articles/WxEniCQAACQAvmUE Lynch, Shana. “‘She Was Only Walking Home’: The Most Powerful Messages from The Vigil Honouring Sarah Everard.” Grazia, March 15, 2021. https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/inthe-news/sarah-everard-vigil-signs Nally, Claire. “‘The Outcast Dead’ Performance, Memory and Sites of Mourning at Cross Bones Graveyard.” In Contemporary Gothic Drama: Attraction, Consummation and Consumption on the Modern British Stage, edited by Kelly Jones, Benjamin Poore, and Robert Dean, 181–200. London: Palgrave, 2018. Nally, Claire. “Cross Bones Graveyard: Excavating the Prostitute in Neo-Victorian Popular Culture.” Journal of Victorian Culture 23, no. 2 (March 2018): 247–261. doi: 10.1093/jvc/ vcx006 O’Gorman, Laura. Crossbones Burial Ground, Redcross Way, Southwark SE1. London: Museum of London Archaeology, 2013. Redpath, Ellie. “Sarah Everard’s Case is a Wake-Up Call – Violence against Women Needs to End.” The Oxford Blue, March 15, 2021. https://www.theoxfordblue.co.uk/2021/03/ 15/sarah-everards-case-is-a-wake-up-call-violence-against-women-needs-to-end Slade, Paul. “The Outcast Dead.” Planet Slade, 2013. http://www.planetslade.com/pdf/ crossbones.pdf Southwark Council. “Southwark Council Planning Committee Meeting 15 June 2020 2 pm.” YouTube Video, June 19, 2020, 2:39:37. https://youtu.be/l9Rsu1FWw4k Stow, John. A Survey of London, edited by W. J. Thoms. London: Chatto and Windus, 1876 [1598]. The Guardian. “Murder Verdict for the ‘Predator’ Who Dissected Prostitute.” November 23, 2005. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/nov/23/ukcrime1 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press Books, 2015 [1995]. U+I, “The Liberty of Southwark.” 2021. https://thelibertyofsouthwark.com Walsh, John. “Tales of the City.” Independent, March 14, 2006. https://www.independent.co. uk/voices/columnists/john-walsh/john-walsh-tales-of-the-city-5335618.html

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23 THE GHOSTS OF KŪKAI Virtual Heritage and Landscapes of Death in Japan’s Shikoku Pilgrimage

Ronald S. Green and Susan J. Bergeron Shikoku, Japan has long been known in folklore as the island of the dead. Accordingly, the spirits of the dead inhabit the mountains and can sometimes interact with visitors. This is incorporated into the guiding ideology of the 750-mile (1,200kilometer) Buddhist Pilgrimage to 88 Temples wrapping around Shikoku. This chapter discusses the Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage project in the context of the immersive platform serving as a digital mirror of the embedded stories preserved along the pilgrimage through plaques, paintings, and other works that convey information about local beliefs related to death. In particular, with emphasis on the difficulties in representing it digitally, this chapter describes the centrality of “Kōbō Daishi faith,” that is, the widespread belief that the founder of the trek, the Buddhist monk Kūkai (774–835 CE) did not die but sits in state (Japanese: nyujō) in his mausoleum, waiting to assist the future Buddha. Many pilgrims report meeting Kūkai along the route in times of need. Pilgrims wear white to indicate their own death, carry a walking stick considered imbued by Kūkai’s guiding spirit, and repeat the adage “Two People, Same Practice” to specify their own embodiment of the founder. The final leg of the pilgrimage, known as the Nirvana dōjō, is seen as a place to attain sokushin jōbutsu or Buddhahood in this body, the same death-like state as Kūkai. Kūkai’s fame has only increased over time because of such stories and an explosion of other types of popular (manga, movies, blogs, and so on) and academic accounts of his life. For example, the premodern and modern tourist industry, whether through the oral transmission of traveling monks or television advertisements, has urged all Japanese to gain the spiritual benefits of visiting Mount Kōya at least once in their lifetimes. Likewise, the four prefectures that comprise Shikoku are currently working together in an attempt to have the entire pilgrimage recognized as an UNESCO World Heritage Site.1 The Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage project is a long-term endeavor focused on the design and development of an immersive virtual landscape exploration platform that will use state-of-the-art 3D digital technologies to recreate the cultural and natural 336

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-28

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landscapes of the temples and surroundings that make up the Buddhist Shikoku Pilgrimage on the island of Shikoku, Japan. Embedded within this virtual platform will be digital stories and media elements that will allow users who explore the platform to delve into the experience of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, through images and words of those who take part in the pilgrimage, the local residents who live and work within the landscape of the temples and pilgrimage routes, and the scholars who have studied the pilgrimage and its importance. One of the key areas of focus for content development within the Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage platform is the representation of qualitative humanistic concepts, including the symbolic meanings ascribed to elements within the Shikoku pilgrimage.

The Ghosts of Kūkai as Companion and Oneself Kūkai (774–835 CE) is among the most important intellectual figures of Japan. As founder of the Japanese Shingon tradition of esoteric Buddhism, his influence pervades Japanese religious and cultural sensibilities even in the present day. Indeed, for transmitting these esoteric teachings to Japan from China in the early Heian period (794–1184 CE), the emperor awarded him the posthumous title Kōbō Daishi, or “Great Master Who Propagated the Dharma.” But Kūkai’s influence extends far beyond Buddhism: scholars, artists, and others recognize his major contributions to the development of Japanese calligraphy, poetry, and literary theory. He engaged in social welfare projects and Japanese society remembers him as a celebrated architect, who designed plans for the Mount Kōya temple complex, which has become one of the major spiritual and tourist destinations in Japan. One would find it difficult to name another historical figure so beloved and respected in Japanese society. To this day, many pilgrims steadfastly maintain that Kūkai’s spirit assists them in conquering difficulties encountered along Shikoku’s 750-mile Pilgrimage to 88 Temples, which honors his legacy, just as he is said to have helped countless others in their time of need. Soon after his physical death, or parinirvana, stories arose that he had not in fact died; his followers believed that he had, instead, entered a deep state of meditation. As such, the master is still alive today. Similar to the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, in Shikoku, pilgrims traditionally wear white clothes to symbolize their own deaths. In terms of Buddhism, this is thought of as the death of the self-image that people construct and maintain as if it were a real and enduring identity. There are two interrelated aspects to this. Japanese Buddhists and East Asian Buddhists in general typically believe that all sentient beings have a “Buddha nature,” that is, an innate drive to reach enlightenment or nirvana, which is also a drive toward extinction. According to this belief, all of the selfish and profit-oriented actions that we perform and identify with as central to our personalities are motivated by ignorance of Buddha nature, which is at the root of who we really are. In fact, according to Buddhism, all people have undertaken a wide range of activities, and have many aspects of personal history and backgrounds such as ethnicity, birth period, country of origin, and so forth. We tend to cherry pick a relatively small amount from this huge array and, as 337

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psychology has shown, have false memories of even that, to construct a narrow selfidentity we use to inform our decisions and behavior. The Shikoku pilgrim seeks the death of this narrow and false identity, sometimes called the “ego-self,” and to realize Buddha nature or one’s innate Buddha mind. Pilgrims begin this process in the first of four training grounds (Japanese: dōjō) they will pass through. The first dōjō is called the Place of Spiritual Awakening (Japanese: Hosshin no dōjō). Those who endure will complete the journey in the fourth and final dōjō, the Place of Nirvana (Japanese: Nehan no dōjō), where they realize death as sokushin jōbutsu. Sokushin jōbutsu is typically translated as “Becoming a Buddha in this body,” that is, without the need for further rebirths. Nirvana is not a heavenly paradise as non-Buddhists sometimes think. Nirvana is extinction. It is extinction of the desires for something else, which by definition is dissatisfaction, and it is ultimately extinction of life without rebirth, called parinirvana or ultimate extinction. For this reason, the term sokushin jōbutsu is also the name of the act of Buddhists practicing asceticism to a point near death and becoming mummified while alive. Walking the pilgrimage route in Shikoku, stopping at 88 Temples, climbing mountains and walking long stretches of asphalt beside the ocean, is such an ascetic practice, known in Japanese as “gyō.” A motto also seen on pilgrim clothing and elsewhere in Shikoku uses this idea of asceticism, “dōgyō ninin,” two people, same practice, meaning the unity of all pilgrims with one another and with Kūkai. All pilgrims carry a rectangular wooden walking staff known as a kongo tsue, literally a “vajra staff.” A vajra is a handheld esoteric Buddhist ritual instrument symbolizing a diamond weapon that cuts through the illusion that life, and anything we encounter, is permanent. Pilgrims think of this sacred vajra staff as being Kūkai himself, who is always with them as guide, teacher, and partner undertaking the same ascetic practices. The handgrip of the pilgrim’s vajra staff is a colored cloth that both cushions the pilgrim’s hand from the wood and hides the inscriptions at top. The inscription is a mantra that reads in Sino-Japanese, “ah, bi, ra, un, ken,” corresponding to earth, water, fire, air, and the void (or sky), the five great elements that comprise the universe and everything in it according to Japanese Buddhism. When a person dies, these elements that comprise the human body, including the mind, break down into the five elements and disperse in nature in those original forms. For this reason, Japanese Buddhist grave markers known as gorintō (literally: five-ringed tower) traditionally represent the five great elements as stones made into geometrical shapes and stacked one atop the other. Specifically, the earth element is shaped like a cube that serves as the foundation of the grave marker. The water element is represented as an oval sphere that sits on top of the cube. Above these, the fire element is a pyramid, the air element a crescent, and the void is a jewel at the peak of the grave marker. Each of these elements has a corresponding vibration represented by a syllable of the mantra. Therefore, the ah, bi, ra, un, ken inscription that each pilgrim carries at all times is Kūkai’s grave, covered up with the hand cloth as if buried. Connected to this, the death of the pilgrim’s own ego-self further establishes the identification with Kūkai and sokushin jōbutsu, becoming a Buddha in this body, also means becoming Kūkai. Accordingly, white-clad pilgrims are identified as embodiments of Kūkai and people living in Shikoku often give alms to pilgrims, effectively building merit for better 338

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rebirths by giving alms to Kūkai. Such alms can be anything from fruits, energy drinks, or candy to a ride in a car to the next temple.

Kūkai’s Death and “Long-Term Samadhi” In his last will and testament called the Honored Spoken Memento, Kūkai prophesied his death would be on the twenty-first day of the third month. The Biography of Sōzō Kūkai gives the following account of the day: On the last day of the fifth month of Jōwa 1 (834), he asked his disciples to gather around him and said: “My life will not last much longer. Live harmoniously and preserve with care the teaching of the Buddha. I am returning to the mountain to remain there forever.” In the early part of the ninth month, the master chose his burial place. From the first month of the second year (835), he drank no water. Someone advised him to take certain herbs as the human body is readily subject to decay, and a celestial cook came day after day and offered him nectar, but he declined even these, saying that he had no use for human food. At midnight on the twenty-first day of the third month (835), Master Kūkai, lying on his right side, breathed his last. One or two of his disciples knew that he had been suffering from a carbuncle. In accordance with his will, Kūkai, clad in his robes, was interred on the Eastern Peak. He was sixty-two years of age.2 We can interpret Kūkai’s line, “I am returning to the mountain to remain there forever” as a reference to the Japanese belief that mountains are places that house the spirits of the dead. The inclusion of the detail that Kūkai “lying on his right side, breathed his last,” is likely a metaphor linking him with the Buddha and other Buddhist saints said to have assumed the same auspicious position upon dying. Further description is seen in the report Kūkai’s disciple Jitsue sent to Qinglong Temple where Kūkai had studied in Chang’an: In the third month of Jōwa 2 (835), his fuel became exhausted and his fire was extinguished. He was sixty-two years old. Alas! Mt. Kōya turned gray; the clouds and trees appeared sad. The emperor in sorrow hastily sent a messenger to convey his condolences. The disciples wept as if they had lost their parents. Alas! We feel in our hearts as if we had swallowed fire, and our tears gush forth like fountains. Being unable to die, we are guarding the places where he passed away.3 Fifty-eight years after the death of Kūkai, the Shingon monk Kangen (853–925), who became head of Kūkai’s Tōji temple in Kyoto and later Kongōbuji at Mount Kōya, petitioned the emperor to grant a posthumous title to Kūkai, as had been granted Saichō. At that time, Kūkai was given the title Kōbō Daishi. Kangen took the imperial edict to Mount Kōya, opening Kūkai’s vault to present it to the master. Kangen reported finding Kūkai still in the meditative posture, his hair grown long. Kangen is said to have cut Kūkai’s hair and changed his robe. When one of Kangen’s 339

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followers refused to believe Kūkai was in perpetual samādhi, he touched Kūkai’s knee and reported finding it was still warm.4 Kangen had been a pupil of Shōbō, who propagated the idea that Mount Kōya was the Tantric Pure Land (mitsugon) where the spirits of faithful Buddhists find repose after death. In opposition to these stories, others argue there are written indications from the time pointing to the probability that Kūkai was cremated, as was the Buddhist practice. At Mount Kōya, every year on 27 March, the Dharma gathering of the Honored Robe Kaji (Japaense: Gyoi kaji) is held at the Hōki building. On that day, a robe the color of Japanese cypress bark is presented in front of the tomb of Kūkai as a kaji offering. The robe is dyed in the temple’s water of Mikoro moido, literally, Honored Robe Well Door. On the twenty-first day, the dyed robe enters a Tang Chinese chest called karabitsu and is taken to Kongōbuji. After a service, it is taken to the front of the tomb, further in the inner forest building. Likely, this annual event has its origin in the legend of finding Kūkai alive at the opening of his tomb.5 Before and after that time, to this day, some of Japan’s greatest poets (e.g. Saigyō), emperors, monks, and ordinary people have reported seeing Kūkai or experiencing his presence. Jitin (1155–1225), a famous high priest (sōjō) of the Tendai School of Japanese Buddhism and poet of the first era of the Kamakura period, wrote the following poem: That which is in the shadow of the rocks at Takaosan is Daishi, still blessedly present.6 From the end of the 10th century to the 11th century, which is around the time Jitin wrote this poem, the belief that one could pray to Kūkai for help and protection developed into what is called today Kōbō Daishi faith (Japanese: Kōbō Daishi shinkō). While this faith exists alongside Kūkai’s Shingon Buddhist doctrine the two do not rely on each other and can exist independently. Kōbō Daishi faith, even more central to the Shikoku pilgrimage than Shingon Buddhism, is a blend of miracle stories associated with Kūkai and Buddhist beliefs about Maitreya, the next Buddha who will appear to save humanity from suffering in the future. The justification for faith that Kōbō Daishi is still living is found in a doctrine known in Japan as the Great Guiding Teacher Who Came in the Time Between Two Buddhas (Japanese: Nibutsu chūgen no daidōshi).7 The doctrine is adapted from such canonical writings as the Āgama scriptures8 and the Mahāyāna Great Collection Kṣitigarbha (literally “Womb of the Earth”) Ten Wheels Sūtra.9 Accordingly, 567 million years after the parinirvana (death or final nirvana) of the Buddha Śākyamuni, the future Buddha, who is Maitreya (Japanese: Miroku Bosatsu), will appear for the salvation of all sentient beings. In the Buddhist scheme of the three great eras after the death of Śākyamuni, Maitreya will appear in the time when the Buddha Dharma cannot be understood nor followed, at the time of the “Third Assembly” of Buddhists.10 In that age, sentient beings must rely on the activities of Maitreya for their salvation. Scholars today believe Kūkai was not responsible for the legends connecting his nyūjō (long-term meditation) with Maitreya, which accordingly arose after the time of 340

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his death. However, several writings attributed to Kūkai mention Maitreya and Tuṣita Heaven where Maitreya is believed to reside until returning to earth. In the seventeenth article of his last will and testament, Kūkai addresses his own status after death, giving advice to the pupils and the future teachers from then until the end of the final age of the world. Kūkai writes the following: If we think of the (future) meditation instructors of Tōji temple, generations of ācārya (i.e. esoteric masters), I will live on in the final age of the world through those followers. After my death the followers to come will number in the tens of millions and they will all be my followers after my life. Those foundational teachers will not see my face directly but in their hearts. They will have heard my name necessarily and know the history of the former teacher. Then I, with the wishes of a white corpse, will not desire the kindness of people. Protection following the mysterious teachings is the decree of destiny at the opening of the Ryūke third flower garden plan (i.e. the Third Assembly of Maitreya). After closing my eyes, I must have abiding life in Tuṣita Heaven, to await the honored presence of tender Maitreya for the remainder of fifty-six hundred million (years). Then, together in the honored presence of the tender one who will descend to the world, I, respectfully waiting, will perhaps regard my previous tracks. Furthermore, looking down from the cloud palace, there will be sympathy for believers in times of doubt and help will be given. Non-believers are unfortunate. You must work diligently, diligently without neglect.11 A similar description appears in the Biography of Kōbō Daishi. Dated the twenty-first day of the third month of Shōwa 4 (1316), four hundred and eighty years after Kūkai’s nyūjō, this biography was written by ex-emperor Go-Uda (1267–1324 r. 1274–1287) after he abdicated and became a monk. From looking at the similarities in the passages and finding no evidence of such a report in the earliest biographies, Watanabe concludes Kūkai’s mention of his presence in Tuṣita Heaven in the Honored Spoken Memento was probably a later addition.12 Indeed, in the writing quoted above, the abrupt mention of living on in Tuṣita Heaven may contradict the previous talk having the feel of finitude (e.g. “with the wishes of a white corpse”). Kūkai indicates faith in Maitreya in his semi-fictitious work Indications of the Goals of the Three Teachings and a prayer written for the observance of the thirty-seventh day after the death of the mother of Tōsakon no Syōken, a Fujiwara family member. In the latter, Kūkai says, The one called the Great Teacher (i.e. the Buddha) is not a different person from Ārya-mahā-maitreya-bodhisattva (i.e. Maitreya). Residing in the Hall of the Dharma Realm,13 assisting the virtue of Mahāvairocana Buddha. In Tuṣita Heaven the Honored Ranking (i.e. Maitreya) spreads the teachings of Śākyamuni.14 Kūkai goes on to say the bodhisattva Maitreya, though already a Buddha, took the form of a bodhisattva for the sake of sentient beings, and “Tuṣita Heaven is longed for in the moon.” Kūkai locates Tuṣita Heaven on the moon, at least allegorically.15 341

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Today, the moon is used as an object of meditation in several Shingon practices. Pilgrims are sometimes exposed to these at Shingon temple lodgings in Shikoku and on Mount Kōya, particularly the Ajikan, meditation on the sound “A” while visualizing one’s mind as an expanding moon. While pilgrims today are unlikely to be aware of the concept of Tuṣita Heaven, Mount Kōya serves as an esoteric Pure land and Kūkai’s mausoleum there is thought of as the same kind of waiting place for the spirit of Kōbō Daishi. From the late 10th century to this day, pilgrims having Kōbō Daishi Faith refer to him by the familiar nickname “Odai-sama.” “O” is honorific, “dai” is short for “Daishi,” and “sama” is a term of respect in Japanese higher than “san” that is ordinarily appended to a name. Pilgrims venerate Kūkai when they chant “Namu Daishi Henjō Kongō” (Praise be to the Great Master, the All-Expansive Vajra) several times at every temple.

The Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage – Challenges in Representing These Aspects of Kūkai in the Digital Pilgrimage – What Inspirations Can We Use? Near the end of his life, Kūkai wrote the following now-famous prose to open his work titled The Jewel Key to the Mysterious Treasury (Hizōhōyaku): Born, born, born, born, darkness in the beginning of life; Death, death, death, death, darkness in the ending that is death.16 In reflecting on Kūkai’s words, a seminal question for digital heritage projects like the Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage is raised – how do we integrate the experience of a digital world with examples of the humanistic thought that are intellectual, spiritual, and emotional touchstones to the cultural landscapes we are recreating? This is one of the most interesting challenges that we have already begun to explore during our initial research in the field on Shikoku and throughout the development of the Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage prototype: the question of how to digitally represent both the elements of each temple and the surrounding landscape and the experience of being there, as there are many ways for pilgrims to traverse the pilgrimage and many ways to experience each temple. The digital representation of places and the intangible cultural meaning that permeates them has been the focus of a growing body of literature in a number of fields, including geography, history, archaeology, and other disciplines that work with cultural heritage.17 As discussed earlier, the Shikoku pilgrimage itself is undertaken in honor of the famous 9th-century Buddhist priest Kūkai, known by the honorific title Kōbō Daishi (Great Master who Propagated the Buddha’s Teachings). Kūkai was from Shikoku and many of the events in his life leading him to enlightenment are memorialized at the 88 Temples of the pilgrimage. Pilgrims typically think of themselves as emulating these events and thereby becoming a part of Kūkai’s life, spiritual progress, and legacy. Pilgrims often form deep bonds with one another over their common experiences. Residents of Shikoku and visitors to the island frequently give alms to the pilgrims as living embodiments of Kūkai, whom they also say appears along the route in times of need. 342

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Incorporating references to Kūkai’s life and work, then, must be important aspects of the design of the Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage platform, as well as content that reflects the ways in which the pilgrimage invites the exploration of Japanese beliefs and traditions concerning the nature of life and death. The cultural and natural elements of the temple landscapes as well as elements of the pilgrim experience are fundamental to digitally recreating the pilgrimage experience. In addition, the representation of intangible elements that explore cultural and spiritual beliefs reflected in the pilgrimage landscapes, including attitudes and beliefs about death and the spiritual world discussed earlier, have been a central focus in the development of embedded media within the Virtual Shikoku platform. The multi-year collaborative Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage project is an immersive virtual landscape exploration platform that seeks to digitally recreate the landscapes, temples, and experiences of the well-known 88 Temples Buddhist pilgrimage that circumnavigates the island of Shikoku, Japan and explore the experience of the pilgrimage through user navigation through and interaction with the virtual landscape. Embedded within this virtual platform will be digital stories and media elements that allow users to explore and delve into the experience of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, using images and words of those who take part in the pilgrimage, the words of Kūkai and other Buddhist texts, the local residents who live and work within the landscape of the temples and pilgrimage routes, and the scholars who have studied the pilgrimage and its importance. Conveying aspects of Buddhist and Japanese cultural beliefs about death and the spirit world within the Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage experience is accomplished in three main ways: (1) through the digital recreation of specific cultural and natural landscape features that have significance in referencing the dead or spirits, including Kūkai; (2) through embedded media content that can be accessed through interaction with specific digital objects within the virtual landscape; and (3) structuring navigation through the virtual landscape experience with a third-person character that can adopt aspects of a Shikoku pilgrim, such as the henro clothing and the walking staff, and can perform some of the rites and tasks that a pilgrim engages in. In designing and implementing the Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage experience, particular attention is being paid to give users opportunities to actively engage with elements in the virtual landscape. Users have the option to choose an avatar dressed in henro attire that represents their presence within the virtual landscape. At each temple, users may interact with specific areas of the temple where common rites are performed, including candle lighting, leaving name slips, coin offerings, and the sutra recitations that are key parts of the pilgrimage experience. In addition, progress along the virtual experience will be tracked through a progress screen designed in the style of traditional pilgrimage stamp books, which are stamped at each temple visited as tokens of completion on the pilgrimage route. In order to more fully experience the Shikoku pilgrimage within the virtual landscape, our navigation design includes multiple methods to traverse the routes between our selected temples, including walking on the henro paths, using local train and bus service, and even cable and incline cars to visit several mountain temples. These methods reflect the many ways in which pilgrims can journey along the 343

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pilgrimage routes between temples. For those who follow paths on foot, embedded content will focus on vignettes that highlight aspects of the pilgrims following in Kūkai’s footsteps. For example, pop-up text, image, and video windows offer quotes from written accounts of pilgrims, photos of graveyards and other monuments along the path, and videos of the walking experience. Until recently, much of the work of virtual heritage was focused on the technical and methodological challenges in recreating past cultural features, landscapes, and environments. Now that many technological hurdles have been cleared by advances in computing hardware that have made powerful processing and high-resolution graphics available at the consumer level, a number of innovative projects in virtual heritage have begun to move beyond design and implementation challenges to explore conceptual questions related to their presentation of humanistic cultural information. Increasingly, projects within virtual heritage and digital humanities are exploring aspects of the role of interaction within immersive 3D virtual landscapes and how it impacts the user experience.18 An important area of technical research and literature that informs this project is the growing literature on the application of video game technologies and mechanics in virtual archaeology and virtual heritage. Champion has argued that “a primary aim of virtual heritage is to communicate the cultural significance of a site”19 and interaction and immersion can be powerful tools to accomplish this goal by fostering a sense of place and cultural presence within a user. High-resolution graphics, complex dynamic systems, and interactive feedback are among the tools that can now be brought to bear on the development of virtual heritage.20 The immersive virtual platform under development in the Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage project will continue to build on and leverage video-game graphics and interaction techniques through the Unity engine to create an immersive and compelling virtual 3D representation of Shikoku’s temples and surrounding landscapes that provide both immersive exploration and integrated multimedia and scholarly information.21

Notes 1 Shikoku Henro World Heritage Inscription Council, “Many minds, Many Hearts, One Shikoku. Symposium to Promote World Heritage Registration of the Eighty-Eight Temples and Pilgrimage Routes of Shikoku.” Report on the Symposium in FY 2017. https://88sekaiisan.org/en/report/pdf/ReportontheSymposiuminFY2017.pdf 2 Yoshito Hakeda, Kūkai: Major Works (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 59–60. 3 Hakeda, Kūkai, 60. 4 Daigan Matsunaga and Alicia Matsunaga. Foundation of Japanese Buddhism. Vol. 1, The Aristocratic Age (Tokyo: Buddhist Books Intl, 1978), 197. 5 Shōkō Watanabe and Miyasaka Yusho. Shamon Kūkai (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1967), 222. 6 Ronald S. Green, Kūkai, Founder of Japanese Shingon Buddhism: Portraits of his Life. PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 2003, 290. 7 Hajime Nakamura, Fukunaga Mitsuji, Namura Yoshirō, Konno Tooru, eds. Iwanami bukkyō jiten (Iwanami Dictionary of Buddhism) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1999), 635.

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The Ghosts of Kūkai 8 The Chinese translations of the Āgama scriptures roughly correspond to the Pali Nikāyas. In particular, see T. 2 n. 100. 9 T. 13 n. 411. 大乘大集地藏十輪經, abbreviated 十輪経, J. Jūrinkyō. 10 Nakamura et al., Iwanami bukkyō jiten, 788. 11 KZ 7, 265–266. 12 Watanabe and Yusho, Shamon Kūkai, 15. 13 A note in the KKZ says Dharmadhātu shrine refers to the Maitreya assembly northeast of the central lotus in the Garbhakoṣadhātu (Womb Realm) maṇḍala, KKZ 6, 547, n. 10. 14 KZ 10, 108. 15 Similarly, Hinduism’s Br̥ hadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad says the mind of the deceased goes to the moon. 16 T. Vol. 77, no. 2426, pp. 363a06-a12. 17 Heather Richards-Rosetto, Jim Robertsson, Jennifer von Schwerin, Fabio Remondino, Giorgio Agugiaro, and Gabrio Girardi, “Geospatial virtual heritage: a gesture-based 3D GIS to engage the public with ancient Maya archaeology.” Archaeology in the Digital Era: Papers from the 40th Annual Conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA), Southampton, 26–29 March 2012, edited by Graeme Earl, Tim Sly, Angeliki Chrysanthi, Patricia Murrieta-Flores, Constantinos Papadopoulos, Iza Romanowska, and David Wheatley (Amsterdam University Press, 2013), 118–130; Erik M. Champion. Playing with the Past (New York: Springer, 2011). 18 Donald H. Sanders, “Virtual heritage: researching and visualizing the past in 3D,” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 2, no. 1 (2014): 30–47; Erik M. Champion, “Otherness of place: game-based interaction and learning in virtual heritage projects,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 14, no. 3 (2008): 210–228; R. G. Laycock, D. Drinkwater, and A. M. Day, “Exploring cultural heritage sites through space and time,” ACM Journal on Computing in Cultural Heritage 1, no. 2 (2008): 1–15; Arne R. Flaten et al., “Immersive technologies to explore the Cyrene Treasury at Delphi,” Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 14, no. 4 (2014). 19 Champion, “Otherness of place,” 212. 20 Kit Devine, “The virtual Sydney Rocks: a case study of a virtual heritage environment,” International Journal of Heritage and Sustainable Development 3, no. 1 (2013): 63–69; Eike Anderson et al., “Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review,” Virtual Reality 14 (2009): 255–275. 21 For project information, updates, and demos, see https://immersivehumanities.org/ virtualshikokupilgrimage/

Bibliography Anderson, Eike Falk, Leigh McLoughlin, Fotis Liarokapis, Christopher Peters, Panagiotis Petridis, and Sara de Freitas. “Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-ofthe-art review.” Virtual Reality 14 (2009): 255–275. doi: 10.1007/s10055-010-0177-3 Champion, Erik M. Playing with the Past. New York: Springer, 2011. Champion, Erik M. “Otherness of place: game-based interaction and learning in virtual heritage projects.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 14, no. 3 (2008): 210–228. doi: 10. 1080/13527250801953686 Devine, Kit. “The virtual Sydney Rocks: a case study of a virtual heritage environment.” International Journal of Heritage and Sustainable Development 3, no. 1 (2013): 63–69. Flaten, Arne R., Susan J. Bergeron, Marcello Garofalo, Brandon Rudolph, and Jeffrey Case. “Immersive technologies to explore the Cyrene Treasury at Delphi.” Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 14, no. 4 (2014): 25–33. Green, Ronald S. Kūkai, Founder of Japanese Shingon Buddhism: Portraits of His Life. PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 2003.

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Ronald S. Green and Susan J. Bergeron Hakeda, Yoshito. Kūkai: Major Works. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972. KKZ. Kōbō daishi kūkai zenshū (The Complete Works of Kōbō Daishi Kūkai). Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, Shō wa, 58–60 [1983–1985]. KZ. Kōbō daishi zenshū. Sofū Sen’yōkai (compiler). Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan; Kyōto-shi: Rokudai Shinpōsha, Meiji, 42–43 [1909–1910]. Laycock, R. G., D. Drinkwater, and A. M. Day. “Exploring cultural heritage sites through space and time.” ACM Journal on Computing in Cultural Heritage 1, no. 2 (2008): 1–15. doi: 10.1145/1434763.1434768 Matsunaga, Daigan and Alicia Matsunaga. Foundation of Japanese Buddhism. Tokyo: Buddhist Books Intl, 1978. Nakamura, Hajime, Fukunaga Mitsuji, Namura Yoshirō, Konno Tooru, eds. Iwanami bukkyō jiten (Iwanami Dictionary of Buddhism). Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1999. Richards-Rissetto, Heather, Jim Robertsson, Jennifer von Schwerin, Fabio Remondino, Giorgio Agugiaro, and Gabrio Girardi. “Geospatial virtual heritage: a gesture-based 3D GIS to engage the public with Ancient Maya archaeology.” In Archaeology in the Digital Era: Papers from the 40th Annual Conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA), Southampton, 26-29 March 2012, edited by Graeme Earl, Tim Sly, Angeliki Chrysanthi, Patricia Murrieta-Flores, Constantinos Papadopoulos, Iza Romanowska, and David Wheatley, 118–130.Amsterdam University Press, 2013. doi: 10.2307/j.ctt6wp7kg.15 Sanders, Donald H. “Virtual heritage: researching and visualizing the past in 3D.” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 2, no. 1 (2014): 30–47. doi: 10.5325/ jeasmedarcherstu.2.1.0030 Shikoku Henro World Heritage Inscription Council Office. “Many minds, many hearts, one Shikoku. Symposium to promote world heritage registration of the eighty-eight temples and pilgrimage routes of Shikoku.” Report on the Symposium in FY 2017. https:// 88sekaiisan.org/en/report/pdf/ReportontheSymposiuminFY2017.pdf T. Taishō shinshō daizōkyō (Taishō Tripitaka), 85 vols. Takakusu Junjirō et al., eds. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai, 1924–1932. Watanabe, Shōkō and Miyasaka Yusho. Shamon Kūkai. Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1967.

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24 A SHADOW PANDEMIC Protest, Mourning, and Grassroots Memorialization in Mexico City

Kelsey Perreault When the world went into various states of lockdown in March 2020, I was flying back to Canada from Costa Rica through Mexico City. I had stopped in Mexico earlier in my trip to undertake some research at the Museum of Memory and Tolerance in Mexico City for my dissertation that I had planned to write on activism and museums. In the weeks that followed, a lot would change and dramatic shifts in the world in response to the escalating global health pandemic forced me to pause and pay attention. As someone who had spent my formative academic years studying trauma, violence, and memory, it was disconcerting to find myself suddenly living through a period of global sickness, death, and collective grief. I should have been well prepared to handle such a scenario but like most everyone else I could not have anticipated the onslaught of catastrophic events that would shape 2020 nor how that trauma would seep into my life and affect me. I abandoned my dissertation project early into lockdown and resolved myself to spend the pandemic paying attention to the way trauma, death, and memory shaped pandemic life and public mourning. I held out hope that a new project would emerge from the messy collection of photographs, videos, and articles that seemed incoherent and disorganized to me at the time. In “The Politics of Affect in Catastrophic Times,” Maurice Stevens argues for the need to remain conscious of our own deep affect, feeling, and stakes in conversations about memory, history, trauma, and the biopolitical. That, in fact, to speak and to think about the biopolitical vis-à-vis this cultural concept we call ‘trauma’ necessitates that we pay attention to affect.1 Following this line, I began approaching my research in a way that was cognizant of my own feelings and affect under pandemic conditions while simultaneously watching how the affect, grief, and loss of others played out far away, but was made to feel close to me, by nature of our digital connection. DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-29

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Now, after over two years under pandemic conditions, the messy collection of photographs that I began compiling has evolved into an ephemeral archive of feminist protest movements during the pandemic. While the world was tracking and tallying daily death tolls for COVID-19, I was highly attuned to how stay-at-home orders and other restrictions that kept women inside private spaces were having a direct impact on rising numbers of femicide and intimate partner violence around the world. I also looked on helplessly from my living room as many governments used this moment of pandemic isolation to push through bills that directly attacked women’s rights. Judith Butler claims in The Force of Nonviolence that protests and mourning must go together when losses and violence have gone unrecognized and unacknowledged.2 I ask: What work do protests and mourning do to counter gendered violence and femicide? And how did pandemic restrictions influence protest and mourning practices in public spaces? This chapter examines sites of protest, mourning, and grassroots memorialization in response to femicide in Mexico over the course of 2020, while drawing connections to the marked increase in violence against women globally since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Femicide refers to the killing of women based on their gender and encompasses the imbalance of gender in structures of power that often leads to corruption and neglect by authorities surrounding the murder of women. Tracing the femicide social movement in Mexico through the lens of the pandemic and under lockdown orders, I argue that stay-at-home orders created the optimal conditions for domestic violence and femicide. This chapter details how femicide activists protesting gendered violence in Mexico City have been doing the ongoing work of memorializing and mourning victims of femicide in public places, calling attention to and publicly documenting systemic state violence. Initially, I define femicide as a term and contextualize it in both the Mexican and global context as a shadow pandemic that proliferated in the background of the global COVID-19 pandemic. I then turn my attention to sites of femicide activism in Mexico City from 2020 to 2021 to consider how violence, death, protest, and mourning are bound up with each other. Tracing three sites of protest in Mexico City under pandemic conditions, I think through how the dual labor of protest and mourning work to uncover and expose gendered violence publicly, while also reconfiguring public spaces through grassroots memorialization as places for collective grieving and resistance.

Femicide Femicide as a term is used to describe the intentional killing of women and girls because of their gender. Femicide originates from the Latin femina for woman and cida from caedere, meaning to kill. Femicide is linked etymologically to the English term homicide, which also has Latin origins. Femicide as a concept includes a wide variety of abuses such as rape, torture, sexual slavery, childhood sexual abuse, sexual harassment, genital mutilation, unnecessary gynecological operations, forced heterosexuality, forced sterilization or motherhood, criminalizing contraception, and restricting access to abortion. When any of these result in the death of women, they 348

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fall under the umbrella of femicide.3 Alice Driver notes in More or Less Dead: Feminicide, Haunting, and the Ethics of Representation in Mexico that the terms femicide and (newly) feminicide have raised confusion since people may assume that the term only encompasses serial sexual killings and not issues of domestic or intimate partner violence. Driver clarifies that femicide refers more generally to gender-motivated violence, and feminicide has evolved to include an analysis of violence that results from both gender and the performance of gender, as well as the power structures that create inequalities for women.4 While femicide exists in every corner of the world, that specific terminology often isn’t used in conjunction with feminist social movements and that may in part be because of the heaviness the word itself contains. More likely, however, is that the confusion around the term keeps feminist groups from fully harnessing it to address the interconnectedness of feminist issues. However, in Mexico, the term femicide has become deeply important to the work that feminist protestors are doing on the ground and in defense of victims of femicide. Driver lays out in More or Less Dead how competing discourses surrounding victims of femicide are often at odds and contend with one another in the public imagination. The public discourse in the media may center out-of-control sexuality and use the victim’s sexuality as a weapon to discredit their death, while the private discourse coming from families seeks to protect the victim’s memory and to remember them often through rich cultural modes of production.5 Posthuman media studies scholar, J. J. Sylvia, argues that: The COVID-19 pandemic lays bare the biopolitics of the current moment. On one hand, governments have increased measures of surveillance and control for population management. On the other hand, this occurs within the larger context of the racial disparities woven into biopower as individuals are increasingly asked to take responsibility for making life and death decisions themselves.6 While much discourse has emerged about how race has played into the biopower of the pandemic on a global scale, what is less clear still and often left out of the conversation is how stay-at-home orders as a measure of control have directly influenced women’s lives and safety. Tracking rising femicide and rates of domestic violence is one way that I initially began to think about how gender disparity is shaped by the biopolitical apparatus under pandemic conditions. Biopolitics refers to a politics that deals with biological life, often credited to be theorized by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault.7 A biopolitical apparatus of gender, then, can be understood as the structures, forces, and mechanisms of power that seek to govern and classify bodies based on the Western conception of a gender binary. On May 27, 2020, United Nations Women released a campaign called “the Shadow Pandemic” that focused on global public awareness of rising domestic 349

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violence amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.8 The press release includes a 60-second film narrated by actress Kate Winslet that highlights the upsurge in reports of intimate partner violence in the home since stay-at-home orders were put into effect in many nations. The Executive Director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, remarked that Even before the pandemic, violence against women was one of the most widespread violations of human rights. Since lockdown restrictions, domestic violence has multiplied, spreading across the world in a shadow pandemic. This is a critical time for action, from prioritizing essential services like shelter and support for women survivors, to providing the economic support and stimulus packages needed for broader recovery.9 Six women are killed every hour globally, most often by men that are intimate partners or family members of the victim. UN statistics estimate that 137 women a day are killed by men that they know, roughly 50,000 femicides annually are perpetrated by male spouses and family.10 Here in Canada, studies show that Indigenous women are twelve times more likely to be murdered than other women in Canada and sixteen times more likely than white women specifically.11 The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) notes that femicide is a worldwide problem and even in nations where homicide numbers might be dropping, femicide rates are on the rise. Moreover, femicides are particularly brutal violent crimes and women are more likely than men to be killed by strangulation, drowning, suffocation, and stabbing.12 Another key factor that drives the problem of femicide in Mexico is the high impunity rate. Systemic impunity in Mexico means that around 93 percent of crimes are either not reported or not investigated. Mexico only started tracking femicide numbers in 2012 and the city of Ciudad Juarez gained significant news recognition as a deadly city wherein hundreds of women were reported missing or found dead. A few high-profile cases since then have garnered international recognition and driven protest movements across Mexico. In February 2020, two cases sparked significant public outrage: Ingrid Escamilla was skinned and killed by her partner on 9 February, and a few days later Fatima Aldrighetti, a seven-year-old girl, was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.13 These cases prompted dozens of activists to protest at the National Palace in Mexico City, throwing down red paint and spray-painting graffiti on the main doors. When the government of Mexico imposed a partial lockdown in March 2020, there was a 25-percent increase in domestic violence reports indicating that the lockdown was putting women at even greater risk.14 Despite these lockdown orders, feminist activists took to the streets of Mexico City repeatedly throughout 2020 highlighting the severity of violence against women and the safety risks of staying at home.

Protest and Mourning On March 8, 2020, International Women’s Day, members of the art activist collective Colectiva SJF began painting the names of femicide victims on the ground of Mexico 350

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City’s Plaza del Zocalo. As events for the day got underway and they prepared for their march, around 200 women joined them in painting the names of approximately 250 victims of femicide.15 Later, approximately 100,000 women would come together for the march. The ritual of displaying the names of victims is not new but tied to a long history of naming the deceased on monuments of genocide and mass trauma.16 Naming the dead is a way of recognizing each individual life, a way of resisting their erasure and keeping their memory alive. This case of memorializing victims is significant in its grassroots organization and in the governmental response of scrubbing away the names less than twenty-four hours later. Aerial shots of the plaza captured by Mexican photographer and filmmaker Santiago Arau show the striking typographic memorial art in its entirety and with the crowds of protestors gathered before the march.17 Pictures and videos of the massive letters speak to the scale of this project. The collective made sure to document it before it’s inevitable destruction. Martha Muñoz Aristizabal, a member of the collective, spoke to the intention of the memorial stating that we were sick of seeing the femicide problem through statistics. We wanted to humanize these women. When they die, they leave an imprint on all of us and we wanted to visualize that imprint for everyone, to create a collective memory. It is a necessity of social protest to occupy public spaces and resignify them.18 While Muñoz makes clear the importance of their project in making visible statistics that are impossible to fully comprehend, she also touches on the significance of their chosen public space and the way their direct action contributes to collective historical memory. The prompt removal of the names from the plaza in turn signals the government’s own attempts to erase such memories from not only this public place but the larger constructed national narrative as well. The next day, 9 March, tens of thousands of women participated in a walkout, refusing to go to work or school. The marches, memorial art, and walkouts gained news recognition but seemingly failed to force any faster movement on government policy, unsurprisingly considering how deeply entrenched the corruption goes on an administrative level. Photographs of the femicide protests in Mexico City found their way to me by way of friends sharing images from the ground and through Instagram. These documents translated for me the way the pandemic has laid bare the biopolitics of our world in this moment of interconnected crises. Biopolitics is intimately bound up with issues of gendered violence in Mexico. These images and documents of activism show that these protest spaces are also spaces where death haunts, where grief is brought to the foreground, where mourning might look like violence, and where women are calling out for political change from a system that does not value their lives. This leads me to draw on what Judith Butler has theorized as the grievability of life, wherein grievability is a continuum that recognizes loss of life in some frames but may be unrecognizable or absent elsewhere.19 Grievability accounts for why a loss of life may be mourned within one community but otherwise unmarked in national or international frameworks. According to Butler: 351

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It is one reason why the community that mourns also protests the fact that the life is considered ungrievable, not only by those responsible for taking the life, but also by those who live in a world where the presumption is that such lives are always vanishing, that this is simply the way things go. This is one reason why mourning can be protest, and the two must go together when losses are not yet publicly acknowledged and mourned.20 Following this line, the 2020 Women’s Day March in Mexico City and the resulting memorial in Plaza del Zocalo exemplify how mourning and protest collaborate to argue for the grievability of women’s lives in Mexico. The work that activists are doing on the ground serves a dual function. Their labor is politically engaged in forms of protest that aim to raise public consciousness surrounding gendered violence, inequality, and rights to safety. These protests are simultaneously public places for mourning, memorializing, and grieving the lives of the “ungrievable.” The United Nations recognizes Mexico as one of the most dangerous places in the world for women to live. This is partly because the state has no solutions to the increasing violence, often stating that femicide is no longer an issue even though statistics show just the opposite. Women and family members who come forward and try to get justice are often faced with lengthy bureaucratic runarounds that lead nowhere. It is also well acknowledged that the statistics are much lower than the actual numbers and lived reality since so many cases of violence go unreported out of fear of repercussion and further violence.21 On September 2, 2020, two women who had come to the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico City for a regular meeting regarding their individual cases refused to leave the building. Marcela Aleman was there on behalf of her fouryear-old daughter that was sexually assaulted. Frustrated with the lack of progress and answers from her meeting with President Rosario Piedra Ibarra, Marcela tied herself to a chair. The two mothers, Marcela Aleman and Silvia Castillo, refused to leave and reached out to local activists for support in their occupation. The next day, a few dozen activists from feminist collectives met outside to protest in solidarity. Leading the action was a group of black hooded women who refer to themselves as the Bloque Negro (Black Block). The women spent the first night sleeping outside the building on the pavement. On Friday, 4 September 4, they peacefully entered the building, reading a list of demands to security officers and officials. Pushing further into the building, they asked workers to leave. Renaming the building, Okupa Cuba Casa Refugio (Cuba Occupation Shelter House, known more commonly as Okupa,22 the women moved into the space reclaiming the formerly white walls with bright murals and protest graffiti. Okupa became home for many women and girls seeking refuge. They hosted drop-in workshops for aerial yoga, art making, and ceramic classes, as well as weekly bazaars where women could sell handmade goods. Okupa remained under constant police supervision and the women rotated taking turns on guard at the door where they kept a supply of homemade molotov cocktails, a necessary precaution given the police’s use of force in other protests and occupation attempts. 352

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Women stood their ground outside of Okupa holding up historical portraits that they painted over, sparking outrage from the President who condemned their “violence” and “vandalism.” One photograph shows a woman gesturing to an upside-down portrait of Francisco I. Madero with added lipstick, blush, and purple hair. Madero was a Mexican revolutionary that served as President briefly before his assassination in 1913. Born into a wealthy family, Madero is widely regarded as instrumental in the Mexican revolution and a champion of social justice and democracy of the time. The feminized portrait of Madero was put up for auction on the street. The critical response to this artistic act of protest and revision of a historical portrait raises questions about why the government will publicly denounce such acts but fail to address the brutal violence against women all over the country.23 Sitting President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) condemned the women, stating that “I respect all the demonstrations, but I do not agree with the violence, vandalism. I do not agree with what they did to the painting of Francisco I. Madero.”24 This raises a few questions for me. Is a portrait of a dead president worth more than the lives of Mexican women? Who gets to decide how the oppressed should respond to violence and subjugation inflicted on them? How do we separate and identify structural violence from forms of protest, occupation, and resistance that seek only to intercept violence? Okupa sparked feminist protests and activism all over Mexico for a short period in the fall before internal rifts would lead some women away. The sweeping political message for the protection of all women was at odds with a statement by the Black Block in October 2020 that transgender women were not welcome to stay at Okupa, which was intended as a shelter for victims of violence and sexual assault.25 Local LGBTQ+ groups publicly withdrew support in response, recognizing transgender women as vulnerable members of their community and most at risk for violent attacks. Like many political movements that take on a life of their own, the work and internal relationships among the women on the ground of Okupa are filled with complexities and disagreements. Despite clashes within Okupa, we can still recognize the movement as a radical reclaiming of a public building by a vulnerable group with the intent of safeguarding the lives that the National Human Rights Commission of Mexico has failed to protect. To return to Butler, she writes that: Nonviolence is perhaps best described as a practice of resistance that becomes possible, if not mandatory, precisely at the moment when doing violence seems most justified and obvious. In this way, it can be understood as a practice that not only stops a violent act, or a violent process, but requires a form of sustained action, sometimes aggressively pursued. So, one suggestion I will make is that we can think of nonviolence not simply as the absence of violence, or as the act of refraining from committing violence, but as a sustained commitment, even a way of rerouting aggression for the purposes of affirming ideals of equality and freedom.26 By this definition of nonviolence, we can begin to see how slippery a definition of violence truly is and how difficult it is to locate an original source of violence when 353

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forms of nonviolence seek to intercept it and may unintentionally become entangled. It is possible however to recover aspects of Okupa that may have been deemed by the government or public as violent and reframe them under this rubric of nonviolence as acts that were taken with the clear intent to affirm women’s rights, equality, and safety.

Grassroots Memorialization After more than a year under pandemic conditions and no real governmental response to ensure women’s safety from violence, protests broke out again at the National Palace in Mexico City to mark International Women’s Day on March 8, 2021. Photography of the day’s events show the Palace secured behind a massive barricade wall that wraps around the entire building. Other images from throughout the day show women clad in all black kicking back against a police barricade, attempting to scale the wall, and general fury and chaos on the frontlines of the protest. The memorial that was painted in the square a year earlier and quickly washed away was replaced this time around by a more robust grassroots memorial that quickly sprung up directly on the black metal barricade outside the palace. The protestors co-opted the material space of the wall meant for protecting a building and reconfigured it as a site for memorializing and mourning the dead, calling attention to the lack of protection for women and the unrecognized violence that pervades their daily lives. The barricade itself highlights the contradictory nature of a government intent on protecting infrastructure, buildings, and a particular national narrative while women die and lay crosses and flowers at the foot of the wall. Names of femicide victims were added in white paint and hundreds of names dominate and stretch across the entirety of the makeshift structure. The National Feminist Collective called out AMLO’s government for taking more action to protect a building than it has to protect the Nation’s women. Other activists echoed that there are not enough walls to name all the femicide victims.27 Pink crosses fill the spaces in between while pink, white, and purple bouquets of flowers are laid to rest on the ground and hang from the barrier. The memorial went up on Friday, March 4, in anticipation of the march and protest that would take place on Women’s Day on the following Tuesday. On Sunday night, in the interim, a light show projected messages onto the National Palace including a proclamation for “Legal Abortion Now.” These protests and memorialization efforts are indicative of a recent shift away from the state holding the monopoly on configuring national stories of memory and histories of violence. David Simon and Eve Monique Zucker argue in Mass Violence and Memory in the Digital Age: Memorialization Unmoored that we are seeing a rise in private citizens creating public and digital forms of memorialization that often resurrect previously unrecognized stories of state violence. They state that: The past, once curated, contained, and circumscribed in the public domain, is now being reassembled in novel forms and formulations through ever-growing digital capabilities that are employed by a multitude of actors. Memorialization, therefore, once the purview of the state and typically consisting of tangible, physical places, and objects, has, in the ‘digitocene’ era, become unmoored. 28 354

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The rise of counter-memorials by citizens according to Simon and Zucker is indicative of how social media and the digital realm have changed the way we protest and mourn. Protests are no longer obligated to be held in tangible spaces but may traverse across digital spaces to reach wider audiences, calling in more allies than groups may have previously been able to access. Since the early days of the pandemic, I witnessed a dramatic rise in campaigns and direct-action taking place online and through social media. And while this rise in online social activism was clearly due to stay-at-home orders sweeping the globe, there were millions of women this year that chose not to stay home and took to the streets instead. Protest photographs circulated online in the mainstream media and by digital activists showed women gathering at the barricade memorial in Mexico City with grief and loss heavy in their bodies. Women hold each other tight as tears stream down their faces and their handwriting boldly lists the names of victims on the wall, calling in the presence of their ghosts. Video footage of the protest action shows women attacking the barrier and violently clashing with the police that positioned themselves behind the wall. In these videos, the air is thick with the fog of police teargas and smoke from fires set in the street by protestors. For me, the photographs were highly affective and sparked a lot of feminist rage as I grappled with the way women’s lives were becoming increasingly precarious and at risk under pandemic conditions. I was also simultaneously asking questions through my work and research about what to do with that rage. I wanted to know what we do with uncomfortable emotions like rage and grief and distrust during a period where there often doesn’t feel like there is time or space to unpack them. Erika Doss suggests in her writing on the emotional life of temporary memorials that the intense and explosive nature of grief can be renegotiated through the structure of feelings that temporary memorials (like the one outside Mexico City’s National Palace) embody. Doss argues that temporary memorials: both express and manage the psychic crisis and social disorder of death and loss via materialist and performative modes of mourning. Their burgeoning contemporary presence at sites of sudden death and places of traumatic loss, in memory of roadside fatalities, airplane crashes, political assassinations, victims of school shootings, victims of terrorism, and more, reveals both a cultural renegotiation of grief and the changed dimensions of mourning.29 If we understand grief as the deep individual emotional anguish we feel in response to death or loss and mourning as the ritualized practices that are often done in community to help us to assuage that pain then Doss claims that temporary memorials problematize the Modern Western distinction between grief and mourning by visibly embodying both in very public spaces. Temporary memorials also represent continued rather than severed bonds between the living and the dead. Much of Sigmund Freud’s writing on “Mourning and Melancholia” argues that mourning is key to individuals working through grief and freeing themselves from the psychologically “dangerous” attachments to the dead. Freud coined the term 355

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melancholia to describe a pathological form of grief that he believed resulted from not properly mourning or working through the loss. His later personal experiences with grief forced him to revise his thinking about mourning, although he is still often cited as one of the earliest thinkers to take up the questions of grief and mourning.30 Doss goes on to say that: more recent theoretical and clinical analyses of grief, which are based on how and why people actually grieve rather than on essentializing modernist interests in controlling their emotional responses to loss, contextualize grief within the particularities of lived experience and emphasize the inseparability of life from death – or the ‘continuing’ bonds between the living and the deceased.31 By this description of grief, mourning practices work to preserve not sever the bond between the living and the dead. There is no moving on from grief, only finding ways to live on with the loss and to let it change us. In Mexico City, feminist protestors who are lobbying for basic human rights are also doing the work of mourning femicide because it remains critical to arguing for the grievability of women’s lives in Mexico. In my research, I did not find any data on how the public perceived the memorials which is why I opted to write from my own position and lean on memory and affect as lenses through which to view their production and meaning in a larger global memory scape. Perception is, of course, varied and subjective so I attempt to situate the memorials and protests within a contemporary moment of feminist resistance under the pandemic to highlight how the pandemic may have influenced femicide and resistance in Mexico and globally.

Conclusions While my writing has focused on feminist protest movements in Mexico, drawing particularly on recent protests during the pandemic, this research has just scratched the surface in terms of thinking about how violence dominated women’s daily lives during the pandemic on a global scale. Examining the femicide situation in Mexico City has raised even more questions for me about effective and affective strategies for countering and eliminating gendered violence. The rise in femicide rates worldwide under lockdown transformed the phrase “stay-at-home order” from its original intent as a means of ensuring public safety into something more sinister and volatile. To “stay at home” as a woman is also to risk violence and death which is the tragic result we witnessed unfold as the pandemic raged on. To return to Butler’s claim that protest and mourning must go together when losses are unrecognized and unacknowledged, I believe that the femicide protests in Mexico demonstrate what this dual labor looks like in action. Since the violence is ongoing and the government refuses to act, protests in the streets of Mexico serve as vital spaces to also grieve, mourn, and memorialize publicly. The affective components of these civilian memorial practices simultaneously infuse the protest movements with reminders of the dead because these protests are not just about hope for a safer future, they are also mourning for every life that was violently stripped away in the past. 356

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Notes 1 Maurice Stevens, “The Politics of Affect in Catastrophic Times,” in Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict and Memory in Everyday Life, edited by Monica J. Casper and Eric Wertheimer (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2016), 23. 2 Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence (London: Verso Books, 2020), 74. 3 Alice Driver, More or Less Dead: Feminicide, Haunting, and the Ethics of Representation in Mexico (Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 2015), 16. 4 Driver, More or Less Dead, 16. 5 Driver, More or Less Dead, 17. 6 J. J. Sylvia, “The Biopolitics of Social Distancing,” Social Media and Society (2020): 3. 7 Michel Foucault and Michel Senellart, The Birth of Biopolitics Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-79 (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 8 “Press Release: UN Women Raises Awareness of the Shadow Pandemic of Violence against Women during COVID-19,” UN Women, May 27, 2020, https://www.unwomen. org/en/news/stories/2020/5/press-release-the-shadow-pandemic-of-violence-againstwomen-during-covid-19 9 “Press Release,” UN Women. 10 Douglas Broom, “As the UK Publishes Its First Census of Women Killed by Men, Here’s a Global Look at the Problem,” World Economic Forum, November 25, 2020, https://www. weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/violence-against-women-femicide-census/ 11 “Trends and Patterns in Femicide,” Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, accessed February 2020, https://www.femicideincanada.ca/about/trends 12 Linnea Sandi, “Femicides in Mexico: Impunity and Protests,” Centre for Strategic and International Studies, March 19, 2020, https://www.csis.org/analysis/femicides-mexicoimpunity-and-protests 13 Sandi, “Femicides in Mexico.” 14 “Number of Femicides in Mexico from January 2019-January 2021,” Statista, July 5, 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/979076/mexico-number-femicides-month/ 15 Zoe Mendelson, “In Mexico City, Art Collective Paints the Names of Femicide Victims on the Streets,” Hyperallergic, March 11, 2020, https://hyperallergic.com/547297/colectivasjf-paint-names-of-femicide-victims-mexico-city/ 16 A history deeply connected to the memory boom of the 1990s and the proliferation of Holocaust memorials worldwide. 17 Santiago Arau (@Santiago_Arau), “#NiUnaMenos,” Twitter, March 8, 2020, https:// twitter.com/Santiago_Arau/status/1236798534634135554?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw %7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1236798534634135554%7Ctwgr%5E %7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.typeroom.eu%2Fmexico-citycolectiva-sjf-typographic-memorial-femicide-iwd2020 18 Mendelson, “In Mexico City.” 19 Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009). 20 Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence, 74. 21 Shannon Collins, “Feminist Protests Reveal Deeply Embedded Structural Issues in Society and Culture,” Mexico News Daily, December 19, 2020, https://mexiconewsdaily.com/ opinion/feminist-protests-reveal-deeply-embedded-structural-issues/ 22 Cuba refers to the street the building is on. 23 Similar critiques have been launched against protestors who have destroyed or vandalized monuments of racist historical figures. 24 “AMLO Attacks Women Who Took over the CNDH Facilities,” The Yucatan Times, September 8, 2020, https://www.theyucatantimes.com/2020/09/amlo-attacks-womenwho-took-over-the-cndh-facilities/ 25 Madeleine Wattenbarger, “Inside Mexico’s Feminist Occupation: Protesters Seized Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission Building in an Effort to End Femicide,”

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26 27 28 29 30 31

Al Jazeera, October 29, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/10/29/blockfeminists-okupa Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence, 27. “Mexico City’s Metal Barrier Becomes Memorial for Thousands of Victims of Femicide,” Mexico News Daily, March 8, 2021, https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-citysmetal-barrier-becomes-memorial-for-thousands-of-victims-of-femicide/ Eve Monique Zucker and David J. Simon., Mass Violence and Memory in the Digital Age: Memorialization Unmoored. 1st ed. (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020), 2. Erika Doss, Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials: Towards a Theory of Temporary Memorials (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008). Accessed December 7, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, 40. Doss, Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials, 20. Doss, Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials.

Bibliography “AMLO Attacks Women Who Took over the CNDH Facilities.” The Yucatan Times. September 8, 2020. https://www.theyucatantimes.com/2020/09/amlo-attacks-womenwho-took-over-the-cndh-facilities/ Arau, Santiago. (@Santiago_Arau) “#NiUnaMenos.” Twitter. March 8, 2020. Bratton, Benjamin. The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-pandemic World. London: Verso Books, 2021. Broom, Douglas. “As the UK Publishes Its First Census of Women Killed by Men, Here’s a Global Look at the problem.” World Economic Forum. November 25, 2020. https:// www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/violence-against-women-femicide-census/ Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso, 2009. Butler, Judith. The Force of Nonviolence. London: Verso Books, 2020. Collins, Shannon. “Feminist Protests Reveal Deeply Embedded Structural Issues in Society and Culture.” Mexico News Daily. December 19 2020. https://mexiconewsdaily.com/ opinion/feminist-protests-reveal-deeply-embedded-structural-issues/ Doss, Erika. Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials: Towards a Theory of Temporary Memorials. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008. Accessed December 7, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central. Driver, Alice. More or Less Dead: Feminicide, Haunting, and the Ethics of Representation in Mexico. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 2015. Foucault, Michel and Michel Senellart. The Birth of Biopolitics Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-79. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Mendelson, Zoe. “In Mexico City, Art Collective Paints the Names of Femicide Victims on the Streets.” Hyperallergic. March 11, 2020. https://hyperallergic.com/547297/colectivasjf-paint-names-of-femicide-victims-mexico-city/ “Mexico City’s Metal Barrier Becomes Memorial for Thousands of Victims of Femicide.” Mexico News Daily. March 8, 2021. https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/mexico-citysmetal-barrier-becomes-memorial-for-thousands-of-victims-of-femicide/ Milstein, Cindy. Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017. Monique Zucker, Eve and David J. Simon. Mass Violence and Memory in the Digital Age:Memorialization Unmoored. 1st ed. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020. “Number of Femicides in Mexico from January 2019-January 2021.” Statista. July 5, 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/979076/mexico-number-femicides-month/ “Press Release: UN Women Raises Awareness of the Shadow Pandemic of violence against women during COVID-19.” UN Women. May 27, 2020. https://www.unwomen.org/ en/news/stories/2020/5/press-release-the-shadow-pandemic-of-violence-againstwomen-during-covid-19

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A Shadow Pandemic Sandi, Linnea. “Femicides in Mexico: Impunity and Protests.” Centre for Strategic and International Studies. March 19, 2020. https://www.csis.org/analysis/femicides-mexicoimpunity-and-protests Stevens, Maurice. “The Politics of Affect in Catastrophic Times.” In Critical Trauma Studies:Understanding Violence, Conflict and Memory in Everyday Life, edited by Monica J. Casper and Eric Wertheimer. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2016. Sylvia, J. J. “The Biopolitics of Social Distancing.” Social Media and Society (2020). “Trends and Patterns in Femicide.” Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability. Accessed February 2020. https://www.femicideincanada.ca/about/trends Wattenbarger, Madeleine. “Inside Mexico’s Feminist Occupation: Protesters Seized Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission Building in an Effort to End Femicide.” Al Jazeera. October 29, 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/10/29/block-feministsokupa

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PART 5

Public Education and Engagement in Museums and Heritage

25 ENGAGEMENT THAT WORKS Practical Insights for Inviting the Public into Cemeteries

Kimberly Bearden During the years that I have worked for Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, I have been frequently asked about my educational background, and how I am qualified to run a cemetery. I always laugh at that question. An English degree with a concentration in creative writing from a liberal arts program is what prepared me for cemetery work. Further, the hours I spent reading as a young person made me a storyteller; storytellers invite people to listen to what inspires them and ignites their imaginations. I have experienced the death of a loved one and I know the psychological potency of cemeteries. Those are my qualifications. As far as I know, one cannot earn a degree in cemetery management from any university in the United States, and if there were such a program, I would not have been inclined to pursue it as a student. Almost two months after the loss I mentioned earlier, and to my great surprise, I took a job at Elmwood Cemetery. Although I lived my entire life in the city where the cemetery is located, I had never visited it. I was not aware that it existed. My first day at work was 11 November, or Veterans Day, in the United States. The cemetery staff closed the office for one hour and hosted the public for a memorial program. My manager invited the local elementary school, university students, a bugler, a priest, a newspaper reporter, and a veteran who fought in the Battle of the Bulge to be the guest speaker. My job was to take photos of the event. Stepping into the cemetery that chilly November morning was more difficult than I anticipated. I knew absolutely nothing about the place, which seemed steeped in history. I felt vulnerable. Surrounding me were soaring monuments and small, worn markers, huge trees, and a cold, uninterrupted sky. The World War II veteran spoke about courage, love, and loss. I blinked back tears while I took photos of the students, who listened with rapt attention. The bugler played taps, a melancholy tune played at funerals for all US veterans, and sadness ached and echoed in my heart. I almost quit after the first day; the experience of being in the cemetery was too emotionally charged. I do not know what I expected it to be, but I did not expect it to be that. DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-31

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That evening, I reflected on what I had heard, seen, and experienced that day. Although it had been an emotional day, I knew in my heart that I had done some­ thing that would challenge my preconceived notions of what is supposed to happen in a cemetery. I began to think about how healing can be found in the most novel and unexpected ways. I started to understand that cemeteries are places of grief, love, history, learning, growth, inspiration, nature, and art. Like churches, they are sacred. Like libraries, they teach. Like museums, they hold our treasures. Eventually, I would see that we, the stewards, can share cemeteries with the public in a life-affirming and respectful way. We could help the public see a fuller picture of our shared history, all by being in a cemetery. I hope by spending years in a cemetery that I understand better what my ancestors knew. Death is a part of life; both are beautiful and scary. Grief does not vanish, but it becomes a part of who we are. It is good to be vulnerable sometimes in this work of tours, events, and telling stories. Visitors will return that vulnerability when it is given to them, and when people are open, the best learning takes place. Whether they know it or not, when visitors enter a cemetery, they are prepared to be vulnerable. Cemeteries inspire people to feel their emotions, and this inspires imagination. It is a special gift that cemeteries give to all of us, the reconnection with our kinder, softer, contemplative selves. The overwhelming emotion I experienced my first day on staff, I would come to understand, was a gift the cemetery gave to me, just for being there. The moment imprinted on me. I will never forget it. The perception of cemeteries as more than graveyards began before my time spent in one. I did not invent the idea that cemeteries could also be educational tools or even places of entertainment. I listened and watched as other cemeteries around the United States began to venture into hosting events and engaging tourists. I realized that cemeteries are best when the living enjoy and visit them. Within this chapter, I will share what I have learned, hopeful that if you are able to, you will invite the public into your cemetery. Before engaging the public with cemetery events of any kind, begin with purpose. Not all events are created equally, nor do they need to be. Events are going to entertain or teach, and some will do both. Events might be youth or adult tours, fundraising parties, charitable runs, tree plantings, gardening initiatives, memorial services, or events that I have not imagined yet. Be careful to understand what you can do in your cemetery and stay away from tours or events that would cause negative emotions or publicity. Community en­ gagement is best and most successful at reaching its goal when the values of the community in which the cemetery is located are reflected in the activity’s content. This is not to argue for creating an echo chamber. To be clear, cemeteries can be progressive; at Elmwood, there are 1,000 Confederate troops and 300 formerly en­ slaved people buried and separated by only a few rolling hills. During tours, Elmwood’s tour guides visit both sites with their groups. I advocate that all cemeteries with similar residents do the same. In this chapter, I will explore the ways my staff and I have approached the nuances of cemetery programming to celebrate the lives of the individuals buried in the 364

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cemetery I manage. I hope to show how cemeteries can unite a community by re­ minding them of the history they can share with the public.

A Place within a Place Elmwood Cemetery was founded in 1852 over two and a half miles from the town’s center. Memphis was founded in 1819 and was little more than a trading post for a few decades. The wooded land that was chosen for the cemetery was judiciously cleared. Carriage paths would soon be installed. The first customers purchased beautiful, delicate marble markers, and soaring monuments of bronze and granite. Mausolea, built out of brick, dotted the landscape. Rich, poor, inventors, laborers, businesspeople, politicians, immigrants, poets, musicians, holy men and women, martyrs, enslaved people, veterans, Civil Rights workers, suffragists, and so many more would become residents of Elmwood. The cemetery is a patchwork quilt that reflects the history and population of Memphis.1 The cemetery is 80 acres large. It is a historic final resting place doubling as an outdoor museum. The cemetery is still active, now averaging over 300 burials a year. It is a magnificent green space now surrounded by an interstate, a residential neighborhood, and a commercial district. Memphis is a complex place. According to the US Census Bureau’s website, as of July 1, 2021, over 628,000 residents call it home. Situated by the Mississippi River, it is a historic river town, built on the trade of cotton, enslaved people, and mules. As with the rest of the United States, it is experiencing a reckoning of its history. Memphis is also part of the Bible Belt. People move to Memphis from other places to work at places like FedEx. Suburbs built after school desegregation surround the city, but now the once-abandoned downtown area is being reborn as a place in which stakeholders can live, work, and find entertainment.2 Memphis is changing. Everything listed above influences the tours we offer. On tours, we discuss modern attitudes about death compared to the Victorian Age, the history of Memphis and the United States, civil unrest and the revolutions that took place because of it, the people who settled the city, and more. Elmwood reflects the society in which it was founded. It continues to offer that reflection to those who look for it. Our programming holds up the mirror.

Youth Education Creating youth education programming at a cemetery means that the cemetery will eventually fill up with children on tour. That seems mechanical and obvious, but the reality of 75 grammar school students taking a tour, potentially during a funeral service, is just one of the possibilities to consider when creating a youth education program. I routinely think about things like business insurance, parking for school buses, posted Rules & Regulations signs, public restrooms, water fountains, CPR certification, first aid kits, and walkable, wheelchair-accessible paths. Teachers look for all-inclusive stops for field trips. At Elmwood, we have picnic tables underneath a vine-wrapped pergola located next to the wheelchair-accessible 365

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restrooms and water fountain. School groups are welcome to bring their lunches and stay after their tour. Ask teachers for their requirements, and whether their schools require that all field trips should be approved by local school leadership. If they require approval, establish a relationship with a district or county leader who can help you get the tour approved. Elmwood’s tour is all-walking and lasts 90 minutes. By the end of a tour, students are ready to sit down. By 90 minutes, not only are their legs ready for a break, but so are their minds. Exceed 90 minutes at your own peril. Smaller groups are optimal. Divide large classes into subgroups of 25. We accounted for every person or historic site that we thought was necessary for a good tour of the cemetery and mapped them out. “Good” tours will include stops that represent well-acknowledged, or major, points in history. I will offer the fol­ lowing example of Elmwood’s Confederate Rest section. There are about 1,000 Confederate veterans of the US Civil War buried at Elmwood in a communal area called Confederate Rest. The Battle of Memphis lasted for 90 minutes in 1863. The soldiers buried at Elmwood were really casualties from battles fought elsewhere, brought in by train for burial. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln authorized the purchase of land for the burial of federal troops who died in service to their county, and so the 700+ Union soldiers buried in Elmwood were disinterred and moved to the nearby national cemetery.3 The night before they were to be moved, their names, written in yellow chalk on the sides of their nowunearthed caskets, were washed away in a rainstorm. There are unidentified Union soldiers buried in the local national cemetery because of this tragedy. That story is compelling. It makes a relevant tour stop because it depolarizes the subject matter. Many Americans yet have lingering emotions and preconceived emotions about the Civil War. It reminds us that the soldiers who fought for both sides were young men with identities that the living managed somehow to take away from them; they are seen as only Confederates, or only unknown Federal soldiers. I believe this story underscores how careless people can be with each other, in life and in death. This story is an example of what I call a “good tour stop.” Good tour stops include facts and touch the heart, both. Other stops include veterans, epidemic victims, Civil Rights leaders, an enslaved peoples’ burial site, musicians, steamboat disaster victims, unique monuments, a former Memphis mayor of note, religious martyrs, and the South’s first African American millionaire. This is not an exhaustive list. Occasionally, teachers have special requests, and Elmwood’s tour guides are happy to focus on African American history, monument symbolism, or Civil War history. Trees make excellent teachers, too. A certified arboretum or grand old trees on your cemetery’s property should be included on the tour route if it is possible. There is one state champion tree at Elmwood, an Atlas cedar. There is an American elm tree that was planted when the cemetery was founded. The Tulip Poplar is the Tennessee state tree and is well-represented in the cemetery. Science facts can be used to break up a history tour and can make for an enriched experience, which everyone appreciates. 366

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If you remember nothing else from this section, remember this. There are students who have never been to a graveside service before, let alone to a cemetery! It can be overwhelming, and students might need special reassurance that they are not being disrespectful, that there are no ghosts in the cemetery, and that the people buried in the cemetery wanted to have visitors or else they would not have put up lovely monuments and markers for all to read. Different cultures see cemeteries through their own unique lenses, and it will be up to you and your guides to teach students how to be in a cemetery. In doing so, you will make each of them cemetery advocates for the rest of their lives. The next great news about youth visiting cemeteries is that they always bring adult chaperones. If you have curated a valuable experience for students, the adults will talk about it and will want a tour of their very own.

Tours for Adults Adult tours require the same infrastructure as youth tours, so, if you plan to host adults, you are prepared. We have toured adults for over 20 years, and the routes and information shared have not changed much, but the tone of information varies. One example is the “No Man’s Land,” a site of yellow fever victims; it is on every youth education tour. The madam buried just across the path from the No Man’s Land who closed her brothel during the yellow fever epidemics and operated it as a makeshift hospital4 is not a part of the youth education tours because no tour guide wants to explain what a brothel or a madam is to children! Creative tour guides might refer to this madam as a “businessperson,” but students cannot be easily tricked. Admittedly, I prefer adult tours over youth tours. There are those who do and will prefer leading students through a cemetery because they get a charge out of watching young people learn. For me, adult tours offer the ability to veer off-script, which I enjoy. While the “beginner” tour of Elmwood has not changed much, we have added themed tours of which I am proud. They have become locally popular. Here are some themes:

Scandals and Scoundrels This is a tour of the famously infamous and includes murderers, a well-known gambler, several love affairs gone wrong, and some eyebrow-raising epitaphs. It is our most popular tour. It took years to build up the courage to offer it to the public. Once I did, it sold out quickly, and every time it was offered. Why did it take courage? I will be honest. About 25 years ago, when Elmwood’s staff first began offering basic history tours to the public, we received phone calls complaining that we were desecrating the cemetery, and that we had no respect for the place, or the people interred there. The concept of touring a cemetery was so new to the United States and especially Memphis that it overwhelmed some community members with conservative religious backgrounds. 367

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This made me spend time examining my intentions and the content of the tours that we offered. I reached out to colleagues for critical feedback on what I was doing. I asked some friends. However, I also remembered that rural cemeteries, like Elmwood, were once novel concepts that took time for cultures to accept.5 In 2019, Elmwood earned over $100,000 in operating revenue for its tours through admissions and sponsorships. It took many years to learn, but from this I took away that there can be a significant difference in what people say they want versus what they really want.

True Crime of Bygone Times This tour was created by a volunteer and has quickly become extremely popular. We stick to the 19th and early 20th centuries out of respect for any recent crime victims buried in the cemetery. The cemetery volunteer who created this tour has been quite agreeable to keeping the tour out of the realm of horror or else I would not feel right offering this tour. We stick to history. Others will be self-explanatory: • • • • • • • • • • •

Tombs: A Mausoleum Tour Love on The Rocks: A Valentine’s Day Tour Stories in Stone: A Symbolism Tour African American Women of Elmwood African American History of Elmwood The Memphis Upstanders: A Civil Rights Tour The Memphis Music Tour The Blue & The Gray: A Civil War Tour The Women of Elmwood Tree Tour After-Hours Tour

This list is not exhaustive, nor will it ever be finished. Right now, a coworker and I are creating a tour about fashion, and another about the cemetery’s entertainment industry connections.

Events Tours are wonderful, but not everyone wants to visit for a straight history lesson, no matter how strong our storytelling is. Elmwood is an active cemetery and a nonprofit organization, and so the cemetery’s other events are designed to attract people bored by the very thought of history. Elmwood’s operating budget is $1,015,000 for the current fiscal year; events are meant to raise funds and help offset maintenance costs. The Soul of the City is our biggest event of the year. Held over two days every October, the event is a dramatic history tour with a theatrical twist. Visitors meet eight costumed actors portraying individuals buried in Elmwood. The Soul of the City has been going on for close to 20 years, takes 35 volunteers minimum and all staff 368

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members to operate. Elmwood staff raises $25,000 in sponsorships before the event. Ticket sales earn an average of $18,000. In 2022, Elmwood will expand, and where we once offered the event two nights a week, we will now include a third evening. This event took many years to grow, and while the general mechanics have been worked out for a long time, we never stop trying to improve the experience for everyone. Cemetery Cinema is an idea I gratuitously lifted from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.6 Initially, the idea of a movie night appealed so much yet struck such fear in me that I almost gave up the thought. I did not want to incur the wrath of the public once again, as I had when we began offering tours in earnest. There are hidden fees associated with movie nights, too. Films that are not yet in the public domain must be licensed. In our case, licensing fees take about half of ad­ missions earned; you read that correctly. Also, Elmwood did not own high powered speakers, a sound mixing board, or a professional grade projector, so we hired an AV company to do the work of making it a great event. We project films onto the highpitched roof of our historic office building, as shown in Figure 25.1. The only way to proceed and succeed financially with a movie night is to find sponsorship to cover the cost of the AV company. Our AV costs are around $2,000 per film, which does not include film licensing costs. Sponsorship is the only way to make this a success. Choose to show public domain movies and you can cut licensing costs out entirely.

Figure 25.1

Elmwood Cemetery film series; projecting films onto the high-pitched roof of the historic office building.

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We have shown The Birds, O Brother! Where Art Thou?, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Vertigo, Young Frankenstein, The Witches of Eastwick, and many more. People love bringing lawn chairs, visiting with friends, eating food from the parked food trucks, all under the stars in an old cemetery. Cradle Gardening is not a new concept for other Rural Cemeteries, but until 2018 we had not yet undertaken it. After seeing a television show about the success another cemetery had with such a program, I approached three volunteers I thought might like to try. They enthusiastically agreed to give it a spring, summer, and fall. The results were positive. We are now entering the fourth year of this program and there are over one hundred participating volunteer gardeners. The cemetery has benefited from it with improved landscaping. The gardeners benefit with exercise and com­ munity involvement, and the friendships that have arisen from this program are lasting. At the height of the pandemic, I heard repeatedly from Elmwood’s gardeners that the cemetery was their respite when they could not go other places safely (Figure 25.2). Our Spirits with The Spirits event is a fundraising party that takes place in the cemetery after hours. Sponsors are engaged at various levels, and partygoers buy tickets. For entertainment, there is live music, a tarot card reader, a palm reader, and costumed actors mill about, talking with guests. We included a silent auction during the party, which is an event within an event. The party is a full court press and

Figure 25.2 Elmwood Cemetery Cradle Gardening.

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demands attention, so much so that it has been on hiatus for two years. I have already begun redesigning the party so that we can enjoy it next spring or early summer.

Tips and Tricks Trustees and staff of other cemeteries have reached out to me over the years to ask for site visits and advice about getting a program of any kind started. I am always happy to help, as others have helped me. I had to learn some lessons the hard way, and I try to impart this knowledge onto others as they venture forward. • Rain is always possible. I will never forget it. I was about to open the gates for an event and out of nowhere a thunderstorm arrived and immediately cancelled the event. Guests were already parking their cars! But, because I had already made a rain policy and published it on the admissions sales page, I knew what to do and did not panic. Weather can be your best friend and worst foe. I have learned that indecision regarding weather can create havoc and leave a bad memory in the minds of those who wanted to attend. Be decisive. • Start small. The first time we produced a costume tour, it was open to the public for an hour and a half. Starting small helps you understand what you, your staff and volunteers, and the cemetery can do within reason. I advise slow and steady growth. Eventually, you will realize that given the right ingredients, the event will be a success, even (maybe especially) if you find yourself not working too hard. I have finally reached that point, but it took two decades before I reached it. • Watch the clock. The length of time you should assign for an event or tour is an equation that should consider the entire visitor experience. We sell around 600 tickets per evening for one event. The time visitors spend waiting in line to get into the event is calculated as part of the experience. We also factor in walking time from the car or bus to the front gate. All human beings need restroom breaks that take time, and many like to sit and rest, or maybe they are unable to walk for over two hours. Food on site will give guests a chance to have refreshment; informational booths and merchandise for sale will enhance their experience in the cemetery, and it will all add to the amount of time they are on the grounds as your guests and your responsibilities. • Sell tickets for more than you think they are worth. So often we sabotage our own success by not asking for what we are worth. Do the math carefully and decide what you need, and then ask that price. • Exit through the gift shop. We sell branded t-shirts, coffee mugs, history books, original art, and postcards in our office. Have something to sell as your guests leave.

The Future Elmwood Cemetery will one day no longer be an active cemetery, meaning that we will no longer perform burials. I do not know when that will be; with cremation rates on the rise throughout the United States, the staff will be able to bury small cremation vessels in small gravesites and columbaria for a long time to come. In the United 371

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States, graves are not reused after any number of years; when they are done, as the saying goes, they are done. So, when there is no more room for larger casket burials, what becomes of this place? I believe that Elmwood and other cemeteries like it will increasingly become full-time outdoor museum spaces, becoming less a place of active grief, and more a site of reflection in a natural setting, filled with awe-inspiring funeral statuary as art. The proprietors of Elmwood understood that Memphis in 1852 needed a new cemetery, and by embracing the rural cemetery concept, they created a setting that lent itself to reflection and an appreciation of the natural world. Elmwood and other new rural cemeteries were largely “considered places of beauty, far removed from the press of city life, places to commune with nature and admire the architecture, places to pay homage to those who had gone before.”7 An inviting, bucolic setting was of the utmost importance to the founders. It is not terribly easy to read and a little dramatic, but Joseph Lenow, one of the early pres­ idents of the cemetery, wrote in the Elmwood 1874 book of the cemetery trees, “Our feelings deepen into reverence as the mind ponders over the strange revelations of inner truth these voiceless teachers silently convey to thinking men, and clearer grows the eternal law of analogy between mankind and the trees.”8 Heavy stuff, but the point is that the founders meant the cemetery to be inviting, naturally beautiful, and thought provoking. The environment was just as important as the people buried on site with their beautiful monuments. The cemetery was designed to offer a break from the harsh realities of life. It was intentionally created to be a park for the living and a resting place for the dead. I hope the spirit found in that tradition continues well into the future. Events and tours held at the cemetery are the most logical way to keep it alive (apologies for the pun). Many cemeteries around the world have embraced this idea and have shown success. Would this growing trend work for a younger, newer cemetery? I would point to the successes of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery of Los Angeles in engaging the public as an attraction-museum would. By knowing your cemetery and the spirit of your town, you can endear the cemetery to your community. Here are a few samples of excellent stewardship found at other cemeteries I have visited, and some that are places I long to visit, both to learn from and to use as a comparison to what we do. The managers of these cemeteries prioritize engaging the public by making their grounds accessible and keeping them well-tended, interpreting their history for the public to enjoy and learn from, and setting goals for themselves that mean constant work and creative growth. • • • • •

Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky (cavehillcemetery.com) Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia (oaklandcemetery.com) Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles, California (hollywoodforever.com) Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York (green-wood.com) The Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (woodlandsphila.org)

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In 2019, Elmwood’s Board of Trustees and staff set out to create a fresh strategic plan for our cemetery business and the tourist/museum/nonprofit side of operations. We discovered that by connecting with the staff of other historic cemeteries around the United States, we have gained great perspective. Everyone I have talked with has been incredibly forthcoming and willing to share their best practices and warnings. Get out, explore, and connect with the others who do the same job as you, or those who volunteer at or otherwise care for a cemetery. You will learn a tremendous amount.

Conclusion I feel incredibly lucky. I wandered into working at an active, nonprofit, historic cemetery purely by chance, and although it was emotionally challenging to stay on staff for the first few months, I feel fortunate that I did. In fact, I believe that my grandfather – the one who died right before I joined the staff – found a way to encourage me to give the job a chance. I think he knew that the cemetery would offer solace to my grief. It would give context to my life, situated as it is in the history of Memphis. Every day at work I see obelisks that soar, angels that beckon passers-by to think of their heavenly reward, draped urns, life-like statues of religious figures, and mausolea. I love the ancient cemetery trees that offer shade. The office I work in was built in 1866; it is a Victorian Gothic Carpenter Cottage, and in the vault inside are housed more than 130,000 file folders containing obituaries, photographs, letters, and newspaper accounts of the individuals at rest in the cemetery. I have access to the most beautiful and storied place in Memphis every single day, and I am inspired by it. I do not take it for granted. My hope is that one day I can take you on a tour of Elmwood Cemetery, too. I would love to share it with you.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Kimberly McCollum and Willy Bearden, Elmwood Cemetery (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2016), 8. Toby Sells, “Memphis: Downtown Boomtown!” Memphis Flyer, August 11, 2016, https:// www.memphisflyer.com/memphis-downtown-boomtown Perre Magness, Elmwood 2002: In the Shadows of the Elms (Memphis: Elmwood Cemetery, 2016), 115. Perre Magness, Elmwood 2002: In the Shadows of the Elms (Memphis: Elmwood Cemetery, 2016), 171–179. Thomas Laqueur, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 272–273. “Cultural Events,” Hollywood Forever Cemetery, accessed April 10, 2022, https:// hollywoodforever.com/culture/ Perre Magness, Elmwood 2002: In the Shadows of the Elms (Memphis, TN: Elmwood Cemetery, 2002), 7. Joseph Lenow, Elmwood: Charter, Rules, Regulations and By-Laws of Elmwood Cemetery Association of Memphis (Memphis, TN: Boyle & Chapman, 1874), 77.

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Bibliography Hollywood Forever Cemetery. “Cultural Events.” Accessed April 10, 2022. https:// hollywoodforever.com/culture/ Laqueur, Thomas. The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. Lenow, Joseph. Elmwood: Charter, Rules, Regulations and By-Laws of Elmwood Cemetery Association of Memphis. Memphis, TN: Boyle & Chapman, 1874. Magness, Perre. Elmwood 2002: In the Shadows of the Elms. Memphis, TN: Elmwood Cemetery, 2002. McCollum, Kimberly and Willy Bearden. Elmwood Cemetery. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2016. Sells, Toby. “Memphis: Downtown Boomtown!” Memphis Flyer. August 11, 2016. https:// www.memphisflyer.com/memphis-downtown-boomtown

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26 TALKING ABOUT THE D WORD Public Engagement in a Place of the Dead

Janine Marriott Background of Arnos Vale Cemetery Arnos Vale Cemetery (AVC) in Bristol, England, is one of many garden cemeteries set up during the 19th century. It is an excellent example of the type and conforms to Rugg’s definition of a cemetery.1 Due to its visual and historic qualities, the site was awarded Grade 2* listing in 2002.2 As Udall points out in her 2019 doctoral thesis on AVC, much of its importance as a historic landscape is due to its being one of the “purest examples of Arcadian-style landscape in the UK today.”3 From the cemetery’s initial design and build, it was envisioned as a place for people to enjoy and explore, with the cemetery company’s first chair Charles Bowles Fripp describing its location as the “the most Romantic of situations.”4

The Purpose of Garden Cemeteries Much has been written about the development of the garden cemetery for sanitary, social, and religious reasons5 and like all burial grounds, 19th-century garden cemeteries were obviously first and foremost a place for the disposal of human remains, but this was never their only purpose. Landscape designer J.C. Loudon,6 a major influencer on the development and design of garden cemeteries in the UK, stated: “A secondary object is, or ought to be, the improvement of the moral senti­ ments and general taste of all classes …” (emphasis in original). The 19th-century philanthropists, city leaders, and planners envisaged cemeteries as an asset to the city and although they were usually located on the edge of the city, not centrally for hygiene reasons, they were regarded as part of the city infrastructure, and even though many of the early Victorian cemeteries were private enterprises they were still public spaces.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-32

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Places for the Living as well as the Dead The idea of cemeteries not just being for the dead but for the living too as places of leisure was not only suggested by Loudon but also demonstrated by a range of contemporary 19th-century tourism guides to garden cemeteries and published ar­ ticles and books about visiting them.7 Although there is no known guidebook fea­ turing AVC, it is very likely the cemetery was also a place of leisure due to its accessible location which was previously a known local beauty spot and carefully designed landscape. There are commercial postcards held in the Bristol Archives; one that shows the monument of Raja Ram Mohan Roy8 in the foreground with the cemetery buildings and landscape in the background, and a later one from 1906 showing the landscape.9 Other 19th-century cemeteries were also photographed and turned into postcards10 and often the images in books and on the postcards feature people promenading in their Sunday best, demonstrating that visiting a cemetery for leisure was not an unusual phenomenon, it was a place that people visited for relaxation as well as to pay their respects to the dead.11 AVC is an early example of a garden cemetery, established in 1837 and opened in 1839, run by a joint stock business (not by a religious institution) called the Bristol

Figure 26.1 Photograph 1: aerial photograph of Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol, surrounded by its communities. Credit: Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust.

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General Cemetery Company (BGCC). AVC was established before the Burial Acts of the 1850s and 1860s which saw the closure of a number of city graveyards and predates the development of mid-Victorian municipal cemeteries established by burial boards and parishes. Its design is unique, and it was set in an already well-known beauty spot in the countryside on the edge of the city, conveniently situated on one of the main roads into Bristol. The original landscape of the cemetery is set in a natural amphitheatre space with a partly man-made bank to make the views more impres­ sive.12 The initial impression when entering the cemetery is very dramatic, with four neo-classical style buildings (two chapels plus two entrance lodges, all Grade 2* listed),13 laid around a sweeping circular path. It is now situated in the suburbs of the city surrounded by 19th- and 20th-century housing and industry, an oasis of green in a significantly urban area (Figure 26.1).

Decline and Regeneration Due to changes in the fortunes of the BGCC and the site since its inception in 1837, the current landscape of the cemetery is not as manicured or managed as the original designer, Charles Underwood, had probably envisaged. BGCC did very well during the 19th and early 20th century, but income began to decline due to lack of burial space and ageing cremation equipment, originally installed in the mid-1920 to 1940s. By the 1980s, the site was managed not by a board of directors but by a single individual, who had no previous experience of running a cemetery and viewed the site mainly as prime development land. Fearing the destruction of AVC, a 20-year fight ensued led by the Friends of AVC (FAVC) who campaigned to save it as a cemetery, and as a historic, sacred, and public space. Pressure was brought to bear on Bristol City Council (BCC) which eventually compulsorily purchased the cemetery for £1 pound sterling (GBP) but AVC/BGCC was in major debt; the site and the buildings were in particularly bad and dangerous condition and there were major problems to solve regarding income generation, maintenance, and landscape management. The new owners BCC recognised that AVC was a financial burden on the city’s budget so set up an unusual method for management of the cemetery. Initially, FAVC took on the management of the site and worked with BCC to renovate, care for, and improve the cemetery. The project was greatly helped by a substantial grant of £2.8 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) in 200514 and a restoration project started in 2006. With support from BCC a charitable company called Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust (AVCT) was created (charity number 1120210) and various objec­ tives were laid down and can be summarised as follows: maintenance and operation as a cemetery, conservation and management of the natural and built landscape, buildings and memorials; preservation as a burial landscape; education of the public on the people, burial culture, natural and built landscape; and care of the documentation related to the cemetery and its history. BCC signed a 199-year lease with AVCT and relinquished control of the site to the charity in 2007, with a caveat that a BCC representative would sit on the AVCT board. 377

Janine Marriott Table 26.1 AVCT’s organisational structure (dark gray – staff roles; light gray – volunteer roles)

Organisational Structure AVCT was formed to take care of and rejuvenate the site through a range of income-generating activities and fundraising. AVCT had evolved from the vol­ unteer pressure group (light grey- staff roles: dark grey - volunteer roles) that fought to save AVC and began as a volunteer-led team of trustees, fundraisers, landscapers, researchers, and guides but with the HLF grant a small staff team of five was assembled to oversee the restoration project which began in 2006. AVCT now employs permanent staff overseen by a team of trustees15 who manage the different needs of the site while still relying heavily on volunteers (Table 26.1) to deliver landscape management, public engagement, and visitor services. AVCT now offers a range of activities that can be classed as public engagement, and others that come under the umbrella of commercial activity. Commercial activities include burial and memorial services, celebration of life events, weddings, baby-naming ceremonies, building hire, and birthday parties. In addition, there is an on-site shop selling locally produced art, gifts, and books which also functions as a visitor reception supplying site maps, selling guide books and general information about all aspects of the services offered. AVC is not unusual and a number of 19th-century garden cemeteries in the UK struggle to care for their sites properly due to various issues including council financial cuts and lack of income from burial services due to closure, local competition, and cremation so the trust is not unique in embracing a business model that differs sig­ nificantly from the original Victorian business model of income from just burial and funeral income. For these historic cemeteries to thrive, modern income generating solutions are being found. 378

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For the Improvement of the Great Masses of Society – Public Engagement in AVC Public engagement activities in or about historic cemeteries can be quite diverse. Cemeteries undertake various levels of engagement and at AVC the public engagement is predicated on its charitable objectives. In comparison to many other UK cemeteries, AVC has extensive public engagement activities including public and private tours, talks, theatre performances and film screenings, school trips, exhibitions, art installations, and performances often in collaboration with other organisations, artists, performers, and charitable organisations. It is worth noting that the income from these activities is less than half of the commercial income streams.16 Not all public engagement activity generates income since venues are used for free by the local community; free activities include hosting a death café,17 a Christmas memorial service for the bereaved, Día de los Muert ofrenda (Day of the Dead altar), a ceremony for Armistice Day, and a celebration of AVC’s most well-known “resident” Raja Ram Mohan Roy, a religious and political reformer regarded as one of the founders of Modern India.18

Cemetery Tours Although AVCT staff now run all the public engagement activities on the site, the first public engagement undertaken was tours run by the FAVC19 to raise awareness of the plight of the then threatened cemetery, and to generate much needed income to help with restoration and legal fees. Most UK historic garden cemeteries established in the 19th century and other burial grounds that have any kind of “Friends of” group, or is a charitable trust, will offer tours. A search of garden cemeteries in the UK and Ireland suggests that most tours at historic cemeteries are led by volunteer groups because most historic cemeteries do not have dedicated public engagement/ public history or operations staff, and those that are managed by a local council with no friends group rarely offer tours at all. There are a few sites that do have staff or independent professional guides organising tours at the time of writing20 but like AVCT these sites depend heavily on volunteers. Some large historic cemeteries with a significant public engagement programme have a regular tour programme covering a range of themes, the most well-known being at Highgate Cemetery which until July 2020 could not be visited independently of a tour guide. Another 19th-century garden cemetery that is well known for its tours, although not in the UK, is Glasnevin Cemetery in Ireland, which is run by Dublin Cemeteries Trust, delivering tours most days for school children, tourists, special interest groups, and locals. In the UK and Ireland, cemetery tours focus on stories of the people buried in the landscape, but some sites, including AVC, also offer tours on grave symbolism, architecture, landscape design and development, and flora and fauna. Like many historic cemeteries, the site tours at AVC are mainly delivered by a team of volunteers, but unusually they are managed and trained by a staff member. Not all cemetery sites charge for their tours and may instead request a donation, but AVCT does charge for tours and offers a range of different times for tours, including day and night, weekdays, and weekends for the general public and for 379

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Figure 26.2 Photograph 2: a night tour in the cemetery in October. Credit: Ruth Davey, Look Again.

privately booked groups and are competitively priced in line with other local heritage venues. Offering monthly tours at night is quite unusual and requires a higher level of preparation in terms of health and safety and route planning (Figure 26.2). The cemetery has few lights for pedestrians as low light levels protect the environment for bats that live on site, and due to the complexity of installing electricity in a 45-acre sloped Victorian listed landscape. The landscape can also be a barrier to some who wish to visit, so one tour is delivered in the daytime on a tarmacked flat area, making it suitable for the less physically able. As a form of public engagement, tours are low risk and relatively easy as once the initial research and training has been undertaken the running and organisational costs are minimal. There is still some risk around offering a comprehensive tour programme because being a tour guide requires a certain kind of presenter who can capture the interest of a large group of people in an energetic and engaging manner and must be undertaken professionally since a poor-quality guided experience can be harmful to the reputation of a site. Therefore, quality tour training of volunteers is key.

Public Talks Talks are also a staple of a cemetery’s offer and can be undertaken on site or as outreach. AVCT is lucky enough to still have two beautiful historic chapels, the Dissenters Chapel (now known as the Spielman Centre) and the Anglican Chapel, which both have suitable facilities for talks installed as part of the restoration. Even during the COVID-19, UK-wide lockdown staff were able to fulfil the charitable 380

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objectives and raise awareness of the site with online talks. Interestingly, off-site and virtual talks can encourage people to become visitors to the site, and a portion of the on-site private tours delivered by AVCT follow on from one of these talks. AVCT talks are always linked to the site or its purpose in some way and have covered the life stories of people remembered on site, death customs and traditions, other historic cemeteries, living and dying well in the 21st century, human disposal practices, and practicalities, and the flora and fauna of the cemetery. Talks are delivered by a range of academics and experts in their field, and though it might be suggested that some of these themes are dark or disturbing, part of the public engagement programme focuses on being open and honest about death and dying.

Engagement with Young People When AVCT formed out of FAVC and took on staff, one of the first staff-led public engagement activities paid for by HLF was to encourage the use of the site by formal learning organisations. The schools’ programme was developed and delivered by a former primary school teacher in collaboration with local schools, focussing on the English National Curriculum21 (NC) and relevant subjects.22 The first business plan developed in the early years of AVCT leaned heavily towards schools’ engagement as some of the trustees saw it as an effective way to reach a ready-made audience and generate income. Once educational visits had begun it quickly became apparent that schools’ workshops and visits would only ever break even, and that although AVC is a heritage landscape school staff sometimes viewed the site as an inappropriate place to bring young people. This may well be due to the view that talking about death with children is damaging, although research23 shows that up to 70% of children could ex­ perience a bereavement according to the key statistics from the Childhood Bereavement Network.24 A research report by Cedar Education CIC25 states that death education can positively impact mental health in young people and a lack of it can be harmful. The NC also states that children should be taught about death and death customs in Key Stage 2. Through the public engagement work at AVCT, schools’ attitudes have slowly changed and more now see the site as a heritage venue and educational space and the uptake of the schools offer slowly increases. Along with formal learning activities, AVCT also delivers informal learning activities and events for family groups such as storytelling, arts and crafts workshops, film screenings, theatre performances, trails, and bushcraft activities.

Arts Since its formation, AVCT has always worked to balance various elements of the site, as it is not just a working cemetery but also a built deathscape filled with beautiful memorials and buildings.26 This connection to the arts and the deliberate staging of the landscape means the site lends itself to unique events, although it was certainly not designed in the 1830s with this in mind. The compartmentalised nature of the setting means it is suitable for events that echo its dramatic style, using picturesque spaces that inspire, surprise and delight, and its imposing buildings, hidden corners, and sweeping paths make it ideal for walking theatre and static performances. Bristol has a thriving arts 381

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scene and AVC collaborates with small local theatre companies, arts producers, pro­ fessional storytellers, and poets to create bespoke site-specific performances, which are often supported by a major national funder. Due to AVC’s emotional connection, pieces are often themed around death, dying or remembrance, or landscape and wildlife with the artists working with the landscape and its natural ambience. The garden cemetery boasts a collection of beautiful artistic pieces in the form of the gravestones, and to compliment this has hosted a number of local and national artists including Marcus Coates’s Questioning the Dead,27 Jimmy Galvin’s Death Disco,28 and Inside the Crematorium by photographer Stephen Lewis.29 In 2020 during the COVID19 pandemic, Jo Bushell became the local artist-in-residence and worked alone in the landscape on a project called Ashes to Ashes, exploring themes of loss and death and connecting them to the evolving landscape that was changing due to the loss of numerous ash trees on site caused by Ash dieback disease.30 The artist encouraged local people to visit as part of their allowed daily exercise and create art in various mediums, but as the work could not be displayed physically on site due to lockdown it was uploaded to a web page which received hundreds of images and views. Film screenings are also held in the buildings and the landscape and have proved particularly popular in September and October; screening historic or vintage footage, children’s Disney films and older, classic films that might be classed as scary. There is always a serious consideration around the appropriateness of the screening, so films are often chosen in collaboration with the local community who are the main attendees at these events. This ensures that the right level of film is selected, although in the past some films nominated in this way have been vetoed by AVCT as they could be regarded as disrespectful or in another way inappropriate in a sacred space.31 Due to their connections with death, dying and disposal of human remains, art pieces and exhibitions can be challenging and may need explanation or warning signage to ensure they are not seen accidentally by the unsuspecting public or upset the recently bereaved. Nevertheless, AVCT does not shy away from memento mori themes and uses the arts to demystify and explain the death and disposal process through events and education. An example is the Life, Death (and the Rest) Festival which was held at AVC regularly (pre COVID-19 pandemic) and explored death, end of life choices and remembrance.

Conclusion As AVC is used by a range of visitors, finding balance between the diverse groups using the site is vital for ensuring that charitable objectives are met and that the site continues to be an important community resource. These audiences include mourners and the bereaved, volunteers, families, historians, informal adult learners, family history researchers, wildlife enthusiasts, formal learning groups, dark tourists, members of the local community, wedding parties, people exercising, and even those just using it as a convenient cut through. These audiences use the site in a range of ways and can cross over audience type depending on usage or event. To organise and support such audiences, dark tourism research by Rachel Raine is a useful guide and her work divides visitors to burial 382

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grounds into four categories: Devotion, Experience, Discover, and Incidental,32 AVCT audiences can be divided in this way. The Devotion visitor who is bereaved and mourning is engaging with the site in a different way to the person who has come to Experience or Discover or is an Incidental visitor. Devotion visitors are unlikely to be an audience taking part in the public engagement offer although the diversity of the offer and a focus on death, dying and bereavement can move a visitor to the Experience category and support their emotional wellbeing. As the cemetery is a working space offering bereavement services, it is vital that the Devotional visitor is supported with sensitivity and their grief is not disrupted by other visitors and activities. Visitors enjoying public en­ gagement activities will fit into the Experience or Discover categories, although if the activities are pilgrimage to a specific grave like Raja Ram Mohan Roy or Plymouth Brethren founder George Muller, this activity fits within the Devotion category. Some of the success of the public engagement programme and the value of AVCT’s work is around engaging the same visitor as a different person in an alter­ native category at a different time; as an Incidental visitor on a walk in the woods, then as a bereaved person (Devotion), and then as an Experience visitor to an exhibition or by joining a landscape volunteer party. Evidence suggests that conversations about as­ pects of death and remembrance can improve mental health and help people make better preparations for the end of their life which can have a positive impact on them and their families and friends. Some scholars argue that the act of visiting a historic cemetery if a visitor is not a bereaved person is dark tourism.33 Dark tourism in relation to cemeteries (rather than specific graves) is mostly mentioned briefly in academic literature and a search of dark tourism literature will show most dark tourism sites are directly related to death or deaths rather than the deathscape they are in. Rojek’s definition of cemeteries as “black spot tourism” doesn’t really fit either as his definition is centred around the graves of the famous, and Dann’s reference to cemeteries puts them in the category of Fields of Fatality and refers to specific graves rather than the memorialisation of the ordinary person or the importance of the landscape.34 Stone’s well-referenced dark tourism spectrum talks of death, but not the dead; however, cemeteries are not places of death and dying but places where the dead rest.35 It is also worth noting that those running historic cemeteries do not regard the sites as dark and in their introduction Magee and Gilmore say “Heritage sites no longer want to be seen as dark places and are striving to become sites of sensitive heritage where the focus is on visitor and social engagement.”36 In 2017, a round table discussion piece was published in Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes in which J. John Lennon acknowledges that the dark tourism label is rejected by various sites and that the Director of the Association of Significant Cemeteries in Europe (ASCE) rejects the dark tourism label when applied to cem­ eteries. He acknowledges that it is generally only academics (not sites or visitors) who are applying the label.37 It is a challenge to fully fit much of AVCT public engagement into any of the dark tourism frameworks as the focus is not on death but on the dead person themselves. In addition, the deathscape of AVC also evidences the intangible heritage of historic and current local funeral traditions and much of the unique offer of AVCT is that many of 383

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the public engagement activities do not focus on the spectacle of death or the hidden human remains but on remembrance of the dead with a focus on finite life and the importance of living it more fully. AVC is an important green landscape, heritage site, education space, and burial ground, and also a secular space for mortality mediation.38 Many of the public engagement activities meet the needs of users variously at different times in their life and the deathscape itself can facilitate this as people are attached to the place39 and take comfort in it. By ensuring that the charitable objectives and core values guide and lead the work of AVCT, making the site and organisation valuable, it can be argued that although the site usage has changed dramatically since 1839, AVCT uses the cemetery “for the improvement of the great masses of society” and AVC can continue to be an asset to the city as a landscape for the living as well as a resting and remembrance place for the dead.

Notes 1 Julie Rugg, “Defining the Place of Burial: What Makes a Cemetery a Cemetery?” Mortality 5, no. 3 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1080/713686011 2 “English Heritage Listing 1000559,” English Heritage, 2009. https://historicengland.org.uk/ listing/the-list/list-entry/1000559 3 Lindsay A.S. Udall, “Arnos Vale South Bristol: The Life of a Cemetery” (PhD Diss., University of Bristol, 2019), 23. 4 Bristol Mercury, August 1838. 5 James Stevens Curl, Death and Architecture (Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2002); Chris Brooks, Mortal Remains: The History and Present State of the Victorian and Edwardian Cemetery (UK: Wheaton Publishers, 1989); Ken Worpole, Last Landscapes: The Architecture of the Cemetery in the West (Reaktion Books, 2003); Peter Thorsheim, “The Corpse in the Garden: Burial, Health, and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century London,” Environmental History 16, no. 1 (2011): 38–68, https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emq146; Ian Hussein and Julie Rugg, “Managing London’s Dead: A Case of Strategic Policy Failure,” Mortality 8, no. 2 (2003), https://doi.org/10.1080/1357627031000087433; Julie Rugg, Churchyard and Cemetery: Tradition and Modernity in Rural North Yorkshire (Manchester University Press, 2013). 6 J.C. Loudon, On the Laying Out, Planting and Managing of Cemeteries and on the Improvement of Churchyards. Facsmilie volume, ed. Stephen J. Curl (Redhill, Surrey: Ivelet Books Ltd, 1843: 2019). 7 Ian Dungavell, “Following the Cultural Route: London Cemetery Guidebooks in the Nineteenth Century,” in Ancient Greek Art and European Funerary Art, ed. Evangelina Georgitsoyanni (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), 277–290. William Justyne, Guide to Highgate Cemetery (United Kingdom: Moore, 1865). T.P. Grinsted, Last Homes of Departed Genius: With Biographical Sketches of Poets, Painters, and Players (United Kingdom: G. Routledge & Sons., 1867). H.J Croft, A Guide to Kensal Green Cemetery (Snow Hill, London: J. Howell, 1881). James Branwhite French, Walks in Abney Park, with LifePhotographs of Ministers whose names are found there (London: James Clarke and Co, 1883). 8 Bristol Archives, “Postcard of the Tomb of Raja Ram Mohan Roy,” post 1843, https:// archives.bristol.gov.uk/records/43207/26/1/27 9 Bristol Archives, “Arnos Vale Cemetery Postcard,” 1906, https://archives.bristol.gov.uk/ records/43207/9/40/22 10 “Rushden Cemetery Postcard,” n.d., https://rushdenmuseum.co.uk/2020/11/rushdencemetery; Bristol Archives, “Postcard of Greenbank Cemetery,” 1900s, https://archives. bristol.gov.uk/records/43207/2/9

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Talking About the D Word 11 For example, Kensal Green Cemetery in London was described in “The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction” on April 28, 1838 as “a site of extreme beauty, and the view extends over the rich and varied scenery of the western environs of the metropolis and a large tract of the county of Surrey.” 12 Lindsay Udall, “Arnos Vale South Bristol: The Life of a Cemetery,” 23. 13 Historic England, “Arnos Vale Cemetery,” n.d., https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/ the-list/list-entry/1000559 14 Historic England, “Case Study: Arnos Vale Cemetery,” n.d., https://historicengland.org. uk/advice/caring-for-heritage/take-ownership/case-studies/arnosvale/ 15 Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust, “About AVCT,” n.d., https://arnosvale.org.uk/board-staffplan/#staff 16 See the 2020 accounts as supplied to the charities commission. Charity Commission, “Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust,” 2007:2020, https://register-of-charities.charitycommission. gov.uk/charity-details/?regid=1120210&subid=0 17 Death Café, What Is Death Café? n.d., https://deathcafe.com/what/ 18 Ulysses Young, “Rammohan Roy ‘and the Modern World,’” East and West 5 (1955). 19 Joyce Smith, “Case Study 1: The Friends of Arnos Vale Cemetery,” in Saving Cemeteries. A Handbook for Cemetery Friends, ed. The National Federation of Cemetery Friends (The National Federation of Cemetery Friends, 2009). 20 Cemeteries with staff include Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust in Bristol, Highgate Cemetery, Abney Park Cemetery, Willesden Jewish Cemetery, Tower Hamlets Cemetery in London, and Sheffield General Cemetery. 21 The Department for Education, National Curriculum in England: Framework Document (UK Government, 2014). 22 Science, History, Geography, and local area study. 23 Judith Western, “Death (or Life?) Lessons – Why Are They Needed?” Professional Reflections in RE Today, National Association of Teachers of Religious Education 34, no. 1 (Autumn 2016). 24 Childhood Bereavement Network, “Research Evidence: Key Statistics,” n.d., https:// childhoodbereavementnetwork.org.uk/about-1/what-we-do/research-evidence/keystatistics 25 Judith Wester and Kathryn Walker, Is Death Education Important for Young People (Cedar Education CIC, 2017), https://cedareducation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Isdeath-education-important-for-young-people.pdf 26 Avril Maddrell and James D. Sidaway, eds., Deathscapes: Spaces for Death, Dying, Mourning and Remembrance (Farnham: Ashgate/Routledge, 2010); Elizabeth Kenworthy Teather, “The Case of the Disorderly Graves: Contemporary Deathscapes in Guangzhou,” Social & Cultural Geography 2, no. 2 (2001): 185–202, https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360120047805. 27 Museums at Night, “Marcus Coates – Questioning the Dead at Arnos Vale Cemetery Bristol,” 2016, https://museumsatnight.org.uk/marcus-coates/#.YZEjymDP3cs 28 Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust, “Art & Music Installation by Jimmy Galvin,” 2018, https:// arnosvale.org.uk/events/art-music-installation-jimmy-galvin/ 29 Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust, “Inside the Crematorium, Photography Exhibition by Stephen Lewis,” 2018, https://arnosvale.org.uk/events/inside-crematorium-photographystephen-lewis/ 30 Hymenoscyphus Fraxineus. 31 Psycho (1960), A Clockwork Orange (1971), and The Exorcist (1973). 32 Rachael Raine, “A Dark Tourism Spectrum,” International Journal of Culture, Tourism, and Hospitality Work 7, no. 3 (2013), https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCTHR-05-2012-0037. 33 Chris Rojek, Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993); Richard Sharpley, “Travels to the Edge of Darkness; Towards a Typology of ‘Dark Tourism,’” in Taking Tourism to the Limits: Issues, Concepts and Managerial Perspectives, ed. M. Aicken, S.J. Page, and C. Ryan (Oxfordshire: Taylor & Francis Group, 2005); Philip Stone, “A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a Typology of

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34 35 36 37 38 39

Death and Macabre Related Tourist Sites, Attractions and Exhibitions,” Tourism: An Interdisciplinary International Journal 54, no. 2 (2006); Craig Young and Duncan Light, “Interrogating Spaces of and for the Dead as ‘Alternative Space’: Cemeteries, Corpses and Sites of Dark Tourism,” International Review of Social Research 6, no. 2 (2016); Duncan Light, “Progress in Dark Tourism and Thanatourism Research: An Uneasy Relationship with Heritage Tourism,” Tourism Management 61 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman. 2017.01.011; Peter Tarlow, “Dark Tourism – The Appealing ‘Dark’ Side of Tourism and More,” in Niche Tourism: Contemporary Issues, Trends and Cases (Routledge, 2004). C. Rojek and I. Ebrary, Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993). Stone, Towards a Dark Tourism Spectrum, 2006. R. Magee and A. Gilmore, “Heritage Site Management: From Dark Tourism to Transformative Service Experience?” The Service Industries Journal 35, no. 15–16 (2015): 898–917. J. Lennon, T. Seaton, and C. Wight, “Directions, Disconnect and Critique: Round Table Discussion,” Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes 9, no. 2 (2017): 228–239. Philip R. Stone, “Dark Tourism and Significant Other Death. Towards a Model of Mortality Mediation,” Annals of Tourism Research 39, no. 3 (2012), https://doi.org/10.101 6/j.annals.2012.04.007. Leila Scannell and Robert Gifford, “The Experienced Psychological Benefits of Place Attachment,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 51 (2017), https://doi.org/https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2017.04.001.

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Talking About the D Word The Department for Education. National Curriculum in England: Framework Document. UK Government, 2014. Dungavell, Ian. “Following the Cultural Route: London Cemetery Guidebooks in the Nineteenth Century.” In Ancient Greek Art and European Funerary Art, edited by Evangelia Georgitsoyanni, 277–290. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019. Dunk, Julie. “Management of Old Cemetery Land: Now and the Future – A Report of the University of York Cemetery Research Group.” Journal of Planning and Environment Law (June 1994): 534–536. Grinsted, T. P. Last Homes of Departed Genius: With Biographical Sketches of Poets, Painters, and Players. United Kingdom: G. Routledge & Sons, 1867. Historic England. “Arnos Vale Cemetery List Entry.” 2009. Accessed 09.09.2021. https:// historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000559 Historic England. “Case Study: Arnos Vale Cemetery.” n.d. Accessed 01.10.2021. https:// historicengland.org.uk/advice/caring-for-heritage/take-ownership/case-studies/ arnosvale/ Hussein, Ian and Julie Rugg. “Managing London’s Dead: A Case of Strategic Policy Failure.” Mortality 8, no. 2 (2003): 209–221. doi: 10.1080/1357627031000087433. Justyne, William. Guide to Highgate Cemetery. United Kingdom: Moore, 1865. Lennon, J. J. and M. Foley. Dark Tourism – the Attraction of Death and Disaster. Cengage Learning, Continuum, 2000. Lennon, J., T. Seaton, and C. Wight. “Directions, Disconnect and Critique: Round Table Discussion.” Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes 9, no. 2 (2017): 228–239. Light, Duncan. “Progress in Dark Tourism and Thanatourism Research: An Uneasy Relationship with Heritage Tourism.” Tourism Management 61 (2017): 275–301. doi: 10.1016/j.tourman.2017.01.011. Loudon, John Claudius. On the Laying Out, Planting and Managing of Cemeteries and on the Improvement of Churchyards. Facsimilie volume, edited by S.J. Curl. Redhill, Surrey: Ivelet Books Ltd, 1843:2019. Maddrell, Avril and James D. Sidaway, eds. Deathscapes: Spaces for Death, Dying, Mourning and Remembrance. Farnham, Ashgate: Routledge, 2010. Magee, R. and A. Gilmore. “Heritage Site Management: From Dark Tourism to Transformative Service Experience?” The Service Industries Journal 35, no. 15–16 (2015): 898–917. Museums at Night. “Marcus Coates – Questioning the Dead at Arnos Vale Cemetery Bristol.” 2016. Accessed 09.09.2021. https://museumsatnight.org.uk/marcus-coates/#. YZEjymDP3cs Raine, Rachael. “A Dark Tourism Spectrum.” International Journal of Culture, Tourism, and Hospitality Work 7, no. 3 (2013): 242–256. doi: 10.1108/IJCTHR-05-2012-0037 Rojek, Chris. Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel. Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, 1993. Rugg, Julie. Churchyard and Cemetery: Tradition and Modernity in Rural North Yorkshire. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013. Rugg, J. “Defining the Place of Burial: What Makes a Cemetery a Cemetery?” Mortality (Abingdon, England) 5, no. 3 (2000): 259–275. doi: 10.1080/713686011. Rushden Cemetery. “Rushden Cemetery Postcard.” n.d. Accessed 09.09.2021. https:// rushdenmuseum.co.uk/2020/11/rushden-cemetery/ Scannell, Leila and Robert Gifford. “The Experienced Psychological Benefits of Place Attachment.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 51 (2017): 256–269. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp. 2017.04.001. Seaton, A. V. “Last Resting Places – Or Recreational Spaces? The International Evolution of Cemeteries as Leisure and Thanatourism Resources.” In Landscapes in Leisure: Space, Place and Identities, edited by S. Elkington and S. Gammon. London: Palgrave, 2015. Sharpley, Richard. “Travels to the Edge of Darkness; Towards a Typology of “Dark Tourism.” In Taking Tourism to the Limits: Issues, Concepts and Managerial Perspectives, edited by

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Janine Marriott Michelle Aicken, Stephen. J. Page, and Chris Ryan. Oxfordshire: Taylor & Francis Group, 215–226, 2005. Smith, Joyce. “Case Study 1: The Friends of Arnos Vale Cemetery.” In Saving Cemeteries. A Handbook for Cemetery Friends, edited by The National Federation of Cemetery Friends, 63–65. The National Federation of Cemetery Friends, 2009. Stone, Philip. “A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a Typology of Death and Macabre Related Tourist Sites, Attractions and Exhibitions.” Tourism: An Interdisciplinary International Journal 54, no. 2 (2006): 145–160. Stone, Philip R. “Dark Tourism and Significant Other Death. Towards a Model of Mortality Mediation.” Annals of Tourism Research 39, no. 3 (2012): 1565–1587. doi: 10.1016/j. annals.2012.04.007. Tarlow, Peter. “Dark Tourism – the Appealing ‘Dark’ Side of Tourism and More.” In Niche Tourism: Contemporary Issues, Trends and Cases, 61–72: Routledge, 2004. Teather, Elizabeth Kenworthy. “The Case of the Disorderly Graves: Contemporary Deathscapes in Guangzhou.” Social & Cultural Geography 2, no. 2 (2001): 185–202. doi: 10.1080/14649360120047805 Thorsheim, Peter. “The Corpse in the Garden: Burial, Health, and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century London.” Environmental History 16, no. 1 (2011): 38–68. doi: 10.1093/envhis/emq146 Wester, Judith and Kathryn Walker. Is Death Education Important for Young People. Cedar Education CIC, 2017. https://cedareducation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Isdeath-education-important-for-young-people.pdf Western, Judith. “Death (or Life?) Lessons – Why Are They Needed?” Professional Reflections in RE Today, National Association of Teachers of Religious Education 34, no. 1 (Autumn 2016): 67–69. Wight, A.C. and J.J. Lennon. “Towards an Understanding of Visitor Perceptions of ‘Dark’ Attractions: The Case of the Imperial War Museum of the North Manchester.” In Tourism and Hospitality Management 2 (2004): 105–112. Worpole, Ken. Last Landscapes: The Architecture of the Cemetery in the West. Reaktion Books, 2003. Young, Craig and Duncan Light. “Interrogating Spaces of and for the Dead as ‘Alternative Space’: Cemeteries, Corpses and Sites of Dark Tourism.” International Review of Social Research 6, no. 2 (2016): 61–72. Young, Ulysses. Rammohan Roy “and the Modern World.” East and West 5 (1955): 300–303.

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27 THE DEATH POSITIVE LIBRARY Stacey Pitsillides, Claire Nally, Anita Luby, Rhonda Brooks, Fiona Hill, Joanne Ghee, Katherine Ingham, and Judith Robinson Designing Death Positive Futures with Libraries Stories interweave themselves into the social fabric of death and dying, and librarians are the custodians of these narratives. Neil Gaiman in his book Stardust explains “without our stories we are incomplete” and through fact, fiction, and everything in between, nothing could be more enriching to our lives. The Death Positive Library grew out of a series of collaborations. It initially began in Redbridge Central Library in Ilford, UK, with a project called “The Final Party” (2018), which included col­ laborations with funeral directors, creatives, and academics along with death cafés and a Day of the Dead Festival. One of the installations commissioned was “Love After Death” (www.loveafterdeath.co.uk) created by Dr. Pitsillides, originally for Nesta’s FutureFest16.1 It brought forth key questions about the role of design, death, and speculation within libraries. Using a fictional Last Will and Testament as a mediating object within a live performance, the public were invited to book a time slot when they could enter a cocooning pod structure and have a guided consultation with a death expert about their future “Creative Bereavement” or “Dead Body.” The “Love After Death” installation aimed to introduce people to planning end of life wishes and ideas of digital legacy, along with exploring technologies currently in research. One example of this is digital tattoos, which are being investigated by companies like Philips and Microsoft.2 The installation reimagined these as digital memorial tattoos to consider how they may be used in future ritual practices: Digital Memorial Tattoo – A Digital Memorial Tattoo uses the merger of electronics and biology to create wearable electronics under the skin, which can be directly printed onto or used as a screen. This may include sensors in the environment and geolocation that activate the tattoo in important places for the bereaved.3

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-33

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In this way, future and current (but largely unknown) rituals were used and imagined as playful diegetic prototypes, a term developed by David Kirby in 2010.4 Diegetic prototypes are grounded in scientific possibility but expanded into new settings or services that normalise their use in public/future environments. Within this instal­ lation, end-of-life rituals are narrativised and sequenced through the Last Will and Testament, in order to allow the public to explore a range of alternative choices that transform our data and bodies into new materialities after we die. Although Kirby focuses on filmic portrayals of technology, the installation uses written description and performance, where the public take on the role of first-person experience. This direct interaction also opens up these technologies to normalisation, conversation, and debate by positioning potential futures as options to be chosen. Theoretically, the project explores DiSalvo’s line of enquiry “how are publics made with things?”5 through the creation of an enclosed but semi-permeable 3D space (Figure 27.1), using warm, white, and natural tones, along with a set of pages that, when bound and signed, constitute a fictional future Last Will and Testament. DiSalvo’s exploration of the design tactic tracing, particularly within socially engaged practices, “is characterised by the use of designerly forms to creatively express the histories, discourses, and techniques that constitute an issue; in ways that foster knowledge”6 and it is this kind of engagement we aimed to foster through the layers of social and designed interaction. To take this slightly further, Bennett’s Vibrant

Figure 27.1 Original pods (top left and right), part of The Final Party, Redbridge Central Library. Geodesic domes redesigned for use within the Tickets for the Afterlife (bottom left and right).

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Matter encourages the reader to see the world as full of active, animate things – material and human-nonhuman assemblages – rather than passive objects, including the internal agents within the human body.7 This installation uses the context of vibrant matter as it asks people to examine themselves post death through modes of decomposition, such as 3D printing with cremated ashes, as a merger with environments through blending your DNA with a tree, or as an assemblages with technologies by downloading your brain into a robotic body or using the energy produced from your body to power cities. These speculative ma­ terialities impact the way that people creatively see both themselves and their loved ones after death, inspiring new kinds of conversations. The use of speculative design (or design fictions where designed things are used to tell stories about the future) is “a method of research, or means of asking questions and generating new connections” that present alternative social, cultural and ritual reali­ ties.8 This opens a space to use audience thoughts and views as a starting point for design thinking and iterative design cycles, with feedback and responses from a diverse public. The assortment of reactions can be seen by examining three responses to this initial 2018 installation in Redbridge Central Library:9 • Firstly, Gita sees the installation through a lens of personal belief and the trans­ formation of the body as a form of legacy, stating “because I am Hindu … after crematorium ashes can [go] to the concreate ball for corals marine, so at least someone can survive even from ashes.” • Fred responds to the experience and uses the performance of a legal document to voice his concerns about privacy and consent, the installation is “very calming, just the right atmosphere to discuss this kind of thing but what I didn’t like was the legal arrangement, the way it’s presented I think that’s a bit presumptive … to set it out as a legal arrangement is a bit unusual and that part needs to be rethought.” • Alistair, as a funeral director, uses the proposed fictions to think about his own professional practice stating that recycling “the energy from your cremation and [giving] it to a social cause … [is a] really good idea … you can donate any metals that’s left … so why couldn’t there be another box saying would you like to recycle the energy from cremation.” Suchman claims that technical artefacts are embodied with human subjectivity as we are performing with them.10 When we combine technological concepts with spec­ ulative design, this allows language and narrative to be made tangible as fluid possi­ bilities giving people a space to voice their own values, beliefs, and concerns. The response to the initial installation raised a series of questions, which include the fol­ lowing: (1) whether the performance was the right mode of discovery for a library where browsing and personal exploration is the norm; (2) whether the pods could be embedded with different signifiers that evoke spirituality, for example, light, shadows, and transparency; (3) to ensure the pods are lightweight and simple enough to be moved from site to site; (4) to develop a deeper understanding of how books and literature can be used to shape future iterations. 391

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Subsequently, a new range of pods were designed as geodesic domes, inspired by architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller who patented these self-supporting geodesic structures, excited by their occurrence in nature and mathematics.11 These domes were able to be assembled by a team of three, in under three hours using a drill and simple hand tools on-site in the libraries and could remain in the libraries for a longer duration with minimal invigilation. The cladding of the structure included cut out patterns inspired by jali, or pierced screens (which appear in both Hindu and Islamic architec­ ture) using laser cut paper and CNC cut lightweight wood, allowing sunlight to project patterns onto the dome at different times of day. Layers of tulle enclosed the entrance and vivid green plants stood out again the muted colour palette. This installation split the previous Last Will and Testament into a collection of 50 Tickets for the Afterlife which were arranged around the dome to be taken individually by visitors and divided more clearly into past, present, future, and distant future – resembling bookmarks in their form – and connecting to a handbound book with chapters: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Life can be understood backwards (past) The present changes the past (present) The future is uncertain but the end is always near (future) The further future is hope distant (future).

Within each chapter typographic references to books and quotes were used to further explore the themes.12 The exploration of how a diverse collection of books about death (past to future) can reframe public thinking was expanded in 2019–2021, when the Death Positive Libraries considered to death and dying as a health and societal issue. This is further explored through design and humanities research that frame the libraries collections of factual and fictional books as creative resources that push us to consider our own mortality. During COVID-19 across 2020/2021, the plans for physical geodesic pods needed to be changed as everything shifted online and one of the first ways this was approached was by creating online spaces and event series like the Death Positive Library.13 The visual communication that underpins these connections with an online public was created in collaboration with graphic designer Elena Demireva. A brand identity was developed, based on the physical installations with a neutral three colour palette, cropped textural imagery, and a focus on typography, negative space, and simple illustrations of cracks or fractures. This was inspired by Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold that treats repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise – to acknowledge the uncertainty of a moment of time. The visual design aimed to support people’s need to go beyond the public death count which dehumanises and flattens our relationship to death and dying and give breathing space to the fragments of story and imagery presented on social media.14 The team also set out to design a digital experience also called Tickets for the Afterlife15 which blends and extends the first two versions of the design, (see discussion above) but engaged directly with library staff to co-design the user experience using workshops run on Miro (an interactive virtual workspace) to develop the core design and interaction.16 We also worked very closely together on the technical testing, user 392

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feedback, and book recommendations linked to library catalogues, including infor­ mation about availability in their collections. Using a series of typographic questions and answers along with a bespoke soundscape that helps to guide people in choosing a Tickets for the Afterlife from the project’s collection, the website begins: This site will help you explore a range of choices. And discover what you can do with your body, memories and legacies. With rituals from the past, present and future of death and dying. You will be asked to decide what matters most to you, to find your own ticket for the afterlife.17 It also uses each library’s collections of books as a way of giving people personalised recommendations for further inquiry. For each ticket the user chooses, they will be offered three book recommendations that link directly into each of the library’s cata­ logues, whether they are in Redbridge, Newcastle upon Tyne, or Kirklees. Each ticket will also be tagged with some metadata informing the user if it is, for example, currently available and less than average cost. Similarly, to the previous versions, library users can browse the whole collection and there is a space on the website for the public to submit their own tickets to be added to the collection. This digital experience was also installed on large-scale tablets in each of the three libraries partners’ central sites, which included stands of the Death Positive Library book recommendations for people to browse directly, and was included in a virtual booth during the Lifting the Lid festival from 19 November to 21 November (Figure 27.2).

Figure 27.2 Screenshots of author Q&A poster, book quotes for social media, and Tickets for the Afterlife digital experience online and installed in the libraries.

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Books, Mortality, and the Development of the Death Positive Library Books about death and dying are ubiquitous. There are books on how to cope with grief, how to write a will, how to run a death café, and how to navigate graveyards. In the early days of the Death Positive Library project, we focused on palliative care, hospices and grief, and a medical humanities approach to mortality. However, with the context of COVID-19 and the move online, we identified the importance of literature, and indeed libraries, in death education.18 The pandemic has demonstrated the appetite that people have for books in times of need. In “Libraries: An Essential Part of Local Recovery” (2020), Libraries Connected (the national agency for library professionals) reported that “No other public body has the same reach into and across the UK’s diverse local communities, or the networks, economies of scale and flexibility to respond to local needs.” This means that libraries occupy a unique and safe place in which to encourage reflections on what it means to be “Death Positive.”19 The value of certain genres, such as memoirs and self-help books, cannot be underestimated. Equally, we quickly iden­ tified how fiction has a central role to play as part of these conversations: bibliotherapy has been recommended for centuries by librarians, teachers, and other socially involved professions to ease varying degrees of hardship. Two main types of literature have dominated the field of bibliotherapy: didactic literature (e.g. self-help books, manuals) and imaginative literature (primarily poems and fiction).20 Therefore, the narrowing focus of the project began to question representations of death cultures, and this is reflected in our booklist for the Death Positive Library: how have writers thought about death throughout history and across genres? One of the key ways in which we can navigate the issue of death is through the arts and humanities: “Stories – myths, plays, pictures, novels, histories – are among hu­ mankind’s chief instruments for understanding ourselves and our world.”21 In thinking about humanity’s death cultures in the past and future, we have sought to provide an imaginative reflection on death which broadens out and reconsiders the idea of “death positivity.” Part of this activity relates to rethinking the canon of literary works which can be used to foster public reflection on death, and whether this should always be configured around medicine, or whether wider literatures such as genre fiction or contemporary novels can be useful as facilitatory prompts. Hence, we have explored how far it is possible to broaden the current focus on bereavement literature, and instead consider wider questions of what death has looked like in the past, and how it will appear in the future. As an assertion of the value of literature and culture in times of crisis, and especially as our project was operating during COVID-19 lockdown measures in the UK (2020-1), it became imperative to represent different experiences of death and dying, including social inequalities and injustices. The importance of participation by diverse commu­ nities is something we still need to develop (as our attendees at author events tend to be white, and often women).22 However, the collaboration emphasised at all points in 394

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accordance with Giorgio Agamben’s argument (1998) that “life and death are not properly scientific concepts but rather political concepts.”23 As such, we curated a list which (however limited), attempted to capture diversity. The urgency of this endeavour was emphasised by the irruption of the Black Lives Matter movement in mid-2020, responding to George Floyd’s murder on 25 May 2020 at the hands of police officers. Hence, books such as Breesha Wade’s Grieving While Black: An Antiracist Take on Oppression and Sorrow (2021) and Karla FC Holloway’s Passed On; African American Mourning Stories (2002) represent important cultural documents in confronting the difficulties of marginalised communities. We also sought to showcase these political agendas through novels like Salena Godden’s Mrs Death Misses Death (2021), a fictional work which personifies death as an ageing black woman on the streets of London. This book is a part fictional memoir, part historical journey into deaths throughout history, through the lens of Mrs Death, who stands in for the forgotten or marginalised of society. This book confronts the sys­ temic inequalities of the modern world, such as those highlighted by Grenfell Fire in London (2017). Other personifications of death, in Terry Pratchett’s work such as Mort (1987), suggest a wryly humorous and sympathetic character who helps us on our final journey – and he likes cats. Despite the value of new and non-canonical literatures, we also considered the relevance of more familiar and traditional texts which represent death in its historical and contextual richness. For instance, we featured the anonymous Old English poem Beowulf (famously translated by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney in 1999) because it contains a poignant lament for the death of the titular hero. Indeed, the poem also opens with a ship burial, where Scyld Shefing’s funeral ship is personified.24 We have cremation, laments and other obsequies which act as a testament to the cultural specificity of early mediaeval communities, but also the universality of death as a human experience. Moving forward several centuries to the Victorian period, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850) is an elegiac series of poems about the death of the poet’s friend, Arthur Hallam. In one verse, Tennyson poignantly recalls the discontinuity between grief and the continuation of everyday life: He is not here, but far away The noise of life begins again And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain On the bald streets breaks the blank day.25 From a similar cultural vantage point, Charlotte Bronte’s lament on the death of her sister Anne explains: There’s little joy in life for me, And little terror in the grave I’ve lived the parting hour to see Of one I would have died to save.26

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So in many ways this leads us to the “death denial” thesis,27 and relatedly, the popular idea that the Victorians were much closer to death than our contemporary selves. In this theory, post-industrial society has sanitised death, or held it at a distance through hospitals, mortuaries, funeral homes, and hospices. However, the books on our list confirm that the “death denial” thesis is strategic (answering the agendas of death positive campaigners) rather than being concretely verifiable. Death denial been very effectively critiqued by Lyn Lofland’s The Craft of Dying (1978): “the empirical evidence for all these assertions is something less than overwhelming.”28 Similarly, John Troyer perspicaciously comments in his book Technologies of the Human Corpse (2021) that claims of a taboo about death are greatly exaggerated: “one of the most unhelpful and unnecessary death and dying arguments, an argument that dogmatically persists today … the death taboo is always about utility, not truth.”29 Lyn Lofland notes that humanity’s approach to death is paradoxically both universal and specific: cultural beliefs, feelings, and practices are variable, but the very fact of death is a universal. Hence, our work has provided a cautious account of modern attempts to talk about mortality, which need to engage emotionally and communally, not just intellectually. Davis and Breede identified that “Death and dying are such personal, confusing, mysterious, painful and mystical experiences, sometimes poetry and artwork, literature, and mediated stories are the only ways we can communicate about it.”30 As such, the Death Positive Library asserts the therapeutic value of books and reading as part of a broader conversation about mortality. A resistance to death denial is not intended to overlook the historical, temporal, religious, and cultural specificity of different death practices. Hence, the booklist we generated for the Death Positive Library addresses accounts of global death and dying, including the nuances which may be found in different countries. For instance, Caitlin Doughty’s travel memoir of death, From Here to Eternity (2017), provides eyewitness accounts of death rituals across the world, including Indonesia, Mexico, Japan, and the United States. This also points to a broader trend in non-fiction writing (also demonstrated by writers such as Sue Black, Erica Buist, and Kate Mayfield), where memoirs of death and dying do not directly relate to subjective grief (“grief memoirs”), but rather explore how societies and peoples experience mortality, through the lens of a death practitioner.31 While we have represented this subtle shift in the contents of the booklist, this is of course a very different readership to those who need solace in the loss of a loved one, and we tried to signpost this distinction – we included self-help books, memoirs of grief, of palliative care physicians, of funeral directors, and those close to them. Kathryn Mannix’s With the End in Mind (2017) is one such example, as is Liz Rothschild’s edited collection of real-life accounts, Outside the Box: Everyday Stories of Death, Bereavement and Life (2020). The Death Positive Library was also keen to evaluate different types of fiction (and wider culture). Davis and Breede acknowledge that perhaps one of the key things about death is how far it seems to be outside of our control, and how fiction (and film) – particularly sci-fi, gothic, horror, or fantasy genres – might be able to help us – at a safe distance – to explore some of these questions about mortality: 396

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in horror fiction … the undead – whether vampires, zombies, or ghosts – represent a third space in which the living and the dead come together, and provide a way to bring the viewer closer to death in order to develop an acceptance and familiarity with the idea of our own mortality.32 Hence, our booklist also contains material that, on the first encounter, might not seem therapeutic. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, first published in 1818, is about the pain of existence, loss, and what it means to be human. The material in our booklist features stories such as R. L. Stevenson’s novella, The Body Snatchers (1884), and that ubiq­ uitous figure of the undead, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). There are contemporary and fictional interventions in historical cases – such as Hilary Mantel’s The Giant O’Brien (1998), a character drawn from Charles Byrne, whose body was used and exhibited after death, expressly without his consent, and he remains in the Hunterian Museum. So one big question these books ask is does it matter what happens to our bodies after death? However, humanity’s imagined journey into death – and arguably death positivity – is not just therapeutic – it is dark and difficult and complex. It also does not need to be sensational. So while the spectacle of death is visible in some more sensational material, the ordinariness of our mortality, and its ubiquity, is a cornerstone of the project. Lofland’s term “thanatological chic”33 is therefore a useful way of navigating the more spectacular aspects of death studies debate. This is where ideas of celebrity and death cultures intersect with the material we have showcased to the public. Carla Valentine’s Past Mortems: Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors (2017), as well as her high-profile Twitter presence reveal a number of intersections between a gothicised and noir sen­ sibility, alongside frequently graphic, or otherwise humorous and irreverent accounts of autopsy and anatomy. In some ways, we might link this strand of books to the theory and practice of dark tourism, which may take an educational or voyeuristic approach to tourist sites of death and disaster, depending on the framing of a particular site, and the way in which it is narrated.34 We might ask ourselves as readers how far some publications are educational, and how far they are spectacularly lurid, and if the distinction between these two ideas is so unambiguous as it might first appear. Studying death and producing any sort of material on the topic for the public also involves a conjecture of what may come next for society and its relationship with mortality. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) or Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon (2002) explore complex philosophical questions around Artificial Intelligence death, being fictional speculations of what might happen in an unknown future. Elaine Kasket’s book All the Ghosts in the Machine (2019) intellectually supports a consideration of these fictions, through a factual evaluation of digital death and dying. Additionally, our fiction choices target some incredibly emotive and affective topics, such as the return of a dead child in Andrew Michael Hurley’s eerie novel Starve Acre (2019) or Sylvia Plath’s part fictional, part autobiographical reflections on, and ex­ perience of suicide in The Bell Jar (1963). Each in very different ways, all our books provide an exploration of what death means across time, geographies, communities, and histories. 397

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Conclusion The Death Positive Libraries (2020–2021) presented an online programme con­ sisting of seven book club Q&A’s with authors, two film screenings with Q&A, two specialist panels on pet bereavement and how death has changed across time, a Book Room of Loss in collaboration with the Loss Project, a Death Café, a virtual gallery in collaboration with the Marie Curie Hospice, and a Tickets for the Afterlife workshop in the Reimagine End of Life Festival which cumulatively had 1,772 tickets booked on Eventbrite, and with many of the Q&A events continuing to be available online. The project has also used social media as a way of engaging audiences between events, particularly through book quotes and book reels which recommend topics such as “five books about death from Russian authors.” Our engagement on Instagram, for example, over a brief period (11 August–8 November, 90-day period) had a reach of 17,400 (accounts which have seen content) with a similar breakdown to our events of 75.8% from the UK, 62.8% women, 35.7% between the age of 25–34. As the events and project moved online during COVID-19, there has also been a strong response (492 surveyed) from members of the public commenting that the “sensitive topic of dying [was] explored delicately and honestly as part of Death Positive Library,” while others shared how the events helped them to consider their own bereavements: I … was a little apprehensive of the subject but knowing it was online and I could leave at any point enabled me to join the event. I found it a positive and I would be more likely to attend other dying matters type events. It also enabled people to act in ways that supported their friends and communities: 2 friends who have both experienced the sudden death this week of their beloved dogs. The event made me realise how important people feel about having their experience of death acknowledged (even that of a pet) and it helps to validate the life of the deceased. Others commented that the online programme supported accessibility “as someone who is limited in their ability to attend events by physical condition (wheelchair user) it was liberating to be able to attend an event via zoom on same terms as everyone else.”35 The project has used design to create three different versions of physical and digital installation (2018–2021) that together explore how libraries can use design and cre­ ativity to develop new approaches to death and dying that employ different forms of literature as a starting point for public engagement. The digital experience called Tickets for the Afterlife has had a total of 1,593 views, to date, with popular tickets including “Memento Mori Photography” followed by “Green Cremation,” “Cremation Energy,” and “Human Composting.” This blending of design and humanities research 398

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with deep collaboration with library staff has created a range of different learning opportunities and allowed for the playful experimentation with what it means to be a Death Positive Library.

Acknowledgements This project has been funded by the Wellcome Trust, Carnegie UK, and the Wolfson Foundation.

Notes 1 “Love After Death” was initially commissioned for Nesta’s FutureFest16 as part of the Future Love strand, curated by Ghislaine Boddington. FutureFest aims to vision and cre­ atively explore 10–30 years in the future and commissions installations based on each year’s core themes. This commission included a performative installation, an exhibition of speculative design objects and a panel on FutureFest’s Social Stage. The festival attracted over 4,000 international visitors (September 17–18, 2016). 2 Microsoft Research Labs, “Smart Tattoos,” August 22, 2018, https://www.microsoft. com/en-us/research/project/smart-tattoos/ 3 This quote has been extracted from the Tickets for the Afterlife installation, Ticket No. 32/ 50 Digital Memorial Tattoo. See https://loveafterdeath.co.uk/tickets-for-the-afterlife for full collection 4 David Kirby, “The Future Is Now: Diegetic Prototypes and the Role of Popular Films in Generating Real-World Technological Development,” Social Studies of Science 40, no. 1 (2010): 41–70. 5 Carl DiSalvo, “Design and the Construction of Publics,” Design Issues, 25, no. 1 (2009): 48–63, 49. 6 DiSalvo, “Design and the Construction of Publics,” 56. 7 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). 8 Anne Galloway and Catherine Caudwell, “Speculative Design as Research Method: From Answers to Questions and ‘Staying with the Trouble,’” in Undesign: Critical Practices at the Intersection of Art and Design, ed. Gretchen Coombs, Andrew McNamara, and Gavin Sade (London: Routledge, 2018), 85–96, 95. 9 Various participants interviewed by Dr Stacey Pitsillides and edited into a short film: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/312733465 10 Lucy Suchman, “Located Accountabilities in Technology Production,” Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 14, no. 2 (2002): 91–105. 11 Hsiao-Yun Chu, “The Evolution of the Fuller Geodesic Dome: From Black Mountain to Drop City,” Design and Culture 10, no. 2 (2018): 121–137. 12 Link to online documentation of physical book that was exhibited as part of the Tickets for the Afterlife installation ( https://loveafterdeath.co.uk/tickets-for-the-afterlife). 13 The team utilised a range of digital platforms to communicate with audiences including Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/DeathPositiveLibrary), Instagram ( https://www. instagram.com/thedeathpositivelibrary/), and Twitter ( https://twitter.com/deathpositivel1). 14 Inioluwa Deborah Raji, “The Discomfort of Death Counts: Mourning Through the Distorted Lens of Reported COVID-19 Death Data,” Patterns 1, no. 4 (2020), doi: 10.1016/ j.patter.2020.100066 15 The digital experience can be accessed via https://afterlifetickets.co.uk/ 16 The Tickets for the Afterlife website was creatively directed by Stacey Pitsillides with graphic designer Elena Demireva, web developers Parvin Asadzadeh Birjandi and Tom

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17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34

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Hegarty, and sound designer Emma Margetson. Content research and co-design with Claire Nally and the Death Positive Library team. Introduction to Tickets for the Afterlife experience; https://afterlifetickets.co.uk/ Introduction Daniel K. Jernigan, Walter Wadiak, and W. Michelle Wang, Narrating Death: The Limit of Literature (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019). Libraries Connected, “Libraries: An Essential Part of Local Recovery,” 2020, accessed October 20, 2021, https://www.librariesconnected.org.uk/resource/libraries-essentialpart-local-recovery Katarzyna A. Małecka and Jamison S. Bottomley, “Grief Memoirs: The Familiarity of Helping Professionals with the Genre and Its Potential Incorporation into Grief Therapy,” Death Studies (2020): 1–9, 1, doi: 10.1080/07481187.2019.1705938 Jonathan Bate, ed., “Introduction,” In The Public Value of the Humanities (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), 1, accessed December 7, 2021, http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/ 9781849662451.0006 The total aggregate of responses to the Death Positive Libraries Exit Survey was as follows: 81.03% of attendees were White English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British, and 89.44% identified as female. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 164. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, The Four Funerals in Beowulf (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 23. Alfred Lord Tennyson, Selected Poems, ed. Alan Day (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), 135. Charlotte Brontë, The Complete Poems of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Clement Shorter (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923), 210. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press, 1973). Lyn Lofland, The Craft of Dying: The Modern Face of Death (40th Anniversary Edition), ed. John Troyer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019), 73. John Troyer, Technologies of the Human Corpse (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021), 40–41. Christine Davis and Deborah C. Breede, Talking Through Death: Communicating about Death in Interpersonal, Mediated, and Cultural Contexts (London: Routledge, 2019), 21. For “grief memoirs,” see Katarzyna A. Małecka and Jamison S. Bottomley, “Grief Memoirs: The Familiarity of Helping Professionals with the Genre and Its Potential Incorporation into Grief Therapy,” Death Studies (2020): 1–9, doi: 10.1080/07481187. 2019.1705938 Davis and Breede, Talking Through Death, 22–23. Lyn Lofland, The Craft of Dying: The Modern Face of Death (40th Anniversary Edition), ed. John Troyer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019), 85. Richard Sharpley and Phillip R. Stone, eds., The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism (Bristol: Channel View, 2009); J. John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster (London: Continuum, 2000). See also Virtual Dark Tourism: Ghost Roads, ed. Kathryn N. McDaniel (London: Palgrave 2018) for the intersection of dark tourism as a theory with literary texts. An independent evaluation was conducted by Marge Ainsley MA MMRS as part of the Engaging Library Award Phase 2. The evaluation occurred between May 14, 2020 and November 23, 2021 through a post-event survey and that aimed to measure the impact of attendance on the audiences and to pinpoint the core demographics.

Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel HellerRoazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

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The Death Positive Library Bate, Jonathan, ed. The Public Value of the Humanities. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press, 1973. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Brontë, Charlotte. The Complete Poems of Charlotte Brontë, edited by Clement Shorter. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923. Chu, Hsiao-Yun. “The Evolution of the Fuller Geodesic Dome: From Black Mountain to Drop City.” Design and Culture 10, no. 2 (2018): 121–137. Coombs, Gretchen, Andrew McNamara, and Gavin Sade, eds. Undesign: Critical Practices at the Intersection of Art and Design. London: Routledge, 2018. Davis, Christine and Deborah C. Breede. Talking Through Death: Communicating about Death in Interpersonal, Mediated, and Cultural Contexts. London: Routledge, 2019. DiSalvo, Carl. “Design and the Construction of Publics.” Design Issues 25, no. 1 (2009): 48–63. Galloway, Anne and Catherine Caudwell. “Speculative Design as Research Method: From Answers to Questions and ‘Staying with the Trouble.’” In Undesign: Critical Practices at the Intersection of Art and Design, edited by Gretchen Coombs, Andrew McNamara, and Gavin Sade, 85–96, 95. London: Routledge, 2018. Jernigan, Daniel K., Walter Wadiak, and W. Michelle Wang. Narrating Death: The Limit of Literature. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. Kirby, David. “The Future Is Now: Diegetic Prototypes and the Role of Popular Films in Generating Real-World Technological Development.” Social Studies of Science 40, no. 1 (2010): 41–70. Lennon, J. John and Malcolm Foley. Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster. London: Continuum, 2000. Libraries Connected. “Libraries: An Essential Part of Local Recovery.” 2020. Accessed October 20, 2021, https://www.librariesconnected.org.uk/resource/libraries-essential-partlocal-recovery Lofland, Lyn. The Craft of Dying: The Modern Face of Death (40th Anniversary Edition), edited by John Troyer. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019. Małecka, Katarzyna A. and Jamison S. Bottomley. “Grief Memoirs: The Familiarity of Helping Professionals with the Genre and Its Potential Incorporation into Grief Therapy.” Death Studies (2020): 1–9. doi: 10.1080/07481187.2019.1705938 McDaniel, Kathryn N., ed. Virtual Dark Tourism: Ghost Roads. London: Palgrave, 2018. Owen-Crocker, Gale R. The Four Funerals in Beowulf. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Raji, Inioluwa Deborah. “The Discomfort of Death Counts: Mourning Through the Distorted Lens of Reported COVID-19 Death Data.” Patterns 1, no. 4 (2020). doi: 10.1016/ j.patter.2020.100066 Sharpley, Richard and Phillip R. Stone, eds. The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism. Bristol: Channel View, 2009. Suchman, Lucy. “Located Accountabilities in Technology Production.” Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 14, no. 2 (2002): 91–105. Tennyson, Alfred Lord. Selected Poems, edited by Alan Day. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991. Troyer, John. Technologies of the Human Corpse. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021.

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28 HAUNTED HOUSES AND HORRIFIC HISTORY Ghost Tours at Historic House Museums

Katie Stringer Clary and David Hearnes Historic house museums are a unique sector of the museums and heritage world; they offer the unique opportunity to tell the stories and history of a particular place in a specific time or times. In the United States, many historic house museum professionals are making a move away from the popular view of these sites as stuffy, dusty, places for reenactments to dynamic and relevant community centers.1 As historic house museums continue to evolve, they sometimes struggle to gain visitors, especially repeat visitors.2 One way staff have combated this problem is by offering speciality tours around holidays, themed events, and after-hours tours. Among the most popular are tours about ghosts, legends, mourning culture, and other “spooky” themes during the month of October in particular. Colin Dickey states in Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, “Ghosts bridge the past to the present; they speak across seemingly insurmountable barriers of death and time, connecting us to what we thought was lost.”3

Historic House Museums and Interpretive Programs A benefit for historic house museums is their existence in a liminal space between the present and past. Often a historic house museum serves to interpret the specific time and place of its period of significance. This can be a challenge for older sites that may have undergone many transformations, and some historic sites struggle to tell the many stories available to them in favor of a glorified or sugar-coated story. This is especially true of historic house museums in the American South that were sites of enslavement and white supremacy. As these historic sites reckon with dark history, and become sites of dark tourism in some cases, the stories of real people and their lives are what visitors can connect with the most and learn from. In general, a historic house museum in the United States offers a basic one-hour tour of the building and grounds for visitors, speciality tours and educational programs for school, homeschool, and other groups, and specialty tours at holidays or for other 402

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special events. Granting agencies and general admission ticket sales do not often provide the full amount needed to keep these sites preserved and open to the public. The popularity of perceived supernatural events, ghostly encounters, or other scary events have been a prime fundraising opportunity for historic sites that are often in need of funds for preservation, conservation, education, and operations. This of course brings up questions of ethics, best practices, authenticity, and truth-telling at these sites. Often, the truth of history and the capabilities of other humans is in many ways more frightening than any fictional ghost story or haunting. The enslavement and subjugation of Indigenous peoples, enslavement and trafficking of Africans, and the treatment of people of different races, classes, and genders are very real lessons for visitors today. The loss of thousands of people to pandemics and wars is also horrific, and very familiar to many visitors in the post-2020 COVID-19 world. Death and dying have always been a part of life in every time and space, and historic homes have the opportunity to build connections between the past and present for visitors.

Why Ghosts and Haunts at Historic House Museums? “Better for Haunts,” by Sarah Burns, explains that the architecture and mythos surrounding mid- to late-nineteenth-century homes are some of the most evocative for hauntings and scary stories in the United States. The growing industrialism and fastchanging world in this time and into the twentieth century lead to a sense that the moldering Victorian homes with a jumble of architectural styles were haunted in many ways.4 Burns describes: Each house was a vessel, a lid clamped down on a stew of powerful emotions, both personal and cultural—fear, dread, trauma, anxiety, disgust, repulsion, grief, guilt—meant to be shoved to the back of a dark closet and forgotten. What the house contained, though, always threatened to seep out, no matter how strong the desire to subdue and repress it. Like Pandora’s box, it exerted a perverse allure, roused the irresistible impulse to raise the lid, peer inside, discover the secret, penetrate the mystery. What haunted these houses were memories that refused to die.5 Not unrelated, many of the historic house museums in the United States are from this time period. In many cases, visitors expect that a historic place is haunted, either by actual ghosts, or more likely, by the weight of history. Elaine Davis, in How Students Understand the Past, explains that to understand how to teach history one must also know how the past is constructed in the minds of individuals who are shaped in turn by their age, culture, ethnicity, and other factors.6 She argues that historical knowledge is constructed in two ways: narrative understanding and logical-scientific understanding. The former is perhaps the most important to the processing of this new information in visitors’ minds, perhaps while at a historic house or landscape, while the latter is generally the kind of learning that takes place in the traditional classroom. To stimulate informal learning, Davis argues 403

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for active engagement, and objects such as artifacts or replicas help a learner connect to the past on a personal level. By using interactive and object-based learning, visitors can be better engaged and connected in studies of the past.7 “Ghost tours” or other types of spooky-perceived programming at historic house museums are a perfect site for this type of learning to take place. In Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear, Margee Kerr explains that “people enjoy being scared in safe environments because chemicals are released in the brain causing them to feel pleasure.”8 This research leads many to believe that the historic house museum is the perfect site for ghost tours, or those about death and dying, to connect visitors with the past and people who lived in the home. The combination of personal narrative stories, the authentic historic landscape, and the connotations many have with these sites as places of unease make them a natural location for popular tours based in dark tourism. These tours can take many forms including historical, theatrical, ghost hunting, folklore, or a combination of these types. This study focuses mainly on the historical and folklore tours at historic house museums.

Successful Programs and Considerations at Historic House Museums Authenticity and Truth Many graduate students in American public history and museum studies educational training programs have investigated the question of ghost tours in thesis over the past several years. Emily Alvey’s 2017 Master of Art’s thesis explores ghost tours as a way for historic house museums to gain revenue while staying true to their mission to educate the public. Alvey researched tours at three different historic house museums then analyzed their adherence to mission-based work, as well as their revenue value. The conclusion of this thesis states, The findings of this study also suggest that ghost tour programs in historic house museums can help sustain visitorship through public outreach to new audiences and by meeting public demand. All three sites included in the study indicated that two of the primary motivations for offering the ghost tours are public outreach and demand. The ability of the ghost tours to bring in repeat visitors who might not have otherwise engaged with the regular programming of the different house museums was stated as one of the primary benefits of the programs.9 She also explains that because people enjoy ghost stories, integrating such stories into tours can help people connect to the past, which is often a goal for these historic sites and in history pedagogy. Kaci Lynn Johnson reviewed case studies at five institutions in the United States in her 2020 thesis, “‘They Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts’: Dark Tourism at Historic Sites.” The case studies include sites that are traditional “Dark Tourist” locations including a former sanitarium and a penitentiary, in addition to historic house museums. Johnson 404

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explored the ethics of tours at these sites through the lens of museum ethics; she reminds readers, Ghost tours and other similar programming are not based on historical evidence. Evidence is bread and butter for historians, and they look for written documents or artifacts from the period to verify historical claims. No evidence of ghosts exists except in an experiential form found in oral histories and folklore.10 This is not to discount folklore, oral history, or other non-written accounts of history; these are valuable to historians as they are. For public historian and museum professionals, especially those working with and writing history for the public, Johnson reminds the reader that, “While academic historians traditionally privilege archival and artifact primary sources over oral histories, public historians at work in museums have long understood the value of oral histories and folklore as a way to involve the public in history.”11 Jeannie Banks Thomas is a folklorist who recognizes in her chapter, “The Usefulness of Ghost Stories,” that in many ways we can learn more about ourselves or culture from ghost stories than about ghosts themselves. “The veracity of a ghost story is not a prerequisite in order for cultural meaning to be apparent in the narrative.”12 While historic house museums must be cognizant that visitors understand the difference between “historical fact” and narrative or folkloric interpretations, both are in many ways equally valuable to public historians. Colin Dickey’s 2016 book Ghostland explores the use and truth in some of the most famous ghost stories and haunted places in the United States.13 Throughout the book, the author uses primary sources and interviews to determine the validity of some of the stories. Importantly, Dickey reminds us that, “if you want to understand a place, ignore the boastful monuments and landmarks, and go straight to the haunted houses. Look for the darkened graveyards, the derelict hotels, the emptied and decaying hospitals.”14 An example is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts, a favorite pilgrimage site for all Americans who love Halloween because of its history of witches and popular culture connections. A “hidden staircase” was supposedly uncovered in the house by inhabitants in 1888, and it became the source of many stories including its use as a hiding place for accused witches, a secret route for smuggling, or even a hiding place for the inhabitants from so-called “Indian raids.”15 In the last ten years, the staff at the House of the Seven Gables uncovered paperwork that proved the staircase was actually built in 1888 by those who claimed to have uncovered it; it did not have a dark past, other than the contrived mystery surrounding its uncovering by those who constructed it.16 For those who work in historic house museums, this story may not come as a surprise. Many of us have found similar mistruths in our research of these sites. Author of this chapter, Katie Clary, related a similar example from the Sam Davis Home and Museum in Smyrna, Tennessee. On display in the children’s room at the Sam Davis Home was a seemingly old, dirty, worn, and undoubtedly creepy, doll, which was claimed to be the doll of Sam Davis himself. The doll was included in all the tours, as a 405

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tangible connection to the past, especially for children. He even appeared in the coloring book available in the giftshop, clearly marked as “Sam’s Doll.” In researching the site, Clary uncovered a document in which a board member for the site admitted to creating and planting the doll as a joke. Little did that board member know that the doll would become canon at the site, and countless visitors were misled about the history of that item of material culture. Sometimes these items of material or architectural culture are authentic; at the Blount Mansion, Clary came back from a conference to find a dismembered and broken, dirty, old doll on her desk. As restoration work was done on the home, the doll was found in the walls of the home. Though she could not be accurately dated, she was from one of the periods of significance to this historic site. Even though we don’t know the doll or her owner’s story, the doll can contribute to the narrative of the site, and also serve to frighten some visitors in the process.

“Beneath the Dignity” One fear among historic house museum staff and boards is “looking silly” or being “beneath the dignity” of the site. The American Alliance of Museums published a blog in 2019 in which three historic house directors detailed the programs at their sites.17 At all three museums, the programs are some of the most successful in terms of revenue as well as visitor numbers, with few drawbacks mentioned. The Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library summary included a concern that many governing boards and professionals have when considering this type of programming: For many years, the administration remained reluctant. Winterthur has an image and a reputation to protect … Professionally and academically a leader in the field of American material culture—arguably the birthplace of the discipline— Winterthur certainly couldn’t afford to look silly.18 In spite of these fears, Winterthur seems to have gone on to provide tours that were both educational and somewhat spooky for visitors: an ideal balance. The National Building Museum uses artifacts to evoke feelings of unease, in this case, abandoned shoes found within walls and under floor boards. Blount Mansion, who provide a case study for this chapter, have several artifacts found during renovations, including multiple dolls and shoes, that are also displayed during Halloween and the autumn to provoke those creepy feelings.

Ethical Challenges There are many ethical challenges to be aware of as historic house museums embrace ghost tours and narratives surrounding death and dying as part of their repertoire. Historic sites in the United States are home to not only “the big house” and the wealthy White family, but also places where indigenous families were removed forcibly, families were separated and enslaved, individuals of various genders and socio-economic statuses suppressed, and more true horrors of our past. Historic house 406

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museums and interpreters must be cognizant of this past and be sure to never make light of the real history. Julian Holloway explains that in many cases, the playfulness of ghostly enchantment gets serious, delight turns to concern over the ethics of making a spectacle of torture, and the pleasurable deceits of modern enchantment fall away. The commodification of qualitative intensity found in ghost tourism must thus be understood as emergent through differing and sometimes conflictual moments of modern enchantment, genuine belief, or politicised reaction and critique.19 Section 1 of Ghostland is titled “Unhomely Homes” and researches some of the most famous “haunted” homes in the United States including Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana, the Amityville house in New York, and the Winchester Mystery House in California. What Dickey always seems to find as he researches the history of these homes, landscapes, and buildings is that the truth is scarier than a ghost or ghoul. He uncovers subjugation, enslavement, post-war strife, indigenous removal, disease, and more as the real horrific history of these sites. There’s no where in this nation that wasn’t already inhabited before Europeans arrived, and there’s no town, no house, that doesn’t sit atop someone else’s former home. More often than not, we’ve chosen to deal with this fact through the language of ghosts.20 The American South has been particularly guilty, historically, of glossing over difficult history in both regular historical tours, as well as of sensationalizing the very real, true horror of enslavement, torture, and racism for Dark Tourism. Tiya Miles’ Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era explores this phenomenon in depth.21 The entire book is an important analysis of ghost tours in the American South, some of which are at historic house museums. Miles writes of her connection to the past through historic spaces: I am haunted by homes from the past and the people who occupied them. This is why I write history, I think, dwelling on what once was and peering into domestic realms where intimate human dramas unfold, scene by scene and century by century.22 The US South is often romanticized as a site of Gothic horrors, sometimes without the historical contexts that make this history real. Miles claims that, “In the South, the term ’dark tourism’ thus takes on a second, racialized dimension, as the practice of this pursuit in the region often incorporates slavery and the African American experience,”23 as well as that of Native Americans. In the tours Miles analyzes, those that are a part of the typical “big house,” romanticized, “White” histories are missing the voices of those who were subjugated there, as well as the voices of their descendants. She says, “the use of slaves’ lives, 407

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likenesses, and experiences for the grist of this economic enterprise seems to amount to a virtual recommodification and recommercialization of black bodies in the modern moment.”24 However, the tours that are run by people of the local communities reflect their voices and a more accurate narrative of the past. Most historic house museums have apocryphal tales of “the woman who died at the fireplace,” the wandering ghost looking for home, an “Indian burial ground” or “curse,” a “woman in white,” or other similar stories from the past that turn out to be metaphors for the real history. Rather than sensationalizing these stories, the real history should be told as part of the everyday interpretation of these sites; not fodder for Halloween or for scaring tourists. In spite of these hurdles and challenges, historic house museums can hold ethical, profitable, and educational programs for their visitors who want a spooky experience. Perhaps the most important step a historic house museum can take when developing these programs is to always work closely with community members and descendant groups to maintain mutual respect, avoid stereotypes and offense, and to create programs that anyone can enjoy. One of the most impactful ways historic house museums can make use of these programs is through a combination of strategies mentioned above: folklore, historical authenticity, use of material culture, and narrative storytelling. The example below from Blount Mansion is just one in-depth description of the successes and challenges for one historic house museum exploring dark tourism.

Case Study: Blount Mansion It seems like every historic site in the nation must offer some sort of Halloween programming—indeed, what house museum director is not weary of answering the perennial question, “is this place haunted?” Nine times out of ten most would just say “no” and move on, but if handled in the correct way, this annual question can become a positive experience—and a potential money maker—for any historic site. At Blount Mansion, we can earn more in one three-hour evening of Halloween programming than in an entire week of our normal tours—a hauntingly satisfying outcome.25 Blount Mansion is a circa 1792 historic house museum in Knoxville, Tennessee in the United States. The mission of this site is to tell the story of the first and only Territorial Governor of Tennessee, William Blount. Blount was a North Carolina politician and businessman who signed the United States constitution. Tours focus on his life, his family, the creation of the state of Tennessee, and the lives of the enslaved who lived and worked here. Blount Mansion is the only National Historic Landmark in Knoxville as well as being the oldest museum and the oldest house in its original location.26 The average visitorship for a year is between 3,000 and 4,000 guests including tourists, school children on fieldtrips, and group tours. During the busiest parts of tourist season, Blount Mansion sees about 300 visitors in a month. The museum also hosts quite a few events during the year such as garden parties, a Christmas open house, and many different educational events. But Halloween is almost always the most successful event offered for the general public. 408

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Equally importantly, Halloween gives public historians a chance to mine the rich history of mourning and funerary practices from the period of significance and open a window on this important but little-known aspect of culture. Blount Mansion approaches Halloween and the month of October a bit differently than some of the other museums in the same city. Board members have been known to declare, “Never to do anything that is beneath the dignity of the Mansion!” so the site has been careful to steer clear of traditional haunted houses with “jump scares” and costumed ghosts. The focus of Halloween programs at the site is twofold: tours should be educational, but also fun and even a bit creepy. Tours and programming investigate death and mourning customs and how they evolved between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and even into the twentieth century. This involves detailing the events surrounding Governor Blount’s death and funeral in the context of the 1790s, exploring death and mourning customs around the time of the Civil War when the Boyd family was living in Blount Mansion, and discussing the 1918 flu epidemic in Knoxville. Docents who lead this tour describe the often frightening—to modern visitors—treatments doctors employed to cure the sick in past centuries. On a more personal level, tour guides present examples of memento mori and how people used items from the deceased to create memorials and to retain memories of their loved ones. Halloween tours begin with a short introductory presentation in the Visitors’ Center. Tour guides warn visitors in advance that the interior of the Mansion is dark (there are no electric light fixtures), cramped, and full of fragile artifacts. Each guest is handed a flashlight, and we escort the group into our garden, where the actual program begins. Docents who are skilled storytellers regale the participants with folktales of the indigenous Cherokee Native Americans who have lived in the Appalachian Mountains for millennia. The stories include those traditional tales of the Spearfinger, the Stoneman, and the Ravenmockers. Tours also include Appalachian ghost stories passed down from early Scots Irish settlers about river spirits, hellcats, and scary things lurking in the mountains—predatory creatures and water monsters waiting to eat unsuspecting humans or pull them beneath the surface of a dark lake or river. All these tales play on fears of the unknown, this is always one of the most popular parts of our tour. Once the storytelling in the garden is complete, the group moves inside the Mansion, where docents up the ante with even more unsettling but true tales from the past. Here the guests will experience an unusual encounter with our historic house. The windows are blacked out and the interior is dimly lit by battery-powered candles. Speaking in a somber, hushed tone, a docent unspools the story of Governor Blount’s illness and death in the Mansion in early 1800—“in the very room where you’re standing.” As details are revealed about the menacing malarial fever that sickened the entire household and eventually claimed the lives of the governor and his mother-inlaw, and the docent describes blistering, purging, bleeding, and the other miserable “treatments” inflicted by doctors of the day, it becomes clear to the visitors that death was very much a part of life in early America. Indeed, William and Mary Blount, like most parents of the time, had already lost more than one child by middle age. Guests learn surprising details about the local funeral customs of the day, such as “sitting up with the dead,” when family members took turns sitting beside the body of a deceased loved one to make sure they really had completely slipped this mortal coil.27 409

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The tour continues into other rooms in which volunteer actors unsettle participants by staring into space, weeping quietly, or grieving in other ways without interacting with the modern-day visitors. In one particularly poignant scene, a female teenage volunteer simply sits on the stairs singing to herself and playing with period dolls. In other years, actors portrayed the dying William Blount in his bed. Toward the end of the tour, the focus shifts from the 1790s/1800s to the 1860s. Docents discuss the shift in Americans’ perceptions of death and changes in funerary practices, including the introduction of postmortem photography. In the mid-to-latenineteenth century, families who frequently could not afford photos during happier times posed for portraits with the bodies of deceased loved ones—often the only portrait ever made of the dearly departed.28 Guides also explain death masks and other mementoes woven from the hair of the deceased. One of the most popular artifacts exhibited during the tour is a framed photograph of a deceased woman framed by a wreath fashioned from her hair after her death. We remind visitors of the large-scale death visited on countless families—particularly in the American South—during the American Civil War.29 A few dozen reproduced nineteenth-century post-mortem photographs are displayed throughout the tour’s final room. At the end of the program, participants are invited to explore this somber space at their own pace, using their flashlights to attempt to discern which individuals in the photographs were alive—and which were not—in each of the pictures. For the past few years, we have added an additional opportunity for participants to visit our additional historic structure next door to the Mansion, the circa-1818 Craighead-Jackson House, to learn about the flu epidemic of 1919. This gives us a way to smoothly wrap-up the experience inside Blount Mansion, gives our lead docents a break, and resets the Mansion for the next group. We were able in one recent year to offer the tours free of charge thanks to the generosity of a local business—fittingly, a funeral home! That year we also placed a donation jar in the area where the tour began and ended and so managed to earn extra income from participants who enjoyed their experience. As with any other tour or program, it is important to solicit and study feedback from participants in a Halloween program. Our post-tour interactions with visitors have revealed weaknesses in our marketing and advertising plan and helped us refine the experience for future years. Coincidentally, in 2019, we staged a full-scale production, featuring more than 30 volunteer actors, dramatizing Knoxville’s past epidemics. This was a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic reminded all of us that modern Americans are no less susceptible to deadly diseases than our ancestors, even with the benefit of modern science and medicine. This program was inspired by a similar, wildly successful, and long-running program at a historic house museum in another city, but here at Blount Mansion, our cast frequently outnumbered paying participants. This unspoken feedback was a clear indication that we should return to our simpler, more popular Halloween tours. Each time we present this special program, we are struck by the variety of people who purchase tickets and attend—individuals who, in many cases, would probably not visit the museum during the daytime for a normal tour. Oftentimes, these individuals are not particularly interested in history for its own sake but are willing to 410

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pay to experience the Mansion as a setting for ghost stories and creepy candlelit encounters with our talented volunteers. Some visitors who believe themselves to be psychics or feel connections to the afterlife will share with us otherworldly encounters they experience during the program. Regardless of what brings people to our Halloween tours, we find that these special programs are a useful way to build interest among folks who might otherwise never pass through our doors. If there is a downside to doing tours such as these it would be in the time it takes to prepare the space, such as moving delicate objects, installing the heavy blackout curtains, and the time it takes to deal with advertising and ticket inquiries. Another downside is the fact we must limit the sale of tickets to a manageable size group as the spaces are very small and very dark. This makes it difficult to ensure everyone who wants a ticket can get one. We have run into situations where people without tickets have shown up and been turned away and become very angry, or they purchased a timed and dated ticket and come on the wrong date and insisted they be allowed to go anyway. It takes some creativity and people skills to keep the customer/visitor happy. Ultimately, a museum or historic site is successful only in as much as it helps modern visitors make a meaningful connection with the past. Blount Mansion’s Halloween tours meet this standard, allowing participants to look back in time and recognize that our forebears loved their children, parents, and siblings as much as we love ours today—providing that connection between the seemingly disconnected past to our very real present.

Conclusions How can historic house museums use folklore, the popularity of ghost stories, and their historical narratives unique to their space to their advantage? It is important to note that each site has its own set of challenges and opportunities, so there is no onesize fits all model. However, this chapter has offered some ideas for best practices and benefits to using this type of programming effectively. Johnson reminds readers in her thesis that Museums and historic sites must decide on a case-by-case basis whether to implement dark programming or not. No two museums have the same mission and stakeholders. The scale of the operation and number of visitors can also impact programming decisions and varies greatly depending on the museum. What works for one site might not work for another.30 There are some best practices to keep in mind when developing haunted history tours at historic house museums: • Use the actual historical stories and material culture that is available at your site (dolls, shoes, medical implements, photographs). • Avoid sensationalizing the very real horrors of the past. • Remain ethical; think about how those who experienced the past (or present!) might react to any programs you develop. 411

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• Distinguish between truth and fiction as possible, but recognize the importance and value of folklore. • Stay educational and true to the mission of the site. • Develop programs in partnership with community members, stakeholders, and any descendant communities. Interpreters and program designers should also think about how any folklore, ghost stories, or other tales present at the site talk about the past. If the goal is to connect visitors to the past, make that past alive for them through questioning the stories analytically. Dickey reminds us that Ghost stories are about how we face, or fail to face, the past—how we process information, how we narrate our past, and how we make sense of the gaps in that history … There will never be a complete record, particularly when it comes to scenes of great emotional complexity.31 In Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore, Banks Thomas offers examples with lists of questions staff can use to analyze ghost stories and other folklore. She claims that by analyzing ghost tales, one can find cultural “truths” hidden within the story. These questions are reproduced in the following table: Cultural Values

Cultural Stresses and Conflicts Aspects of the Environment

Attitudes toward the Environment

Transforming Individual Thought

Transforming Individual Behavior

What cultures does the story reflect? What cultural values or “truths” (historical or contemporary) can be discerned in the narrative? Does it reveal or reinforce cultural values? Does the story present issues about which there is fear, stress, or conflict in the culture? How are these issues handled in the narrative? What views of trauma, death, and the body emerge from the story?32 What does the story reveal about the landscape in which the story takes place? What physical realities does the account describe? Of what natural conditions (such as atmospheric) might the narrative make us aware? Does the story describe unusual or little-known natural phenomena? How does the story describe the landscape in which the events take place? How tied to the landscape are the events? Do any details in the narrative indicate attitudes toward nature and the environment? Does the story change how those who tell and hear it see the physical setting of the story?33 In what specific ways does the story work to transform the thinking of the listener or teller? Why? How is this change made manifest? Does the experiential (what the person actually experienced) form a basis for the response to the numinous? What specific parts of the narrative function to transform behavior? What actions does the story call forth? What is the impact of these actions? How lasting is the transformation wrought by the numinous?34

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Banks Thomas goes on to explain the importance of connecting people to the past through these stories: We try to capture, contain, and understand them [ghost stories]; sometimes we’re successful. At other times—just like spook lights in wetlands—they elude us, reminding us of how much in life we cannot control. However, ghost stories are useful forms, and we can harness their supernatural energy in a variety of ways … ghost stories awaken us to the skin-crawling pleasure and wonder to be found in all the worlds around us.35 Some sites might not be right for ghost tours or death and dying tours at all; it might not meet the mission of that site, the site might be too solemn a place of remembrance, or the stakeholders of the site may not want that type of attention or connotation. At other sites though, these programs can be thoughtfully and educationally executed for an audience. Staff and interpreters should think through any programming very carefully and involve any descendant communities and stakeholders in the area. An important part of successful programs is communication and a willingness to stay flexible to the needs of visitors, communities, and stakeholders. Every historic site has a haunted history; sometimes those stories manifest as ghosts, ghouls, or haints, but more often, the true stories are the real horror.

Notes 1 Franklin D. Vagnone, Olivia B. Cothren, and Deborah E. Ryan, Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums (London: Routledge, 2016); Kenneth C. Turino and Max A. Van Balgooy, Reimagining Historic House Museums (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019); Hilary Iris Lowe, “Dwelling in Possibility: Revisiting Narrative in the Historic House Museum,” The Public Historian 37, no. 2 (2015): 42–60. doi: 10.1525/tph.2015.37.2.42 2 Gage Miskimen et al., “Historical House Museums Facing Struggles,” Thegazette.Com, 2016, accessed July 22, 2022, https://www.thegazette.com/news/historical-housemuseums-facing-struggles/ 3 Colin Dickey, Ghostland: A History of American History in Haunted Places (Penguin, 2016), 4 Sarah Burns, “Better for Haunts: Victorian Houses and the Modern Imagination,” American Art 26, no. 3 (September 2012): 3. 5 Ibid., 15–16. 6 Elaine Davis, How Students Understand the Past: From Theory to Practice (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2005), 17. 7 Ibid., 119. 8 Margee Kerr, Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear (New York: PublicAffairs, 2015), discussed in Emily R. Alvey, “Gone Haunting: Exploring the Use of Mission-Based Ghost Tours in Historic House Museums” (ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2017). 9 Emily R. Alvey, “Gone Haunting: Exploring the Use of Mission-Based Ghost Tours in Historic House Museums” (MA Thesis, University of Washington, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2017). 10 Kaci Lynn Johnson, “‘They Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts’: Dark Tourism at Historic Sites” (MA Thesis, North Dakota State University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2020), 67. 11 Ibid., 71.

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Katie Stringer Clary and David Hearnes 12 Jeannie Banks Thomas, “The Usefulness of Ghost Stories,“ in Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore (Logan, Utah: University Press of Colorado, 2007), 25–59, 30, accessed August 12, 2022. doi: 10.2307/j.ctt4cgmqg.6 13 Dickey, Ghostland: A History of American History in Haunted Places. 14 Ibid., 2. 15 Ibid., 31. 16 Ibid., 32. 17 Andrea Malcomb, Mark Nardone, and Kristen Sheldon, “Is History Haunted?: Three Museums Explain Their Supernatural Programs,” American Alliance of Museums, Alliance Blog, October 30, 2019, accessed August 7, 2022, https://www.aam-us.org/2019/10/30/ is-history-haunted-three-museums-explain-their-supernatural-programs/ 18 Ibid. 19 Julian Holloway, “Legend-Tripping in Spooky Spaces: Ghost Tourism and Infrastructures of Enchantment,” Environment and Planning, published November 11, 2009, accessed August 9, 2022, 634, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1068/d9909 20 Dickey, Ghostland, 38. 21 Tiya Miles, Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015). 22 Ibid., 115. 23 Ibid., 117. 24 Ibid., 123. 25 Data are based on analysis of our sales on Square and our own internal visitor demographic numbers. 26 List of National Historic Landmarks by State, NPS.gov, accessed August 16, 2022, https:// www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks/list-of-nhls-by-state.htm 27 Renee Clark Swink, “Gender and Division of Labor Associated with Dying, Burial, and Mourning in Early America,” Fairmont Folio: Journal of History 19 (May 2019). 28 J.A. Bunge and J. Mord, Beyond the Dark Veil: Post-mortem & Mourning Photography from the Thanatos Archive (San Francisco, CA: Grand Central Press & Last Gasp, 2015). 29 Over 620,000 combat casualties, 50,000 civilian casualties. Drew Gilpin Faust, “Death and Dying,” Civil War National Cemeteries on the National Parks Service website, accessed August 26, 2022, https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/national_cemeteries/death.html# :~:text=The%20distinguished%20Civil%20War%20historian,Volga%20in%20World %20War%20II 30 Johnson, “They Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts,” 81. 31 Dickey, 265. 32 Banks Thomas, 31. 33 Ibid., 44. 34 Ibid., 52. 35 Ibid., 59.

Bibliography Alvey, Emily R. “Gone Haunting: Exploring the Use of Mission-Based Ghost Tours in Historic House Museums.” MA Thesis, University of Washington, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2017. Bunge, Jacqueline A. and Jack Mord. Beyond the Dark Veil: Post-mortem & Mourning Photography from the Thanatos Archive. San Francisco, CA: Grand Central Press & Last Gasp, 2015. Burns, Sarah. “‘Better for Haunts’: Victorian Houses and the Modern Imagination.” American Art 26, no. 3 (September 2012): 2–25. Davis, Elaine. How Students Understand the Past: From Theory to Practice. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2005.

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Haunted Houses and Horrific History Dickey, Colin. Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places. New York City: Penguin, 2016. Faust, Drew Gilpin. “Death and Dying.” Civil War National Cemeteries on the National Parks Service website. Accessed August 26, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/national_ cemeteries/death.html#:~:text=The%20distinguished%20Civil%20War%20historian, Volga%20in%20World%20War%20II Holloway, Julian. “Legend-tripping in Spooky Spaces: Ghost Tourism and Infrastructures of Enchantment.” Environment and Planning. Published November 11, 2009. Accessed August 12, 2022. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1068/d9909 Johnson, Kaci Lynn. “‘They Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts’: Dark Tourism at Historic Sites.” MA Thesis, North Dakota State University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2020. Kerr, Margee. Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear. New York: PublicAffairs, 2015. Lowe, Hilary Iris. “Dwelling in Possibility: Revisiting Narrative in the Historic House Museum.” The Public Historian 37, no. 2 (2015): 42–60. Accessed August 12, 2021. doi: 10.1525/tph. 2015.37.2.42 Malcomb, Andrea, Mark Nardone, and Kristen Sheldon. “Is History Haunted?: Three Museums Explain Their Supernatural Programs.” American Alliance of Museums, Alliance Blog. October 30, 2019. Accessed August 7, 2022. https://www.aam-us.org/2019/10/ 30/is-history-haunted-three-museums-explain-their-supernatural-programs/ Miles, Tiya. Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Miskimen, Gage. “Historical House Museums Facing Struggles.” The Gazette, 2016. Accessed August 8, 2022. https://www.thegazette.com/news/historical-house-museums-facingstruggles/ National Parks Service. “List of National Historic Landmarks by State,” NPS.gov. Accessed August 16, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks/list-of-nhlsby-state.htm Swink, Renee Clark. “Gender and Division of Labor Associated with Dying, Burial, and Mourning in Early America.” Fairmont Folio: Journal of History 19 (May 2019): 14–25. Thomas, Jeannie Banks, Diane E. Goldstein, and Sylvia Ann Grider. “The Usefulness of Ghost Stories.” In Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore, 25–59. Logan, Utah: University Press of Colorado, 2007. Accessed August 12, 2022. doi: 10.2307/j.ctt4cgmqg.6 Turino, Kenneth C. and Max A. Van Balgooy. Reimagining Historic House Museums. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. Vagnone, Franklin D., Olivia B. Cothren, and Deborah E. Ryan. Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums. London: Routledge, 2016.

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29 WALKING, PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT, AND PEDAGOGY Mobile Death Studies

Ruth Penfold-Mounce Introduction Walking as a method for conducting research is well established through ethnographic work particularly in anthropology. It is also increasingly used by sociologists con­ ducting biographical research through “walking interviews.”1 However, walking as a method has not been fully embraced within death studies. This chapter argues that by building on emerging social science and arts-based work on mobile methods that death studies can, and should, benefit from walking not only for data gathering but also as a pedagogic tool to engage public and student alike. Many social sciences have been slow on the uptake of “mobile methodology,”2 although sociology and crim­ inology are making strides forwards. In this chapter, the argument made by O’Neill et al.3 will be extended beyond mobile criminology and the role of biography. It will be argued that walking offers an innovative and imaginative pedagogic approach for revealing hidden and marginalised histories and for understanding places and spaces in relational and material ways. Embedding walking methods within death studies provides a pedagogic tool that connects participants to events and places. It offers opportunities for teaching about human mortality within Higher Education and for engaging the public to learn about current research, theory, and concepts. Walking has much potential as a pedagogical tool and complements how it has also been used as a research method. As such it reflects the influence of innovative and creative theorising as well as data gathering and the need to share knowledge beyond the academy. Walking is a way of creatively learning whilst on the move4 and due to its participatory nature it devolves “knowledge in understandable and meaningful ways” so knowledge “can reach broader publics, beyond the university.”5 This chapter explores the role of imagination through the pedagogical value of research informed, self-guided, and fully podcasted walks which map sites relating to pertinent 416

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-35

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social and cultural issues such as human mortality. A case study of the York Death and Culture Walk (a self-guided fully podcasted walk around the key sites in York, UK) will be used to examine how walking is more than a research methodology which gathers data. It is a highly imaginative and engaging teaching tool that allows for learning on the move – embracing mobile pedagogy6 – and which enables knowledge sharing in a flexible and accessible way to walk participants. This mobile pedagogy elicits ways of both “knowing and understanding”7 events and places to those who complete the walk embedding knowledge at an accessible and sensory level for all.

Thanatological Imagination and Public Engagement According to Harris, imagination is the capacity to consider and explore alternative possibilities and to work out implications.8 It is developed early in childhood and lasts a lifetime. C. Wright Mills took imagination and developed the concept of the sociological imagination using it as an intellectual call to arms for the field of soci­ ology.9 For Mills, his concept was to get academy sociologists to recognise the sig­ nificant contributions of non-academics to the field. As Osborne et al. write: it is not only “professional sociologists … who investigate, analyse, theorise and give voice to.. [social] phenomena.”10 There are also contributions made by journalists, film makers, educationalists, cultural theorists, and policy makers.11 There is even recognition of how art can disseminate social science findings to create impact on the public through knowledge transfer.12 Sociologists have risen to this challenge leading to the socio­ logical imagination being applied to various ideas such as to address surveillance,13 popular culture,14 and even seeking to use it as a teaching tool.15 Notably its perti­ nence and significance has even been adopted and expanded by criminology which has embraced imaginative approaches to data gathering such as narrative, biography and walking16 in order to explore crime and justice as a critical, yet creative, space. In contrast to sociology and criminology, death studies (or thanatology) has long been effective at embracing the contributions of non-academics from a multiplicity of backgrounds from funeral directors and morticians to death positivity activists to pal­ liative care workers. However, the role of imagination in data gathering and knowledge exchange with the public and students has been neglected. The “thanatological imag­ ination”17 encapsulates how the death-focused imagination is not, and should not be, limited to the academy. It is a space where the social potential of death can be considered and explored by non-scholars. The thanatological imagination is a lynchpin enabling consumers to explore understandings of mortality. It is a concept that recognises that death matters impact and affect everyone indiscriminately. In living life every person encounters death in their social network but also through global consumables such as popular culture forms. The thanatological imagination enables people to engage with “morbid spaces” where death is explicit or sometimes occurs offscreen or the page allowing for the imagination to paint a picture of mortality. It allows us to develop our own “morbid sensibilities” thus allowing for death and the dead to be productive via their impact upon the living.18 Death is, it appears, utterly unavoidable and an issue that demands consideration during a lifetime. Drawing upon the thanatological imagination 417

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has much to contribute to not only the study of mortality but more significantly through knowledge transfer and public engagement. Death studies, as yet, has not embraced the thanatological imagination as thor­ oughly as possible. Engaging the thanatological imagination offers an opportunity for academics to turn research into impactful public engagement.19 Consequently, death scholarship can be, and should be, shared to connect … work with the public. Done well, it generates mutual benefit, with all parties learning from each other through sharing knowledge, expertise and skills. In the process it can build trust, understanding and collaboration and … impact on civil society.20 Public engagement by academic and non-academic scholars is therefore a way to connect and share with the public about knowledge and ideas that play a part in our social world. However, in death studies, the thanatological imagination remains somewhat under utilised. There are of course exceptions such as the Death Studies Podcast Series21 which is showcased as a platform for diverse voices in and around the academic field of death studies. It features independent scholars, practitioners, and established researchers from different countries, cultures, and contexts. This chapter argues for the thanatological imagination to be centralised into death studies. This is not only to embed “non-professional thanatologists to engage with death matters and contribute to the advancement of examining issues of mortality outside of the academy”22 but also to produce tools to provoke the living to consider morality despite the persistent public belief that death is taboo.23 The thanatological imagination is, like the sociological imagination, a site from which a rallying call for death studies can be cried. The sociological and thanatological imagi­ nation are both concerned with different cultural locations of creative thinking. They recognise the need for innovative and flexible sharing of knowledge. To engage the public about mortality, and to share research conducted by death scholars, the thanatological imagination must be embraced. Here the thanatological imagination will be explored through the research-led pedagogical tool – the York Death and Culture Walk, UK. This walk embodies “mobile death studies” in that it is a self-guided fully podcasted walk around the centre of the city of York, UK. It was designed to showcase research, teach, and engage students and the public, as well as being used as a university marketing tool. The walk not only encapsulates “mobile pedagogy” through the lens of death studies but it is also a catalyst for the non-academic and academic thanatological imagination.

Mobile Pedagogy and the York Death and Culture Walk The York Death and Culture Walk,24 UK was designed and launched in 2019 by Ruth Penfold-Mounce and Matt Coward-Gibbs following their experience of developing a pedagogical-driven York Crime Walk in 2018. The York Crime Walk25 was designed and launched by a team of academics, museum curators, doctoral researchers, and an undergraduate student intern.26 It is a self-guided fully podcasted walk lasting approximately one-two hours around the centre of York, UK. The team sought to 418

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utilise “mobile pedagogy” that draws on mobile technology and physical mobility, that is, walking. This combination allows for accessible learning on the move and educating walkers and enabling embodied knowledge. This walk was designed to connect land­ marks and events relating to the history of crime and punishment and to have a threefold use: as a teaching and learning tool for Year 1 Undergraduate teaching; a University of York recruitment tool; and most importantly for knowledge exchange through public engagement. Following initial planning and operationalising of the York Crime Walk, it rapidly became clear that there was too much material to include in a single walk. The pooling of the creative ideas of the research team and curators and archivists at the York City Museum and York Archeological Trust revealed an underlying theme – human mortality. The plethora of little known stories of death, dying, and the dead within the ancient city of York provided a diverse range of possible podcast topics which did not fit into the York Crime Walk. The York Death and Culture Walk was born out of the wealth of material and stories that did not fit into the York Crime Walk. It was developed in several stages and launched in 2019. Stage 1 entailed establishing the walking route and stopping points on the walk map and assessed the route in terms of access. The walk is accessible to people with mobility difficulties and the York city map and podcasts can be accessed remotely through the website if the walk cannot be undertaken in person. The pre-existing York Crime Walk map was used in order to link these two research-led pedagogic walks together. Each stopping point on the York Death and Culture Walk map relates to human mortality and contains a podcast specific to the location as well as other con­ nected tales. For example, at stopping point 9 (York Minster; Figure 29.1) you can learn not only about York Minster as a location of where the dead are disposed of but also about the phenomenon of Victorian funeral biscuits and even dead celebrities post­ humous careers. Stage 2 involved contacting podcast contributors, scripting podcasts, before recording and editing them. Additionally, a website was constructed to house the podcasts. Stage 3 comprised a short film being scripted, recorded, and edited to show at the public launch event as well as designing an exhibition including 12 exhibition boards outlining key features of each stopping point, and the writing of a public lecture. Stage 4 was the public launch event held at the University of York in March 2019 and attended by approximately 200 people. A public lecture was delivered along with a question and answer session; the short film was shown on a loop in a 360-degree cinema; and the walk exhibition was unveiled (and ran for two weeks after the launch event). The exhibition not only had exhibition boards outlining the narrative of the York Death and Culture Walk stopping points but also had two LED-lit artificial trees upon which attendees could hang their responses to the statement – “Death matters matter because …” – on coffin-shaped card cut outs. Notably, the exhibition on launch night had an artefact stand manned by curators from York Castle Museum and York Archeological Trust. This allowed for attendees to handle death-related artefacts including a Victorian funeral biscuit mould. The biscuit mould was of particular significance as the mould had been 3D scanned and a replica made. This replica was used by a university chef to place an imprint on all biscuits (baked to an authentic funeral biscuit recipe) which were then served with drinks at the launch event. Notably, the biscuits are very like shortbread in consistency and taste. 419

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Figure 29.1

The York Death and Culture Walk Map, York, UK showing the walking route around the city centre with nine stopping points. The city walls are marked with rope and the walking route is highlighted by black dots.

Through the York Death and Culture Walk, mobile pedagogy has gone beyond arts-based walking projects27 or the participatory biographical walking method used by O’Neill et al.28 Instead, an innovative and creative pedagogic practice has been embraced using a self-guided walk. It uses walking and podcasts as an accessible route into learning about human mortality through death scholarship for both students and the public. The walk encapsulates, and stimulates, the thanatological imagination of individual walkers. Particularly beneficiaries as undergraduate students registered on the third year option module Morbidity, Culture and Corpses at the University of York, UK, who become “dark tourists”29 as part of their learning experience. Members of the public who complete the walk also have their thanatological imagination inspired through exposure to accessible previously hidden histories linked to the city of York and death studies scholarship. Through the process of the creating and launching the York Death and Culture Walk, the role of the thanatological imagination was revealed to the walk designers. The thanatological imagination of Penfold-Mounce and Coward-Gibbs was central to how the walk is intended to lead participants through the city as a polarised urban space whilst combining the contemporary with the ancient and imprinting on walkers in sensory ways. In developing the York Death and Culture Walk, a critical “mobile death studies” focused pedagogical tool has been created which seeks to value and make accessible to the public “voices through time and in space/place found in archival material and artefacts.”30 420

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Walking and Public Engagement through Mobile Pedagogy The York Death and Culture Walk is designed to be a participatory, creative, imaginative, and mobile pedagogic tool. It seeks to generate knowledge and under­ standing, and walking becomes a way of knowing and understanding31 the history of human mortality in the city space of York. In walking through the city and engaging with the spaces and places associated with death and the dead, walkers experience ways of seeing, feeling, and understanding mortality in the present. Whilst walking and listening to podcasts participants encounter death studies through history, architecture, urban studies as well as sociological and criminological research and theories in sensory and corporeal ways. Walking as a pedagogical tool attunes a people to a place allowing them to engage in critical recovery of histories relating to mor­ tality. In this context, walking is not just a way to travel from one location to another; instead, it allows for a multi-sensory encounter of place and space through mobile dimensions of lived experience.32 An example of learning through a multi-sensory encounter of place and space via lived experience is at stopping point 5 – the cholera burial site – which sits opposite York Train Station. This lawned area dotted with yew trees and a scattering of grave markers is little recognised as a site of mass burial by locals or visitors and is a con­ sistently busy spot in terms of pedestrians and traffic. There is a constant bustle of people moving past the burial site which is adjacent to a busy main road where cars are regularly stuck in queues meaning engines are rumbling and fumes taint the air. This is a stark contrast to what lies beneath the lawned area – 185 cholera victims from 1832 (Figure 29.2). Listening to the podcast whilst standing at the actual location of the cholera burial site shifts the perception of how hidden histories lie under your feet in the city of York. Additionally, the knowledge that John Snow33 was born in North Street, a few hundred metres from the mass grave site, where his actions are memorialised (Figure 29.3) provides additional poignancy to the burial site. This is combined with the podcast-shared knowledge that at least one cart carrying the dead along North Street (which is parallel to the river Ouse) was pushed into the river due to resident fears of catching the disease just by looking at the bodies being transported. Both the York Death and Culture Walk and the York Crime Walk have become popular features at public engagement events including the York Festival of Ideas launched in 2011 which has an annual audience of over 60,000, who attend events in person and virtually, as well as being in partnership with 100 local and national or­ ganisations. Attendees access the two walks and complete them in their own time or sign up to particular dates and times to be guided around the walk. A noted occur­ rence on publicly attended walks is the conviviality of walking together34 where walking has positive outcomes in terms of reflective learning and understanding due to the group sharing knowledge and movement through spaces and places. This reflects Illich’s concept of convivial society where creativity and imagination are central.35 Adopting mobile pedagogy to stimulate the thanatological imagination al­ lows the public not just to learn from the walk but also to share embodied learning through walking, talking, and listening to the podcasts. 421

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Figure 29.2

Cholera Burial Ground plaque marking the site where 185 cholera victims were buried between June and October 1832. This site is opposite the York Train Station and just outside the city walls.

Engagement with the York Death and Culture Walk in order to learn is not just for the public but also as a tool to inspire and teach undergraduate students. Students on a third year option module – Morbidity, Culture and Corpses – evaluate the inclusion of the York Death and Culture Walk as a teaching tool each academic year by posting 422

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Figure 29.3 The John Snow Memorial on North Street (the road where he was born in 1813) York, UK entailing a flat bricked area with a water pump with the handle re­ moved along with a tourist information blue plaque.

their thoughts on the module discussion board. Feedback is consistently positive particularly from international students including one who posted on the module virtual learning environment (VLE) discussion board saying: “I really would like to comment once again that every podcast was soo good, with this scary music and the stories about every place really love it.” Meanwhile another student has reported: I’m really glad there’s more options for dissertation methods than the traditional interviews/focus group stuff – and mobile methods seem like such a great opportunity to be more creative with it all. The York Death and Culture Walk has even been adopted by other Departments at the University of York including Education and Archaeology and by another uni­ versity, York St John, whilst others are considering adopting the York walking tool for their own cities. The significance of the walk being adopted by other departments and institutions has led to mobile pedagogy spreading from York to a national and international level. International students have been inspired by mobile pedagogy to the extent that they are taking learning on the move back to their home nations. For example, one American Alumni has launched their own podcasted interpretive signs at the Oak Hill Cemetery Potter’s Field in Kansas, United States. The aim is to reach across time and tell the stories of those people who have been overlooked and hidden, the podcasts record the lives of the marginalised including immigrants, children, and African Americans buried in a paupers cemetery. A core strength of adopting mobile pedagogy for the York Death and Culture walk is its flexibility in who it educates and inspires. Not only can the public and university students benefit from the walk but it can be used as a student recruitment tool at the 423

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university open days. Through the website, leaflets, maps, and exhibition boards, parental and prospective students can have their thanatological imagination inspired and get a taste of what living and studying in York could be like. The podcasts are even available to be played in open day talks by programme leaders in order to capture the imagination of the audience and give a flavour of the city of York and the topics that will be learnt about during undergraduate studies. The capacity for people to learn on the move provides opportunities for embodied knowledge that is accessible to any and all who listen to the podcasts whilst walking through the city of York.

Conclusion This chapter has discussed the importance of using an imaginative mobile pedagogy for death studies and using walking beyond its capacity as a research method. It has argued for the importance and role of going beyond C. Wright Mills’ sociological imagination and the adoption of the thanatological imagination. Walking has the scope to be more than an ethnographic data collection tool; it is also a critical ped­ agogic tool allowing for engagement with current research, theory, and concepts within and beyond the academy. It harnesses “mobile pedagogy” whereby learning is conducted on the move allowing walkers to connect with the city of York through lived experience and allowing for an understanding of places and spaces in relational and material ways. Walking provides the opportunity for highly imaginative and engaging teaching and learning allowing for the emergence of “mobile death studies.” This ensures accessibility to knowledge by all, whether a member of the public or as a student or at a local or even international level. It offers opportunities for engaging student and public minds to think and learn about human mortality through em­ bodied knowledge. In embedding walking methods within death studies, a pedagogic tool is formed that connects participants to events and places and allows for “learning on your feet” (Beyes and Steyaert 2021, 230). The York Death and Culture Walk, UK has been used to illustrate the importance and valuable opportunities granted using mobile pedagogy to inspire students and non-students alike. Creating a self-guided fully podcasted walk has multiple impacts. First, it inspires the thanatological imagination of the academics who researched, designed, and recorded the York Death and Culture walk podcasts impacting on both their, and others, creative engagement with students and the public. Secondly, in adopting mobile pedagogy participants on the podcasted walk have the opportunity for imaginatively engaging with hidden and marginalised histories of mortality that have been recovered. Finally, despite the York Death and Culture Walk being fo­ cused on a small UK city, it has had an impact beyond the local community affecting learners at a national and international level. This highlights the flexibility and imagination-inspiring reach of walking through urban space whilst reflecting on death and the dead. Engaging the thanatological imagination with mobile pedagogy enables learning and connection to human mortality at a multi-sensory level. This “mobile death studies” encourages the mapping of sites relating to pertinent social and cultural issues focused on human mortality and offers the innate pedagogic value of walkers of “knowing and understanding”36 events and places. 424

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Acknowledgements Many thanks to Matt Coward-Gibbs; M. Faye Prior, York Castle Museum; Louis Carter, York Archaeological Trust; David Honeywell, for permission to use his Cholera Burial Ground and John Snow Memorial Photographs; University of York Research Focus Grant and University of York Design and Print Services.

Notes 1 Maggie O’Neill and Brian Roberts, Walking Methods: Research on the Move (UK: Routledge, 2019). 2 Maggie O’Neill, Ruth Penfold-Mounce, David Honeywell, Matt Coward-Gibbs, Harriet Crowder, and Ivan Hill, “Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology: Walking as Critical Pedagogy,” Sociological Research Online 26, no. 2 (2021): 247–268. 3 Ibid. 4 Ruth Penfold-Mounce, “Creative and Critical Pedagogy: Learning on the Move,” Forum Magazine, Autumn 2020, https://yorkforum.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/forum_issue-47. pdf; Ruth Penfold-Mounce and Maggie O’Neill, “Teaching Through Mobile Methods,” Forum Magazine, Summer 2019, https://www.york.ac.uk/media/staffhome/learningandteaching/documents/409144340-Creativity-in-Learning-and-Teaching-UOY-Forum45-Summer-2019.pdf 5 Fals-Borda and Rahman, 1991, cited in O’Neill et al., “Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology: Walking as Critical Pedagogy,” 251. 6 O’Neill et al., “Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology,” 247–268. 7 Ibid., 248 (italics in original). 8 Paul L. Harris, The Work of the Imagination (UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2000). 9 C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959). 10 Osborne Thomas, Nikolas Rose, and Mike Savage, “Reinscribing British Sociology: Some Critical Reflections,” The Sociological Review 56, no. 4 (2008): 519–534. 11 Ibid., 531–532. 12 Darren Langdridge, Jacqui Gabb, and Jamie Lawson, “Art as a Pathway to Impact: Understanding the Affective Experience of Public Engagement with Film,” The Sociological Review 67, no. 3 (2019): 585–601. 13 Mike Forrest Keen, Stalking the Sociological Imagination: J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI Surveillance of American Sociology, No. 126 (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999). 14 Ruth Penfold-Mounce, David Beer, and Roger Burrows, “The Wire as Social ScienceFiction?” Sociology 45, no. 1 (2011): 152–167. 15 Christopher Prendergast, “Cinema Sociology: Cultivating the Sociological Imagination through Popular Film,” Teaching Sociology (1986): 243–248. 16 O’Neill et al., “Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology: Walking as Critical Pedagogy,” 247–268. 17 Ruth Penfold-Mounce, “Celebrity Deaths and the Thanatological Imagination,” in Death in Contemporary Popular Culture, ed. Adriana Teodorescu and Michael Hvidd Jacobsen (UK: Routledge, 2019), 51–64. 18 Ruth Penfold-Mounce, Death, the Dead and Popular Culture (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing, 2018), 52. 19 Sarah R. Davies, “Research Staff and Public Engagement: A UK Study,” Higher Education 66, no. 6 (2013): 725–739. 20 “About Engagement,” National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement, accessed July 28, 2022, https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/about-engagement 21 The Death Studies Podcast, https://www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com/ 22 Penfold-Mounce, “Celebrity Deaths and the Thanatological Imagination,” 53.

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Ruth Penfold-Mounce 23 Penfold-Mounce, Death, the Dead and Popular Culture. 24 The York Death and Culture Walk, https://www.york.ac.uk/sociology/research/deathand-culture/dacwalk/ 25 The York Crime Walk, https://www.yorkcrimewalk.com/ 26 The team comprised Professor Maggie O’Neil, Dr Ruth Penfold-Mounce, David Honeywell, and Matt Coward-Gibbs (both PhD researchers at the time) and Harriet Crowder, a third year undergraduate, who was appointed as an intern to work on the project. 27 Maggie O’Neill and Philip Stenning, “Walking Biographies and Innovations in Visual and Participatory Methods: Community, Politics and Resistance in Downtown East Side Vancouver,” Medialisierungsformen des (Auto-)biografischen (2013): 215–246; Maggie O’Neill and Ivan Hill, “The Crime Walk: Crime, Justice and Punishment in Durham City,” University of Durham, UK, 2014, accessed July 25, 2022, https://ghostsofourfuture.com/ the-crime-walk; Maggie O’Neill and Phil Hubbard, “Walking, Sensing, Belonging: EthnoMimesis as Performative Praxis,” Visual Studies 25, no. 1 (2010): 46–58; Maggie O’Neill and Catrina McHugh, “Walking with Faye from a Direct Access Hostel to Her Special Place in the City: Walking, Body and Image Space. A Visual Essay,” Journal of Social Work Practice 31, no. 2 (2017): 207–223. 28 O’Neill et al., “Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology: Walking as Critical Pedagogy,” 247–268. 29 Rachael Raine, “A Dark Tourist Spectrum,” International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research 7, no. 3 (2013): 242–256. 30 O’Neill et al., “Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology: Walking as Critical Pedagogy,” 262. 31 Maggie O’Neill and John Perivolaris, “A Sense of Belonging: Walking with Thaer through Migration, Memories and Space,” Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture 5, no. 2–3 (2014): 327–338. 32 Tim Edensor, “Walking in Rhythms: Place, Regulation, Style and the Flow of Experience,” Visual Studies 25, no. 1 (2010): 46–58; Misha Myers, “Walk with Me, Talk with Me: The Art of Conversive Wayfinding,” Visual Studies 26, no. 1 (2010): 50–68; Sarah Pink, Advances in Visual Methods (London: Sage, 2012). 33 The physician who founded epidemiology by identifying that cholera was a water borne disease due to tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London in 1854. He famously curtailed the outbreak by removing the local water pump handle. 34 O’Neill et al., “Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology: Walking as Critical Pedagogy,” 247–268. 35 Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (London: Harper & Row, 1973). 36 O’Neill et al., “Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology: Walking as Critical Pedagogy,” 248 (italics in original).

Bibliography Beyes, Timon and Chris Steyaert. “Unsettling Bodies of Knowledge: Walking as a Pedagogy of Affect.” Management Learning 52, no. 2 (2021): 224–242. Davies, Sarah R. “Research Staff and Public Engagement: A UK Study.” Higher Education 66, no. 6 (2013): 725–739. Edensor, Tim. “Walking in Rhythms: Place, Regulation, Style and the Flow of Experience.” Visual Studies 25, no. 1 (2010): 46–58. Fals-Borda, Orlando and Muhammad Anisur Rahman. Action and Knowledge: Breaking the Monopoly with Participatory Action-Research. New York: Apex Press, 1991. Harris, Paul L. The Work of the Imagination. Blackwell Publishing, 2000. Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. London: Harper & Row, 1973. Keen, Mike Forrest. Stalking the Sociological Imagination: J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI Surveillance of American Sociology. No. 126. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999.

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Walking, Public Engagement, and Pedagogy Langdridge, Darren, Jacqui Gabb, and Jamie Lawson. “Art as a Pathway to Impact: Understanding the Affective Experience of Public Engagement with Film.” The Sociological Review 67, no. 3 (2019): 585–601. McGarry, Ross and Mike Keating. “Auto/Biography, Personal Testimony and Epiphany Moments: A Case Study in Research-Informed Teaching.” Enhancing Learning in the Social Sciences 3, no. 1 (2015): 1–31. Mills, C. Wright. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1959. Myers, Misha. “Walk with Me, Talk with Me: The Art of Conversive Wayfinding.” Visual Studies 26, no. 1 (2010): 50–68. O’Neill, Maggie and Ivan Hill. “The Crime Walk: Crime, Justice and Punishment in Durham City.” University of Durham, UK, 2014. Accessed July 25, 2022. https://ghostsofourfuture.com/the-crime-walk O’Neill, Maggie and Phil Hubbard. “Walking, Sensing, Belonging: Ethno-Mimesis as Performative Praxis.” Visual Studies 25, no. 1 (2010): 46–58. O’Neill, Maggie and Catrina McHugh. “Walking with Faye from a Direct Access Hostel to Her Special Place in the City: Walking, Body and Image Space. A Visual Essay.” Journal of Social Work Practice 31, no. 2 (2017): 207–223. O’Neill, Maggie, Ruth Penfold-Mounce, David Honeywell, Matt Coward-Gibbs, Harriet Crowder, and Ivan Hill. “Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology: Walking as Critical Pedagogy.” Sociological Research Online 26, no. 2 (2021): 247–268. O’Neill, Maggie and John Perivolaris. “A Sense of Belonging: Walking with Thaer through Migration, Memories and Space.” Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture 5, no. 2–3 (2014): 327–338. O’Neill, Maggie and Brian Roberts. Walking Methods: Research on the Move. Oxon: Routledge, 2019. O’Neill, Maggie and Philip Stenning. “Walking Biographies and Innovations in Visual and Participatory Methods: Community, Politics and Resistance in Downtown East Side Vancouver.” Medialisierungsformen des (Auto-)biografischen (2013): 215–246. Osborne, Thomas, Nikolas Rose, and Mike Savage. “Reinscribing British Sociology: Some Critical Reflections.” The Sociological Review 56, no. 4 (2008): 519–534. Penfold-Mounce, Ruth. Death, the Dead and Popular Culture. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing, 2018. Penfold-Mounce, Ruth. “Celebrity Deaths and the Thanatological Imagination.” In Death in Contemporary Popular Culture, edited by Adriana Teodorescu and Michael Hvidd Jacobsen, 51–64. UK: Routledge, 2019. Penfold-Mounce, Ruth. “Creative and Critical Pedagogy: Learning on the Move.” Forum Magazine. Autumn 2020. https://yorkforum.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/forum_issue47.pdf Penfold-Mounce, Ruth, David Beer, and Roger Burrows. “The Wire as Social ScienceFiction?” Sociology 45, no. 1 (2011): 152–167. Penfold-Mounce, Ruth and Maggie O’Neill. “Teaching through Mobile Methods.” Forum Magazine. Summer 2019. https://www.york.ac.uk/media/staffhome/learningandteaching/ documents/409144340-Creativity-in-Learning-and-Teaching-UOY-Forum-45Summer-2019.pdf Pink, Sarah. Advances in Visual Methods. London: Sage, 2012. Prendergast, Christopher. “Cinema Sociology: Cultivating the Sociological Imagination through Popular Film.” Teaching Sociology (1986): 243–248. Raine, Rachael. “A Dark Tourist Spectrum.” International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research 7, no. 3 (2013): 242–256.

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PART 6

Death Studies and Heritage in Practice

30 THE CEMETERY CHURCH OF ALL SAINTS WITH THE OSSUARY Radka Krejčí Introduction to the Church and the Ossuary The functional Roman Catholic Church of All Saints with the ossuary is located in Kutná Hora, Czech Republic in the Sedlec district, which is now known as a suburb of the historic core of Kutná Hora. This town of about 20,000 inhabitants is located 70 kilometres east of Prague. The easy accessibility from Prague means that Kutná Hora is in high demand by foreign tourists, who usually come to the UNESCO-listed town for a day trip. In 2019, the Church of All Saints with the ossuary was one of the most visited monuments in the entire Czech Republic, and with almost half a million visitors, it became the most visited monument in the Middle Bohemia region. The reason why the Church of All Saints ranks among such popular tourist sites is the uniqueness of the decoration of its lower chapel, which is decorated with human remains. Although there are more ossuaries in Europe, 500 of them registered in the Czech Republic, only the ossuary in Sedlec works with bone material as a design element. In the Sedlec ossuary, the bones are not only arranged in simple shapes, as in other ossuaries, but over the centuries various decorative elements have been created from the bones, such as a chandelier, the Schwarzenberg coat of arms, monstrances and chalices. However, this decoration is not intended to arouse outrage, disgust or to appear bizarre, but to refer to the aesthetic, social and spiritual values of various phases of the history of today’s Czech Republic. In addition to being a popular tourist site, the monument is still a functioning church where mass is celebrated at least twice a year. The church is also surrounded by a functioning cemetery, which is often the final resting place of Sedlec’s inhabitants. The Church of All Saints was built in the first half of the 14th century as part of the now defunct Cistercian monastery. Architecturally, the church is very interesting with its two-storey layout. The slender, two-storey building resembles a rather lofty tower. DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-37

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Radka Krejčí

Figure 30.1 Exterior of the Church of All Saints with ossuary as seen from Zámecká Street over the cemetery enclosure wall.

Especially impressive is the western facade with a pair of slender polygonal towers on the sides, in whose lanterns eternal lights once burned. These towers acted as beacons for travellers, as the Church of All Saints with its ossuary had become a very busy place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. Since 2014, the church has been undergoing extensive restoration to preserve the monument for future generations. The entire demanding renovation, which is taking place both inside and outside the church, is financed solely by tourism revenues. The original timetable envisaged completion of the work in 2027–2030 (Figure 30.1).

History of the Church and the Ossuary The history of the Church of All Saints with the ossuary is very closely connected with the Cistercian order, to whom Miroslav, a local nobleman, donated extensive land in the vicinity of today’s Kutná Hora. The foundation charter of the oldest Cistercian monastery in the territory of the present-day Czech Republic was written in 1142 CE. The Cistercians came to Sedlec sometime after 1143 CE and first founded the Romanesque Church of the Assumption of Our Lady, to which the monastery was adjacent. The main mission of the Cistercians is the proclamation of their relationship with God, prayer and the persistent search for the meaning of life. At the same time, they work hard physically because they long for independence from their surroundings. That is why, in addition to churches and monasteries, they also establish farm buildings, 432

The Cemetery Church of All Saints with the Ossuary

cultivate fields and raise animals. At the end of the 12th century, the grounds of the Sedlec monastery consisted not only of the Romanesque Church of the Assumption and the monastery but also several farm buildings and cultivated fields. In the first half of the 13th century CE, the monastery suffered a major decline due to a lack of funds. However, everything changed significantly in the second half of the 13th century when one of the Cistercian monks discovered silver on the monastery grounds. This discovery caused a rapid expansion of the Cistercian monastery, as well as the establishment and subsequent rapid growth of the town of Kutná Hora. In the 14th century, Kutná Hora was one of the largest cities in the world with almost 100,000 inhabitants. People not only lived there, but also died there, whether as a result of famine, plague, poor sanitary conditions or war conflicts. Most of the dead were buried in Sedlec, where the only functioning Christian cemetery was located, which at the end of the 14th century measured an incredible 3.5 hectares.1 At the time of epidemics, mediaeval towns generally faced a major problem with burying the dead; there was no space in existing cemeteries and the dead had to be buried immediately to eliminate the risk of disease. Old graves were therefore dis­ turbed and exhumed remains had to be moved. The remains could not be destroyed; the solution was to build ossuaries in churches or cemeteries. Most often it was in the cellar of a sacred building where human bones were arranged in various geometric formations (mounds, vaults and shapes). Another reason for the large scale of the Sedlec cemetery is that, according to legend, one of the local abbots (Abbot Heidenreich) brought a handful of soil from Jerusalem to Sedlec in the 13th century and founded the so-called Holy Field. He is said to have taken the soil south of Jerusalem from a field called Hakeldama. The Sedlec ossuary and the chapel in the field of Hakeldama are strikingly similar, and it is almost certain that the Sedlec ossuary was designed after its Jerusalem model. Due to the high mortality rate in the 14th and 15th centuries and later because of the need for space, the large area of the Sedlec cemetery had to be reduced in size and the exhumed bones had to be reverently deposited elsewhere. According to Christian rules, skeletal remains must be deposited below ground level, so a two-storey cem­ etery church was built. The lower chapel underground was used for the commem­ orative burial of the remains, the upper chapel for services for the dead. The exact date of the completion of All Saints Church is unknown, but experts tend to believe that it was built in the first half of the 14th century. The first written mention of the ossuary dates from 1409, in which a debt for the masses celebrated in the ossuary is mentioned.2 During the Hussite wars in 1421, the roof and the statics of the whole church were probably damaged. The nearby Gothic Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady, which was built between 1290 and 1320 on the site of the original Romanesque church from the 12th century, was burnt down and the local Cistercians were massacred.3 After this event, life returned to the Sedlec monastery very slowly, and the monks started to rebuild the convent and the necessary outbuildings. However, no one dared to work on the damaged cathedral and the Church of All Saints for a longtime mainly due to high financial requirements of repairs (Figure 30.2). 433

Radka Krejčí

Figure 30.2

View of the grounds of the Sedlec Cistercian monastery before the attack of the Hussite wars in 1421.

Documentation shows that between 1661 and 1663, extensive repairs to the Church of All Saints were started. At that time the church was in danger of complete collapse. During this renovation, the lower chapel of the church was built up with additional large rooms and its area more than tripled. Another important historical milestone was the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, when the abbot Jindřich Snopek managed to raise enough funds to repair the nearby Cathedral of the Assumption. Snopek invited the greatest artists of the time, including the brilliant architect Jan Blažej Santini Aichel, to work on the restoration. Santini restored the cathedral in the spirit of Baroque Gothic and, while working for the Cistercian monastery, he also repaired the church of All Saints with its ossuary. Probably because of a static failure, he added a new entrance to the church, Santini is also considered to be the author of the first skeletal decoration in the lower chapel of the ossuary. In 1783, the Cistercian monastery was dissolved by Emperor Joseph II, the individual buildings were sold at public auction, the Cathedral of the Assumption began to serve as a warehouse, the convent as a tobacco factory and the Schwarzenberg family took over the patronage of the Church of All Saints and the ossuary. After the dissolution of the monastery, the Sedlec cemetery was again reduced in size, and the bones from the dissolved graves were placed partly in the ossuary and partly in a mass grave. During the 19th century, the Schwarzenberg family financed a very extensive reconstruction of the ossuary, including the resto­ ration and addition of skeletal decoration, which was completed in 1870. 434

The Cemetery Church of All Saints with the Ossuary

The Sedlec Convent is still a part of the tobacco factory and houses the offices of the company management. The cemetery of Sedlec, which has been reduced in size several times, is now only a fragment of the original large cemetery, but it directly surrounds the ossuary and is still a functioning cemetery for burials. The Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady and the Church of All Saints are administered by the Roman Catholic parish Kutná Hora Sedlec. Both churches continue to celebrate the liturgy and are open to visitors.

Specific Details about the Skeletons and the Decorations The skeletal remains now deposited in the lower chapel of the ossuary come from abolished graves that were located in the extensive cemetery of the Sedlec monastery. The majority of the remains in the lower chapel of the ossuary date back to the 14th century, when Kutná Hora was a very important mining town with up to 100,000 inhabitants. In 1318, Kutná Hora was hit by a famine in which up to 30,000 in­ habitants of the town died. Thirty years later, another 30,000 inhabitants died as a result of the plague. At the beginning of the 15th century, Hussite wars were fought in the vicinity of Kutná Hora, during which another 10,000 people died.4 All these people and of course other inhabitants of Kutná Hora were buried in the cemetery in Sedlec. However, when the cemetery reached a staggering 3.5 hectares, there was no room to expand it further, so in the 15th century the old graves were exhumed and the remains were freely deposited around the perimeter of the walls of the lower chapel, both inside and outside. According to legend, the bones were first placed in six large pyramids by a half-blind monk in the 16th or 17th century. He is said to have miraculously regained his sight after completing this work.5 The truth remains that there is no credible evidence of the beginning of the decoration with the skeletal remains. In 1630, there is a fairly reliable report that there are a large number of bones in the Sedlec ossuary, that they are flattened and open to the public. In 1699, another report describes the ossuary as follows: it was necessary to enlarge the rather spacious cemetery into a large one, whereby it came about that the ossuary was built of hard block stone and similarly spacious, filled with so many bones that in the whole of Europe so many bones could not be seen in one place … .6 The architect Jan Blažej Santini Aichel, who worked in the Sedlec monastery at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, is considered to be the bearer of the idea and author of the basic concept of the present skeletal decoration in the spirit of Baroque piety and the principles of Baroque aesthetics. The four pyramids of bones and skulls probably date from the Baroque period. Originally, there were perhaps six pyramids, but two of them were dismantled in the 19th century and used for further decoration of the lower chapel. The four large pyramids of bones are located at the corners of the chapel and are topped with gilded carved crowns. However, it is not clearly docu­ mented whether the pyramids come from the Baroque reconstruction or whether 435

Radka Krejčí

they are older and were only renovated by Jan Blažej Santini Aichel at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. The choice of the pyramidal arrangement is not accidental; in the symbolism of elementary geometric shapes, the pyramid is a reminder of the celestial mountain, which recalls the vertical axis connecting heaven and earth, placing earthly reality under the dominion of the celestial order. The symbolism of the pyramid is inter­ preted as the equality of people before the throne of God, regardless of colour or social status. Another important element in the ossuary is light as a symbol of hope in the resurrection. The light is the central artistic and semantic fact of the Baroque com­ position of the Sedlec ossuary. The focal point of the spiritual message is the main altar with the crucified Christ placed against the light background of the east window – through Jesus one can overcome death. The original Baroque principles of Santini’s decoration were greatly influenced by František Rint, who came to the ossuary at the invitation of the church’s new patrons, the Schwarzenberg family. In 1870, under Prince Karel Schwarzenberg, the interior of the ossuary was again modified. A number of remains from the abolished part of the cemetery were transferred to the ossuary … The skeletal decoration was supplemented and modified by the carver Rynt.7 There is not much information available about František Rint, and it is not entirely clear why Rint was approached for such an unusual activity, which the cleaning and stacking of skulls and bones certainly was, even in the 19th century. František Rint shattered the original strictly spiritual concept and created a decoration in the spirit of the then fashionable trend of Romanticism. He is also the author of the most famous elements of the decoration – the chandelier, the Schwarzenberg coat of arms and the hanging garlands. This decoration gave the space a new, strongly macabre expression and uniquely exposed the theme of death as dominant. Instead of a temporary resting place for the deceased, awaiting resurrection with hope, the lower chapel was transformed by František Rint into a realm of triumphant death. It is also assumed that the skeletal remains were added to the lower chapel after 1900, when, according to historical photographs, there was an intensive accumulation of bone decoration. However, the author of this early 20th-century addition is unknown. Skulls were added, for example, to the parapets around the pyramids, but an interesting formation in the form of a winemaker’s demijohn was also created, which is documented in several historical photographs but has not survived to this day. Moreover, much of the original 19th century decoration has not survived to the present day. Some of the decorations were stolen or destroyed by tourists during the 20th century, some have disintegrated. The purpose of the skeletal decoration of the ossuary is that of Memento mori – remember your death. It is a Christian call to remember the last things of man. At the same time, the sight of the remains of the dead leads to reflection on another mystery of faith, which is the resurrection of the dead at the end of the ages. According to the 436

The Cemetery Church of All Saints with the Ossuary

Figure 30.3 Lower chapel of the Church of All Saints with the ossuary.

Bible, the dead will be resurrected with body and soul to the Last Judgement and to eternal life. Thus we see the departed waiting for this moment, and so it is possible to perceive in this gathering of the dead the hope with which they have allowed themselves to be buried here: namely, that thanks to the resurrection of Christ, they too will one day rise with him. When a man faces the dead in the lower chapel of the ossuary and thinks about the moment of his death, he realises that he is mortal and he will stand before God with his deeds. Since after death he no longer has the opportunity to reform himself and do something good, this reflection leads him to change his life while there is still time (Figure 30.3).

The Increase in Tourism at the Sedlec Ossuary The ossuary in Sedlec served as an important pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages, with the eternal light burning in two towers to help pilgrims with orientation. In fact, the entire Cistercian monastery in Sedlec was ready for pilgrims as early as the 13th century, when one of the buildings served as a hostel for pilgrims. And this is the goal of the monument’s administrators, to return the eternal light to both of the towers and to make the ossuary, which is now a destination negatively affected by overtourism,8

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once again a place of pilgrimage associated with prayer, silence and contemplation of questions of faith, life and death. It is recorded in modern history that in 1924, the provincial authorities allowed the collection of admission fees to the ossuary and the cathedral. However, due to the disapproval of the patron of the ossuary, Prince Bedřich Schwarzenberg, admission fees to both Sedlec monuments were not collected until 1928.9 This is the beginning of modern tourism in Sedlec. During the 20th century, the ossuary became a very popular tourist site. Between 1948 and 1989, the ossuary was open to the public, as evidenced by a black and white short film from 1970 by director Jan Švankmajer.10 This film accurately reflects what the sacral building had to deal with during the communist era: high attendance, disrespect for the rules, theft or destruction of the skeletal decoration and the antiCatholic mood throughout society. By 1989, both sacral monuments in Kutná Hora Sedlec were in a very dilapidated state. Priority in repairs was given to the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady as a parish church and, moreover, as a UNESCO World Heritage Site from 1995. The Church of All Saints with the Ossuary did not make the prestigious UNESCO list and is not even a national cultural monument. Nevertheless, the fame, and therefore the number of visitors to the Sedlec ossuary, is increasing year by year. Prior to 1989, the ossuary was visited only by Czechoslovakians, and foreigners were a complete exception due to the closed borders. Since 2000, this trend has completely reversed. In 2019, up to 70% of visitors were foreign clients. The most frequent visitors to the Sedlec ossuary were tourists from Germany, Russia, America or Asian countries, very often on group tours. These groups visited all the important historical monuments of Central Europe in a very short time and tourists often had no idea what country they were in. The average time spent in the ossuary by such guided groups was up to 10 minutes, with the aim of taking a photo or video in the monument, and in 2019 even live stream. As for the development of visitor numbers, the Sedlec ossuary exceeded 300,000 visitors per year in 2012, in 2017 there were already well over 400,000 visitors, and in 2019 it was a few thousand visitors short of half a million. Visitation, especially in the summer months, attracted 70,000 people per month, over 2,300 visitors per day. However, such high visitor numbers carried with them a negative effect in the form of so-called overtourism. Too many visitors were crowded into the small space of the lower chapel. The guides of the group tours shouted over each other while giving loud explanations. On the adjacent functional cemetery next to the ossuary, a queue of visitors stretched several metres long, waiting to buy a ticket to the monument. Some of those waiting sat on graves, lit cigarettes and unwrapped snacks. Local residents who have relatives buried in the cemetery did not like this behaviour and demanded redress. Another very negative consequence of mass tourism was the fact that visitors often had very little awareness of the place they were entering. They did not know the historical or social context of the monument; they were going to an attraction they had learned about on social media. Few saw the ossuary as both a functioning Roman Catholic church and the resting place of tens of thousands of ancestors. Rather, they thought of the ossuary as a bizarre attraction, a castle of fear, a place to celebrate death or a museum of artificial bones and skulls. 438

The Cemetery Church of All Saints with the Ossuary

The behaviour of a large number of visitors was not at all compatible with the remembrance and message of the site, and so since 2017 the monument’s adminis­ trator has gradually tried to implement changes that would help the permanently overloaded monument to return to its commemorative character. In 2018, the decision was made to move ticket sales outside the ossuary and to prohibit group guides from giving loud explanations in the lower chapel and the cemetery. In addition, in 2019, photography was banned in both Sedlec monuments. The ossuary is a place that attracts different people for different reasons. A large portion of the visitors are satanists, as well as goths who are generally fascinated by things and places that are dark and scary. Also occultists, spiritualists and other people fascinated with death and dying. It is generally very difficult to explain to all these groups of visitors that they are in a sacred place, where death is not glorified, but instead the belief in God, in the equality of people before the judgement of God and the hope of resurrection is emphasised. Dozens of videos circulate on social media and the web in which visitors try to find ghostly activity, or in which they communicate with the beyond, or misinterpret the symbolism of the ossuary. In general, visitors to the ossuary need to have explained to them the historical context of the creation of the church, the symbolism of not only the bone decoration but also of the entire building, and to be reminded that it is still a functioning church. Many tourists use words like morbid, disgusting, ugly, strange in the context of the ossuary, but it is necessary to perceive the emergence of the bone decoration in the context of the time in which it was created, whether in the emotionally charged and exalted Baroque period or in the melancholic and mysterious Romantic period. The custodians of the monument try to communicate these facts, whether on the official website, social media, brochures or leaflets. Their long-term goal is to return the monument to a commemorative character, with modern pilgrims visiting the ossuary for education, for a chance to quieten down, to slow down, to stop and reflect on their lives and their finitude.

NUMBER OF VISITORS SEDLEC OSSUARY 600000

500000

400000

300000

200000

100000

0 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

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The Photography Ban and Why It Was Implemented One of the most significant and negative aspects of over tourism is the trend of social networking and therefore taking photos in the ossuary in completely inappropriate poses, positions or costumes. Photography was banned after an analysis of photos from the lower chapel of the ossuary circulated on social media after the 2019 summer season. In addition to the less objectionable photos, in which tourists made only funny, disgusted or frightened faces, a large number of photos with erect middle fingers, “cuckolds,” etc. were found. A very common phenomenon was the pho­ tographing of visitors in various satanic costumes. However, what bothered the custodians of the monument the most was the fact that visitors did not hesitate to touch the bones and skulls, arrange them in various ways, even lick them. This be­ haviour led to the destruction and desecration of human remains. Taking into account the commemorative nature of the site, in the autumn of 2019, it was decided to ban photography in the entire area of the ossuary. A press release sent to the Czech media quickly spread around the world and caused a wave of contradictory opinions: Up to half a million visitors pass through Church of All Saints with the Ossuary every year, not all of whom respect the significance and historical context of this globally unique monument. The resting place of up to 60,000 dead people results in defamatory photographs, inappropriate selfie portraits and visitors often do not hesitate to tamper with the bones just to make an interesting photograph. A negative impact of mass tourism and the behaviour of some visitors is the publication of these inappropriate photos and videos on various social media sites.11 Media reaction to the announced ban on photography in the ossuary: “This is not a bizarre castle of horror, this is not a cheap attraction,” Radka Mandryszová comments on the tourist expectations of the Kutná Hora ossuary, adding that the parish is counting on a possible drop in interest. Visitor dis­ satisfaction is also announced by tourist guides. They argue that foreign visitors are eager to take away a personal memento from Kutná Hora and that the ban on taking photographs is a restriction on their right to have their picture taken.12 Two years after photography was banned, the monument’s administrators are still battling unruly tourists who want to take pictures, but the number of inappropriate photos taken in the ossuary has been significantly reduced. The goal that the ad­ ministrators had set themselves with this step has thus been significantly approximated by this act. In general, traffic in the ossuary has calmed, slowed down and quietened. Rather than through the lens of a camera or a mobile phone, visitors actually perceive the space and tend to learn more about the site than they did in the past. There will always be a percentage of visitors who will not accept the regulations, but the majority of visitors understand, respect and very often even welcome them. 440

The Cemetery Church of All Saints with the Ossuary

The Future of the Sedlec Ossuary The Church of All Saints with the Ossuary has been undergoing extensive renovation since 2014. The ossuary was in a state of complete disrepair, with the biggest problem being the long-term static failure and high humidity throughout the building. This resulted in the skeletal decoration, plaster and stucco falling off, the altars crumbling and the walls cracking. The administrators of the monument decided to finance the repair of the ossuary from the income from tourism only, without using money from subsidies, grants and funds. Part of the repairs includes building an underground annex on the level of the lower chapel, where the sale of souvenirs would be moved. At the same time, there should be facilities for guides and also an exhibition of the architectural development of the building and archaeological research, which took place around the ossuary in 2016–2018 and produced a lot of interesting information about the mediaeval pop­ ulation living in Kutná Hora. After the opening of the underground extension, the aim is to unify the monu­ ment so that the movement of visitors around the monument circulates better and does not clog up the entrance areas, and at the same time so that the visitor logically goes through the entire circuit, including the newly built extension and the upper chapel, and thus better understands the whole idea of the building. The extension should be completed in 2025 and in the future the administrators are considering the introduction of timed entry, whereby only a limited number of tourists will be allowed into the ossuary for a clearly defined period of time.

Conclusion The long-term goal of the monument’s administrator is to return the sacral monument to the character of a place of remembrance and at the same time to the status of a still functioning Roman Catholic church and to eliminate mass tourism, which devalues the values associated with the ossuary and the history of Sedlec. The church will still be kept open to visitors, but the wish is that the ossuary will be perceived as the final resting place of previous generations and as a place to reflect on life and its finality.

Notes 1 Vladislav Dudák, Kutnohorský poutník (Praha, 2004), 414. 2 Josef Čelakovský, Klášter sedlecký, jeho statky a práva v době před válkami husitskými (Praha, 1916), 126. 3 Dudák, Kutnohorský poutník, 393. 4 Dudák, Kutnohorský poutník, 415. 5 Dudák, Kutnohorský poutník, 411. 6 SOkA k: Hora, fund Devoty J. F., inv. no. 1, Histora Monasteriorum …, 1690–1702, book 1. The manuscript was called in the existing literature “Memoriae miscellaneae Monasterii BVM de Sedlecz S. ordinis Cisterciensis, collectae Labore et Industria Domini Henrici, Abbatis Loci Anno Domini MDCCII, die VII mensis Julii,” 23–24, translation from Latin. 7 Dudák, Kutnohorský poutník, 411.

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Radka Krejčí 8 Ko Koens, Albert Postma, Bernadette Papp, and Ian Yeoman, ‘Overtourism’? – Understanding and Managing Urban Tourism Growth beyond Perceptions (World Tourism Organization, 2018). 9 SOA Třeboň, fund Schwarz. central office Orlík n. Vlt., inv. no. 1535, signature 13/51, for the church, parish and ossuary in Sedlec, 1905–1939, card 515. 10 Jan Švankmajer (born September 4, 1934) is a Czech retired filmmaker. He is a self-labelled surrealist known for his stop-motion animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists. 11 Press release of the Roman Catholic parish of Kutná Hora – Sedlec, 2019. 12 https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/kultura/2953673-uz-zadne-selfie-s-lebkami-kutnohorskakostnice-se-rozhodla-zakazat-foceni

Bibliography Čelakovský, Josef. Klášter sedlecký, jeho statky a práva v době před válkami husitskými. Praha, 1916. Devoty, Josef František. Memoriae miscellaneae Monasterii BVM de Sedlecz S. ordinis Cisterciensis, collectae Labore et Industria Domini Henrici, Abbatis Loci Anno Domini MDCCII, die VII mensis Julii. 1690–1702. Dudák, Vladislav. Kutnohorský poutník. Praha, 2004. Koens, Ko, Albert Postma, Bernadette Papp, and Ian Yeoman. ‘Overtourism’? – Understanding and Managing Urban Tourism Growth beyond Perceptions. World Tourism Organization, 2018. “Už žádné selfie s lebkami. Kutnohorská kostnice se rozhodla zakázat focení.” Česká televize. October 19, 2019. https://ct24.ceskatelevize.cz/kultura/2953673-uz-zadne-selfie-slebkami-kutnohorska-kostnice-se-rozhodla-zakazat-foceni “Zákaz fotografování v sedleckých památkách.” Sedlec. October 17 2019. https://sedlec.info/ infocentrum/pro-media/

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31 MEMENTO MORI EXHIBITION FROM THE DOMINICAN CRYPT, VÁC (MÁRCIUS 15 SQUARE, 19), HUNGARY Anita Csukovits and Katalin Forró Introduction The Memento Mori exhibition in Vác, Hungary, is Europe’s only permanent exhibition of crypt material processed in accordance with scientific standards, taken from its original settings and displayed in a museum environment. The exhibition, put together following the uncovering of the Dominican Crypt of Vác, offers a vast array of infor­ mation on 18th-century funerary culture and contemporary views on death. The pomp and rich symbolic structure of the coffins, the large variety of vestments and the ex­ traordinary number of grave goods provide insight into the views on life and death of the inhabitants of a city coming to its senses after a long period of near constant warfare.

A Step into the 18th Century – The Uncovering of the Dominican Crypt of Vác The story begins in 1994, during the renovation of the former Dominican Church, situated on the main square of the city of Vác, Hungary. Workers stumbled upon a forgotten entrance to a crypt which had been used from the mid-18th century and which was later walled up in the early 19th century. The parish priest descending the stairs was met with a unique sight: a large hall filled with long rows and stacks of old coffins, each colourfully painted or covered in textiles. Investigators soon discovered that many of the bodies were preserved, either partially or fully mummified. Due to the fact that there were no plans to preserve the crypt and use it for its original purpose (it was converted into a columbarium which functions to this day), the Bishopric of Vác commissioned the Tragor Ignác Museum to investigate the site. The museum set up a DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-38

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working group to perform the task. There were no precedents in Hungary with regard to this kind of non-archaeological work, so unique methods had to be developed. During the preparation phase, a bacteriological study of the site was undertaken along with the purchase of the necessary tools and material.1 A special survey form was put together to register the observations and data. During the work, each coffin was assigned a number, and their original location and position were documented through photos. After the preliminary documentation and disinfection process, the coffins were opened and properly described and the human and material remains were lifted out. The chief guiding principle during the entire process was that everything that could be preserved had to be preserved. The other important guideline was to act with piety while handling human remains. The excavation of the crypt enriched the museum’s collection with approximately 1,800 special 18th-century objects. Since the Tragor Ignác Museum had insufficient capacity to house such a large collection of anthropological materials (in terms of both professional knowledge and financial means), the human remains were transferred to the Anthropological Department of the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest. The museum’s anthropology experts immediately started studying the material and within the next few years, thanks to the collaboration between Hungarian and foreign anthropologists, the mummies of Vác became internationally known. The finds were put together for display by the Tragor Ignác Museum for the first Memento Mori exhibition in 1998. The current exhibition, renewed in its concept, visual presentation and material on display, has been open to visitors since 2016.

The Views on Death of the 18th-Century Burghers of Vác, Their Deaths and Burials The Long Turkish War of 1591–1606 CE wiped out almost the entire population of Vác. The feudal lord of the city, the Catholic Bishop of Vác, invited Catholic settlers, mostly craftsmen, to repopulate the town. The bishop’s call was answered by people coming both individually and in organised groups from all over Europe. The largest numbers arrived from German speaking territories situated along the banks of the river Danube. Swabians, Bavarians and Austrians floated down the river to find their new home at the lower portion of the Danube Bend. Besides the Germans and Hungarians, a large number of immigrants of Slavic origin (Slovakians, Bohemians and Moravians) settled in the city as well. The settlers brought with them their tra­ ditions and customs which they held onto for quite a long time and which amalga­ mated with the Hungarian ones during the partial assimilation of the 19th-century, creating new, local traditions.2 The only mediaeval church left in Vác after the expulsion of the Ottomans (1686) was in a very dilapidated condition. Thus, the religious orders settling in the city started large-scale church construction projects. Each new church was fitted with a crypt. The Dominicans, whose churches were popular burial places all over Europe, started the construction work of their new church in Vác in 1699. The first burial in the crypt underneath the belfry took place in 1731, and the oldest coffin dates back to 1736.3 Initially, only members of the Dominican Order and their patron families 444

Memento Mori Exhibition from the Dominican Crypt, Vác

could be buried in the crypt. After the transformation of the church into the parish church of the city, it became a very important burial place for the German, Hungarian and Slovakian burghers of the Upper City as well. During the 80 years the crypt was in use, the coffins were rearranged multiple times. It can be seen that in certain cases, when no significant time had elapsed between the dates of burials, efforts were made to place family members as close as possible to each other. Also, in order to somewhat alleviate the unavoidable filling up of the crypt, the skeletal remains of “older” deceased were placed in a common chest, an ossuary. In 1798, the space under the former Loretto Chapel4 was transformed to serve a similar purpose. By 1808, the crypt filled up entirely so it could no longer be used.5

Burghers of Vác – Mummies of Vác Those who chose to be buried in the Dominican crypt had close ties to the Dominican order or the many adoration societies. They never imagined that the placement of the ventilation shafts would create a special microclimate suitable for spontaneous mum­ mification allowing future generations to learn more about the people who lived in the 18th century. From a scientific perspective, the well-preserved collection of grave finds offers us an extraordinary window into the microbiological, genetic and histological characteristics of Vác’s 18th-century population. By studying the mummies, the past comes to life: faces and vestments can be put to the names found in contemporary written sources. As a result, various fields of research can be interlinked. The mummies are kept and researched at the Hungarian Natural History Museum. Studies revealed many interesting cases from the perspective of the history of med­ icine. Through the investigation of these remains, it is possible to detect the DNA of human pathogens and by reconstructing genealogical lines, a genetic analysis of the population can be carried out. The examination of the DNA samples from the Vác mummies revealed that almost three quarters of the deceased had suffered from tuberculosis, though not all of them died of the disease. It was also possible to establish what the bacteria causing the disease looked like 200 years ago. This can help modern biological research. Unfortunately, not all bodies became mummified, and some of them were found in a skeletal state. Through modern facial reconstruction techniques, the physical appearance of these people can be revealed. The method allows us to bring back to life the face of some prominent figures of Vác. One such person is Antal Simon, a priest and a teacher, the former director of the Institute for the Deaf, whose re­ constructed face can be compared to a contemporary painting of his.6

Special Funerary Objects, Object Types from the Crypt Coffins Mediaeval coffins in their earliest form had a flat, chestlike appearance.7 However, there are illustrations and other sources (funerary processions, testaments and mem­ oirs) from the 16th to 17th centuries, including ones from Hungary, which offer detailed descriptions of the coffins then in use. During this period, the coffins were hexagonal, initially covered, later wrapped in textiles. 445

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The 262 coffins recovered in the Dominican crypt were all hexagonal, prism shaped, with one end progressively widening towards the head. Their makers – members of the carpenter’s guild of Vác – fashioned them out of pine, more rarely oak, or walnut boards. These coffins were often fitted with carved legs and forged iron handles Figure 31.1.

Figure 31.1 Tragor Ignác Múzeum. Source: Photograph by Orlik Edit.

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The more archaic type of coffins is represented by those covered with textiles, which corresponds to our historical data. The dominant mourning colours are dark (black) in the case of adults, and green or white in the case of children. The decoration consists of an inscription made out of rivets and a crucifix that stretches along the lid.8 Most of the coffins, however, are painted, and those prior to the 1770s are simpler: on the brown, treated boards the shape of a cross was drawn out with a template, and the edges were highlighted with black. Sometimes the edges were further decorated with black painted flowers. The shape of these coffins is simpler as well. Later variants of the painted coffins include those decorated with a crucifix. Parallels of these can be found in Germany, Austria, Bohemia and Moravia. Their emergence can be linked to settlers arriving to Hungary from these regions after the expulsion of the Ottomans. The coffins of adults are light grey, yellow or brown, while the ones belonging to children are green and blue. The decorative motifs on these coffins revolve around the concepts of death, vanitas and redemption. The Baroque ideas expressing the futility of earthly existence, the presence of death and the everlasting life of the soul appeared on the coffins as well. These images were meant to encourage self-reflection and piety among the faithful. The basic element of the decoration is always the cross which follows the shape of the object. A group of 30 coffins dating back to between 1760 and 1808 is decorated with the image of Christ on the cross and the skull of Adam at the base of the rodtree. The images were created by multiple hands, belonging probably to multiple workshops. Thus, the level of execution varies from the naïve to the high quality. Some of the coffins bear the inscription Memento Mori, reflecting the concepts of life and death of the particular period they were made in. Most of the coffins have Latin, German or Hungarian inscriptions conveying the name, age, and sometimes even the profession, or social status of the deceased. These inscriptions are important sources of the history and unification of the multilingual and multi-ethnic city.

Burial Shrouds The use of funerary textiles – with the exception of clerical burials – was widespread in Vác during the 18th century. The most common was the use of two shrouds: the lower shroud, placed under the body, and the upper shroud, covering the deceased.. Lower shrouds were in most cases simple homespun linens, so it is unlikely that they were ever put on the catafalque. Among the machine woven or homespun ones there are some that were decorated with lace, which made them more suitable for repre­ sentational purposes. These appear sporadically during the 50 years’ worth of grave goods. The intricate nature of the decoration precludes the possibility that these were made in a short period of time, exclusively for the burial. They were found mostly in coffins belonging to women so the maker may have been the deceased herself or a female relative. Embroidered motifs or decorations related to death or sacred themes were not found on any of these lower shrouds. In the case of the upper shrouds, we do not find any homemade decoration, the textiles were not made of homespun linen. The material (e.g. tulle), the decoration 447

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(e.g. scalloping) and their matching the other decorative elements of the coffin indicate the presence of a specialist. The material and the decoration of the textile are not automatically signs of status, gender or age. Tulle upper shrouds were used mostly in case of children and younger persons, but they could also be used for adults. Black ribbons or ribbon decorations could be used for both women deceased at a young age and elderly men. The colour of pillows placed in the coffin is not a clear sign either. In the case of children, blue or pink ribbon bouquets, or ribbon roses were used instead of black ribbons. Of the two types of funerary textiles used, the upper shroud was larger, and in most cases, it was hanging out of the coffin. It was not unusual, that the skirt, the funerary shirt or apron worn by the deceased was arranged to fit the side of the coffin, for represen­ tational purposes. This indicates that even when the lower shroud under the corpse was changed before putting the body in the coffin and closing the lid, great care was taken to present a pleasant image of the deceased for family and friends to remember.

Grave Goods and Sacred Objects A rosary was found in the hands of almost every deceased individual. During the excavation, many different rosaries were recovered: used, incomplete and new ones as well. These were made of seeds, wood, glass or bone beads, with mother of pearl inlays. The crucifixes at the end of the rosaries were made of either wood, metal, a composite of these two materials or mother of pearl inlays on a wooden base. Some of the rosaries end with a medallion. Another sacred object found among the grave goods is the crucifix, also placed in the hands of the deceased. The most common among these is the one with a cast metal corpus fixed on a wooden cross. Some crucifixes were made of wax, which made them very brittle. These were obviously purchased specifically for the burial as they were impractical for everyday use. The large number of holy images, medallions, scapulars and small reliquaries placed in the coffins provide valuable information not only for researchers of contemporary religiosity but also for those researching the 18th-century industry and commerce involving sacred objects.

Showcasing the Life and Death of 18th-Century People through the Ars Memorandi and the Memento Mori Exhibition At the beginning of the 21st century, a transformation of museums occurred worldwide: their traditional role was supplemented by that of culture mediation and smoothing out social differences. The Tragor Ignác Museum plays a very important part in building local communities, reviving local traditions, preserving local cultural heritage and strengthening local identity. The principal aim of the museum, and the main societal use of the exhibition, is to strengthen local identity.9 Settlers arriving from all over Europe played a crucial role in the rebuilding of the bishop’s seat in the 18th century. The city’s cultural life and economy were subs­ tantially shaped by its highly heterogeneous population, whose members had not only 448

Memento Mori Exhibition from the Dominican Crypt, Vác

kept their language and culture but also formed a very strong local identity. An ex­ ample of this is the inscription “citizen of Vác” on one of the coffins from the Dominican crypt. One of the main messages of the two interconnected exhibitions, which is always highlighted during the guided tours, is that without settlers from other parts of Europe who brought with them their language and culture to the banks of the River Danube, it would have been impossible to populate vast areas of the Kingdom of Hungary, devastated by the Ottoman Wars. The Ars Memorandi exhibition tells a story about life while, at the same time, it is linked to the crypt and those buried in it. Through the life paths of those men and women whose names were found among those buried in the crypt, the 18th-century history of Vác is presented: its repopulation, rebuilding, its multicultural society as well as the life of its inhabitants from the cradle to the coffin. Visitors can embark on a journey to learn about a contemporary midwife, a burgher woman, a student, a soldier, a civil servant, a priest, a teacher and a physician. The various grave finds (originals or their faithful reproductions), such as pieces of clothing, footwear, headwear and different sacred images help in their endeavour. This exhibition displays objects which, due to conservation reasons, could not be exhibited in the cellar where the Memento Mori exhibition is. Visitors can watch two short movies as well: one is about the development of the city in the 18th century, and the other is about the excavation of the crypt. The latter helps in the transition to the Memento Mori exhibition. The current Memento Mori exhibition opened in 2016 and replaced a previous one which in time became outdated. In spite of the positive feedback regarding the previous exhibition, its updating was necessary due to multiple reasons. First and foremost, over the years a lot of new information came to light regarding the period, the persons buried in the crypt, and the various types of objects uncovered. On the other hand, new ways of exhibition display techniques and installation methods have become possible. In spite of this, we wished to slow down the visitor and nudge them towards silent contem­ plation in the midst of an informational deluge so characteristic of the 21st century. Thus, we chose a clean, more object-centred and less technology-based way to exhibit the material. The exhibition exerts its influence over the visitor through its simplicity. After visiting the Ars Memorandi section of the exhibition, visitors pass through a long, narrow, dimly lit stairway to arrive in a large vaulted cellar, where they may, at the sight of the coffins, experience almost the same kind of dismay the parish priest felt when he first caught a glimpse of the crypt in 1994. The painted coffins, richly decorated with symbols of redemption, death and Vanitas, along with the three mummies at the rear end of the cellar alone offer a very emotional experience, so there is no need for more sophisticated technology in this space. Upon descending the stairway from the Ars Memorandi exhibition, visitors find themselves in the 18th century. Opposite the stairway a large photo of the excavation conveys the original atmosphere of the crypt. This is where information pertaining to the excavation can be found. Through a slideshow visitors can get a glimpse of the most interesting and memorable moments of the excavation, but they can also take a look into the activities of the excavation workgroup. A list of all the identified persons buried in the crypt together with written sources referencing their lives (e.g. testa­ ments and registers) can be found here as well. 449

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The main hall of the Memento Mori exhibition, a large vaulted space, was originally built as a mediaeval wine cellar, but it recreates the aura of the crypt perfectly. It is the most pronounced element of the entire exhibition where the rite of the “last trans­ formation” is displayed together with its material culture, which, to the modern eye, seems exotically rich. Due to the characteristics10 of the great hall, the visual elements get a special emphasis. The hall itself consists of three separate parts: the first being the repro­ duction of the crypt, which highlights the circumstances of burials; the second is the section presenting the coffins; and the third part is the reproduction of catafalques. This is where visitors meet with the most important element of burials: the coffin, its various types and the aesthetics of a formerly unknown object – the painted coffin. On the walls of the great hall, the different coffin types, colours and motifs are ex­ hibited in chronological order and in groups based on various aesthetical aspects. Thus, the main changes in decoration and motifs that took place during the 50-year period when burials took place in the crypt are presented. In front of the longitudinal section of the wall, in the left middle portion, richly decorated children’s coffins were placed on a metal supporting structure. At the back of the hall, three catafalques11 can be seen, containing the mummified corpses of citizens of Vác, dressed in period clothing. The purpose of the

Figure 31.2 Tragor Ignác Múzeum, gallery view. Source: Photograph by Orlik Edit.

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reconstructed catafalques is to depict funerary customs and provide an opportunity to reverently remember the long dead citizens of the city. In a former stairwell shaft opening from the great hall, a mannequin is dressed as a Dominican friar to represent the role the Order of Preachers in establishing and running the crypt. The smaller hall, where the grave goods found in the crypt are exhibited, is where visitors can experience a kind of emotional release after visiting the great hall. Along the longitudinal sections of the walls, rosaries, crucifixes and other religious objects are displayed in closed glass cubes along with texts explaining their role and origin (Figure 31.2).

Interpretation and Experiences of the Exhibition Most of the visitors are attracted by the exotic and unique nature of the exhibition because it offers a confrontation with the chilling experience of death without actually dying. In contrast, the COVID pandemic made death a very real possibility for many; thus, the exhibition leaves a far greater impression on visitors. During the interpre­ tation process, we tried to emphasise quiet acceptance instead of shivering, and learning instead of cheap theatrical tricks. The interpretation of the exhibition is tailored to the needs of our visitors, and takes place on various levels and in various ways. A majority of visitors prefer dis­ covering exhibitions alone. It is important for us that those looking for “interesting things,” or spectacles feel just as welcome as those who would like to enrich their knowledge through immersion into the texts explaining the various aspects of the exhibition. The English language texts are not mirror translations of the original Hungarian ones as foreign visitors usually have much less historical knowledge about 18thcentury Hungary. Based on the available statistics, most of the visitors who come in groups are students.12 Schoolchildren relate to the exhibition in a manner specific to their age. They usually visit the exhibition with openness and without fear. Apart from local schoolchildren, numerous groups of students visit the exhibition at the beginning and end of each school year, when they are on school trips. During the summer period, visitors are mostly domestic and foreign tourists with families or people hiking in areas surrounding Vác. A special target group is elderly tourists. The subject of death is often spiritually more taxing for them. They look at the exhibition through their personal losses, without abstractions. The remarks left in the guestbook are an important source of feedback for the curator. Opinions expressed in a shorter or longer format let us know if the goals set during the preparation phase of the exhibition have been met. Typically, visitors leave notes that are more than just formulaic phrases. They often share with us their feelings triggered by the exhibition. Some epithets that are frequently used are “effective,” “touching,” “emotional,” “thought-provoking,” “impressive,” “enigmatic,” “reverent” and “humility-inducing.”13 Museum pedagogical and andragogical programmes help to deepen the under­ standing of the exhibition. The museum’s guided tours are tailored to the knowledge 451

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base and age-related specifics of our visitors. The pedagogical programmes strive not only to satisfy the need to convey historical knowledge but also to cater to emotional needs. Students can literally dress up in history by putting on period costumes which were made just for this purpose and which are accurate replicas of the originals. Within the framework of equal opportunities, and in our effort to include as many people as possible in our activities, special programmes have been put together for people with disabilities.14 On special occasions the museum holds curatorial guided tours, or invites external experts involved in the study of mummies. One such occasion is the so-called “Night of the Museums” when besides lectures and guided tours, visitors can get closer to understanding the era through Baroque concerts. A few years ago, during the “Night of the Museums” event an actor “brought back to life” an 18th-century burgher woman of Vác. Örzse Piklin, a former midwife. Speaking in a period dialect, and dressed in a period costume based on finds from the crypt, she talked during the guided tour about the city, its inhabitants, festivities and everyday life, and of course about those buried in the crypt of the Dominican church. As a result of the extraordinary success of this event, the 18th-century guided tour became part of the museum’s programmes multiple times. A colourful museum activity book helps school children process the information and impress the acquired knowledge more deeply on their mind. It first teaches students about the 18th-century history of Hungary and Vác, the main demographic of the age, the key elements of the Baroque style, everyday life and industry, fashion and clothing, and knowledge related to health and disease. After this presentation of the peculiarities of the era, it moves on to treat the main topic of the exhibition (death, burial, coffins, funerary objects and mummies) through a presentation of the grave goods. The time for commemorating death and the dead in Hungary is the Day of the Dead.15 The guided tour offered on this specific day concentrates on the topics of death and burials, specifically discussing what views 18th-century people held about death and dying. A presentation of the exhibition can be read on the museum website,16 but those interested can find out more about programmes on social media and on the city’s various media platforms as well.17 Numerous publications containing detailed accounts of the research carried out by museum colleagues have been printed, but unfortunately these are only accessible in Hungarian. A colourful and highly detailed catalogue about all the coffins of the crypt was recently published in which an abridged version of the introductory study is available in English too. Due to the highly varied nature of the subject material, however, no comprehensive publication has been published as yet. On an institu­ tional level, the study of the mummies is not linked to the Tragor Ignác Museum. The museum helps the anthropological research undertaken by the Hungarian Natural History Museum with background support, and it uses the latter’s findings as much as possible, but Memento Mori is fundamentally not a natural sciences exhibition.

Summary Tourists visiting cities are often interested in built heritage and the cultural offerings of museums. Vác is in a lucky position in this respect because the city centre’s unified 452

Memento Mori Exhibition from the Dominican Crypt, Vác

Baroque style setting and the Ars Memorandi – Memento Mori exhibition reflect on one another: the buildings and settings that formed the environment of those buried in the crypt, still exist today. The presentation of the era of the reign of queen Maria Theresia and the Baroque is an important element in the city’s tourism and the ex­ hibition forms part of it. The material from the Dominican crypt offers an oppor­ tunity for the city to appear in the life stories of those buried there, while the history of the city can also be complemented by the personal histories of these deceased. Among the domestic and foreign visitors to the Tragor Ignác Museum, there is a growing number of people who come to Vác specifically to see the mummies. The domestic interest is raised by regular media appearances (tourist television pro­ grammes, printed and online articles), while foreign attention is generated through the various itinerant mummy exhibitions. Based on Tripadvisor reviews, the exhibition ranks first among the “Top Attractions in Vac.”18 The number of visitors could actually be increased through various domestic and international tourism marketing campaigns, but such campaigns go beyond the scope and possibilities of the museum.

Conclusion The museum staff is aware that the exhibition is worth expanding. Based on the feedback received, most visitors would like to see more mummies and would like to know more about the anthropological analyses being conducted.19 Preparations are ongoing for a permanent exhibition built on new research, and housed in a space with a larger surface area. Unfortunately, an expansion in the near future is unlikely due to lack of financial funding. Sadly, in recent years, the museum received suggestions from the tourism sector to transform the exhibition into one that builds on the basic reflexes of the visitors, and creates an “attraction” that sends shivers down people’s spines, a kind of mummy-Disneyland. This is very far from curatorial and professional plans regarding the exhibition. The museum would like to continue putting humans and human stories at the forefront instead of offering a macabre tour. Hopefully, this approach will further strengthen tolerance and help change the attitude of 21st-century humans towards death. The best practices in this respect, provided by the institutions that appear in this volume, are therefore highly appreciated.

Notes 1 Transport and packaging materials, hand tools, chemicals, photography equipment and materials, protective clothing and masks. 2 Katalin Forró, Vác etnikai képe a 18. században a váci Fehérek temploma kriptafeltárásának tükrében [The Ethnical Composition of Vác in the light of the excavation of the crypt of the Church of the Whites], in Történeti Muzeológiai Szemle 8. Bp. 2008, 103–112. Ferenc, Schram: Vác népének szellemi kultúrája 1686 és 1848 között [The intangible culture of the population of Vác between 1686 and 1848] in Levéltári Szemle, 19(3) (1969), 627–681; Ignác Tragor, Vác lakossága a XVIII. század elején Vác [The population of Vác in the early 18th century], 1921. 3 Anita Csukovits, A váci domonkos kripta koporsói [The Coffins of the Dominican Crypt of Vác]. Vác, 2021, 12.

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Anita Csukovits and Katalin Forró 4 The side chapel in the Dominican Crypt. 5 Anita Csukovits, “A váci domonkos kripta koporsói [The Coffins of the Dominican Crypt of Vác],” Vác, 2021, 15. 6 Antal Simon’s portrait on the institute’s website, accessed August 11, 2022, https://www. chazar.hu/az-intezmeny-tortenete/igazgatok-intezmenyvezetok#sub_content 7 Only fragments of objects have come down to us from the era (putrefied wood, iron mountings), contemporary pictorial representations suggest a chestlike appearance (e.g. Buffalmacco: The Triumph of Death, fresco). Anita Csukovits, “A váci domonkos kripta koporsói [The Coffins of the Dominican Crypt of Vác],” Vác, 2021, 16. 8 Anita Csukovits, “A váci domonkos kripta koporsói [The Coffins of the Dominican Crypt of Vác],” Vác, 2021, 8–267. A monograph on the coffins of the crypt of Vác with an itemised catalogue and an English language summary. 9 Zsuzsa Koltai, “A múzeumi kultúraközvetítés változó világa [The changing world of cul­ ture mediation in museums],” Veszprém, 2011; Ibolya Bereczki, Magdolna Nagy, and Annamária Szu, “Szolgáltató múzeum” (The service providing museum), Szentendre, 2019. 10 High vaulted ceilings, stone stairs, walls built of roughly shaped stones. 11 The open coffins with the mummies are placed in a glass showcase on a raised pedestal. 12 Visitor statistics of the TragorIgnác Museum, from the Tragor Ignác Museum. 13 Guestbook I of the Memento Mori exhibition at the Tragor Ignác Museum, 25 June 2016–31 August 2018, 31. Guestbook II of the Memento Mori exhibition at the Tragor Ignác Museum, 1 September 2018–31 December 2019. Guestbook III of the Memento Mori exhibition at the Tragor Ignác Museum, 1 January 2020–31 March 2022. 14 Museum pedagogical programmes for the hearing impaired, guided tours for those with comprehension difficulties (children’s and adult groups). In cooperation with the city’s special education institutions. 15 Also known as the “All Souls’ Day,” it is a Christian holiday commemorating the souls in purgatory. In Hungary it is observed on 2 November. Customs include among others visiting graveyards, decorating graves and lighting candles. 16 Tragor Ignác Museum, website, accessed July 28, 2022, www.muzeumvac.hu. 17 Tragor Ignác Museum Facebook page, accessed July 28, 2022, https://www.facebook. com/vac.tragorignacmuzeum, and Tragor Ignác Museum Instagram page, accessed July 28, 2022, https://www.instagram.com/tragormuzeum/. 18 Review for “Tragor Ignác Museum - Memento Mori exhibition,” Tripadvisor, accessed July 28, 2022, https://www.tripadvisor.com/Search?geo=274881&q=V%C3%A1c%20top%20attraction&topIds=1102816%2C7291589&searchSessionId=221251EFF8DB49D332296F80511067601650885016418ssid&sid=781BD00F10E9405C84CC198858F7284D1650885092914&blockRedirect=true&ssrc=A. 19 On the basis of guestbook notes and oral feedback received during guided tours.

Bibliography “Antal Simon’s portrait.” Vac Institute Website. https://www.chazar.hu/az-intezmenytortenete/igazgatok-intezmenyvezetok#sub_content Bereczki, Ibolya, Magdolna Nagy, and Annamária Szu. “Szolgáltató múzeum (The service prodiving museum).” Szentendre, 2019. Csukovits, Anita. “A váci domonkos kripta koporsói [The Coffins of the Dominican Crypt of Vác].” Vác, 2021. Forró, Katalin. “Vác etnikai képe a 18. században a váci Fehérek temploma kriptafeltárásának tükrében [The Ethnical Composition of Vác in the light of the excavation of the crypt of the Church of the Whites].” Történeti Muzeológiai Szemle 8 (2008): 103–112. Koltai, Zsuzsa. “A múzeumi kultúraközvetítés változó világa [The changing world of culture mediation in museums].” Veszprém, 2011.

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Memento Mori Exhibition from the Dominican Crypt, Vác Schram, Ferenc. “Vác népének szellemi kultúrája 1686 és 1848 között [The intangible culture of the population of Vác between 1686 and 1848].” Levéltári Szemle 19, no. 3 (1969): 627–681. Tragor, Ignác. “Vác lakossága a XVIII. század elején [The population of Vác in the early 18th century].” Vác, 1921. Tragor Ignác Múzeum. Vác Museum “Facebook Page.” Accessed July 22, 2022. https://www. facebook.com/vac.tragorignacmuzeum. Tragor Ignác Múzeum. Vác Museum “Instagram Page.” Accessed July 22, 2022. https://www. instagram.com/tragormuzeum/. Tragor Ignác Múzeum. Vác Museum. “Website.” Accessed July 22, 2022. www.muzeumvac.hu. Tripadvisor. “Tragor Ignác Múzeum Vác Museum - Memento Mori Exhibition.” Tripadvisor. Accessed July 22, 2022. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Search?geo=274881&q=V %C3%A1c%20top%20attraction&topIds=1102816%2C7291589&searchSessionId= 221251EFF8DB49D332296F80511067601650885016418ssid&sid=781BD00F10E9405C84CC198858F7284D1650885092914&blockRedirect=true&ssrc=A.

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32 OUR QUEERLY DEPARTED – RESEARCHING, REMEMBERING AND RESPECTING THE LGBTQ+ DECEASED Sacha Coward Author’s Note I feel it is important to define and explain a few terms before going into this chapter. The identities of people within the LGBTQ+ community are often poorly under­ stood, and they also have a complex but important history. To begin, the word “queer” which for a long time has been a slur, and a pejorative used to attack Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans people, has changed in meaning. Since at least the early 20th century,1 and more visibly during the 1980s this term has been reclaimed by activists and the civil rights movement. The meaning, for those who choose to use it, has been flipped by the LGBT+ community, to become an inclusive term for all those who are not heterosexual and/or cisgender. That being said, for many the memory of this word, which was used to hurt and ostracise, is still very fresh and painful. These people are understandably not comfortable with “queer” as a personal descriptor and may choose not to use it. In this chapter, I use the term “queer” frequently, and it will always be used in this second manner: as a reclaimed and empowering word to describe the community and its ideas. I fully appreciate those who do not feel comfortable using this term themselves. Secondly, I will be using the acronym LGBTQ+ throughout the piece; this refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. The “+” also stands in for a myriad of other entirely legitimate identities including asexual, intersex and pan­ sexual. There are many terms we use to describe ourselves within the community, and all are included within the remit of this piece, even if not directly referenced. Finally, I will be using the terms “cis” and “trans,” as shortenings for “cisgender” and “transgender.” Cisgender refers to anyone who is assigned a gender at birth (traditionally 456

DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-39

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“male” or “female”) and then continues to live comfortably within that gender identity. Transgender refers to any person whose lived gender identity is not the same, or not fully described, by that which is assigned at birth. This can include those who live their lives as a different binary gender, such as many transgender men and women, or those who ascribe to both or neither gender identities of man and woman. These people, who include nonbinary, genderfluid and gender nonconforming people, are also included within the transgender umbrella.2

Museums of People When walking around a cemetery or graveyard, what you are really doing is treading over the remains of hundreds, if not thousands of people. This is one of the reasons cemeteries have earned a reputation as “creepy,” and as classic settings for gothic horror films, or today as the backdrops for Halloween Instagram photoshoots. My friend and co-conspirator, Sheldon K. Goodman, who has been obsessed with cemeteries since childhood, has another way of looking at them; he describes them as “museums of people.” For Sheldon, these are not places to fear, or dread, and not just fun, spooky settings for ghost stories, but spaces of valuable connections between the people of today and those of yesterday. In launching Cemetery Club, a set of blogs, articles and guided tours for the general public, he has made it his life’s work to tell the stories of people within these spaces.3 When Sheldon and I met, we already had a lot in common. I have been working in museums now for over 15 years for similar reasons. We both have a love for telling stories, a joy in history and perhaps most importantly, the shared lived experience of being gay men living and working in London, England. Through collaborating together, we have begun to carve out a specific line of research into exploring LGBTQ+ lives within cemeteries, graveyards and burial sites. All LGBTQ+ historians bring an element of themselves to the work we do, by the very nature of who we are. When you belong to a minority and work in public history, it is also an opportunity to champion the voices that are not often heard. Therefore, even if the work you are paid to do does not directly state “inclusivity” as its goal, it is almost impossible not to tap into your own experience as part of a marginalised community. We feel an added responsibility to advocate for other minorities, not just LGBTQ+, but also the lives of people of colour, those with disabilities, women and working class people. Traditionally, these are all stories that are given second or third place to the “Great White Men” of history. It is worth noting that the lionshare of this work, the exploration of so-called “hidden histories,” is often put on the shoulders of those who are themselves part of a marginalised community. Therefore, long before we both began working on projects actively exploring LGBTQ+ histories in cemeteries, we were already thinking about how to diversify the narrative. By running lantern-lit Halloween tours of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park together over Halloween, we started having conversations about the kinds of stories we felt were missing in the historic record. Stories that, on a personal level, we were both so desperate to tell. 457

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Methods Sheldon and I mainly work with cemeteries to research and then deliver tours for the general public. This process involves getting to know the site, both physically (in terms of layout and logistics) and historically (what was the function of the cemetery and what kind of people were buried there). The goal is to create a cata­ logue of stories relating to people from that site, whose lives and experiences can fairly be seen to connect with the lives of LGBTQ+ people living today. Namely we are looking for people buried or associated with the cemetery, who had relationships with, or romantic affection for, those other than the opposite gender, or those whose gender identity would today be seen as fitting what we would term a transgender or gender nonconforming identity. There are clearly hurdles and complexities with this work and this terminology, which will be explored within the following case studies. This research changes depending on the story being explored but can involve looking through census records, exploring newspaper archives, finding first-hand accounts of people’s lives and tracking relationships through correspondences, diaries and personal writings. It sadly also takes us to the darker side of historical research, through criminal records, sanitarium and asylum manuscripts and newspaper scandals. If we are lucky we have people who, despite being deceased, are able to tell us who they were in their own words. If not, as with all social history, we can piece lives together from the words of their friends, their family, their contemporaries and through their creative output. At the end of this lengthy period of research, we aim to find a set of 6–10 stories of people that have a strong body of research which holds water: whose connection to a non-heterosexual or non-cisgender identity is founded, meaning it has historical integrity and can be backed up with multiple reliable sources. As part of this, we may find 30 stories of interest at the outset, but will whittle this down to only 6–10 which we feel confident and comfortable talking about, where the evidence and material is at its strongest and most compelling. These stories are then presented, normally in the form of an in-person tour around the cemetery for the general public. We will stop by the person’s grave, tell their story and outline the research we have done into their lives. As well as presenting the “case” for a person’s identity, we aim to humanise these people by giving our visitors a sense of who they were and how they lived beyond their sexuality or gender identity. The following three sections outline some of this work for three different cemeteries.

Brompton Cemetery Our first opportunity to fully devote our time to the exploration of LGBTQ+ lives in a cemetery came with Brompton Cemetery in London. Having heard about the success of our lantern tours at Tower Hamlets, and Cemetery Club’s reputation, they reached out to us. They had received funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund specifically to diversify their audiences. One hereto unexplored audience was LGBTQ+ people. Therefore, Sheldon and I began work with the cemetery, alongside one of their volunteers, Floria Lundon, to research the stories of LGBTQ+ people in the cemetery. 458

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The goal was twofold: 1 To find and collate as many LGBTQ+ centred stories that related to the cemetery and its residents. 2 To create a tour or event that would cater to these stories and would allow an LGBTQ+ audience to feel welcome and represented. From this was born the “Queerly Departed” project; a fantastic pun, which sadly neither Sheldon nor I can take credit for. The name was crowdsourced over Twitter by LGBTQ+ users, and the winning name was presented by Dr. Alfredo Carpineti, an activist and queer astronomer. In terms of starting point for research, the cemetery already had some loose ideas of possible people buried within the grounds whose lives might be described today as LGBTQ+. Beyond this, we needed to flesh these out and find enough stories within the cemetery to warrant both a tour and a meaningful research document. This initial project raised a number of challenges specific to this kind of research, challenges that would come up repeatedly at different sites. Possibly, the most obvious issue with looking for stories of people whose lives may have fit contemporary understandings of a queer identity prior to the 1980s is lack of data. On many headstones of married men and women, a full family lineage is laid out; particularly, the name of their most recent spouse, who was often buried with them or nearby, and often any children they might have had. Marriage between people of the opposite gender is something that is celebrated both in life, and in death. Prior to 2014 marriage between members of the same gender was not possible in the UK; therefore, the story of even long-term relationships between two men, or two women, is not preserved in cemetery records or on tombstones. Prior to the 1980s, beyond simply not being recognised, such unions could be punishable offences. Men, women and nonbinary people could lose their livelihoods, their families and even their lives, for having relationships that did not fit a heterosexual model. Therefore, finding hard evidence is challenging, and one must look far beyond tombstones, records and obituaries. The solution depends on each person and each story, as outlined in the “Methods” section of this chapter. But normally primary sources such as diaries, letters and biographies, whilst incredible when they exist, are extremely rare. The next stage for most of our chosen people at Brompton was to explore the writings of their friends, peers, contemporaries and critics. This can then be cross-referenced with newspaper articles, and criminal proceedings particularly in relation to same-sex re­ lationships between men. One can then layer understanding by seeing who they were known to spend their time with, how relationships were perceived by people around them and what networks or social groups they surrounded themselves with. An example from Brompton is Luisa Casati, an extravagant Marchessa who was known to travel with a group of women in Capri known for their same sex desire.4 Luisa was also painted by the notoriously queer artist Romaine Brooks, much to the ire of Romaine’s jealous girlfriend.5 Of the many stories, we explored at Brompton, most simply did not have the detail or material to take any further. But of the well over 35,000 people buried here we managed to find ten people where there was firm, credible and reliable sources that 459

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showed their lives, relationships and identities were analogous to queer identities today. For each person, we gathered a paper trail that painted a portrait of their lives, who they were, and how they lived. A few of these people were open and public about their sexuality or identity, some were well known amongst LGBTQ+ communities of the time. For example, Ernest Thesiger, an actor, was quite open with friends and acquaintances about his queer identity, supposedly asking “anyone for a spot of buggery?”6 at a party. Sadly, such open and personal declarations of a queer identity prior to the 1980s are very rare, for reasons that are probably obvious. Many LGBTQ+ people actively hid their lives out of a need to protect themselves. Whilst people who would describe themselves as queer today have existed since the dawn of time, they operated within secret and safe networks, largely out of the prying eyes of heterosexual society and authorities. Sometimes a kind of posthumous cover-up is done by the people themselves, or by well-meaning (or not so well-meaning) family members and friends after their death. Therefore, we are often looking for stories that are not just absent; they have been actively hidden, coded and secreted away. Queer history is less a breadcrumb trail, and more a pile of burnt love letters, or just the ashes that are left behind. Luckily through years of working with this history, we can become skilled at uncoding some of these hidden stories, by unpacking the many hidden ways queer people have used to express themselves in secret. Examples include the use of Polari, a queer-centred pidgin language,7 or certain coded terms used amongst queer men such as “Mary Ann”8 or “Ganymede.”9 Letters often use Greek, or classical allusions to cypher romantic feelings10 and occasionally a quotation from a piece of well-known queer adjacent literature is used as a tacit acknowledgement of queerness between two parties.11 None of these things by themselves would ever be enough to say a person living in the past would be queer today, but they all form part of a story which presented together can begin to shine a light on a person’s true identity. The ten stories were whittled down to the six strongest, where there was the most reliable and convincing account of the person’s life. We then presented this as part of a tour for LGBT History Month during February 2019. Whilst the tour stood well by itself, Sheldon and I felt that to create an experience that would truly resonate with a contemporary LGBTQ+ audience we also wanted to bring elements of queer culture and performance. We also became aware that all of our subjects were white, and many were upper middle class. This is not representative of either London today, or in fact, the local area of the cemetery during the 1800s. For this reason, we worked with four performers; two drag artists, Eugene Delacroissant and Virgin Xtravaganza, and two poets of colour, Keith Jarrett and Toni-Dee Paul, to create responses to the tour that would honour the voices still missing from our research. The end result, “Queerly Departed” (Figure 32.1), was an enormous success, with all free tickets gone within a few days of them becoming available. Sixty members of the LGBTQ+ community travelled around the cemetery, hearing the stories we had found, and laying white roses at the grave of each person. We were told through feedback that this was a powerful and moving experience, that many of our audience were really excited to hear stories from the past that connected with their own experiences today. As an example, here are two responses from the public “The Queerly Departed tour of 460

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Figure 32.1 Promotional materials for the “Queerly Departed” programme.

West Brompton cemetery was brilliant! Sacha Coward and Sheldon Goodman did a brilliant job telling the story and got four fabulous performers on board too!”12 and “Last night I went to a queer graveyard tour at Brompton Cemetery where I learnt a lot about the queerly departed. Was fabulous, camp and educational.”13 461

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Of the stories we told, one was not about an individual, but about the cemetery as a whole. Cemeteries are not just places for the dead, they are also locations for the living. Green spaces across the United Kingdom have been used by members of the LGBTQ+ community, particularly, although not exclusively, gay and bisexual men, as areas for intimacy and sex. So-called “cruising” was born out of a time when same sex intimacy was either illegal or vilified, meaning that for many, parks and cemeteries were some of the only safe spaces one could meet other queer people. Brompton Cemetery has a long history as one of London’s most well-known cruising areas, with many quotes of men, particularly from the 1970s and 1980s, who habitually met there. It was for this reason, strongly policed by plain clothed policeman known as “Pretty policemen,”14 who would engage in a kind of entrapment, luring gay and bisexual men and then arresting them for public indecency. As shown by the quotes of men who were caught in Brompton Cemetery,15 this was a common occurrence, and many still have a criminal record today because of these historic “crimes.” I felt this was an important story to explore alongside the lives of people buried in the cemetery. Of all the stories we covered, it was only this area that caused friction with the cemetery. The cemetery were initially uncomfortable with discussing the use of the space by queer people as a place for sex, as they were concerned that it would call into question the safety of the site. Through a conversation over how and why we felt this was a powerful story to tell, we came to a mutual decision that it should be included in the tour. It is important to note that queer history can often raise topics, ideas and situations that many can find distasteful or disturbing. From experience, through openness and honesty we are often able to defend the integrity of these kinds of queer histories despite fears of controversy.

Arnos Vale The second queer-focused tour we developed was with Arnos Vale cemetery in the city of Bristol, Somerset. Having heard of the success of Brompton Cemetery’s offer (which was later repeated for London Pride over summer and even as a sell-out virtual offering during the COVID-19 pandemic), the Chief Executive Officer, Ellie Collier, asked us to work on a similar project for the cemetery. This project became known as “Drop Dead Gorgeous.” Arnos Vale is a cemetery with around 170,000 burials, but no LGBTQ+ focused study of those buried there had been done before. The approach for this site was therefore very similar to Brompton, but we had now learnt a number of things through the process of creating similar programmes. Again, the cemetery had a few inklings as to “people of interest,” some of whom we were able to explore in more depth. For the other stories, we simply had to go through the records of all the people that had a surface level of research and a paper trail which we could begin deepening. Sheldon and I were able to tease out six people from the entire deceased population, whose lives would fit a modern understanding of LGBTQ+ lived experience, and had the sources to back it up. Whilst the vast majority of feedback we had received from Brompton Cemetery was positive, whenever one engages in LGBTQ+ focused work online there is a 462

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certain level of backlash. This criticism always came from people who have not been on the tour, or looked into the research, but it was something we wanted to address head-on when beginning work with Arnos Vale. The few negative comments we saw online from our work with Brompton could generally be framed around concerns about us, to paraphrase from Facebook comments, using language that did not exist in the past or defiling and outing the dead against their wishes. Whilst most negative responses online can be put down to sheer conservative distaste to anything created by and for the LGBTQ+ community, there is a legitimate thorny issue associated with these “concerns.” How do you properly frame the life of someone living in the early 1900s, or 1800s, or even the 1700s, for a contemporary LGBTQ+ audience in a way that does their life justice, is understandable, but uses language that is not anachronistic? Even in the rare situation when we have a story that seems clear cut, such as a person who wrote almost exclusively about loving those of the same gender, a person like John Addington Symonds, buried in Arnos Vale, whose 19th-century writings were only published for the general public in the 1980s.16 There are still huge divisions between the understanding of identity today and that of a hundred years ago. John, who within his marriage and family was known to openly discuss his sexuality at the breakfast table even in the mid-1800s, would never have used words such as “gay” or “bisexual.” At this point, the word “gay” did not exist. John referred to his own sexuality as “Greek love,”17 as well as numerous poetic terms drawing from classical mythology. Even Oscar Wilde, whose trial has him seen as the go-to token historical gay or bisexual man, has his relationships described as “the love that dare not speak its name.” Oscar never thought of himself as queer, or LGBTQ+. Whilst this comes down to semantics, which can become a distraction from important work, it is still important to wrestle with. The method that Sheldon and I use is to talk about how that person might have been identified today. We can reiterate that we cannot know for sure, that the person is not here to speak for themselves, but based on how they lived their lives we can think how this intersects with contemporary understandings of queer gender and sexual identity. For example, a person assigned female at birth, who lived his entire life as a man, who chose to use he/him pronouns, may be equivalent if not the same to contemporary ideas of trans men or nonbinary people. Just because these concepts are not semantically or societally identical does not mean we can’t draw a parallel. We can make the connection, sometimes phrasing it clearly as a personal opinion based on a wealth of evidence, without having to mislabel or misrepresent the deceased. In theory, this is not at all controversial. We talk of “marriage” over thousands of years, we use the same word to describe this union, despite the fact that at some points in time it meant very different things. We also acknowledge historical realities all the time when we talk about the past. If we discuss slavery, or witch burnings, or the beheading of a King’s wives, it is common to reframe this and unpack this from the context of the time and reflect on how this would be perceived today. Sadly, in practice this is one of the key areas of queer history that results in a sustained level of misunderstanding, and on occasion outright bigotry. A few people from outside the community will always fear that we are, for example, social media 463

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comments, such as “Ooh for F sake – give it a break Metro! Talk about LGBT agenda.”18 It is also worth noting that the only time we have been approached by a living relative it was to share more information with us. Whilst working on a tour in Birmingham a volunteer came to share a photograph of her uncle, Fred Wakeling, who was in drag campaigning for women’s rights. The volunteer wanted us to include him as part of the tour as he was buried in the cemetery. We are aware of these misconceptions, and whilst working on Arnos Vale we were very intentional about how we spoke about the dead during the tour. For example when we stopped by the grave of hymnologist Annna Latetitia Waring we would never say “here lies a lesbian.” Instead, we told her story in a way that is most respectful to her life, including her relationship with other women. We demonstrated this through the contemporary accounts of her friends, through one of her final poems which is written to an unnamed “gifted friend,” the fact her letters were destroyed after her death for not being “suitable” for publication19 and the appearance of her name on a list of “aberrant hymn writers” as a “lesbian.”20 Saying that a life is relevant, and connected to today’s umbrella of queer identities is for me the opposite of “disrespectful” or “nonsense,” I believe it is the truest and kindest act that can be done for someone who had to hide their identity for fear of prejudice and persecution. The secondary point of going against someone’s wishes is also something I feel is important to explore, and ultimately refute. Primarily, there is a huge difference between someone stating that they do not wish for an element of their life to be discussed out of fear of repercussions, and simple privacy. A person living under an authoritarian rule today, someone who is alive but oppressed by their society or government, would never be described as being “private.” The understanding would clearly be that the need to repress and conform away from one’s real self would be down to the world they were born into, not out of privacy. For LGBTQ+ people, this is the same, the past was for many people a draconian dictatorship that outlawed their right to exist freely. For many queer people around the world, this is still very much the case. Finally, as with language, in other areas of history this is not actually a controversial idea. When we talk of Henry VIII, or Joan of Arc, or Ghandi, we should aim to talk about the full human. We do not trip ourselves up asking whether Henry would have liked the public to know about his wives, or his motivations, or his childhood. The pall of shame and the fear of “defiling” only rears its head around queer relationships and queer experiences, which says a lot more about our hang-ups today than the true sensibilities of those buried: we are presuming that those who are deceased were ashamed of these parts of themselves, because on some level, perhaps even uncon­ sciously, we still understand these to be worthy of shame. It is also worth saying that when LGBTQ+ people study history, having actual lived experience of hiding and repressing our own identities, we have significantly more understanding about how to respectfully tell the story of a queer person’s life than our detractors. Our approach, which is to imagine the person we are describing is standing next to us, is significantly more respectful than the way most historians would treat their subjects. We go to lengths to be advocates and ambassadors for the 464

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people we talk about on tours, due to the very fact that we have this shared con­ nection of lived experience. One situation where there is legitimate and very real nuance relates to people who may today have self-defined as transgender. For some trans people living in, what is colloquially described today as “stealth mode,” there is a real desire to avoid any association with the gender assigned at birth. The naming and experiences of people prior to their lived identity are sometimes experienced as painful, and there is an understandable desire to distance themselves from these experiences. We use the term “dead name” to refer to a past that should not be referred to today, as it is disrespectful and perhaps traumatising. In these cases, is it ok to talk about a person’s gender assigned at birth when the historical person went to great lengths to avoid this being shared? Examples are men who asked not to have their body studied after death, or women who in life never chose to acknowledge their experiences before transitioning. In all cases where there is a question of honouring the wishes of the deceased and telling their story fully and honestly, there is a decision to make as a queer person and as a historian. Primarily, if the person’s identity is not one you have lived experience of it is vital to bring in living people with that identity to help frame the conversation as respectfully as possible. Beyond that, I would say that whilst deceased queer people are owed the respect and integrity many did not have in life, living queer people are also owed the story of their forebears and a history that has long been denied to them. Each individual case needs to be discussed separately, thinking on how it honours the person’s memory, and how it impacts the lives of the living. Still, despite the opinions in some Facebook comment sections such as “Really disrespectful. The dead don’t want their past reopened. Let them rest in peace”21 or “Why do we have to hear about this every 5 minutes,”22 it is important valid work and in fact it is LGBTQ+ people who are best placed to tease out this nuance. The final tour for Arnos Vale was again a huge success. As with Brompton Cemetery, we invited a local queer poet, Kat Lyons, and a queer acrobat, Rowen Kimpton, to create a performed response to some of the stories of the people in the cemetery. A full version of the poem written by Kat Lyons about Anna Laetitia Waring appears at the end of this chapter. Again feedback for this event was uniformly positive, and we have since reworked this tour into a digital offering during the pandemic. Through these two experiences, we have learnt a lot about researching queer lives, learnings we are taking forward to our next project.

Tower Hamlets Cemetery Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park was the first cemetery I ever developed tours for; it therefore has a special place in my heart. It is also Sheldon’s old stomping ground, so there is a shared sense of love for this space. Partly because compared to many other cemeteries this is a place full of working class stories, with a large number of the over 350,000 people buried there being local East End people. The very first LGBTQ+ connected story I ever told in a cemetery also started here. This was the story of William Howard, an orphaned child who was taken into a Bernardos home before the turn of 465

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the century. We have some scant information of their life prior to their death and burial in an unmarked grave in Tower Hamlets. One powerful detail being that William was described as a “hermaphrodite” within the records held by Bernardos.23 This is an archaic term, as today we use the word intersex to describe a person who at birth does not fully fit the prescribed physiological characteristics of the male/female binary. Long before the other LGBTQ+ cemetery projects, I finished a lantern-lit halloween tour of Tower Hamlets Cemetery with the story of William and con­ sidered what life might have been like for a young person in the 1800s whose gender could not be medically determined at birth. Today, intersex people are sometimes collected underneath the LGBTQ+ umbrella, many of whom may have different opinions about their gender than the ones originally assigned to them. William’s story was therefore an opportunity to talk about a very real lived experience today from the perspective of a young working class person born over 100 years ago. They probably started the process that led to all the work I have done since. We are again returning to Tower Hamlets Cemetery, where we started this journey, to explore queer lives represented in the Cemetery. We have begun re­ searching people and hope to find a similar collection of voices of individuals, who like William, might have described themselves as being somewhere within the queer spectrum, if they had been born today. By sheer mathematics, even by a conservative metric based on 350,000 people, and current census data of LGBTQ+ people would mean there are at least 14,000 in Tower Hamlets Cemetery who today might self define as not heterosexual and/or not cisgender. As ever we will aspire to be ad­ vocates for those who cannot speak, and tell their stories with dignity and respect. We will continue to try and inject the experience with some LGBTQ+ joy, either through performance or interpretation for a contemporary audience.

Epitaph We have now begun research on further cemeteries, such as the Key Hill and Warstone Lane cemeteries of Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. Slowly there is a building thirst for this kind of work in cemeteries, graveyards and museums, to ex­ plore the complex line between death and queerness. Our next steps are to get more people researching LGBTQ+ stories in their local cemeteries and graveyards, and to help those who do not consider themselves to be “real historians” to learn some of the techniques to do their own research and contribute to these stories. For us the more people who are involved, the more opportunities there will be to breathe life back into our dearly queerly departed. In terms of learnings from what we have achieved so far, it is challenging to condense everything into a single statement, but remember that even when language changes, the lives of people, who and how they loved, are still incredibly relevant to people today. For me, seeing a teenager, with a rainbow flag in hand, stood by a headstone of someone who died 120 years ago, and seeing that moment of connection and contemplation, that is the reason I do history. 466

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A Letter to Anna Letitia Waring: A Spinster Late of This Parish By Kat Lyons Dear Anna, you were 87 when you died in Clifton in the spring of 1910. It was a different world back then And yet so much was still the same. We think of history in 2D-distant, dusty and unreal. As if those people couldn’t feel like us, as if they were removed entirely from lives like ours lived in glorious technicolour, with our #loveislove and rainbow packaged sandwiches and glittered pride parade and bars. But you were real- you breathed and bled and probably got cramps each month and argued with your sisters, had a favourite colour, favourite food had close-kept dreams that never did come true and maybe some that did. Dear Anna, you grew up in Wales. The valleys of your home still bloom with flowers in the spring. Your buttoned booted feet would have crushed the daisies underneath as you hiked your hooped skirt high above your ankles for the mud. Your dark hair smoothed beneath your bonnet a woolen shawl around your shoulders as you walked to church. You found a faith and never lost it. You let it light your steps as you did your best to live a life that mattered. Dear Anna, to live life with integrity – that’s all that we can do try to walk in others’ shoes and maybe those of us that draw our lives outside society’s narrow lines find empathy a little easier to come by. Women like you have waved banners, shouted slogans into loudspeakers danced all night at benefit gigs for miners or asylum seekers. Like them, you believed in justice. You reached your hand through prison bars to those who others judged unworthy. Where society saw irredeemable rubbish you saw compost, and renewal. We know so little of your life You were sensitive and shy. But we know you believed in hope. We know you believed in kindness and second chances. Dear Anna, you remained unmarried, And like “confirmed bachelor” or “dear companions” we take these words and read between the lines. We queers are excellent detectives, always looking out for clues in asymmetric hairstyles, earrings or shoes or the way a woman looks at us across a bar. Across the years the silence says so much. So much can hang from false assumptions. It’s so important to know how to read a room or when its safe 467

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to make a fuss. Kissing on a bus creates black eyes and bloodied noses even now. So much can hang from a single indiscretion. Men have hung from a single indiscretion. Done time and hard labour for a single indiscretion But not now, not anymore. Or at least not here. Dear Anna, did your family know and do you think they cared Or was it always ask no questions tell no lies? Never illegal, but always a scandal best kept hidden, plausibly deniable. And so, you lived quietly avoided publicity though it was noted that your “friendships” with women were “of singular depth and intensity.” Not everyone can be an Oscar- Wilde, and uncontained and sheltered from the worst by money, aristocracy or fame. Flouncing into posterity leaving history books aflame with a trail of witty quotes and broken hearts. Not everyone has the energy to be extra-visible. Some save their courage for other things. And after all a hidden life is still living, and love in the shadows is still better than none in the light. Dear Anna, I wish that you could see Bristol now I’d like to take you up the town and show you how it’s changed. There are drag queens reading stories to children – can you see them? There are grey-haired women holding hands in museums queer kids buying makeup and hair dye from the high-street shops, men getting married and settling down with adopted children and maybe a dog. We have come into the sunlight and we hardly have to hide and it’s easy to forget who came before. Dear Anna, they say you wrote your heart into your hymns. So many songs over the years so many voices sing them even now. Did you sing together, you and her, did she open up your lips and let the joy fly out like birds? Dear Anna, I found a list online, compiled by a minister of a church. I suppose he thought he was doing God’s work, rooting out those he deemed unworthy of hymns, a long list of names and beside them, their sins. Your name was there, and next to it: “Lesbian.” Dear Anna, you stand condemned by a handful of love letters. You’ve laid a century in the grave 468

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yet there are some who still believe you’ll never be dead long enough to scrub away that stain. Dear Anna, before you died you destroyed almost all your correspondence. Almost every scrap. But not quite all. What remains is apparently unsuitable for publication the relationship referred to is shocking their contents ripe for speculation. Did you wait till you knew it was the end to do the deed? Did you re-read them, did they transport you back to youth long gone and lips not kissed for years? I imagine that you waited, hesitated for a moment before you tore the memories to shreds and fed them to the kitchen stove. Was the paper showing scorch-marks from the words before it even touched the flame? Dear Anna, who was she, your “gifted friend” you dared not name? The one that died before. You wrote a hymn for her. Did she hold the gate of heaven open like you asked? You were so confident, that she’d be there and you would be together. Your God had room enough for everyone and even though your song was cut from hymnbooks and your letters were destroyed and her name has been forgotten and your love was papered over I hope you never doubted that. I hope you left here easy, in the knowledge love was waiting. Dear Anna, your grave is lost and overgrown with brambles somehow I doubt you’d care. And while your songs are being sung you’re not quite gone. And even when they’re silent and you’re totally forgotten the daisies will still blossom in the spring and blackbirds will still sing their wordless songs while girls hold hands and search for heaven in each others skin while you rest in peace and life and love goes on.

Notes 1 “In the early 20th century in the United States, the term queer was used as a term of selfreference (or identity category) for homosexual men who adopted masculine behavior.” George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World. 1890–1940 (Basic Books, New York, 1994), 16–18. 2 For more on terminology related to the LGBTQ+ community, please see this resource created by the charity Stonewall, www.stonewall.org.uk/help-advice/faqs-and-glossary/ list-lgbtq-terms, and also see this glossary compiled by The Human Rights Campaign, www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms

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Sacha Coward 3 Cemetery Club is the name Sheldon Goodman uses to describe his tours, research and work advocating for cemeteries and graveyards as places of social history. See www. cemeteryclub.wordpress.com 4 Sir Compton Mackenzie, Extraordinary Women (London: Hogarth Press, 1928). 5 Romaine Brooks, The Marchesa Casati (1920), a portrait of Luisa painted by Romaine that is now part of a private collection. 6 Anthony Slide, Eccentrics of Comedy (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 1998), 146. 7 Paul Baker, Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men (Oxford: Routledge, 2003). 8 Morris B. Kaplan “Who’s Afraid of John Saul?: Urban Culture and the Politics of Desire in Late Victorian London,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5, no. 3 (1999): 267–314. 9 The collections record for “Ganymede & Jack-Catch” a satirical print at the Museum of London Docklands from 1776 reads: “In Greek mythology Zeus, the King of the Gods, fell in love with the shepherd boy Ganymede. The Darlys published two satirical prints fea­ turing Drybutter under the pseudonym Ganymede. The first appeared in 1771. In this later version Jack Catch, shown holding a noose, says ‘Dammee Sammy you’r a sweet pretty creature & I long to have you at the end of my string.” Drybutter, shackled in leg irons, replies “You don’t love me Jacky.” www.collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/ object/463628.html 10 Helena Whitbread, No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister (New York City: NYU Press, 1993). 11 As an example, Hans Christian Andersen writes to Edvard Collin, “I long for you as though you were a beautiful Calabrian girl.” and “Our friendship is like ‘The Mysteries,’ it should not be analysed” both require an understanding of literature to unpack. Calabria is a part of Italy that was associated in writing with beautiful woman and sex workers, and “The Mysteries” being a series of Mediaeval plays. Quotations from a collection of gay “love letters” by Rictor Norton, My Dear Boy (San Francisco: Leyland Publication, 1998). 12 Dr Alfredo Carpineti (@DrCarpineti), Twitter Post, February 23, 2019, 5:43 PM, https:// twitter.com/DrCarpineti/status/1099364062327160832 13 Darren (@MxDarren), Twitter Post, October 31, 2019, 9:01 AM. 14 “Last summer GALOP started to receive complaints that police in Earls Court were hanging around gay pubs posing as gay men, approaching people for sex and then arresting them,” Annual Report 1984 (London: GALOP – Gay London Police Monitoring Group, 1984), 10. 15 “I was once in West Brompton cemetery and a pretty policeman nabbed me and I was arrested. I wasn’t sent to prison but I was taken to court, convicted and fined. And I thought ‘This is ridiculous: he came on to me, I didn’t come on to him.’ But that was the way it was – a constant threat.” Tim Tate, Pride: The Unlikely Story of the True Heroes of the Miner’s Strike (London: Kings Road Publishing, 2017). 16 John Addington Symmonds, The Memoirs of John Addington Symmonds (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1984). 17 John Addington Symmonds, Male Love: A Problem in Greek Ethics and Other Writings (Pagan Press, 1983). 18 Mo Ali, Facebook Comment to “Queerly departed: Meet the cemetery tour guides re­ telling forgotten LGBTQ stories,” The Metro, February 16, 2019, 4:02 PM, https://www. facebook.com/MetroUK/posts/ pfbid02ehzGkCUgAMHxMk66PvpnAMJVbHUN8Vo3XPZncCQ7MdhzaRCSC8Kao­ wa3eisrkR4fl 19 Foreword by Mary S. Talbott, to reprint, Anna Laetitia Waring “Hymns and Meditations,” 1911. 20 “Anna Laetitia Waring (Lesbian)” from Rod Haferkamp “Vetting the Trinity Hymnal for It’s Aberrant Writers of Hymns,” www.semperreformanda.com/psalmody/vetting-thetrinity-hymnal-for-its-aberrant-writers-of-hymns/

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Researching, Remembering, and Respecting the LGBTQ+ Deceased 21 Savvas Panos Kastanos, Facebook Comment to “Queerly departed: Meet the cemetery tour guides retelling forgotten LGBTQ stories,” The Metro, February 16, 2019, 4:02 PM, https:// www.facebook.com/MetroUK/posts/pfbid02ehzGkCUgAMHxMk66PvpnAMJVbHUN8Vo3XPZncCQ7MdhzaRCSC8Kaowa3eisrkR4fl 22 Paul Bernard, Facebook Comment to “Queerly departed: Meet the cemetery tour guides retelling forgotten LGBTQ stories,” The Metro, February 16, 2019, 4:02 PM, https://www. facebook.com/MetroUK/posts/pfbid02ehzGkCUgAMHxMk66PvpnAMJVbHUN8Vo3XPZncCQ7MdhzaRCSC8Kaowa3eisrkR4fl 23 Chris Kitching, “The Children the World Forgot: Heartrending Faces of Barnardo’s Orphans Buried in Unmarked Graves – and How They Will Finally Be Remembered,” The Mirror, December 5, 2016, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/stirringportraits-tragic-barnardos-children-9393517

Bibliography Baker, Paul. Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men. Oxford: Routledge, 2003. Brooks, Romaine. The Marchesa Casati. Private Collection, 1920. Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World. 1890–1940. Basic Books, 1994. GALOP – Gay London Police Monitoring Group. Annual Report 1984. London: GALOP, 1984. Goodman, Sheldon K. “About.” The Cemetery Club. Accessed November 30, 2022. www. cemeteryclub.wordpress.com Haferkamp, Ron. “Anna Laetitia Waring (Lesbian).” Vetting the Trinity Hymnal for It’s Aberrant Writers of Hymns. Accessed November 29, 2022. www.semperreformanda.com/ psalmody/vetting-the-trinity-hymnal-for-its-aberrant-writers-of-hymns/ HRC Foundation. “Glossary of Terms,” Human Rights Campaign. Accessed November 30, 2022. www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms Kaplan, Morris B. “Who’s Afraid of John Saul?: Urban Culture and the Politics of Desire in Late Victorian London.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5, no. 3 (1999): 267–314. Kitching, Chris. “The Children the World Forgot: Heartrending Faces of Barnardo’s Orphans Buried in Unmarked Graves – and How They Will Finally Be Remembered.” The Mirror, 5 December 2016. Accessed November 29, 2022. https://www.mirror.co.uk/ news/uk-news/stirring-portraits-tragic-barnardos-children-9393517 Lyons, Kat. “A Letter to Anna Letitia Waring: A Spinster Late of This Parish.” Private Commission for the Cemetery Club. Mackenzie, Sir Compton. Extraordinary Women. London: Hogarth Press, 1928. Norton, Rictor. My Dear Boy. San Francisco: Leyland Publications, 1998. Slide, Anthony. Eccentrics of Comedy. London: Scarecrow Press, 1998. Stonewall. www.stonewall.org.uk/help-advice/faqs-and-glossary/list-lgbtq-terms Symmonds, John Addington. Male Love: A Problem in Greek Ethics and Other Writings. Seattle, WA: Pagan Press, 1983. Symmonds, John Addington. The Memoirs of John Addington Symmonds. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1984. Talbott, Mary S. “Foreward.” In reprint of Hymns and Meditations, by Anna Laetitia Waring. Originally published England. 1850. Tate, Tim. Pride: The Unlikely Story of the True Heroes of the Miner’s Strike. London: Kings Road Publishing, 2017. W. J. “Ganymede & Jack-Catch.” ID A8178. London, UK: The Museum of London Docklands. https://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/object/463628.html Whitbread, Helena. No Priest But Love: Excerpts from the Diaries of Anne Lister. New York: NYU Press, 1993.

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33 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH DEATH AND DISEASE Young Visitors’ Perspectives at the Mütter Medical History Museum

Rachel Anisha Divaker and Mary Margaret Kerr Dark tourism connotes travel to sites of or associated with death and “difficult heritage.”1 Included in these sites are museums with displays about death and dying. Yet, youth perspectives are sidelined in the literature, thereby denying museums and other sites empirical guidance for interpretation.2 Underscoring the significance of this oversight, dark tourism sites vividly present death and human suffering to vulnerable young visitors, many of whom possess only an immature understanding of death. A few studies have begun to document young tourists’ experiences at battlegrounds, memorials, cemeteries, and history museums. At these sites, death is primarily represented in texts, photographs, headstones, and videos. In contrast, children visiting the Mütter Museum collection stand within inches of disease-ravaged skulls, jars of preserved organs, deformed fetuses and skeletons, and mummified remains. The narrow spaces within the museum heighten close encounters with death and disease. As a result, children stand right next to surgeons’ tools and floating body parts. The goal of this case study was to provide a better understanding of how children describe their encounters with these exhibits. To provide context for our case study, we next offer a brief review of medical museums.

Medical Museums: A Brief Review Contemporary medical museums date back to the 1800s when they were established for the purpose of medical education. In recent decades, increased costs, ethical concerns about procurement, and newer technology-enhanced pedagogical approaches threatened their existence. In an attempt to save medical collections, Horder, a medical museum educator, advocated “a change of mindset about exposing the collection to new audiences for which a pathology museum would have 472

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relevance.”3 Horder went on to describe the success of reopening the Museum of Human Disease − a pathology collection in the Medical Faculty at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). This museum now welcomes nearly 10,000 visitors a year, including thousands of youth: “Primary, secondary, and tertiary students gawp and marvel at reproductive organs with monster tumours and alimentary canals with gaps and cell clusters.”4 Following a similar trajectory, the recently redesigned (United States) National Museum of Health and Medicine, established in the mid-1800s as the Army Medical Museum, now welcomes 45,000 annual visitors. Children as young as three handle artifacts in its expanded educational programs. In Amsterdam, the Vrolik Museum “aims to extend its appeal to a much wider audience following refurbishment and reorganisation (completed in 2012), providing a unique experience to all visitors interested in the (abnormal) human body.” France’s Musée Fragonard d’Alfort opened to the public as a veterinary museum and has since expanded to include exhibits of skinned human cadavers. At Japan’s Meguro Parasitological Museum, gruesome photographs show human hosts living with parasites, their body parts deformed and enlarged by the creatures literally eating them alive. But the reallife specimens are far worse than the photographs; some of the displays present preserved parasites actually popping out of their animal hosts.5 Owing to their newfound popularity, medical museums now appear in popular media (CNN’s World’s 10 Weirdest Medical Museums website) and on travel websites in their “Best Places to Visit” listings.6 Yet, young visitors’ encounters with these grim displays go unnoticed in the literature, where we found only one unpublished study. The Mütter Museum offers young visitors a distinct experience through its exhibit design and interpretation. Photographs of individuals whose remains are on display appear throughout, with texts that inspire pity for the deceased’s life conditions. Our chapter examines young visitors’ own writings about their encounters with these human stories. To give the reader context for these descriptions, we open with a brief description of the museum and its exhibits.

The Mütter Museum Designed to emulate the aesthetic of a 19th-century “cabinet museum,” the Mütter Museum occupies two floors. At the time of our study, one first encountered The Soap Lady, the body of a woman exhumed in Philadelphia, naturally mummified through the process of saponification. Saponification chemically transforms body fat into a soap-like substance called adipocere.7 The mummified corpse lay in a glass case on a low wooden table. Next to the Soap Lady was an exhibit called Albert Einstein’s Brain, containing microscope slides of Einstein’s brain. To the left of this display appeared the Hyrtl Skull Collection of 139 skulls of different ages collected by anatomist Hyrtl from various locations across Europe. The skulls lined a large wooden cabinet spanning most of the wall.8 Next to the shelf of skulls, Our Finest Clothing: A Layered 473

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History of Our Skin used realistic wax molds to demonstrate the history, biology, and social history behind various skin diseases and ailments. Parallel to these exhibits was A Stitch in Spine Saves Nine: Innovations in Spinal Surgery. This exhibit chronicled the history of spinal surgery using various surgical instruments and bone samples. Across the room, Grimm’s Anatomy: Magic and Medicine delved into how bodies discussed in fairytales can be rooted in actual diseases or conditions. This exhibit consisted of text, images, and the occasional wet specimen. On the museum’s bottom floor, exhibits were closer together. Upon entering this floor, visitors encountered a large glass case displaying the skeleton of a dwarf woman, a giant man, and an average-sized man, along with the skull of the dwarf woman’s newborn child. Also on display were the skeletons of Harry Eastlack and Carol Orzel. Both were diagnosed with the rare bone disease Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP), which causes the patient to develop a second skeleton made of soft tissue. The stories of Harry, who died in 1979, and Carol, who died in 2018, were presented to visitors in a highly personal way by sharing their individual stories, photographs, and testimonies. Next to this exhibit was one encased in glass called the Cast and Livers of Chang and Eng. Each plaster death cast appeared above a wet specimen of the corresponding liver. The next exhibit was the Chevalier Jackson Swallowed Objects Collection, a large collection of the 2,374 foreign bodies that Dr. Jackson removed from his patients’ throats, esophaguses, and lungs. The objects were arranged categorically (e.g., buttons, coins, etc.) in different drawers that visitors could open to view. Next, the visitor encountered the Giant Megacolon, a glass-enclosed display of an 8-foot-long human colon stuffed with fabric and straw. The display included the story of the man to whom the colon once belonged. Dry and wet specimens and an array of medical instruments lined the walls of this room, organized by medical specialization: obstetrics, neurology, and the reproductive, skeletal, and muscular systems. The largest of these exhibits was the obstetrics section, showcasing fetuses in jars, medical equipment used in 19th-century birthing, and detailed medical diagrams. An adjacent room included a shrunken human head and the wet specimen of President Grover Cleveland’s tumor. The aesthetic of this room was a bit more modern, and each sample was displayed in a completely transparent case. Exiting this room, the visitor returned upstairs to temporary exhibits. Visitors could enter Broken Bodies, Suffering Spirits: Injury, Death, and Healing in Civil War Philadelphia. The exhibit showed medical equipment used during that war, text describing medical practices of the day and how they influenced modern medicine, and descriptions of how the war impacted Philadelphians. At the time of our study, the last exhibit was Imperfecta, which delved into the societal perception of humans with abnormal or “imperfect” development. The exhibit used artifacts to depict the world’s changing perceptions about those deemed “abnormal,” along with written content providing historical and informational context. The focal point of the exhibit was a wet specimen displaying the fetus of conjoined twins. At the end of Imperfecta was the visitor book, where people could record their impressions. To better understand the experiences of young visitors, we analyzed the visitor book entries. 474

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Methods Museums, memorials, and other tourist destinations often collect visitor comments. Historically, the most common formats were visitor books (also known as visitor logs), while other forms now appear: handwritten cards (sometimes posted for others to view) and comments entered online.9 Visitor comments allow one to understand and interpret the experience and perspective of the visitor.10 Despite their proliferation, “comment books are certainly under-used and under-analyzed.”11 Scholars suggest that visitor comment books encourage a dialogue between the visitor and the curator. Comments can demonstrate how visitors interpret an exhibit’s message and apply it to their own lives and experiences.12 The comment book occupied a podium at the end of the museum exhibits, adjacent to the gift shop. In contrast to the orderly lined pages of many visitor books, this visitor book took the form of a blank sketchbook, opening to 100 large (11 by 14 inch) blank pages. When all pages of the visitor book were filled, staff sent it to storage and then replaced it with a new one. Our investigation included all visitor books from 2017 through 2019. To identify the comments, we used a method similar to one described in earlier studies of visitors’ comments archived at a memorial site.13 First, we studied each visitor book page to identify words authored by young visitors. We considered signature and age when provided. However, as McDonald noted, such identifying information does not always appear in visitor comments: Making the task harder is the fact that information about those who write in visitor books is usually extremely restricted or even non-existent. While this poses an interpretive challenge, however, it does not make visitor books worthless as research sources.14 When age and name were not available, we engaged in several steps. First, we eliminated entries if they reflected mature content, word choice, or syntax. Next, we pursued the steps outlined by other researchers and considered the format and spacing of letters and characters, word choice and spelling, and contextual cues (e.g., mention of a school trip).15 Lastly, we studied drawings incorporated into the written entries. (One author of this chapter has 40 years of experience with schoolchildren’s writing and artwork.) In instances where we could not agree, we eliminated the comment from our analysis. To validate our selections, we shared photographs of the pages we studied with educators not involved with the study and asked them to identify comments attributable to children. To analyze the comments, we chose qualitative content analysis, established as a method for studying museum visitor books and online reviews.16 We followed the steps that Hsieh and Shannon recommended when prior research or theory is limited and existing coding schemes are not available.17 First, we transcribed verbatim and independently read the 98 comments to identify preliminary codes. Then we independently open-coded all comments based on these primary (e.g., description of the museum) and secondary codes (e.g., positive, negative, neutral). While coding, we independently recorded researcher memos. Following the first coding round, we calculated our inter-coder agreement, discussed 475

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our discrepancies and memos, and refined our coding scheme.18 We then re-coded every comment independently before calculating our final inter-coder agreement of 0.86 (Cohen’s kappa). Our next step was to identify categories, or themes. To achieve this we used matrices to chart our coded comments.19 By charting primary and secondary code cooccurrence, we identified nine themes, which we verified through peer review with another researcher not involved in this study. The next section describes our findings (Table 33.1). Curiously, none of the comments referred to the individuals whose body parts were on display. Although the museum prominently displays biographical text next to many body parts to impart information about the deceased and their challenging life circumstances, the young visitors in our sample never mentioned these people. Could it be that children focused on the body parts rather than realizing that they belonged to someone who is no longer alive? This is striking because our other studies of children in these age groups reveal many comments and drawings with empathy for the dead and their suffering. Yet, we saw no references to feeling sad. In contrast, these “famous see-through residents” enliven a recent children’s picture book authored by the museum’s curator.22 In this whimsical story, a child takes other youngsters on tour through the museum, introducing those whose body parts inhabit the cases. As if they were alive again, the deceased eagerly greet the group. One wonders if children’s human perspectives would change if they read the book before their visit. Distinct differences between young visitors’ impressions and those of adults underscore the value of eliciting young visitors’ comments. For example, we rarely read adult comments that made jokes or refer to being ill. Moreover, while adults frequently left specific comments about becoming better informed, young visitors rarely referred to learning.

Discussion The Mütter Museum collects its visitor comments through a large sketchbook. This format deserves mention. The blank pages encourage visitors to draw freely and write all over the pages. Our prior research has shown that young visitors often express their thoughts by drawing.23 The sketchbooks stood in stark contrast with typical visitor books that have lined pages to elicit only brief comments. Moreover, museum curators interested in feedback from children may want to offer them an alternative to the newer computer-based visitor surveys. Although collected, stored, and preserved, visitor comments rarely receive the scholarly interrogations they deserve. As a result, curators and museum educators lose valuable perspectives on children’s experiences. Yet, what we uncovered can inform conversations and educational programs with future young visitors encountering death in any museum. As Calvert observed, “it is extremely important for museum educators to be comfortable discussing the topic of death and dying and to expect this topic to arise at some point, even if the educator works at a museum that does not 476

Close Encounters with Death and Disease Table 33.1 Themes with illustrative verbatim quotes Findings What follows are the nine themes we uncovered in the visitor comments, along with verbatim quotes to illustrate each theme. We then offer a brief interpretation. General Impressions Thirty-six children wrote general comments describing the museum or its exhibits. Nineteen of these comments conveyed a totally positive experience: • Glad to be here [drawing of heart]. • [Heart] 4/17/2019 FUN SCHOOL Field Trip … Learned so much and got to see some stuff we though could only see on Google search. Weird, but Cool Mixed emotions or reactions appeared in 11 comments. For example: • This was a little weird but cool. • Awesome but creepy! • I never knew that museums were as grossly fun and interesting at this was [smiley face]. • This place was oddly interesting. • VERY CREEPY but it was okay! • Suppose it’s wrong to say I love this place but it is awesome. • Spooky, informative, and FUN! [heart]. Analysis: These comments echo other “recreational horror encounters which inspire, or intend to inspire both positive and negative affect.” 20 These mixed points of views appeared also in children’s descriptions of their physical reactions, our next theme. Physical Reactions Six comments contained both positive and negative connotations as the children expressed their enjoyment of the museum, but also noted an adverse physical reaction. • My nose is smelling really weird and my stomach is upscat. Really interesting and cool peaces though. • I think the mutter museum was very interesting in a scientific way. But on the other hand I was feeling like throwing up. Anyways I [heart] Mutter museum [heart]. • This place is really cool, but completely disgusting now off to eat. not (: • Loved it but wanted to vomit the entire time. • THANX 4 MAKING ME PUKE! • This experience was traumatizing, my nose is smelling really weird and my stomach is upscat. Really interesting and cool peaces though. Analysis: The nature of the exhibits no doubt played a role in eliciting these reactions. What is interesting here is the candor with which children and adolescents offer their comments. We did not see these kinds of comments from adults. Fear Only four children wrote comments that conveyed fear. Some of the comments displayed the child’s general emotional state by at the end of the visit: • HEH, THANKS FOR GIVING ME NIGHTMARES. • Scary AF [as f***]. (Continued)

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Rachel Anisha Divaker and Mary Margaret Kerr Table 33.1 (Continued) • I am truly scared. • This experience was traumatizing. Comment: We also noticed one comment from an adult who recalled a childhood visit: “saw special on TV about the Mutter Museum and night terrors for years. Feels strange to be here as an adult and feel like none of it was ever a big deal.” Analysis: Given the graphic nature of the exhibits and the relative inexperience of some young visitors, fearfulness was not unexpected. Inspired In contrast to those who were frightened, the visit reaffirmed medical career aspirations for some children. • I am going to be a doctor. • I want to be a doctor when I grow up. • Can’t wait to be a doctor one day. Jokes Seven adolescents’ comments contained a joke or some type of humor. Some of the jokes were a play on the words, “Mütter Museum.” Others referred to the anatomical exhibits. • We came, we saw, we muttered. • Hey yall is mutter like über? • Hey, did ya hear the one about the corpse??? I don’t have a joke, I’m just looking for a joke about corpses. • Can’t wait to come back for a quick snack! Other comments were sarcastic in nature and referred to the unsettling nature of the museum’s exhibits: • This place is really cool, but completely disgusting now off to eat. not (: -Erin • Can’t wait to come back for a quick snack! • I think it’s pretty cool [smiley face] P. S.: If those skeletons ever come to life … it’s over. Analysis: Research has shown that adolescents may use humor and sarcasm to cope with their fear of death. 21 Drawn to Imperfecta Exhibit Overview: “Imperfecta” was a temporary exhibit in the Mutter Museum open from March 2017 to October 2019 that delved into the societal perception of humans with abnormal or “imperfect” development. The display used its own artifacts with historical and informational text to depict the world’s changing perceptions about those deemed abnormal. The exhibit challenged visitors to reflect on the human body and its complexities. This interpretive message was echoed in some of the youths’ comments: • All humans monsters should be loved! [heart]. • Humans are weird man. • The human body is weird beautiful. Treat yours like gold. (Continued)

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Close Encounters with Death and Disease Table 33.1 (Continued) One of the featured artifacts was a wet specimen containing the fetal body of conjoined twins. Several young visitors took a special interest in the conjoined twins, as reflected in these comments: • I loved the two headed babies! [with drawing; see photo]. • I like babies stuck together!!! • I stared at a deformed fetus today! • I like babies stuck together. • Now I’m afraid to get pregnant [sad face] Melissa. • Babies in a museum DUDE. Other’s Insides Some of the other comments explicitly referred to exhibits throughout the museum. For instance, many young visitors commented on the presence of wet specimens (jars that contain an organ or body part floating in fluid) found throughout the museum shelves. One of these exhibits contained wet specimens of fetuses and outlined historical birthing practices. In other jars, visitors could see human organs, including brains. These displays caught the attention of young visitors as well. • Einstein’s Brain 4 Life! [refers to histology slide of Albert Einstein’s brain]. • Brains are disgusting! • Oh, gosh, my insides feel claustrophobic while looking at other insides in jars. What an experience! [heart]. • Full of interesting specimens and tools! • This place is the best cuz there is tons of cool things like skeletons! • I saw the colon when I was 9, now I m seeing it at 17 … I will never forget. • I have given up the fact that I want to be a brain surgeon, brains are disgusting! Young visitors also took note of the wall of skulls. Each skull is displayed on a stand, and many are inscribed with details regarding the person’s age at death, region of origin, and cause of death. • I loved the sculls on the upper floor. • Awesome collections of sculls. • Awesome collections of scull. Confronting Death Young visitors faced the dead during their visit. • I hope I don’t end up on one of those shelves when I die.:) • RIP everyone in here. • Bury me – Grim Reaper [Drawing of Grim Reaper]. • Maybe I shouldn’t have come here before my great aunt’s funeral? My bad.

exhibit skeletal remains.”24 Children’s visitor comments such as these can inform, challenge, and affirm (a) interpretive texts, (b) activities, and (c) exhibit design.25

Interpretive Texts Visitor books help us understand the words and concepts children use to make meaning of their visits. This information could help curators evaluate the impact of interpretive texts. The particular format of the visitor book at the Mütter Museum (large, blank 479

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pages) also allowed us to see how youth visualized their experiences. These words and images shed light on which interpretive texts, guided tours, and signage elicited the young visitors’ attention. Conversely, the absence of comments about the individuals whose remains appear suggests that the youth overlooked the biographical signage.

Activities The visitor comments also suggest activities that would resonate with children. For example, a workbook activity or after-school workshop might feature the frequently mentioned Hyrtl Skull Collection. Although we did not study drawings in the visitor books, they appeared on nearly every page, suggesting that an art activity might be popular.

Exhibit Design Analyzing visitor comments can also inform exhibit design. When curators study visitor comments, they can better understand whether young visitors “see” the exhibit’s key features. They can also identify misunderstandings or overlooked elements. Our studies at other museums suggest that young children often focus on a minor artifact because their understandings are literal.26 For example, young children visiting a Holocaust Museum focused on a loaf of bread pictured in one of the scenes. This information can be important to an exhibit designer because it shows what captures children’s attention.

Conclusion Although collected, stored, and preserved, visitor comments rarely receive the scholarly interrogations they deserve. As a result, curators and museum educators lose valuable perspectives on children’s experiences. To our knowledge, this is the first documentation of young visitors’ experiences at a medical museum. Given how little we know about childhood encounters with human remains, we can benefit from young visitors’ own words (and images) about their tours of human bodies damaged and destroyed. We hope this initial study will inspire others to pull visitor books out of storage and uncover children’s experiences in these unique spaces.

Notes 1 Philip R. Stone, “A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a Typology of Death and Macabre Related Tourist Sites, Attractions and Exhibitions,” Tourism: An International Interdisciplinary Journal 54, no. 2 (2006): 145–160; Rudi Hartmann, “Dark Tourism, Thanatourism, and Dissonance in Heritage Tourism Management: New Directions in Contemporary Tourism Research,” Journal of Heritage Tourism 9, no. 2 (2014): 166–182, https://doi.org/10.1080/ 1743873X.2013.807266; J. J. Lennon and M. Foley, “Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster,” London: Continuum (2000), https://doi.org/10.1080/09647770100401904 2 Mary Margaret Kerr and Rebecca H. Price, “‘I Know the Plane Crashed’: Children’s Perspectives in Dark Tourism,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 553–583; Katherine Sutcliffe and Sangkyun Kim,

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3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16

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“Understanding Children’s Engagement with Interpretation at a Cultural Heritage Museum,” Journal of Heritage Tourism 9, no. 4 (2014): 332–348, https://doi.org/10.1080/ 1743873X.2014.924952; Warwick Frost and Jennifer H. Laing, “Children, Families and Heritage,” Journal of Heritage Tourism 12, no. 1 (2017): 1–6, https://doi.org/10.1080/1743 873X.2016.1201089; Yaniv Poria and Dallen J. Timothy, “Where Are the Children in Tourism Research?,” Annals of Tourism Research 47 (2014): 93–95, https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.annals.2014.03.002 J. Horder, “Promoting Health through Public Programmes in University Medical Museums,” Museology 3 (2013): 127–132, https://doi.org/10.18452/8566 Francesca082, “We-ell, Very Good and QG too: Quite Gruesome” (2016), https://www. tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g552099-d2515014-r356646170-Museum_of_ Human_Disease-Kensington_Randwick_Greater_Sydney_New_South_Wales.html. India Irving, “Tokyo’s Museum of Parasites Will Make Your Skin Crawl,” Culture Trip, September 26, 2018, https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/tokyos-museum-ofparasites-will-make-your-skin-crawl/. Bryan Pirolli, “World’s 10 Weirdest Medical Museums,” CNN (Cable News Network), December 10, 2014, accessed June 24, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/worldmedical-museums/index.html. Anna Dhody, “The Curious Case of Mrs. Ellenbogen: Saponification and Deceit in 19thCentury Philadelphia,” Expedition Magazine 58, no. 2 (2016), https://www.penn.museum/ sites/expedition/volume/volume-58/page/3/. For a detailed history and description of this exhibit, see Sara K. Keckeisen, “The Grinning Wall: History, Exhibition, and Application of the Hyrtl Skull Collection at the Mutter Museum” (2012). Kevin Coffee, “Visitor Comments as Dialogue,” Curator: The Museum Journal 56, no. 2 (2013): 163–167, https://doi.org/10.1111/cura.12017; Phaedra Livingstone, Erminia Pedretti, and B. J. Soren, “Visitor Comments and the Socio-cultural Context of Science: Public Perceptions and the Exhibition a Question of Truth,” Museum Management and Curatorship 19, no. 4 (2001): 355–369; Sharon Macdonald, “Accessing Audiences: Visiting Visitor Books,” Museum and Society 3, no. 3 (2005): 119–136; Ana María Munar and CanSeng Ooi, “The Truth of the Crowds: Social Media and the Heritage Experience,” The Cultural Moment in Tourism (Routledge, 2012), 271–289. Coffee, “Visitor Comments as Dialogue,” 163–167. Coffee, “Visitor Comments as Dialogue,” 166. Mary Alexander, “Do Visitors Get It? A Sweatshop Exhibit and Visitors’ Comments,” The Public Historian 22, no. 3 (2000): 85–94, https://doi.org/10.2307/3379580 Mary Margaret Kerr et al., “Interpreting Terrorism: Learning from Children’s Visitor Comments,” Journal of Interpretation Research 22, no. 1 (2017): 83–100, https://doi.org/10. 1177/109258721702200106 Macdonald, Accessing Audiences: Visiting Visitor Books, 123. Alexander, Do Visitors Get It?, 85–94; Macdonald, Accessing Audiences: Visiting Visitor Books, 123. Kevin Coffee, “Museums and the Agency of Ideology: Three Recent Examples,” Curator: The Museum Journal 49, no. 4 (2006): 435–448, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2151-6952. 2006.tb00235.x; Macdonald, Accessing Audiences: Visiting Visitor Books, 123; Philip R. Stone, “Dark Tourism and Significant Other Death: Towards a Model of Mortality Mediation,” Annals of Tourism Research 39, no. 3 (2012): 1565–1587, https://doi.org/10.101 6/j.annals.2012.04.007 Hsiu-Fang Hsieh and Sarah E. Shannon, “Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis,” Qualitative Health Research 15, no. 9 (2005): 1277–1288, https://doi.org/10.11 77/1049732305276687 Steve Stemler, “An Overview of Content Analysis,” Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation 7, no. 1 (2000): 17, https://doi.org/10.7275/z6fm-2e34

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Rachel Anisha Divaker and Mary Margaret Kerr 19 Matthew B. Miles, A. Michael Huberman, and Johnny Saldana, “Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook” (2014). 20 Kerr, ‘Why Is It So Fun to Be Scared?’ Entertainment in Dark Tourism. 21 Flavelle, Experience of an Adolescent Living with and Dying of Cancer, 28–32; Williamson et al., Adolescents’ and Parents’ Experiences of Managing the Psychosocial Impact of Appearance Change During Cancer Treatment, 168–175; Jones et al., The Meaning of Surviving Cancer for Latino Adolescents and Emerging Young Adults, 74. 22 Anna Dhody, The Mütter Museum: A Junior Guide’s Tour of America’s Coolest Medical Museum (Arglen, PA: Schiffer/Pixel Mouse House, 2020). 23 M. M. Kerr, S. E. Dugan, and K. M. Frese, “Using Children’s Artifacts to Avoid Interpretive Missteps,” Legacy: The Magazine of the National Association for Interpretation (2016); Kerr and Price, “‘I Know the Plane Crashed’: Children’s Perspectives in Dark Tourism,” 553–583; Kerr et al., “Interpreting Terrorism: Learning from Children’s Visitor Comments,” 83–100. 24 Lorenda Calvert, “Navigating Sensitive Topics with Children: An Inquiry of Museum Educators Facilitating Conversations about Death with Children,” in Research Informing the Practice of Museum Educators (Brill Sense, 2015), 81–95. 25 Kerr et al., “Using Children’s Artifacts to Avoid Interpretive Missteps”; Mary Margaret Kerr, Philip R. Stone, and Rebecca H. Price, “Young Tourists’ Experiences at Dark Tourism Sites: Towards a Conceptual Framework,” Tourist Studies 21, no. 2 (2021): 198–218. 26 Kerr et al., “Young Tourists’ Experiences at Dark Tourism Sites: Towards a Conceptual Framework,” 198–218.

Bibliography Alexander, Mary. “Do Visitors Get It? A Sweatshop Exhibit and Visitors’ Comments.” The Public Historian 22, no. 3 (2000): 85–94. doi: 10.2307/3379580 Bianucci, R., M. Soldini, G. Di Vella, L. Verzé, and J. Day. “The Body Worlds Exhibits and Juvenile Understandings of Death: Do We Educate Children to Science or to Voyeurism?” Clinica Terapeutica 166, no. 4 (2015): e264–e268. doi: 10.7417/T.2015.1871 Calvert, Lorenda. “Navigating Sensitive Topics with Children: An Inquiry of Museum Educators Facilitating Conversations about Death with Children.” In Research Informing the Practice of Museum Educators, 81–95. Brill Sense, 2015. Coffee, Kevin. “Museums and the Agency of Ideology: Three Recent Examples.” Curator: The Museum Journal 49, no. 4 (2006): 435–448. doi: 10.1111/j.2151-6952.2006.tb00235.x Coffee, Kevin. “Visitor Comments as Dialogue.” Curator: The Museum Journal 56, no. 2 (2013): 163–167. doi: 10.1111/cura.12017 Dhody, Anna. “The Curious Case of Mrs. Ellenbogen: Saponification and Deceit in 19thCentury Philadelphia.” Expedition Magazine 58, no. 2, 2016. https://www.penn. museum/sites/expedition/volume/volume-58/page/3/. Dhody, Anna. The Mütter Museum: A Junior Guide’s Tour of America’s Coolest Medical Museum. Arglen, PA: Schiffer/Pixel Mouse House, 2020. Flavelle, Shauna C. “Experience of an Adolescent Living with and Dying of Cancer.” Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine 165, no. 1 (2011): 28–32. doi: 10.1001/archpediatrics. 2010.249 Francesca082. “We-ell, Very Good and QG Too: Quite Gruesome,” Review of Museum of Human Disease, Tripadvisor, March 18, 2016, https://www.tripadvisor.com/ ShowUserReviews-g552099-d2515014-r356646170-Museum_of_Human_DiseaseKensington_Randwick_Greater_Sydney_New_South_Wales.html. Frost, Warwick and Jennifer H. Laing. “Children, Families and Heritage.” Journal of Heritage Tourism 12, no. 1 (2017): 1–6. doi: 10.1080/1743873X.2016.1201089 Hartmann, Rudi. “Dark Tourism, Thanatourism, and Dissonance in Heritage Tourism Management: New Directions in Contemporary Tourism Research.” Journal of Heritage Tourism 9, no. 2 (2014): 166–182. doi: 10.1080/1743873X.2013.807266

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Close Encounters with Death and Disease Horder, J. “Promoting Health Through Public Programmes in University Medical Museums” (2003). doi: 10.18452/8566 Hsieh, Hsiu-Fang and Sarah E. Shannon. “Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis.” Qualitative Health Research 15, no. 9 (2005): 1277–1288. doi: 10.1177/1049732305276687 Irving, India. “Tokyo’s Museum of Parasites Will Make Your Skin Crawl.” Culture Trip. The Culture Trip, September 26, 2018. https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/ tokyos-museum-of-parasites-will-make-your-skin-crawl/. Jones, Barbara L., Deborah L. Volker, Yolanda Vinajeras, Linda Butros, Cynthia Fitchpatrick, and Kelly Rossetto. “The Meaning of Surviving Cancer for Latino Adolescents and Emerging Young Adults.” Cancer Nursing 33, no. 1 (2010): 74. doi: 10.1097/NCC.0b013 e3181b4ab8f Jones, Nora L. “The Mütter Museum: The Body as Spectacle, Specimen, and Art.” Temple University, 2002. Kerr, Margaret A. “‘Why Is It So Fun to Be Scared?’ Entertainment in Dark Tourism.” In Children, Young People, and Dark Tourism, edited by M. M. Kerr, P. Stone, & R. H. Price. Abington, UK: Routledge (2023). Kerr, M. M., S. E. Dugan, and K. M. Frese. “Using Children’s Artifacts to Avoid Interpretive Missteps.” Legacy: The Magazine of the National Association for Interpretation (2016). Kerr, Mary Margaret, and Rebecca H. Price. “‘I Know the Plane Crashed’: Children’s Perspectives in Dark Tourism.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies, 553–583. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Kerr, Mary Margaret, Rebecca H. Price, Constance Demore Savine, Kari Ifft, and Mary Anne McMullen. “Interpreting Terrorism: Learning from Children’s Visitor Comments.” Journal of Interpretation Research 22, no. 1 (2017): 83–100. doi: 10.1177/109258721702200106 Kerr, Mary Margaret, Philip R. Stone, and Rebecca H. Price. “Young Tourists’ Experiences at Dark Tourism Sites: Towards a Conceptual Framework.” Tourist Studies 21, no. 2 (2021): 198–218. Kondracki, Nancy L., Nancy S. Wellman, and Daniel R. Amundson. “Content Analysis: Review of Methods and Their Applications in Nutrition Education.” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 34, no. 4 (2002): 224–230. doi: 10.1016/S1499-4046(06)60097-3 Lennon, John J. and M. Foley. “Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster.” London: Continuum. doi: 10.1080/09647770100401904 Livingstone, Phaedra, Erminia Pedretti, and B. J. Soren. “Visitor Comments and the Sociocultural Context of Science: Public Perceptions and the Exhibition a Question of Truth.” Museum Management and Curatorship 19, no. 4 (2001): 355–369. Macdonald, Sharon. “Accessing Audiences: Visiting Visitor Books.” Museum and society 3, no. 3 (2005): 119–136. Miles, Matthew B., A. Michael Huberman, and Johnny Saldana. “Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook.” (2014). Miles, Stephen. “Battlefield Sites as Dark Tourism Attractions: An Analysis of Experience.” Journal of Heritage Tourism 9, no. 2 (2014): 134–147. doi: 10.1080/1743873X.2013.871017 Morris, Bonnie J. “The Frightening Invitation of a Guestbook.” Curator: The Museum Journal 54, no. 3 (2011): 243–252. doi: 10.1111/j.2151-6952.2011.00089.x Munar, Ana María and Can-Seng Ooi. “The Truth of the Crowds: Social Media and the Heritage Experience.” In The Cultural Moment in Tourism, 271–289. Routledge, 2012. Pekarik, Andrew J. “Understanding Visitor Comments: The Case of Flight Time Barbie.” Curator: The Museum Journal 40, no. 1 (1997): 56–68. doi: 10.1111/j.2151-6952.1997. b01121.x Pirolli, Bryan. “World’s 10 Weirdest Medical Museums.” CNN (Cable News Network), December 10, 2014. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/world-medical-museums/ index.html. Poria, Yaniv and Dallen J. Timothy. “Where Are the Children in Tourism Research?” Annals of Tourism Research 47 (2014): 93–95. doi: 10.1016/j.annals.2014.03.002

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Rachel Anisha Divaker and Mary Margaret Kerr Small, Jennie. “The Absence of Childhood in Tourism Studies.” Annals of Tourism Research 35, no. 3 (2008): 772–789. doi: 10.1016/j.annals.2008.06.002 Stemler, Steve. “An Overview of Content Analysis.” Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation 7, no. 1 (2000): 17. doi: 10.7275/z6fm-2e34 Stone, Philip R. “A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a Typology of Death and Macabre Related Tourist Sites, Attractions and Exhibitions.” Tourism: An International Interdisciplinary Journal 54, no. 2 (2006): 145–160. Stone, Philip R. “Dark Tourism and Significant Other Death: Towards a Model of Mortality Mediation.” Annals of Tourism Research 39, no. 3 (2012): 1565–1587. doi: 10.1016/ j.annals.2012.04.007 Sutcliffe, Katherine and Sangkyun Kim. “Understanding Children’s Engagement with Interpretation at a Cultural Heritage Museum.” Journal of Heritage Tourism 9, no. 4 (2014): 332–348. doi: 10.1080/1743873X.2014.924952 Walter, Tony. “Body Worlds: Clinical Detachment and Anatomical Awe.” Sociology of Health & Illness 26, no. 4 (2004): 464–488. doi: 10.1111/j.0141-9889.2004.00401.x Williamson, Heidi, Diana Harcourt, Emma Halliwell, Hannah Frith, and Melissa Wallace. “Adolescents’ and Parents’ Experiences of Managing the Psychosocial Impact of Appearance Change During Cancer Treatment.” Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing 27, no. 3 (2010): 168–175. doi: 10.1177/1043454209357923

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34 THE USE OF CT SCAN FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF MUMMY REPLICAS FOR MUSEOGRAPHY Social and Ethical Perspectives

Verónica Silva-Pinto, Mario Castro, Yanis Valenzuela-Sánchez, Ayelén Tonko-Huenucoy, Carlos Montoya, Marcelo Gálvez, and Trish Biers The display of human bodies has always been a focus of attraction for the public. In contemporary cases, we can observe the phenomenon generated by “Body Worlds,” which with an aesthetic and educational purpose attracted thousands of people in the different cities of the world. Without delving into the controversies that the ex­ hibition has had on the origin of the bodies, we want to reflect on the fascination of human beings for observing dead bodies of their own species. Some refer to this as simple morbidity, but for others it is more of a fascination with what bodies represent, whether it is about an action (in the case of Body Worlds) or the story it holds within itself, a glimpse into the eternity and incorruptibility of the body. Given this public interest in admiring human bodies, museums have traditionally exhibited human remains and some still do, either naturally or artificially mummified, skeletonized or fossilized. The meaning behind this interest has changed over the years, going from being mere “objects” in cabinets of curiosities to being part of the educational pro­ gramming with the aim of reconstructing the past, to meet different cultures and narrate our own history as humanity. Thus, on a global scale, museums that exhibit mummified human bodies are successful in terms of public visits.

Human Bodies’ Scientific Investigation and Its Exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History The idea of creating a national museum arose from several issues: with Chile’s independence from the Spanish crown; with the birth of the nation-state and the need DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-41

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to identify people with their territory allowing them to understand its biological and cultural diversity for the definition of its own identity; differentiating the country from its colonial past and from the neighboring republics. These ideas would not materialize until 1830 with the creation of the National Museum of Chile, one of the oldest museums in Latin America and the oldest in Chile, which was founded on 14 September of that year by the French naturalist Claude Gay.1 Later, German nat­ uralist Rudolph Amandus Philippi took over as Director from 1853 to 1892,2 landing a fundamental milestone in the institution’s consolidation. On January 15, 1876, the museum is installed in the Exhibition’s Palace, its current location, a building located inside the Quinta Normal Park.3 Just like the inception of the National Museum, Chilean and Latin American anthropological sciences were parallel to the development of the nation-state.4 Promoted by the Chilean state, the first anthropological investigations began at the end of the 19th century. The material culture that was recorded by european ex­ plorers obtained in their forays into indigenous territory was seen as evidence of an extinct “pre-historic” world, that is, prior to the beginning of the official history that arrived with the wave of civilization and the writing brought by the Europeans.5 All this contributed to a dissociation of the indigenous populations from their past and was used to justify ethnocentric ideological positions and appropriation of the terri­ tories as uninhabited places.6 In 1878, according to the Guide of the National Museum of Chile, mummies, skulls and heads from Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, but also from other places outside South America were exhibited in the section of antiquities on the second floor. All these remains were donated by individuals, most of whom belonged to the wealthy Chilean elite, who liked to collect “exotic objects.” Nevertheless, Mostny describes the Museum’s foundation as an institution dedicated to research and created for the people of Chile, so that – according to Gay’s own words – its people can get to know their own country.7 Strategies and practices were developed from within the Chilean State, in order to deliver a cohesive principle to society: the construction of a national identity.8 This was a fundamental pillar of the project that sought the integration of ethnic diversity, particularly in the recently occupied territories of the Arica, Tarapacá and Antofagasta regions in northern Chile (1884), the Araucanía region in south-central Chile (1883) and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in Polynesia (1888).9 The prevailing evolutionary and diffusionist criteria of the time were key in the perception of the existing indigenous communities, which were seen as living fossils destined for extinction and who would eventually have no choice but to be assimilated by the Chilean State through the process of miscegenation and acculturation10 (Figure 34.1). The first half of the 20th century is marked by the presence and influence of the German archeologist Max Uhle (1856–1944) and the English Ricardo Latcham (1869–1943), who contributed decisively to the development of Chilean professional anthropology and archaeology11; Latcham became the National Museum’s Director from 1928 to 1943. During this period, the human body was considered as another excavated object and was separated, almost immediately upon discovery, from its grave goods and offerings. This caused widespread dissociation from burial context 486

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Figure 34.1 Mummified bodies on display at the beginning of the 20th century. Source: File photos ©MNHN.

that many collections housed in museums today continue to grapple with. Moreover, in numerous cases only the skull or head was extracted, since it was thought that only this anatomical segment of the body provided scientific information.12 In 1929, the General Directorate of Libraries, Archives and Museums was created and the museum renamed as the National Museum of Natural History (from now on MNHN). By this time, the anthropology collection had grown enormously, and Latcham’s work contributed significantly to it, as well as to consolidate the museum as a space for anthropological research worldwide.13 Despite its name, the MNHN continues to be a natural history and anthropology museum, something that was never questioned at the time, since anthropology and the study of indigenous peoples were often considered as part of natural history.14 In 1939, thanks to the efforts of Latcham, the Austrian archaeologist, egyptologist, philologist, historian, and philosopher Grete Mostny joined the MNHN to work in the Anthropology Section, of which she became Head in 1943. Dr. Mostny had an out­ standing career, becoming the museum’s first female Director in 1964, a position she held until 1982. Together with Junius Bird, they carried out the first stratigraphic ex­ cavations in northern Chile and she was the first person to make ethnographic analogies for the study of archaeology. She achieved worldwide notoriety when in 1954, thanks to her efforts, the MNHN acquired the mummified body of an Inca boy known as “Niño del Cerro El Plomo.” The research on this exceptionally preserved body resulted in an interdisciplinary monograph, which included various studies of the body, its grave goods and offerings; something extraordinary for the time. She also understood that the body had to be preserved in cold conditions and therefore arranged the purchase of a refrigerated chamber for its conservation. The presence of both Ricardo Latcham and Grete Mostny turned the museum into a model for archeology and anthropology, long before its institution into university careers in the 1960s. 487

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Until the 1960s, bioanthropological research in Chile focused mainly on the study of the craniometry of pre-Columbian populations.15 In the mid-1960s, Juan Munizaga began introducing new perspectives to bioanthropological research.16 Munizaga, who was a professor at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Chile (former CEA), created the Physical Anthropology Laboratory in 1980, which became the first training and research center dedicated to the study of human remains in Chile.17 Prominent bioanthropologists were trained in this laboratory like Eugenio Aspillaga, Claudio Paredes, Mario Castro, and Silvia Quevedo, who was also a disciple of Grete Mostny. Quevedo worked in MNHN Ad Honorem from 1966 until 1980 when she was incorporated to the Museum staff. By that time, she had become a specialist in bioarchaeology and assumed the position of Curator of Bioanthropology, when the museum had the largest bioanthropological collection in the country. Her challenge was to systematize the information and continue generating state-of-the-art research. Among her studies we must highlight her work with the Niño del Cerro El Plomo, the Punta Teatinos archaeological site, and the analysis of the bodies of the Camarones 14 site.18 At the same time in northern Chile, since the 1970s, North American pathologists Marvin J. Allison and Enrique Gertzen began to carry out research on skeletonized and mummified bodies from the Regions of Arica and Tarapacá.19 Allison’s disciples were Bernardo Arriaza and Vivien Standen, who have stood out for their multiple investigations, in particular about the Chinchorro culture.20 Beginning in 1980, Arthur Aufderheide, an American pathologist invited by Marvin Allison, carried out innovative bioanthropological research that contributed to a better understanding of pre-Hispanic Andean populations’ lifestyles and diseases, especially from northern Chile and southern Peru.21 Although this period is described as a booming time for physical anthropology, because of the great advances in the understanding of the past through the study of skeletons and mummified remains,22 the main problem was the very destructive research techniques used. The ancient bodies were considered from a biomedical perspective and autopsies were used as the principal method for studying the corpses, taking samples for specific analyses and then skeletonizing the remains. Aufderheide and collaborators report that between 1970 and 2004 at least 785 mummies were autopsied at the Museum of the University of Tarapacá in San Miguel de Azapa,23 despite the fact that the museum had its own X-ray facility and the advances in the study of mummified bodies using imaging techniques. In 1970, a milestone of great relevance for the protection of archaeological and bioanthropological heritage occurred with the enactment of Law 17.288 on national monuments.24 According to this law, all archaeological sites located within the Chilean territory, including human burials and their bodies, were declared national monuments by the virtue of law. Consequently, tomb looting stopped, and those who destroyed archaeological sites were sanctioned. The law also gave tools to the police to prevent the plundering and illicit trafficking of heritage assets either inside or outside the country. The 1973 coup d’état and the civic-military dictatorship that would rule in Chile for 17 years was a difficult moment for the MNHN,25 as some of its members had to 488

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leave the museum. Anthropology in general was strongly affected, universities that taught it, experienced a period of dramatic reduction and repression. Any advance indigenous populations had made in previous periods, suffered a significant setback, since the militarized state sought to generate a national identity aimed at controlling and suppressing cultural differences. Racism and discrimination toward the indigenous communities and their traditions generated a rejection of the same indigenous people toward their identity, for which ignorance and dissociation of the communities with their material and immaterial past was generated, a process that although came from the creation of the nation-state is reinforced by the dictatorship’s repressive policies.26 At the end of the 1970s, MNHN’s permanent exhibition was restructured following a regionalist logic to promote the regionalization process carried out by the civicmilitary dictatorship. The museum gallery included the display of the real body of the Niño del Cerro El Plomo, as well as various mummified corpses, a Chinchorro mummy among them, human skeletons and skulls from various parts of Chile. The child was removed from exhibition in 1982 due to conservation problems. In 1974, most of the collections of the National History Museum were transferred to the MNHN, including the Max Uhle Collection, which included artificial deformed skulls and mummies from the Chinchorro culture (7000 to 1500 BCE). At a national level, with the return of democracy in 1990, different institutional processes began to take shape, which brought with them an important ideological, legal, and institutional change. The state began to generate stronger relations with the different indigenous peoples legally recognized to that date. The proclamation of the Indigenous Law in 1993 resulted in an important advance; however, it recognizes only certain peoples and fails to make cultural diversity visible, since it was formulated mainly from a centralist perspective and with a strong emphasis on the Mapuche people. In any case, this law has allowed the native peoples to become a strong political and social actor, where the tangible and intangible cultural heritage becomes an element of political struggle for the rescue and reinforcement of traditions and the visibility of their per­ sistence over time. In this sense, the indigenous populations are active agents around the decisions about the archaeological heritage and the past’s discourses.27 The demands for the removal of human bodies from display began in Chile in the 1990s, when members of the Atacameño ethnic group made explicit and public their feelings of disapproval toward archeology and the Museo Arqueológico R. P. Gustavo Le Paige of San Pedro de Atacama, which were seen to have caused multiple grievances over time. The traditional worldview of the Atacameño population related the bodies of “grandparents” or “gentiles” with the community’s destiny, therefore interrupting their rest involved calamities for the living. On the other hand, the new generation maintains a relationship of respect for those who are considered their ancestors. Therefore, their most recurring demands are as follows: (a) not to excavate cemeteries, (b) the need to disseminate the information generated by archaeologists, (c) the ownership of archaeological remains, (d) the requirement for community permission to intervene in archaeological projects that affect the territory, (e) social participation and administration of archaeological sites, (f) the administration of the Archaeological Museum of San Pedro de Atacama and, obviously, not exhibit human remains in there.28 Similar demands were later joined by Mapuche people. 489

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Theoretical discussions from the United States and Europe as well as Latin American Indigenism have had enormous influence on Chilean anthropological and archaeological thought.29 Subsequently, a new paradigmatic current, derived from the New Archaeology, motivated the development of a new disciplinary line, Bioarchaeology. This field proposed a radically different theoretical position and set out to answer questions about the social dynamics of past populations not only from a population perspective but also from a multidisciplinary one. In this case, special attention was paid to the study of the skeleton as a whole and the associated cultural remains in their context of discovery.30 The interaction processes with the indigenous communities were intense, mainly through ethnoarchaeological investigations.31 Despite this, both archeology and bioarchaeology were developed under scientific interests, so that, although the theoretical positions were substan­ tially modified, in most cases, a distant relationship was maintained between sci­ entists and indigenous peoples.32 In any case, it should not be ignored that there were several advances in scientific dissemination, which allowed the various indigenous and non-indigenous communities to know the archaeological heritage of their territories. By then, archeology had an important development in Chile, thanks to the increase in professionals trained mainly at the University of Chile. The new theo­ retical underpinnings of the post-processual school developed a critique of unique and universal positivist knowledge that was a central part of the New archeology, pro­ posing instead an interpretive multiplicity about the past and a look from epistemic relativism.33 Toward the end of the 1990s, ethical considerations regarding the ex­ cavations of archaeological cemeteries in relation to their ethnic affiliation began to be discussed as well Law 17.288 by the academy34. Criticism of this legal framework still persists, especially with regard to the consideration of human remains and their associated archaeological materials as national monuments, recognizing them only as state property, omitting any right of indigenous peoples over them.35 In any case, it is risky to have laws that aim more at private or community property of archaeological and bioanthropological heritage, since they could fall into the category of market and become tradable goods. In this sense, a mixed system should be evaluated, main­ taining the current protection exercised by the state but with greater participation of communities in the decision-making process. With the passage to the 21st century, the physical anthropology career was opened at the University of Chile (2002) and later at the University of Concepción (2005). This gave way to renewed multidisciplinary views, focused not only on populations but also on reconstructing history from individuals. Also included was the integration of new paradigms that, although incipient, increasingly consider indigenous peoples’ points of view and opinions.36 Improvements in access to education have also allowed us to currently have indigenous researchers in different areas of anthropology. Along with theoretical changes, this has also allowed the discipline to no longer look only at itself, but to begin to be built from an integrating logic, where the past’s interpretation includes an understanding from cultural practice, a practice that is dynamic and therefore evolving and not a reflection frozen in time on an extinct past. 490

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Alternatives to the Exhibition of Human Bodies On August 24, 2022, from the framework of the 26th ICOM General Conference held in Prague, the ICOM Extraordinary General Assembly approved a new defi­ nition of a museum. The new text is as follows: A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.37 MNHN preserves significant ethnographic, archaeological, and bioanthropological collections, not only from Chile, but from other regions of the world. In addition, it has been incorporating a greater receptiveness toward communities in its work, evidenced by the lasting relationship with the National Indianist Coordinator (CONACIN) since 2009. This organization, formed in 1997, has been a coordinator of both indigenous and artistic-cultural organizations. Every year this group holds celebrations at the front of the museum, to commemorate, for example, Inti Raymi (the festival of the sun in Quechua) and Machaq Mara (the new year for the Aymará populations), a moment in which the communities visit and leave offerings to the Niño del Cerro El Plomo inside the Museum in an intimate ceremony where the past and the present converge, united through prayers and requests for peace (Figure 34.2). The earthquake that hit the central-southern zone of Chile in 2010 forced the museum to close its second floor permanently, until resources were available for its repair and to create accessibility changes for people with limited mobility. This forced restructure of the permanent exhibition left the anthropology collections reduced to small spaces within the exhibition (while maintaining the regionalistic viewpoint). In addition, the decision was made to never again display human bodies due to ethical implications, communities’ demands (e.g. Museo Arqueológico R. P. Gustavo Le Paige from San Pedro de Atacama) and conservation reasons. Within this context, one of the challenges that museums and curators face is how to bring the knowledge that human bodies and mortuary contexts provide to the public. For this reason, in 2016, it was decided to create replicas that replace the real body on display. To achieve this, 20 bodies with evidence of artificial mummification and 65 skulls assigned to the Chinchorro culture, from the Chinchorro Max Uhle and Camarones-14 collec­ tions, were scanned using computed tomography (CT) thanks to collaborative work with the Center for Innovation in Health of Clinica las Condes. A SOMATON Definition AS, Siemens 260-channel tomograph (voxel size: 0.6 x 0.6 mm, H70h) was used. The artificially mummified Chinchorro bodies have the peculiarity of being formed by layers of different materials and densities.38 Bioanthropological analyses and the need to understand mortuary treatment led early researchers to autopsy and sample the human remains using invasive techniques. At present, efforts are made to study bodies in the least invasive way possible; however, in the Chinchorro´s case, 491

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Figure 34.2 Inti Raymi ceremony in front of the National Museum of Natural History of Chile, convened in conjunction with CONACIN. Source: File photos ©Verónica Silva-Pinto/MNHN.

many of the materials that make up the mummified bodies are very dense and this prevents their study using traditional conventional radiological techniques. In par­ ticular, plain X-rays in artificial Chinchorro mummies have the disadvantage that images are extremely radiopaque, so it is not possible to distinguish structures due to the presence of dense sediments that obstruct the visualization of other elements. In 492

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this sense, CT is the only analysis that allows the examination of body cavities without destroying them. CT is a widely used technique for the study of Egyptian and Peruvian mummies, among others, thus avoiding the unwrapping of bodies and allowing their analysis through virtual autopsies, without the need to manipulate the real body.39 CT is a computerized X-ray imaging procedure. The scanner uses a motorized source that emits a narrow beam of X-rays and rotates rapidly around the body in a circular opening in a donut-shaped structure called a Gantry. Signals generated by X-rays in the body are processed by the tomographer’s computer and generate crosssectional images or “slices” of the body, which are known as “tomographic images.” The tissue’s thickness represented in each cut usually varies from 1 to 10 millimeters,40 although the latest models of tomographs can obtain thicknesses less than 1 mm. After scanning the bodies, image processing is performed using algorithms capable of separating the different components of the scanned object through segmentation, which is the process of partitioning a digital image into various segments, in order to simplify and/or change the representation into a more useful image for research purposes.41 Segmentation is carried out using the thresholding function, which is based on the tomographic images’ gray scale, indicating that white tones correspond to denser structures and dark tones to less dense ones. Through this procedure, dif­ ferent structures composed of the scanned body are separated by layers, obtaining in this case, the visualization from the bones to the coverage of the body (Figure 34.3). To achieve the impression of the bodies in 3D and at the same time to be able to show the different layers that compose them and how the bones are arranged inside, we created a window in the outer layer that would allow us to look inside using the Autodesk 3DsMax design software. After obtaining virtual 3D models, the different parts that make up the 3D model were printed with a Stratasys Fortus 250mc industrialgrade 3D printer. This printer uses Fused Decomposition Model (FDM) technology,

Figure 34.3 The process of creating the replica, where it is observed: (a) real body of a mummified infant; (b) the body with 2D CT scan; (c) 3D reconstruction of the interior of the body; (d) 3D reconstruction of the exterior of the body; (e) 3D printing; and (f) final replica.

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Figure 34.4 Artistic post-processing process for the realization of the replica of a Chinchorrro infant body. Source: File photos ©Verónica Silva-Pinto/MNHN and © Jacques Saintard/MNHN.

which consists of building models by placing very fine filaments of plastic (ABS) layer by layer. This printer allows a robustness of the process and high definition in the models, allowing the researcher to choose between three layer resolutions, reaching a finished process that reproduces a large part of the details of the piece to be printed (Figure 34.4). Finishing the printing process, different parts were assembled and later worked on in an artistic post-processing, carried out in this case by a visual artist. This process

Figure 34.5

Final result of the replicas of Chinchorro infants, comparing the original with the replica.

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involved the cutting of certain areas of plastic to replace them with textile yarn, vegetable and animal fibers, such as camelids and pelicans that were obtained in the MNHN taxidermy workshop. The exposed plastic areas were sanded and covered with different layers of putty and paint to give them texture and color. The result was a hyper-realistic replica, constituted not only of plastic but also with an organic appearance thanks to the incorporation of the same materials that the Chinchorro used in their preparations. These bodies are part of the traveling exhibition “Chinchorro Transcender a la Muerte” (Chinchorro Transcending Death) whose story not only focuses on the mortuary environment but also seeks to take a tour of aspects of their daily life, such as the resources they consumed and used, the ailments and pathologies associated with their lifestyles, and the environment in which they lived (Figure 34.5).

Conclusion Chile presents a great biological-cultural diversity. As a result of our miscegenation, in Latin America, we are heirs to our pre-Hispanic past and the historical processes that have led to the formation of our current society. The study of bodies and mortuary rites is not only part of the scientific field, but also social. This is because, together with archaeological materials, it can serve to identify people with their territory, their ancestors and their past. In this sense, they not only reinforce the population’s identity, but also that of the country. A good example of this was the incorporation of the Chinchorro culture into the identity of people from Arica, which enriched their culture, teaching them their past’s value and the importance of preserving their archaeological and bioarchaeological heritage. This has contributed to the recognition of some of its archaeological sites as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Particularly in museography, the creation of exact replicas is very useful for several reasons: when the original objects are fragile and are exposed to irreversible damage as a result of their display to the public; when its economic value is very high and they run the risk of being vandalized or stolen; when the original piece has been destroyed or disappeared but there is still enough information to generate a replica of the object. In the case of human remains, a somewhat different situation arises from those mentioned earlier, since not only are there considerations about their conservation and protection, but above all, ethical and social aspects. In the exhibition “Chinchorro Transcender a la Muerte” at our museum, threedimensional digital modeling allowed the generation of hyper-realistic replicas of bodies and their segments through 3D printing and an interactive application. These elements turned out to be fundamental for the dissemination of scientific knowledge to the general public. The scanning of the corpses and the creation of 3D printed models played a very important role, since they fulfilled the same educational role that the real body would have. During the time, the exhibition has been on display in Chile’s dif­ ferent cities, the public’s reception has always been favorable, and on numerous occasions, visitors have asked if the bodies on display are real. The advantages of displaying replicas are numerous. First of all, they support conservation, as bodies, when permanently exposed and without real preventive 495

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conservation measures, gradually deteriorate due to physical and chemical factors. For example, mechanical stress (vibrations, transfers), exposure to light, and microparticles in the air, among other factors. These factors cause tissue degradation, which when accumulated become evident and can lead to the destruction of the body or ana­ tomical segment, especially in bodies as fragile as the Chinchorro.42 In contrast, replicas allow both transmission of knowledge as well as memorable experiences, without the need to have a real human body in a showcase, thereby contributing to a better relationship with the various communities, traditions, and beliefs of the people who visit us, and performing a social role but with an ethical treatment of the corpses. Currently, archeology and bioanthropology intend to open a dialogue with communities and evaluate the ethical and philosophical implications around the study and handling of human remains. Specifically, to do this in such a way that the communities identify with the archaeological sites and that together they work col­ laboratively for their protection.43 Moreover, each community is different and there are even differences within them, which includes discrepancies regarding the per­ ception of their past and the treatment of their ancestors. Thus, there is no single way to treat human remains from archaeological contexts, nor how to relate to the dif­ ferent communities and their own internal differences. This makes it impossible to take a stance or deliver guidance for how to proceed. Therefore, the study and exhibition of human bodies from past populations brings along a series of complexities, both methodological and cultural, and related to modern communities. It is important to acknowledge that research on human bodies from past human groups allows us to answer problems about cultural processes and/or practices that were forgotten due to acculturation or disappearance, in some cases, of different populations (due to cultural transformations, extinction, or extermination, among others). The importance of understanding both the limitations and the benefits as well as the dialogue between these points of view can give a more complex and complete picture of how human remains are the key to understanding our past and historical reconstruction. We must realize that researchers from the past are children of their time, and the methodologies that exist today and the respect that could have been shown are not how we understand research now. However, this debt must be settled both from the state and from researchers, and museums can be the key so that the relationship, today in conflict, can be corrected. Perhaps, the process of a new archaeological and bioarchaeological paradigm, which is where we find ourselves today, will ultimately open up a space for reconciliation.

Notes 1 Museo Nacional, Guía del Museo Nacional de septiembre de 1878 (Santiago de Chile: Librería chilena del señor Ismael Gajardo, 1878). 2 Sergio A. Castro, Ariel Camousseight, Mélica Muñoz-Schick, and Fabián M. Jaksic, “Rodulfo Amando Philippi, el naturalista de mayor aporte al conocimiento taxonómico de la diversidad biológica de Chile,” Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 79, no. 1 (2006): 133–143.

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The Use of CT Scan for the Construction of Mummy Replicas 3 Grete Mostny, “Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 1830–1980,” Boletín del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 37 (1980): 5–7. 4 Alejandro Haber, “Caspinchango, la ruptura metafísica y la cuestión colonial en la arqueología sudamericana: el caso del noroeste argentino,” Revista do Museu da Arqueologia e Etnologia 3 (1999): 129–141. 5 Alejandro Haber, “Supuestos teórico-metodológicos de la etapa formativa de la arqueología de Catamarca (1875–1900),” Publicaciones Arqueología 47 (1994): 31–54. 6 Carlos Flores and Félix Acuto, “Pueblos originarios y arqueología argentina. Construyendo un diálogo intercultural y reconstruyendo la arqueología,” Intersecciones en Antropología 16 (2014): 179–194; Claudia Aranda, “‘Los huesos hablan lo que la historia calla … ’. Una mirada a los estudios de cuerpos humanos desde la bioarqueología,” in El regreso de los ancestros. Movimientos indígenas de repatriación y redignificación de los cuerpos, ed. Jacinta Arthur and Patricia Ayala (Servicio Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural, 2020). 7 Mostny, “Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 1830–1980,” 5–7. 8 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Londres: Verso, 1991); Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991); Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Nueva York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Gabriela Urizar, “Estado y Museos Nacionales en Chile Durante el Siglo XIX. Representación de una Nación en Construcción,” Boletín Americanista (Barcelona), año LXII 2, no. 65 (2012): 211–229. 9 Hans Gundermann and Hector González, “Sociedades indígenas y conocimiento antropológico: Aymarás y Atacameños de los siglos XIX y XX,” Chungará (Arica) 41, no. 1 (2009): 113–164; José Bengoa, “The Route of Anthropology in Chile,” Revista Antropologías del Sur 1 (2014): 15–42. 10 Rodrigo Retamal, Aryel Pacheco, and Mauricio Uribe, “Bioarchaeology in Chile: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Want to Go,” in Archaeological Human Remains: Legacies of Imperialism, Communism and Colonialism, ed. Barra O’Donnabhain and Maria-Cecilia Lozada (New York: Springer, 2018). 11 Ricardo Latcham, La alfarería Indígena Chilena (Santiago: Universo, 1928); Grete Mostny, “Ricardo Latcham, su vida y su obra,” Boletín del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 30 (1939): 9–32; Mario Orellana, Historia de la Arqueología en Chile (Santiago de Chile: Bravo y Allende Editores, 1996); Hannes Erhadt, “Max Uhle en Chile (1912–1919). Sus aportes pioneros al estudio del Precerámico costeño,” Indiana 15 (1998): 107–138; José Antonio González, “Latcham, un científico social: desde las observaciones etnográficas de la sociedad hasta la arqueología de las culturas originarias chilenas,” Alpha 38 (2014): 67–88. 12 Aranda, “Los huesos hablan lo que la historia calla”; Retamal et al., “Bioarchaeology in Chile: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Want to Go.” 13 Ricardo Latcham, “Notes on Chilian Anthropology,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 33 (1903): 167–178; Mostny, “Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 1830–1980,” 5–7. 14 Latcham, “Notes on Chilian Anthropology,” 167–178; Ricardo Latcham, “Notes on the Physical Characteristics of the Araucanos,” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 34 (1904): 170–180; Ricardo Latcham, Los Changos de las costas de Chile (Santiago: Imprenta Cervantes, 1910); Ricardo Latcham, Arqueología de la Región Atacameña (Santiago: Prensas de la Universidad de Chile, 1938). 15 Carlos Henckel, “Estudios de cráneos de San Pedro de Atacama y observaciones acerca de la deformación craneana,” Boletín de la Sociedad de Biología Concepción 39 (1966a): 33–48; Carlos Henckel, “Cráneos de San Pedro de Atacama,” Sevilla: 36º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas 2 (1966b): 339–350; Carlos Larraín, Gustavo Le Paige, and R. Larraín Del Campo, “Protocolos craneométricos. Contexto y estudio anatómico de 27 cráneos de la Colección del Museo Arqueológico de San Pedro de Atacama,” Anales de la Universidad del Norte 1 (1961): 49–110; R. Larraín del Campo, “Estudios craneométricos de la colección del Museo Arqueológico de San Pedro de Atacama,” Anales de la Universidad del Norte 1

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16

17 18

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(1961): 12–35; Juan Munizaga, “Estudio sobre cráneos de paredes gruesas,” Antropología Física Chilena 1 (1960): 21–61; Juan Munizaga, “Deformación cefálica intencional. Análisis de algunas poblaciones precolombinas en el Norte de Chile,” Revista de Antropología 2 (1964a): 5–17; Retamal et al., “Bioarchaeology in Chile: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Want to Go.” Juan Munizaga, “Comparaciones de poblaciones precolombinas del norte de Chile,” Antropología 2 (1964b): 87–95; Juan Munizaga, “Skeletal Remains from Sites of Valdivia and Machalilla Phases,” Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 1 (1965): 219–234; Juan Munizaga, “Restos Óseos de Poblaciones Precolombinas Precerámicas de la Costa de la Provincia de Coquimbo, Chile,” Revista Universitaria (Universidad Católica del Norte) II (1966): 50–51; Juan Munizaga, Deformación craneana intencional en San Pedro de Atacama (La Serena: Actas del V Congreso Nacional de Arqueologia, 1969); Juan Munizaga, “Paleopatología chilena (Informe Preliminar),” Antropología (Nueva Epoca) 1 (1974a): 35–39; Juan Munizaga, “Deformación Craneal y Momificación en Chile,” Anales de Antropología México XI (1974b): 329–336; Juan Munizaga, “Intentional Cranial Deformation in the Pre-Columbian Populations of Ecuador,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 45, no. 3 (1976a): 687–694; Juan Munizaga, “Paleoindio en Sudamérica. Restos óseos humanos de las cuevas de Palli Aike y Cerro Sota, Provincia de Magallanes, Chile,” In Homenaje al Doctor Gustavo Le Paige, ed. S.J. Antofagasta (Chile: Universidad del Norte, 1976b); Juan Munizaga, Cementerios Tiahuanacos de Pisagua. Colección Max Uhle (Talca: Actas del VII Congreso Chileno de Arqueologia, 1977); Juan Munizaga, “Deformación craneana en América,” Revista Chilena de Antropología 6 (1987): 113–147; Marvin J. Allison, Lawrence Lindberg, Calogero Santoro, and Guillermo Focacci, “Tatuajes y pintura corporal de los indígenas precolombinos de Perú y Chile,” Chungará (Arica) 7 (1981a): 218–236; Marvin J. Allison, Enrique Gerszten, Juan Munizaga, and Calogero Santoro, “La práctica de la deformación craneana entre los pueblos andinos precolombinos,” Chungará (Arica) 7 (1981b): 238–260; Juan Munizaga, Marvin J. Allison, and Enrique J. Gerszten, “Pneumoconiosis in Chilean Miners of the 16th Century,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 51 (1975): 1281–1293; Juan Munizaga, Marvin J. Allison, and Eugenio Aspillaga, “Diaphragmatic Hernia Associated with Strangulation of the Small Bowel in an Atacamena Mummy,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 48, no. 1 (1978a): 17–19; Juan Munizaga, Marvin J. Allison, and Claudio Paredes, “Cholelithiasis and Cholecystitis in Precolumbian Chileans,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 48, no. 2 (1978b): 209–212; Bente Bittman and Juan Munizaga, “Evolución de las poblaciones pre­ colombinas en la costa del Norte de Chile,” Chungará (Arica) 13 (1984): 129–142; Jorge Kaltwasser, Alberto Medina, and Juan Munizaga, “Cementerio del Período Arcaico en Cuchipuy,” Revista Chilena de Antropología 3 (1980): 109–123. Eugenio Aspillaga, “In Memorian: Juan Munizaga Villavicencio (1934–1996),” Revista Chilena de Antropologia 13 (1995): 11–12. Silvia Quevedo, “Estudio de un cementerio prehistórico; exploración de sus potenciali­ dades demográficas y socio culturales,” (BA Thesis, Universidad de Chile, 1976); Silvia Quevedo, “Punta Teatinos: Biologia de una Población Arcaica del Norte Semiárido Chileno,” (PhD Thesis, University of Buenos Aires, 1998); Silvia Quevedo, “Patrones de actividad a través de las patologías en población arcaica de Punta Teatinos, norte semiárido chileno,” Chungará 32 (2000): 11–21; Silva Quevedo, José Cocilovo, Maria Antonieta Costa-Junqueira, Hector Varela, and Silvia Valdano, “Perfil paleodemográfico de Punta de Teatinos, una población de pescadores arcaicos del Norte Semiárido de Chile,” Boletín del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 49 (2000): 237–256; Patrice Horne and Silvia Quevedo, “The Prince of El Plomo. A Paleopathological Study,” Bulletin of the New York Academic of Medicine 60, no. 9 (1984): 925–931; Silvia Quevedo and Eliana Durán, “Ofrenda a los dioses en las montañas: Santuario de Altura en la cultura Inca,” Boletín del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 43 (1993): 193–206. Marvin J. Allison, Daniel Mendoza, and Alejandro Pezzia, “Documentation of a Case of Tuberculosis in Pre-Columbian America,” The American Review of Respiratory Disease 107,

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20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34

no. 6 (1973): 985–991, doi: 10.1164/arrd.1973.107.6.985; Marvin J. Allison, Alejandro Pezzia, Ichiro Hasegawa, and Enrique Gerszten, “A Case of Hookworm Infestation in a Pre-columbian American,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 41 (1974): 103–106; Marvin J. Allison, Ali A. Hossaini, Juan Munizaga, and Rosa Fung, “ABO Blood Groups in Chilean and Peruvian Mummies. II. Results of Agglutination-Inhibition Technique,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 49, no. 1 (1978): 139–142; Allison et al., “Tatuajes y pintura corporal de los indígenas precolombinos de Perú y Chile,” 218–236; Allison et al., “La práctica de la deformación craneana entre los pueblos andinos precolombinos,” 238–260; Marvin J. Allison, Guillermo Focacci, Enrique Gerszten, Monique Fouant, and Marilyn Cebelin, “La sífilis ¿una enfermedad americana?,” Chungará (Arica) 9 (1982): 275–283; Marvin J. Allison, Guillermo Focacci, Bernardo T. Arriaza, Vivien G. Standen, Mario Rivera, and Jerold M. Lowestein, “Momias Chinchorro de preparación complicada: métodos de momificación,” Chungará (Arica) 13 (1984): 155–174; Bernardo T. Arriaza, Vivien G. Standen, Calogero M. Santoro, and Jorge Hidalgo, “De Richmond a Arica: En Memoria de Marvin Jerome Allison,” Chungará (Arica) 47 (2015): 543–547. Retamal et al., “Bioarchaeology in Chile: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Want to Go.” Vivien G. Standen, Bernardo T. Arriaza, Calogero M. Santoro and Iván Muñoz, “El in­ novativo legado de Arthur Aufderheide a la paleopatología,” Chungará (Arica) 46, no. 1 (2014): 3–9. Retamal et al., “Bioarchaeology in Chile: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Want to Go.” Arthur Lorentz E. Aufderheide, Wittmers, Jr., and Bernardo T. Arriaza, “Pneumonia in Antiquity: A Comparison Between Two Preantibiotic Population Samples from Northern Chile and the United States,” Chungará (Arica) 40, no. 2 (2008): 173–180. https://www.monumentos.gob.cl/sites/default/files/ley_2019_web.pdf Victoria Castro and Patricio Núñez, “Mesa de la generación de los ’70,” Boletín de la Sociedad Chilena de Arqueología Número Especial (1995): 13–27. Retamal et al., “Bioarchaeology in Chile: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Want to Go”; Aranda, “Los huesos hablan lo que la historia calla.” Patricia Ayala, “Relaciones entre atacameños, arqueólogos y Estado en Atacama (norte de Chile),” Estudios atacameños 33 (2007): 133–157. Ayala, “Relaciones entre atacameños, arqueólogos y Estado en Atacama (norte de Chile),” 133–157. Bengoa, “The Route of Anthropology in Chile,” 15–42. Jane Buikstra and Lane Beck, Bioarchaeology. The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains (Nueva York: Elsevier Press, 2006). Victoria Castro, Etnoarqueologías Andinas (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2016). Patricia Ayala, “Las relaciones con el otro indígena en la arqueología atacameña,” in Puentes hacia el pasado: reflexiones teóricas en arqueología, ed. Donald Jackson, Diego Salazar, and Andrés Troncoso, 35–58. Serie monográfica de la Sociedad Chilena de Arqueología 1, 2008; Aranda, “Los huesos hablan lo que la historia calla.” Ian Hodder, Interpretación en Arqueología (Barcelona: Crítica, 1994); Christine Van Pool and Todd Van Pool, “The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism,” American Antiquity 64, no. 1 (1999): 33–53, doi: 10.2307/2694344. Patricia Ayala, “Cementerio de los Abuelos de Caspana, una forma de hacer arqueología o un problema de ética arqueológica,” Boletín de la Sociedad Chilena de Arqueología 27 (1999): 28–32; María Luz Endere and Patricia Ayala, “Normativa legal, recaudos éticos y práctica arqueológica: un estudio comparativo de Argentina y Chile,” Chungará (Arica) 44, no. 1 (2012): 39–57; Katherine Westfall, “¿Sólo indio muerto es indio bueno? Arqueólogos, pehuenches y Ralco,” Boletín de la Sociedad Chilena de Arqueología 26 (1998): 35.

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Verónica Silva-Pinto et al. 35 Ayala, “Relaciones entre atacameños, arqueólogos y Estado en Atacama (norte de Chile),” 133–157; Ayala, “Las relaciones con el otro indígena en la arqueología atacameña,” 35–58; Luis E. Cornejo, “Elementos para una reflexión sobre patrimonio arqueológico indígena y legislación en Chile: la mirada de un arqueólogo,” in Pueblos indígenas y arqueología en América Latina, ed. Cristobal Gnecco and Patricia Ayala (Bogotá: Fundación de Investigaciones Arqueológicas Nacionales Banco de la República, CESO, Facultad de ciencias sociales, Universidad de los Andes, 2009); Endere and Ayala, “Normativa legal, recaudos éticos y práctica arqueológica,” 39–57; Andrés Troncoso, Diego Salazar, and Donald Jackson, “Hacia una retrospectiva de la teoría arqueológica en Chile: ¿Qué somos?, ¿de dónde venimos?, ¿A dónde vamos?” in Puentes hacia el pasado: reflexiones teóricas en arqueología, ed. Donald Jackson, Diego Salazar, and Andrés Troncoso, 217–243. Serie monográfica de la Sociedad Chilena de Arqueología 1, 2008. 36 Violeta Abarca-Labra, Maria José Herrera-Soto, Nicole Fuenzalida-Bahamondes, and Valeria Sepúlveda-Castro, “Cuerpos humanos de origen arqueológico: extractivismo y crisis de los depósitos en Chile, el caso del MHAQ,” Anales de Arqueología y Etnología 73, no. 2 (2018): 221–249; Constanza Silva, Constanza de la Fuente, Tomás González, Maanasa Raghavan, Ayelen Tonko-Huenucoy, Felipe Martinez, and Nicolás Montalva, “The Articulation of Genomics, Mestizaje, and Indigenous Identities in Chile: A Case Study of the Social Implications of Genomic Research in Light of Current Research Practices,” Frontiers in Genetics 13 (2022): 817318. 37 https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/museum-definition/ 38 Silva et al., “The Articulation of Genomics, Mestizaje, and Indigenous Identities in Chile,” 817318. 39 Derek C. Harwood-Nash, “Computed Tomography of ancient Egyptian Mummies,” Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography 3, no. 6 (1979): 768–773; Lara Cramer, Anke Brix, Ekaterina Matin, Frank Rühli, and Kais Hussein, “Computed Tomography–Detected Paleopathologies in Ancient Egyptian Mummies,” Current Problems in Diagnostic Radiology 47, no. 4 (2018): 225–232; M. Linda Sutherland, “Use of Computed Tomography Scanning in a “Virtual” Bioarchaeology of Care Analysis of a Central Coast Peruvian Mummy Bundle,” International Journal of Paleopathology 25 (2019): 129–138; Sahar N. Saleem and Zahi Hawass, “Computed Tomography Study of the Mummy of King Seqenenre Taa II: New Insights into His Violent Death,” Frontiers in Medicine 8 (2021): 637527; Anna-Maria Begerock, Robert Loynes, Oliver K. Peschel, John Verano, Raffaella Bianucci, Isabel Martinez, Mercedes González, and Andreas G. Nerlich, “Trauma of Bone and Soft Tissues in South American Mummies—new Cases Provide Further Insight into Violence and Lethal Outcome,” Frontiers in Medicine 9 (2022): 962793, doi: 10.3389/fmed.2022.962793. 40 https://www.nibib.nih.gov/sites/default/files/CT%20Fact%20Sheet%20508.pdf 41 Francisco Javier Olías, “Segmentación en 3D de huesos en imágenes TAC,” in Tesis de Pregrado (Universidad de Sevilla, 2014). 42 Alice DeAraujo, Archana Vasanthakumar, Marcela Sepulveda, Vivien G. Standen, Bernardo T. Arriaza, and Ralph Mitchell, “Investigation of the Recent Microbial Degradation of the Skin of the Chinchorro Mummies of Ancient Chile,” Journal of Cultural Heritage 22 (2016): 999–1005. 43 María Luz Endere, “Restitution Policies in Argentina: The Role of the State, Indigenous Peoples, Museums, and Researchers,” in The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation. Return, Reconcile, Renew, ed. Cressida Fforde, C. Timothy McKeown, and Honor Keeler (Nueva York: Springer, 2020).

Bibliography Abarca-Labra, Violeta, Maria José Herrera-Soto, Nicole Fuenzalida-Bahamondes, and Valeria Sepúlveda-Castro. “Cuerpos humanos de origen arqueológico: extractivismo y crisis de los depósitos en Chile, el caso del MHAQ.” Anales de Arqueología y Etnología 73, no. 2 (2018): 221–249.

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The Use of CT Scan for the Construction of Mummy Replicas Allison, Marvin J., Daniel Mendoza, and Alejandro Pezzia. “Documentation of a Case of Tuberculosis in Pre-Columbian America.” The American Review of Respiratory Disease 107, no. 6 (1973): 985–991. doi: 10.1164/arrd.1973.107.6.985. Allison, Marvin J., Alejandro Pezzia, Ichiro Hasegawa, and Enrique Gerszten. “A Case of Hookworm Infestation in a Pre-columbian American.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 41 (1974): 103–106. Allison, Marvin J., Ali A. Hossaini, Juan Munizaga, and Rosa Fung. “ABO Blood Groups in Chilean and Peruvian Mummies. II. Results of Agglutination-Inhibition Technique.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 49, no. 1 (1978): 139–142. Allison, Marvin J., Lawrence Lindberg, Calogero Santoro, and Guillermo Focacci. “Tatuajes y pintura corporal de los indígenas precolombinos de Perú y Chile.” Chungará (Arica) 7 (1981a): 218–236. Allison, Marvin J., Enrique Gerszten, Juan Munizaga, and Calogero Santoro. “La práctica de la deformación craneana entre los pueblos andinos precolombinos.” Chungará (Arica) 7 (1981b): 238–260. Allison, Marvin J., Guillermo Focacci, Enrique Gerszten, Monique Fouant, and Marilyn Cebelin. “La sífilis ¿una enfermedad americana?.” Chungará (Arica) 9 (1982): 275–283. Allison, Marvin J., Guillermo Focacci, Bernardo T. Arriaza, Vivien G. Standen, Mario Rivera, and Jerold M. Lowestein. “Momias Chinchorro de preparación complicada: métodos de momificación.” Chungará (Arica) 13 (1984): 155–174. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Londres: Verso, 1991. Aranda, Claudia. “‘Los huesos hablan lo que la historia calla … ’. Una mirada a los estudios de cuerpos humanos desde la bioarqueología.” In El regreso de los ancestros. Movimientos indígenas de repatriación y redignificación de los cuerpos, edited by Jacinta Arthur and Patricia Ayala. Servicio Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural, 2020. Arriaza, Bernardo T., Vivien G. Standen, Calogero M. Santoro, and Jorge Hidalgo. “De Richmond a Arica: En Memoria de Marvin Jerome Allison.” Chungará (Arica) 47 (2015): 543–547. Aspillaga, Eugenio. “In Memorian: Juan Munizaga Villavicencio (1934–1996).” Revista Chilena de Antropologia 13 (1995): 11–12. Aufderheide, Arthur Lorentz E. Wittmers, Jr. and Bernardo T. Arriaza. “Pneumonia in Antiquity: A Comparison Between Two Preantibiotic Population Samples from Northern Chile and the United States.” Chungará (Arica) 40, no. 2 (2008): 173–180. Ayala, Patricia. “Cementerio de los Abuelos de Caspana, una forma de hacer arqueología o un problema de ética arqueológica.” Boletín de la Sociedad Chilena de Arqueología 27 (1999): 28–32. Ayala, Patricia. “Relaciones entre atacameños, arqueólogos y Estado en Atacama (norte de Chile).” Estudios atacameños 33 (2007): 133–157. Ayala, Patricia. “Las relaciones con el otro indígena en la arqueología atacameña.” In Puentes hacia el pasado: reflexiones teóricas en arqueología, edited by Donald Jackson, Diego Salazar, and Andrés Troncoso, 35–58. Serie monográfica de la Sociedad Chilena de Arqueología 1, 2008. Begerock, Anna-Maria, Robert Loynes, Oliver K. Peschel, John Verano, Raffaella Bianucci, Isabel Martinez, Mercedes González, and Andreas G. Nerlich. “Trauma of Bone and Soft Tissues in South American Mummies—New Cases Provide Further Insight into Violence and Lethal Outcome.” Frontiers in Medicine 9 (2022): 962793. doi: 10.3389/ fmed.2022.962793. Bengoa, José. “The Route of Anthropology in Chile.” Revista Antropologías del Sur 1 (2014): 15–42. Bittman, Bente and Juan Munizaga. “Evolución de las poblaciones precolombinas en la costa del Norte de Chile.” Chungará (Arica) 13 (1984): 129–142.

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Verónica Silva-Pinto et al. Buikstra, Jane and Lane Beck. Bioarchaeology. The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains. Nueva York: Elsevier Press, 2006. Castro, Victoria. Etnoarqueologías Andinas. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2016. Cornejo, Luis E. “Elementos para una reflexión sobre patrimonio arqueológico indígena y legislación en Chile: la mirada de un arqueólogo.” In Pueblos indígenas y arqueología en América Latina, edited by Cristobal Gnecco and Patricia Ayala. Bogotá: Fundación de Investigaciones Arqueológicas Nacionales Banco de la República, CESO, Facultad de ciencias sociales, Universidad de los Andes, 2009. Cramer, Lara, Anke Brix, Ekaterina Matin, Frank Rühli, and Kais Hussein. “Computed Tomography–Detected Paleopathologies in Ancient Egyptian Mummies.” Current Problems in Diagnostic Radiology 47, no. 4 (2018): 225–232. DeAraujo, Alice, Archana Vasanthakumar, Marcela Sepulveda, Vivien G. Standen, Bernardo T. Arriaza, and Ralph Mitchell. “Investigation of the Recent Microbial Degradation of the Skin of the Chinchorro Mummies of Ancient Chile.” Journal of Cultural Heritage 22 (2016): 999–1005. Endere, María Luz. “Restitution Policies in Argentina: The Role of the State, Indigenous Peoples, Museums, and Researchers.” In The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation. Return, Reconcile, Renew, edited by Cressida Fforde, C. Timothy McKeown, and Honor Keeler. Nueva York: Springer, 2020. Endere, María Luz and Patricia Ayala. “Normativa legal, recaudos éticos y práctica arqueológica: un estudio comparativo de Argentina y Chile.” Chungará (Arica) 44, no. 1 (2012): 39–57. Erhardt, Hannes. “Max Uhle en Chile (1912–1919). Sus aportes pioneros al estudio del Precerámico costeño.” Indiana 15 (1998): 107–138. Flores, Carlos and Félix Acuto. “Pueblos originarios y arqueología argentina. Construyendo un diálogo intercultural y reconstruyendo la arqueología.” Intersecciones en Antropología 16 (2014): 179–194. González, José Antonio. “Latcham, un científico social: desde las observaciones etnográficas de la sociedad hasta la arqueología de las culturas originarias chilenas.” Alpha 38 (2014): 67–88. Gundermann, Hans and Hector González. “Sociedades indígenas y conocimiento antropológico: Aymarás y Atacameños de los siglos XIX y XX.” Chungará (Arica) 41, no. 1 (2009): 113–164. Haber, Alejandro. “Supuestos teórico-metodológicos de la etapa formativa de la arqueología de Catamarca (1875–1900).” Publicaciones Arqueología 47 (1994): 31–54. Haber, Alejandro. “Caspinchango, la ruptura metafísica y la cuestión colonial en la arqueología sudamericana: el caso del noroeste argentino.” Revista do Museu da Arqueologia e Etnologia 3 (1999): 129–141. Harwood-Nash, Derek C. “Computed Tomography of Ancient Egyptian Mummies.” Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography 3, no. 6 (1979): 768–773. Henckel, Carlos. “Estudios de cráneos de San Pedro de Atacama y observaciones acerca de la deformación craneana.” Boletín de la Sociedad de Biología Concepción 39 (1966a): 33–48. Henckel, Carlos. “Cráneos de San Pedro de Atacama.” Sevilla: 36º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas 2 (1966b): 339–350. Hodder, Ian. Interpretación en Arqueología. Barcelona: Crítica, 1994. Horne, Patrice and Silvia Quevedo. “The Prince of El Plomo. A Paleopathological Study.” Bulletin of the New York Academic of Medicine 60, no. 9 (1984): 925–931. Kaltwasser, Jorge, Alberto Medina, and Juan Munizaga. “Cementerio del Período Arcaico en Cuchipuy.” Revista Chilena de Antropología 3 (1980): 109–123. Larraín, Carlos, Gustavo Le Paige, and R. Larraín Del Campo. “Protocolos craneométricos. Contexto y estudio anatómico de 27 cráneos de la Colección del Museo Arqueológico de San Pedro de Atacama.” Anales de la Universidad del Norte 1 (1961): 49–110.

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The Use of CT Scan for the Construction of Mummy Replicas Larraín del Campo, R. “Estudios craneométricos de la colección del Museo Arqueológico de San Pedro de Atacama.” Anales de la Universidad del Norte 1 (1961): 12–35. Latcham, Ricardo. “Notes on Chilian Anthropology.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 33 (1903): 167–178. Latcham, Ricardo. “Notes on the Physical Characteristics of the Araucanos.” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 34 (1904): 170–180. Latcham, Ricardo. Los Changos de las costas de Chile. Santiago: Imprenta Cervantes, 1910. Latcham, Ricardo. La alfarería Indígena Chilena. Santiago: Universo, 1928. Latcham, Ricardo. Arqueología de la Región Atacameña. Santiago: Prensas de la Universidad de Chile, 1938. Mostny, Grete. “Ricardo Latcham, su vida y su obra.” Boletín del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 30 (1939): 9–32. Mostny, Grete. “Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 1830–1980.” Boletín del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 37 (1980): 5–7. Munizaga, Juan. “Estudio sobre cráneos de paredes gruesas.” Antropología Física Chilena 1 (1960): 21–61. Munizaga, Juan. “Deformación cefálica intencional. Análisis de algunas poblaciones pre­ colombinas en el Norte de Chile.” Revista de Antropología 2 (1964a): 5–17. Munizaga, Juan. “Comparaciones de poblaciones precolombinas del norte de Chile.” Antropología 2 (1964b): 87–95. Munizaga, Juan. “Skeletal Remains from Sites of Valdivia and Machalilla Phases.” Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 1 (1965): 219–234. Munizaga, Juan. “Restos Óseos de Poblaciones Precolombinas Precerámicas de la Costa de la Provincia de Coquimbo, Chile.” Revista Universitaria (Universidad Católica del Norte) II (1966): 50–51. Munizaga, Juan. Deformación craneana intencional en San Pedro de Atacama. La Serena: Actas del V Congreso Nacional de Arqueologia, 1969. Munizaga, Juan. “Paleopatología chilena (Informe Preliminar).” Antropología (Nueva Epoca) 1 (1974a): 35–39. Munizaga, Juan. “Deformación Craneal y Momificación en Chile.” Anales de Antropología México XI (1974b): 329–336. Munizaga, Juan. “Intentional Cranial Deformation in the Pre-Columbian Populations of Ecuador.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 45, no. 3 (1976a): 687–694. Munizaga, Juan. “Paleoindio en Sudamérica. Restos óseos humanos de las cuevas de Palli Aike y Cerro Sota, Provincia de Magallanes, Chile.” In Homenaje al Doctor Gustavo Le Paige, S.J. Antofagasta, Chile: Universidad del Norte, 1976b. Munizaga, Juan. Cementerios Tiahuanacos de Pisagua. Colección Max Uhle. Talca: Actas del VII Congreso Chileno de Arqueologia, 1977. Munizaga, Juan. “Deformación craneana en América.” Revista Chilena de Antropología 6 (1987): 113–147. Munizaga, Juan, Marvin J. Allison, and Enrique J. Gerszten. “Pneumoconiosis in Chilean Miners of the 16th Century.” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 51 (1975): 1281–1293. Munizaga, Juan, Marvin J. Allison, and Eugenio Aspillaga. “Diaphragmatic Hernia Associated with Strangulation of the Small Bowel in an Atacamena Mummy.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 48, no. 1 (1978a): 17–19. Munizaga, Juan, Marvin J. Allison, and Claudio Paredes. “Cholelithiasis and Cholecystitis in Precolumbian Chileans.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 48, no. 2 (1978b): 209–212. Olías, Francisco Javier. “Segmentación en 3D de huesos en imágenes TAC.” Tesis de Pregrado, Universidad de Sevilla, 2014. Orellana, Mario. Historia de la Arqueología en Chile. Santiago de Chile: Bravo y Allende Editores, 1996.

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Verónica Silva-Pinto et al. Quevedo, Silvia. “Estudio de un cementerio prehistórico; exploración de sus potencialidades demográficas y socio culturales.” BA Thesis, Universidad de Chile, 1976. Quevedo, Silvia. “Punta Teatinos: Biologia de una Población Arcaica del Norte Semiárido Chileno.” PhD Thesis, University of Buenos Aires, 1998. Quevedo, Silvia. “Patrones de actividad a través de las patologías en población arcaica de Punta Teatinos, norte semiárido chileno.” Chungará 32 (2000): 11–21. Quevedo, Silvia and Eliana Durán. “Ofrenda a los dioses en las montañas: Santuario de Altura en la cultura Inca.” Boletín del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural 43 (1993): 193–206. Quevedo, Silva, José Cocilovo, Maria Antonieta Costa-Junqueira, Hector Varela, and Silvia Valdano. “Perfil paleodemográfico de Punta de Teatinos, una población de pescadores arcaicos del Norte Semiárido de Chile.” Boletín del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, 49 (2000): 237–256. Retamal, Rodrigo, Aryel Pacheco, and Mauricio Uribe. “Bioarchaeology in Chile: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Want to Go.” In Archaeological Human Remains: Legacies of Imperialism, Communism and Colonialism, edited by Barra O’Donnabhain and MariaCecilia Lozada. New York: Springer, 2018. Saleem, Sahar. N. and Zahi Hawass. “Computed Tomography Study of the Mummy of King Seqenenre Taa II: New Insights into His Violent Death.” Frontiers in Medicine 8 (2021): 637527. Silva, Constanza, Constanza de la Fuente, Tomás González, Maanasa Raghavan, Ayelen Tonko-Huenucoy, Felipe Martinez, and Nicolás Montalva. “The Articulation of Genomics, Mestizaje, and Indigenous Identities in Chile: A Case Study of the Social Implications of Genomic Research in Light of Current Research Practices.” Frontiers in Genetics 13 (2022): 817318. Smith, Anthony D. National Identity. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991. Smith, Anthony D. Myths and Memories of the Nation. Nueva York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Standen, Vivien G., Bernardo T. Arriaza, Calogero M. Santoro, and Iván Muñoz. “El innovativo legado de Arthur Aufderheide a la paleopatología.” Chungará (Arica) 46, 1 (2014): 3–9. Sutherland, M. Linda. “Use of Computed Tomography Scanning in a “Virtual” Bioarchaeology of Care Analysis of a Central Coast Peruvian Mummy Bundle.” International Journal of Paleopathology 25 (2019): 129–138. Troncoso, Andrés, Diego Salazar, and Donald Jackson. “Hacia una retrospectiva de la teoría arqueológica en Chile: ¿Qué somos?, ¿de dónde venimos?, ¿A dónde vamos?.” In Puentes hacia el pasado: reflexiones teóricas en arqueología, edited by Donald Jackson, Diego Salazar, and Andrés Troncoso. Serie monográfica de la Sociedad Chilena de Arqueología 1, 217–243. 2008. Urizar, Gabriela. “Estado y Museos Nacionales en Chile Durante el Siglo XIX. Representación de una Nación en Construcción.” Boletín Americanista (Barcelona), año LXII 2, no. 65 (2012): 211–229. Van Pool, Christine and Todd Van Pool. “The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism.” American Antiquity 64, no. 1 (1999): 33–53. doi: 10.2307/2694344. Westfall, Katherine. “¿Sólo indio muerto es indio bueno? Arqueólogos, pehuenches y Ralco.” Boletín de la Sociedad Chilena de Arqueología 26 (1998): 35.

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PART 7

Concluding Remarks Trish Biers and Katie Stringer Clary

In the beginning of this handbook, we set out our aims and objectives to focus on creating a more robust understanding of how death was presented in museum and heritage spaces that we referred to as deathscapes. The nexus for this understanding were human remains, whether present on display, or absent but commemorated. Our themes for the handbook examined critical issues such as preservation of the past, remembrance and cultural memory, and the dismantling of traditional narratives about past peoples and displacement or disappearance. Throughout the six parts of this volume, the reader is presented with theoretical, practical, and emotional reflection from the contributors based on their daily employment, research, and scholarly activities. Engagement with death is at the core of all these writings but through very unique points of view. Any intersection in content or discussion reveals an organic overlap among the museum and heritage fields that has produced a connected community of members across various disciplines. These chapters provided insight into the inner workings of museums, galleries, cemeteries, memorial sites, sacred spaces, graveyards, catacombs, crypts, archives, and even virtual death spaces. Contributors navigated matters involving identity, decolonisation, restitution, political propaganda, tourism, trauma, ritual, grief, and pop culture. The first part of the handbook raised the complex curatorial issues involved in management of the dead in museums and catacombs today. How human remains and their material culture were acquired for collections stems from the often-difficult histories of exploitation and scientific racism (see Stringer Clary and Biers in this volume). Practical ways of ensuring the integrity of remains in collections is through careful conservation and curation. The dichotomy of caring for the dead and maintaining respect, while trying to steer away from the perception that they are objects, was a common theme throughout this volume (see Irving, Bekvalac, Squires and Piombino-Mascali in this volume). This book bridges these issues together through local specialists that focused on respecting ancestral body-preserving traditions in order to produce national policies (see Lombardi et al. in this volume). DOI: 10.4324/9781003195870-42

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The debate over whether human remains should be on display has been one of the most significant issues that museums have tried to address in recent years.1 Since the inception of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990 in the United States, the display of human remains has lessened overall with some exceptions such as Egyptian mummies and medical collections. While NAGPRA legislation was not actionable in other countries, it was the catalyst for critical discussion about the ethics of such collections more broadly. Part 2 introduced the reader to other examples of where displaying the dead is seen as a continuation of harm on descendant communities (see Donlon and Gill in this volume) as well as political subjects to promote tourism (see Lacayo in this volume). The decision to show human remains has brought about a change of thinking on such topics as diversity in the past particularly if scientific research has been conducted, strengthening the storyline to dismantle old stereotypes (see Redfern and Booth in this volume). These concepts are addressed in understanding the ongoing legacies of events such as the Civil Rights Movement as Woodley (this volume) has shown when museums foreground death and loss. Violent or traumatic death through pop culture and historic references has become part of the display lexicon also, with museums displaying imagery of the dead, crime scenes, and fetishised victims (see Price in this volume). The display of memory and meaning of loss as expressed through objects has had a long history in the creation of Memento Mori. Human remains have often been incorporated into pieces so as to keep the dead nearby to the living. More contemporary art, such as paper sculpture, highlights the unique ways to also process and reflect on grief, displaying death in new and innovative ways (see Clary in this volume). Discussions of ownership and direct control in decision-making with regards to heritage have emerged out of collaborative projects involving communities of descent, shifting away from centralised Eurocentric thinking.2 In Part 3, contributors shared a series of examples where the focus was on collections research that was led by community knowledge and museum practice (see Van Broekhoven, Kariwiga, and Abd el-Gawad in this volume). Also investigated was how the identity of the dead can change over time and shape or be shaped by perceptions of the living. The reconstruction of the past can be both controversial in that it can remake an imaginary past (see Doğan, this volume) or it can be restorative when dehumanising practices are stopped (see Barbata in this volume). Equally, conversations about dignity and respect also shared a similar dichotomy due to the difficulty in defining what these mean across cultural, geographic, and professional boundaries (see Numen in this volume). Public mourning and commemoration can be powerful actors in Heritage studies that focus on memorial culture.3 As shown throughout Part 4, warscapes, mass graves, cemeteries and local graveyards, sites of trauma, and pilgrimage destinations connected with the affective relationships to the dead have been the emotional core of these sites (see Viejo-Rose et al. and Mather in this volume). These spaces of remembrance have seen an increase in what is referred to as Dark Tourism4 and faced other challenges such as increased footfall and subsequent conservation issues. However, the transformation of such sites, for example, from historic national necropolis or a graveyard for the outsider to active visitation, has encouraged the examination of posthumous hierarchisations that have directly impacted their 506

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preservation today (see Kucheryavaya and Talbot in this volume). Unfortunately, not all sites of commemoration have a specific presence or place, nor recognition from local authorities, therefore have had to rely on public activism and mobile memorialisation when calling attention to systemic trauma (see Perreault in this volume). The virtual commemorative space has been able to share vital information about victims from trauma for families seeking answers. Virtual Heritage has also afforded those who want to experience the embedded stories preserved at sites, conveying information about local beliefs around death and the mourning process (see Green and Bergeron in this volume). Chapters in Part 5 showed the creative and impactful ways that public engagement has been successful in sites related to death or that have death content as one of its themes. The roles of the professionals at these sites and how they have collaborated with local communities as well as the tourism industry show that death is indeed a subject of interest for many. Cemeteries in particular have seen renewed interest in visitation, thus promoting the improvement of the landscape as well as conservation of the sculptures, statues, and headstones (see Bearden in this volume). Death education at these sites, as well as museums and historic houses, has shown how the public benefits psychologically and emotionally when talking about, for example, end-of-life choices, remembrance, and fear of death or the dead (see Marriot in this volume, also Stringer Clary and Hearnes). Death-themed walking tours, quite popular for certain cities, have been shown to act as a catalyst for the imagination, for recovering hidden and marginalised histories aimed at furthering the general understanding of a place (see Penfould-Mounce in this volume). Libraries and archives have also shown to be incredibly useful as creative places for contemplating mortality, especially on a local level, and most recently due to the COVID-19 pandemic (see Pitsillides et al. in this volume). The handbook concludes in Part 6 with a showcase for death studies and heritage in practice and presents the work of contributors that have tackled particular content or encounters in an impactful way. Challenges faced by those that are stewards, curators, and specialists at sites such as crypts and churches with human remains on display, discuss the curatorial decisions needed to keep access open while maintaining an atmosphere of respect and reflection under high visitor numbers (see Krejčí in this volume, also Csukovits and Forró). Subject-specialist research related to audience engagement and death offers unique insights from first-hand reactions to content. For example, the combination of historical case studies with personal experience when developing meaningful tours about queer identities in the past has revealed the complex relationship among use of language, privacy and legacy, and the lived experience (see Coward in this volume). Research on how young people’s perception of death changed, in this case, by seeing it on display in a museum with medical collections, highlighted the impact such collections have on their understanding of health, illness, and mortality (see Divaker and Kerr in this volume). And finally, the preservation of death and its legacy through the use of 3D replicas shows the reader how crucial new technologies and artistry are for the conservation of the ancient corpse. Through careful construction and detail, replicas of real human remains can elucidate the intimacies of mortuary treatment of the dead without displaying the physical remains at all (Silva-Pinto et al. in this volume). 507

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This volume demonstrated a wide range of examples of the unique and meaningful work occurring at heritage sites, and specifically with human remains who are key actors in the stories shared. In this volume, we, from the collective knowledge shared on these pages, argue for the following: • An ethical community of practice in the treatment, conservation, display, and study of human remains. • An ethical framework in interpretation and practice of death studies information in public history fields, and in other heritage and GLAM fields of practice. • Any such interactions should include authentic collaboration and community engagement to respect all stakeholders, both past and present, living and dead. • There are multiple ways of forming knowledge that are not based on AngloWestern ways of thinking or classification about death and human remains and this needs to be embraced in scholarship and practice. Museums, Heritage, and Death aimed to be a comprehensive and inclusive volume representative of these fields. The editors and contributors worked to make it so, but we recognised there is still work to be done. This is evidenced by the thoughtful commentary of our contributors who acknowledged the sensitive nature of this kind of death work, coupled with the ethical responsibilities associated with preserving human remains and engaging with the living.

Notes 1 2

3 4

Cressida Fforde, C. Timothy McKeown, and Honor Keeler, The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, 2020, https://doi.org/doi.org/10.4324/ 9780203730966. P.S.N.O. Lamptey, “Museums and Skeletons: Prospects and Challenges of Cataloguing, Storing and Preserving Human Remains in the Museum of Archaeology, Ghana,” Ethics, Medicine and Public Health 21 (2022): 100753, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jemep.2022. 100753; Lisa Overholtzer and Juan R. Argueta, “Letting Skeletons Out of the Closet: The Ethics of Displaying Ancient Mexican Human Remains,” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2017.1390486. Mattias Frihammar and Helaine Silverman, Heritage of Death: Landscapes of Emotion, Memory and Practice, 2017, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315440200. A.V. Seaton, “Guided by the Dark: From Thanatopsis to Thanatourism,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 2, no. 4 (1996): 234–244, https://doi.org/10.1080/1352725 9608722178.

Bibliography Fforde, Cressida, McKeown, Timothy, and Keeler, Honor, eds. The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew, 2020. doi: 10.4324/9780203730966. Frihammar, Mattias and Helaine Silverman. Heritage of Death: Landscapes of Emotion, Memory and Practice, 2017. doi: 10.4324/9781315440200. Lamptey, P.S.N.O. “Museums and Skeletons: Prospects and Challenges of Cataloguing, Storing and Preserving Human Remains in the Museum of Archaeology, Ghana.” Ethics, Medicine and Public Health 21 (2022): 100753. doi: 10.1016/j.jemep.2022.100753.

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Concluding Remarks Overholtzer, Lisa and Juan R. Argueta. “Letting Skeletons Out of the Closet: The Ethics of Displaying Ancient Mexican Human Remains.” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2017. doi: 10.1080/13527258.2017.1390486. Seaton, A.V. “Guided by the Dark: From Thanatopsis to Thanatourism.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 2, no. 4 (1996): 234–244. doi: 10.1080/13527259608722178.

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INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” refer to notes; and page numbers in Bold refer to tables; and page numbers in italics refer to figures Abd el-Gawad, Heba 5 Abel, Sarah 141n48 Acacho, Jefferson 210, 214–217, 220 Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) pandemic 153 Acuto, Félix 497n6 Adamchak, Donald J. 314n6 Adams, Shaun 188n55 African heritage 136 afterlife 21, 259, 265, 268, 390, 392, 393, 398, 399n12, 399n16, 400n17, 411 Agamben, Giorgio 395, 400n23 Agugiaro, Giorgio 345n17 Aichel, Jan Blažej Santini 434–436 Alam, Shafik 255n53 Alba-Lois, L. 35n17 Alberti, Samuel 26, 34n1, 88n13, 88n18, 253n8 Albert, Prince 158 Aldrighetti, Fatima 350 Aleman, Marcela 352 Alexander, Mary 481n12 Al-Kashef, Muhammed 253n17 Allen, Jim 179, 185n2 Alleyne, Richard 289n58 Allison, Marvin J. 488, 498n19 Alonso Pajuelo, P. 115n31 Alvey, Emily R. 404, 413n9 Aly, Mostafa 255n61 Amazonian indigenous communities 211

American Alliance of Museum 13, 406 American Museum 15, 16 American Museum of Natural History 183 Anatomy Act 26 Anatomy Museum 33, 265 ancestors 14, 65, 71–76, 100, 101, 131, 136, 180, 184, 195, 214, 216, 218, 238, 243, 244, 246, 250, 279, 306, 364, 410, 438, 489, 495, 496 ancestors’ handling, Peru: The Lady of Cao 68, 69; mummy bundles 66; overview 65; post-Contact cactus 67; testimonies from curatorial staff 67–75 Anderson, Benedict 201n16, 254n31, 497n8 Anquix, Laia 219 Anthropologist 19, 83, 96, 98–100, 112, 178, 184, 194, 198, 214, 232, 320, 322, 327, 444, 488 Anti-Lynching Act 128n23 Apsel, Joyce 126, 127n5, 128n10, 128n24 Arce, Susana 5, 72 archaeology/ archaeologists 1, 4, 5, 29, 38, 39, 46, 66, 70, 71, 74, 78, 80, 83, 84, 97–100, 130, 131, 137, 179, 180, 184, 193, 194, 195, 198, 199, 214, 216, 238, 242, 243, 322, 342, 344, 423, 486–488, 489, 490 Archaeological Museum of San Pedro de Atacama 489

568

Index Aridjis, Chloe 163n4 Army Medical Museum 473 Arnold-de-Simine, Silke 127, 128n25 Arnos Vale Cemetery (AVC): arts 381–382; background of 375; cemetery tours 379–380; decline and regeneration 377; engagement with young people 381; living as well as the dead 376–377; organisational structure 378, 378; public engagement 379; public talks 380–381; purpose of garden cemeteries 375 Aronson, Jay D. 14 Arriaza, Bernardo 488, 499n21 Arroyo, Y. R. R. 114n23 Ars Memorandi 448–451 art 1, 4, 12–14, 19, 78–80, 87, 96, 133, 153–155, 157, 159, 165, 180, 311, 329, 336, 350–352, 364, 371, 372, 378, 379, 382, 417, 480, 488, 506 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project 57 Ashmolean Museum 12, 13, 15 Ashmole, Elias 30 Ashworth, Gregory John 200n15, 294 Aspillaga, Eugenio 498n17 Assem, Dalia 255n60 Atakuman, Çiðdem 200n4 Atewologun, Doyin 330, 333n66–n70 Atkinson, Rebecca 255n63 Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane 288n31 Aufderheide, Arthur 488 Auschwitz State Museum (ASM) 294, 295 Australian Museum 99 Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) 191–197, 199 Awad, Faten 254n39 Ayala, Patricia 499n27, 499n32, 499n34 Babiæ, Staša 89n28 Baker, Paul 470n7 Ballard, Sue 138n7 Bankside Open Spaces Trust (BOST) 319, 323–325, 330 Barbata, Laura A. 6, 22n18 Barker, Alex 89n29 Barnum, Phineas T. 12, 15, 16, 22n10 Barras, Colin 143n63 Bartman, Saartjie 17 Barthel, Marie 229 Batty, David 215, 217 Baxter, Katherine 47n3 Bearden, Willy 373n1

Beard, Mary 163n6 Becker, Annette 288n31 Beckett, Ronald G. 61n41, 61n44, 186n24 Beck, Lane 499n30 Bedeaux, D. 35n32 Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin 7n7, 88n11 Bekvalac, Jelena 48n10, 48n11, 48n14 Bell, Charles 33 Bennett, Jane 399n7 Benson, Rebecca 139n22 Bernard, Paul 471n22 Berns, Steph 321 Bett, John 139n24, 140n27 Bienkowski, Piotr 253n8 Biers, Trisha 5, 88n17, 88n21 biological anthropologist 96, 491 Bird, Junius 487 Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI), Alabama 121 Bjaalie, Jan G. 232 the Black Dahlia 169–171 Black Death 153, 158 Black history museums: America’s racial past 127; cost of civil rights 127; postmortem photographs 122 Black Lives Matter movement 7 Black Museum 165 Blount, William 408, 409 Blum, Ferdinand 31 Boag, Zan 89n36 body 1–3, 5, 11, 12, 14, 20, 21, 26–29, 66, 69, 71, 73, 78–84, 95, 97–100, 107–110, 112, 122–124, 126, 155, 156, 166, 168–171, 180, 183, 193, 211, 227, 230–233, 239, 240, 242–244, 248, 250, 260–263, 265, 277, 278, 281, 283, 298, 326, 336, 338, 339, 342, 389, 391, 393, 394, 397, 409, 437, 447, 448, 458, 465, 472, 473, 476, 479, 485–488, 491, 493, 494, 495, 496, 505 The Body Snatchers 397 Body Worlds 20 Bogden, Robert 22n9 Bo, Klaus 89n36 Bondeson, Jan 230, 235n17, 235n18, 235n21 bone 13, 19, 26, 28, 29, 31, 38, 42, 44, 54, 67, 73, 83, 96, 99, 104, 155, 179, 181, 192–195, 218, 259, 260, 262, 265, 267–269, 329, 431, 433–436, 438–440, 448, 474, 493 Booth, Thomas 140n33 Booth, Tom 5

569

Index Bottomley, Jamison S. 400n20 Boyle, Angela 140n33 Boyle, Gail 47n3 Boyle, Robert 28, 30 Bradley, Mamie T. 122, 124 Bradley, Till 128n9 Bravo, Bradymir 5 Bravo, Patricia V. 106 Breede, Deborah C. 400n32 Brendalsmo, Jan 314n4 Brenner, Erich 34n9, 35n15, 35n24 Brickley, Megan 48n8 Brighton Museum 135 Bristol General Cemetery Company (BGCC) 377 British Museum 13, 15, 243, 246 Brock, Fiona 219 Broll, Ryan 172n12 Brompton Cemetery 458–462, 465 Bronte, Charlotte 395 Broom, Douglas 357n10 Brothwell, Don R. 48n9 Brown, Alison 253n27 Brown Goode, G. 19 Bruegel, Pieter 153 Bucher, Francois 76n12 Buckham, Susan 314n3 Buckland, Francis T. 228 Buettner, Elizabeth 315n9 Buikstra, Jane 499n30 Buitrón, Rubén 5, 67–70 Bull, Peter 139n14 Bulmer, Susan 179 Bunge, J.A. 414n28 burial 2, 19, 21, 45, 66, 69, 70, 76, 79, 80, 81, 83, 86, 87, 96, 98–100, 104, 105, 108, 109, 120, 131, 133, 181, 194, 231–233, 244, 259, 260, 265, 269, 278, 281–284, 306–314, 318–323, 328, 330, 339, 365, 366, 371, 372, 375–379, 382, 384, 395, 408, 421, 425, 433, 435, 444, 445, 447, 448, 450, 452, 457, 462, 466, 486, 488 Burke, William 34n3 Burkholder, Thomas R. 128n20 Burns, Sarah 403, 413n4 Bushell, Jo 382 Butler, Judith 348, 351, 353, 357n2, 357n19, 357n20 Butlerov, Aleksandr 31 Byrne, Charles 17, 397 Cabinets of Curiosities 12, 15, 21, 485

Caffell, Anwen C. 48n15 Cairo Museum 242 Callaway, Ewen 203n53 Calvert, Lorenda 482n24 Camousseight, Ariel 496n2 Campbell, Reau 105, 114n6 Campbell’s Complete Guide and Descriptive Book of Mexico 105 Candille, Sophie I. 142n55 Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily: dark exhibition 52; mummification period 51; mummification rite 51; nineteenth century mummy CT scan 56; preservation and curation 53–55; scientific investigations 55–57 Caputi, Jane 166, 172n13 Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh 13 Carpineti, Alfredo 470n12 Carr, Christopher 88n12 Carruthers, William 255n55 Cassman, Vicki 48n17 Castillo, Silvia 352 Castro, Sergio A. 496n2 Castro, Victoria 499n25, 499n31 Catacomb 4–6, 51–58, 260, 505 Çataloluk, Osman 203n56 Caudwell, Catherine 399n8 Cave Hill Cemetery 372 Cemetery: Arnos Vale Cemetery 375, 376, 377; Bristol General Cemetery Company (BGCC) 377; Brompton Cemetery 458–462, 465; Cave Hill Cemetery 372; Cemetery Cinema 369; Elmwood Cemetery 363, 365, 369, 370, 371, 373; Glasnevin Cemetery 379; Green-Wood Cemetery 372; Highgate Cemetery 379; Hollywood Forever Cemetery 369, 372; Municipal Cemetery 109; Novodevichy Cemetery 307, 308, 310–314, 313; Oak Hill Cemetery 423; Oakland Cemetery 372; Tower Hamlets Cemetery 457, 465–466; Woodlands Cemetery 372 Cemetery Cinema 369 Cemetery Tours 379–380 Centre for Human Bioarcheology (CHB), MoL 39–41 Chalmers, James 181, 187n30 Champion, Timothy 201n19 Chapel, Loretto 445

570

Index Chapman, Malcolm J. 253n8 charamusca 110 Charles, Kathy 172n4 Charleston Museum 19, 23n32 Chekhov, Anton 312 Chester, Henry 181 Chevalier Jackson Swallowed Objects Collection 474 Chidester, David 172n21 Cholera Burial Ground plaque 421, 422 Church 38, 51, 74, 120, 121, 123–125, 230, 231, 233, 244, 260, 282, 294, 308, 309, 311, 319, 320, 364, 431–435, 437, 438–445, 452, 467, 468 Church and the ossuary 432; future aspects 441; history of 432–435; lower chapel 437; overview of 431–432; photography ban 440; skeletons and decorations 435–437; tourism at Sedlec ossuary 437–439 Chu, Hsiao-Yun 399n11 Cisneros, S. 115n33 Clary, Charles 5, 153, 157, 160–162 Clary, Katie 23n33, 405 Clegg, Frances 315n8 Clough, Sharon 61n42 Coates, Marcus 382 Cobo, Bernabe 76n1 Cockburn, Aidan 76n2 Coffee, Kevin 481n9–n11 collection: anthropological 70, 73; archaeological 38, 45; Camarones-14 491; Chamber of Horrors 229; Charles Bell’s 33; Chevalier Jackson Swallowed Objects 474; Chinchorro Max Uhle 489, 491; Complejo Arqueológico El Brujo (CAEB) 67; death in museums 78–87; human remains 4, 11, 26, 39, 41, 45, 192, 199, 218, 269; Hyrtl Skull 266, 473, 480; museum 4, 14, 17, 19, 32, 41, 83, 84, 98, 100, 177, 184, 185, 193, 212, 214, 219, 242, 267, 444; Museum’s Shuar 209; Mütter Museum 472; National History Museum 489; Old Anatomy Museum 267; osteological 41, 46; Papuan 181, 182; Peter the Great’s 13; Pitt Rivers 210; Schreiner 230, 231, 232, 233; skeletal 40, 42, 44, 46, 47, 98, 184; Tradescant and Ashmole 13; tsantsas 212; Wellcome 209; William Hunter 29

Collections Committee 46, 47 Colleter, Rozenn 58n2 Collins, Addie M. 123 Collins, Sarah 124 Collins, Shannon 125 colonial 3, 11, 15, 18, 65, 67, 74, 78, 80, 95, 97, 101, 177, 184, 185, 211, 212, 229, 234, 240, 241, 243–245, 247, 252, 260, 486 Concanen, Matthew 331n7 Connell, Brian 47n6, 47n7 conservation 5, 27, 31, 41–45, 47, 52–57, 68, 70–72, 74, 99, 104–106, 110–112, 183, 209, 219, 245, 249, 250, 265, 270, 293, 301, 377, 403, 449, 487, 489, 491, 495, 496, 505–508 conservator 27, 28, 31, 32, 34n3, 42, 43, 44, 45, 249–251, 265, 268, 270 Constable, John 318, 319, 324, 325, 331n3, 332n15 Cooper, Jennifer 326, 333n47 Coop, Graham 139n15 Corfield, Robin 288n41 Corporeal Remains 13–14 cost of civil rights 120–128 COVID-19 pandemic 7, 137, 166, 219, 245, 348–350, 380, 382, 392, 394, 398, 403, 410, 451, 462, 507 Coward-Gibbs, Matt 418, 420, 425n2 Coward, Sacha 461 Cox, Nikki 327 Crane, David 287n20 Creighton, Lucy 47n3 cremated remains 13, 19, 83, 296 Crenshaw, Kimberlé 330, 333n71 Creswell, Clarendon Hyde 35n35 Crimmins, Peter 87n1 Cronkite, Walter 125 Croone, William 30 Crossbones Graveyard: contemporary identity 318; inside the gates 318–321; intersectional heritage spaces 330–331; maintaining the grunge 322–323; outcast dead (and alive) 327–330; politics of curation 323–327; referencing archaeological advice 322 Crowder, Harriet 425n2 Crowe, Nicholas 219 Csukovits, Anita 453n3, 454n5, 454n8 Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Palermo 52, 54 cultural heritage 52–55, 58, 105, 107, 111,

571

Index 112, 183, 193, 240, 241, 342, 448, 489 Cultural Heritage of the Municipality of Guanajuato 107 Cunnigham, Daniel J. 268, 269, 271n18 Cuno, James 254n32 the Curated Ossilegium: bone-picking cremation ceremony 263; building connections with displayed dead 267–269; burial option 260; caring for unknown dead 264–266; cleanliness 261; continuum of death care 269–270; dead disrespectful 260; eternal rest on display 259–260; memorialising and remembering 266; ossilegium process 261; placing 265; respectful care 264; skeleton of Cornelius Magrath 268; tending 265 curator 40, 53, 55, 70, 96, 99, 123, 215, 216, 230, 232, 268, 269, 270, 451, 475, 476, 488 Dacome, Lucia 34n11 D’Albertis, Luigi 181 Daley, Jason 140n32, 140n34 Daley, Paul 102n7 D’Altroy, T. N. 89n27 Dance of Death 159 Danforth, Loring 261, 262, 270n7 Danilova, Nataliya 315n10 dark tourism 292, 297, 298, 301, 323, 382, 383, 397, 402, 407, 408, 472 Darwin, Charles 228 Dave, Raksha 138n2 David, Rosalie 23n35, 61n38 Davis, Elaine 403, 413n6 Davis, Sam 405 Dawdy, Shannon Lee 322, 332n36 Day of the Dead 69 dead places to places of the dead: battlefields 277; cemeteries 278–279; dead places 279–281; mass graves 281–283; materiality, identity, and temporality 283–285; ruined settlements 279–281 death/dead: Ars Memorandi and Memento Mori exhibition 448–451; care for 264–266; commercial purposes 105; curation and research 81–84; education 507; 18th-Century Burghers of Vác 444–445; ethical decision making 86; exhibition 80–81; grief in the visual arts 153–155; Japan’s Shikoku pilgrimage

336–344; Kūkai’s death 339–344; in the museum space 79–80; phenomena 2; positive futures with libraries 389–393; public engagement 84–86; respect for 239; themed walking tours 507; treatment of 79, 208, 209, 300, 507; US Civil Rights Museums 120–127 Death Disco 382 Death Festival 382 Death Positive Library 6, 389–399; books, mortality, and the development 394–397; designing 389–393; diegetic prototypes 390; Digital Memorial Tattoo 389; factual and fictional books 392; Redbridge Central Library 390, 391; semipermeable 3D space 390; technical artefacts 391; Tickets for the Afterlife 392, 393 deathscapes 1–6, 381, 383, 384, 505 Death Trail 86 de Benavente, Hernando 211 DeBlock, Hugo 88n20 de Guardiola, L. A. 114n19 Deguerce, Christophe 34n12 De humani corporis fabrica libri septem 28 Delano, Jack 16 Delitz, Heike 315n11, 315n12 Demireva, Elena 392 de Muertos, El Día 114n24 Denham, Jack 7n11, 168, 172n22 Dennett, Andrea S. 22n16 De Palma, Brian 173n39 Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity 52–55, 58 de Rivera, Jose Antonio Primo 281 DeSalle, Rob 141n49 Descola, Philippe 223n32 DeSilvey, Caitlin 322, 323 Dhody, Anna 482n22 Díaz-Andreu, Margarita 89n28, 201n19 Dickey, Colin 402, 405, 413n3, 414n13 Dierking, Lynn D. 252n2 Digital Memorial Tattoo 389 DiSalvo, Carl 390, 399n5, 399n6 DNA 14, 44, 131–134, 136, 184, 185, 198, 199, 210, 213, 214, 219, 231, 241, 391, 445 Doğan, Elifgül 5, 202n42 Donlon, Denise 5, 99 Donofrio, Theresa 303n42 Doris Francis 314n2

572

Index Doughty, Caitlin 396 Dreesbach, Anne 23n29 Driver, Alice 349 Dudák, Vladislav 441n1 Duffy, Bobby 139n22 Dungavell, Ian 384n7 Dwork, Deborah 301, 302n14 dying 1, 3, 5, 6, 153, 278, 307, 339, 381–383, 389, 392–394, 396–398, 403, 404, 406, 410, 413, 419, 439, 451, 452, 472, 476 Eastlack, Harry 474 Ebrary, I. 386n34 Edensor, Tim 322, 323, 426n32 Edkins, Jenny 302n5 education 2, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, 19–21, 52, 58, 73, 79, 86, 95, 96, 99, 101, 110–113, 130, 165, 171, 193, 197, 268, 270, 292, 300, 363–365, 367, 377, 381, 382, 384, 394, 397, 402–406, 408, 409, 412, 413, 416, 417, 439, 472, 473, 476, 485, 490, 491, 495, 507 Èelakovský, Josef 441n2 Egyptian heritage 242 Egyptian mummified: community of practice 249–251; displaying “mummies” 242–245; Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage (EDH) 238, 247–249, 248–249; framing considerations 239–240; the Golden Parade 245–247, 250; orphaned culture 238; source communities 240–242 Egyptian Museum 242, 243, 245, 246, 247, 251 Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage (EDH) 238, 240, 246–249, 247–249, 248, 252; human remains in comics 247–249, 248–249; social media 248 El Haq, Gad 242 Eliopoulos, Constantine 270n5 El Kurdy, Sherine 254n44 Elliott, Mark 87n5, 88n22 Ellis, H. 22n21 Elmwood Cemetery: community engagement 364; cradle gardening 370; events 368–371; film series 369; future aspects 371–373; place within a place 365; tips and tricks 371; tours for adults 367–368; youth education 365–367 Empson, Rebecca 87n5, 88n22

Erickson, Lucas E. 186n10 Escamilla, Ingrid 350 Espinosa, J. L. 115n30 Espinosa, Rogelio G. 106, 114n16 Euro-American Museum 211 Evans, Raymond 102n6 Everard, Sarah 327 Evers, Medgar 120, 122, 124 exhibit 15, 17, 20, 21, 53, 71, 109, 121–125, 164, 166, 171, 229, 449, 473, 474, 478–480, 485, 489 exhibition 2–6, 11, 12, 14–20, 33, 42–45, 51, 52, 70, 71, 78–81, 86, 105, 109–112, 120, 121, 127, 133, 136, 154, 165, 227, 228, 229, 238, 239, 250, 264, 265, 294, 379, 382, 383, 419, 424, 441, 443, 444, 448–453, 485, 486, 489, 491, 495, 496 facial reconstructions 131 Fagan, Kevin 22n19 Falk, John H. 252n2 Farella, Flaviano D. 58n3, 60n17, 60n25, 60n26 Farías, Elizarrarás 110 Farrel, Stephen 303n55 Farron, Nichola 102n4 femicide 348–350 Fernandez, Ingrid 171n1 Ferraz, Rafaela 33, 35n33 Fforde, Cressida 89n38, 252n5, 508n1 Field Museum 182 Fields, Liz 163n2 Filippucci, Paola 286n3 Findling, John E. 22n23 Flores, Carlos 497n6 Floyd, George 395 Flynn, Gillian A. 89n38 Forró, Katalin 453n2 Förster, Larissa 253n7 Foster, Gary S. 314n6 Fragonard, Honoré 30 Francaviglia, Richard V. 314n5 Franco, Alessia 59n9 Frankel, David 179, 186n17 Franklin, Maria 138n3 freakshows 14–17; Rutland Fair in Vermont 16 French, Stanley 315n7 Freud, Sigmund 355 Frihammar, Mattias 7n1, 7n9, 8n16, 508n3 Fripp, Charles B. 375

573

Index Fründt, Sarah 253n7 Fuller, Buckminster 392 Gacy, John W. 165 galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) fields approach 1 Galloway, Anne 399n8 Galvin, Jimmy 382 Gamba, Cristina 139n19, 139n25 Gamez, Silvia 232 Gareth Jones, D. 87n3 Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie 227, 235n1, 235n8 Garriga, J. 115n35 Gay, Claude 486 Geismar, Haidy 302n7 Gentry, Kynan 200n10 Geographia 12 Gertzen, Enrique 488 Getty Villa Museum 19 ghosts of Kükai: companion and oneself 337–339; Honored Spoken Memento 339; Kükai death 339–342; long-term samadhi 339–342; pilgrims report 336; Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage project 336, 342–344 Gifford, Robert 386n39 Gill, Fiona 5 Gilliland, Donald 22n6 Gill, Sandra 128n13 Girardi, Gabrio 345n17 GLAM fields approach 1 Glasnevin Cemetery 379 Godden, Salena 395 Godfrey, Kathleen 235n5 Godkin, Edwin L. 15, 16, 22n12 Goebel, Stephan 287n25 Gogol, Nikolai 312 Goldin, Nan 154, 163n3 González, Hector 497n9 Gonzalez-Torres, Felix 154 Goodman, Sheldon K. 457, 461 Goodnow, Katherine 48n13 Gorbachev, Mikhail 312 Gothicized heritage 323 Gotscho Kissing Gilles 154 Gottfried, Glenn 139n22 Government 6, 13, 54, 99, 104, 105, 107, 111, 113, 177, 178, 183, 185, 195, 209, 232, 276, 294, 308, 312, 348–351, 353, 354, 356, 464 Graham, Allison 127n3 Graham, Brian 200n15

Grand Egyptian Museum 251 grassroots memorialization 354–356 graveyard 5, 104, 296, 298, 318–321, 325, 328, 344, 364, 377, 394, 405, 457, 461, 466, 505, 506 Graveyard of the Outcast Dead 319 Green, Ronald S. 344n6 Green-Wood Cemetery 372 Grima, Reuben 60n31 Grimm’s Anatomy: Magic and Medicine 474 Ground Zero 14, 292, 293, 295–301 Guanajuato Mummies Museum 105, 106, 110 Guanajuato’s cultural heritage 112 Guildhall Museum 37 Guillén, Sonia 5 Gundermann, Hans 497n9 Günther, Torsten 143n64 Gurchenko, Lyudmila 313 Haagen, Klaus 222n9 Haber, Alejandro 497n4, 497n5 Hafez, Marwa A. 254n42 Hajer, Maarten 303n37 Hakeda, Yoshito 344n2 Hallam, Arthur 395 Hallam, Elizabeth 35n31, 88n7, 271n15, 271n20 Hall, Ashley R. 128n22 Hammerback, John C. 128n20 Hare, William 34n3 Haring, Keith 153 Harknett, Sarah-Jane 88n17 Harner, Michael 222n13, 223n34 Harris, Adrian 331n4 Harris, Melissa R. 128n22 Harris, Paul L. 417 Harwood-Nash, Derek C. 500n39 Hashem, Radwa 255n59 Hashesh, Zeinab 254n46 Hatzimatheou, Chloe 270n6 Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore 412 Hausner, Sondra L. 320 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 405 Healy, J.D. 165 Hearst Museum of Anthropology 17, 19 Heikal, Mohammed H. 241 Heller, Dana 299, 303n61 Henckel, Carlos 497n15 Henneberg, Maciej 140n39 Henson, Don 320, 332n18, 332n22, 332n23 Hepburn, Sue 143n75, 143n76

574

Index heritage: African 136; archaeological 489, 490, 495; bioanthropological 488, 490; bioarchaeological 495; biocultural 105, 111; in Britain 134; cultural 53, 58, 111, 112, 193, 241, 342, 448, 489; of death 2, 6; digital projects 342; discourses 191, 193–195, 197–199; in Egypt 242, 245, 248; fields 4, 6; formalised 323, 324, 326; Gothicized 323; Guanajuato’s cultural 112; Heritage Theme Park 319–331; illicit trafficking 488; Indigenous cultural 183; Intangible cultural 108; Islamic and Ottoman 192; management 244, 293, 295, 297, 299–301, 318, 325; medical 268; sex worker 328; Shuar 213, 221; sites 2, 4–6, 323, 384, 508; space 318, 331, 505; state-regulated heritage 244; studies 2, 3, 193, 506; theme parking 324; Turco-Islamic 199; in Turkey 195, 199; Universal 251; virtual 2, 344, 507 Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) 377 Heritage Theme Park 319–331 Herle, Anita 87n5, 88n22 Hertz, Robert 169 Hesketh, Rachel 139n22 Hewlett, Kirstie 139n22 Higgs, John 331n5 Highgate Cemetery 379 Hill, Ivan 425n2 Hirisplex-S software 136 Hirsch, Marianne 160, 163n8 Historic house museums 5, 6, 19, 402–411, 507; authenticity and truth 404–406; beneath the dignity 406; Blount Mansion 408–411; ethical challenges 406–408; ghosts and haunts at 403–404; haunted history 411–412; interpretive programs 402–403; overview 402 Historic site 1, 191, 194, 366, 402–404, 406, 408, 411 Hodder, Ian 499n33 Holck, Per 230, 232 Hollimon, Sandra E. 89n30 Holloway, Julian 407 Holloway, Karla 122, 128n8 Hollywood Forever Cemetery 369, 372 “The Hollywood Museum of Death” 164; Black Dahlia 169–171; the Charles Manson room 166–168; museum of

death origins 165–166; synthetic Maiden 168–169 Holmes, H.H. 17 Holocaust Museum 480 Holtorf, Cornelius 322 Honeywell, David 425n2 Hoole, Maya 140n33 Hopman, Roos 140n41, 141n47 Horder, J. 481n3 Horniman Museum 247 Houlton, Tobias 212 Houston Museum of Natural Science 11 Houtzager, Sterre 218, 219, 222n6, 223n45 Huamán, Clide Valladolid 71–72 Hull-Walski, Deborah 89n38 Hulme, Andy 323 human displays 14–17 human remains 13–14; archaeological in Turkey 191–203; Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Sicily 51–61; caring for 31–33; collection management 45; curation and retention of 260; death and treatment 80; deposition of 46; excavations for 180, 180; heritage sites and museums 5; humanity conversation 26–35; in comics 247–249, 248–249; in museums 5, 11, 19–20; mummified 242–247, 248, 249, 250, 251; Papuan coast 178–181, 182; postmortem handling 66; preservation and display of 95, 99–100; systematic management of death 2; unique stratified collection 40 Human Remains Policy 41 Human Tissue Act 44, 48n16 Hummel, Richard L. 314n6 Hungarian Natural History Museum 444, 445, 452 Hunterian Museum 17, 22, 31, 397 Hunter, John 29, 34n8, 34n10 Hunter: The Black Dahlia 170 Hunter, William 28 Hurley, Andrew M. 397 hyper-realistic digital images 136 Ica’s Regional Museum 72 ICOM’s People-Centred Approaches to Cultural Heritage 240 Iles, Jennifer 287n14 The Independent 320 Indiana Medical History Museum 20 indigenous 2, 3, 17, 84, 95–101, 183, 209,

575

Index 211, 218, 219, 226, 227, 230, 233, 239, 260, 264, 350, 403, 406, 407, 409, 486, 487–491 Indigenous cultural heritage 183 indigenous remains 84, 95–97, 99, 101 Intangible cultural Heritage 108 International Council of Museum (ICOM) 209, 240, 250, 491 International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 1 Irving, Cat 5 Irving, India 481n5 Irwin, Geoff 179 Ishi 17, 19 Ishiguro, Kazuo 397 Islamic and Ottoman heritage 192 Ismail, Mostafa 249, 250 Ismail, Nasra 326

Kerr, Margee 404, 413n8, 482n25, 482n26 Kerr, Mary M. 480n2 Kewibu, Vincent H. 186n21 Khrushchev, Nikita 312 Kilmister, Hugh 203n50, 252n1 Kirby, David 390, 399n4 Kitching, Chris 471n23 Klíma, Arnošt 22n22 Knell, Simon J. 88n9 Knott, Kim 321, 332n31 Knox, Frederick J. 28, 29, 31, 32, 34n4, 34n6, 35n20–n22, 35n29 Koltai, Zsuzsa 454n9 Koper, G. J. M. 35n32 Korf, Benedikt 286n1 Kwon, Heonik 288n28

Jablonski, Nina G. 138n8 Jackson, Exerlena 124 Jaksic, Fabián M. 496n2 Janaway, Rob C. 48n15 Jenkins, Tiffany 7n12, 101n2, 253n13 Jensen, Richard J. 128n20 J.L. Shellshear Museum 95–98, 182 John, Helen 323, 333n46 John Lennon, J. 383 Johnson, Kaci Lynn 404, 413n10 Jones, Amy Gray 47n6 Joralemon, Donald 76n5 Joy, Jody 199 Juárez, B. 113n4 Julia Pastrana journey: Catholic mass 233; death certificate 233, 234; exhibition of 227; gingival hyperplasia 226; hypertrichosis terminalis 226; New York Times entertainment 227; Regent Gallery 228; repatriation journey 231–234; rights and memory 230–231 Kahlo, Frida 14 Kaiser, Susanne 140n38 Kansu, Şevket Aziz 202n26 Kaplan, Morris B. 470n8 Kardashian, Kim 20 Kariwiga, Jason 5, 186n21 Kasket, Elaine 397 Keeler, Honor 89n38, 508n1 Keen, Mike Forrest 425n13 Kellaher, Leonie 314n2 Kempinski, Aglaja 88n15 Kenneth, George 178

Lacan, Jaques 172n20 Lacayo, Paloma Robles 5 Ladner, Joyce 126 Landtman, Gunnar 186n26 Lanz, Ortiz 110 Laquer, Thomas 270n1 Laqueur, Thomas 373n5 Larnach, S.L. 96 Larson, Frances 216 Lasisi, Tina 140n40 Latcham, English R. 486 Latcham, Ricardo 497n11, 497n13, 497n14 law 37, 104, 107, 113, 230, 261, 265, 308, 326, 372, 409, 488–490 Lawes, William G. 186n25 Leeds City Museum 43 Lee, Jacob C. 59n14 Lehmannt, Benedik 7n11 Leite, Gabriela S. 325, 326 Lemon, Narelle 60n30 Lenin, Vladimir 310 Lennon, J. 386n37 Lenow, Joseph 372, 373n8 Lent, Theodore 226 Lerma Gómez, C. 106, 114n18 Le Saux, Richard 143n75, 143n76 letter to Anna Letitia Waring 467–469 Lexden, Joseph 101n1 LGBTQ+ community: Arnos Vale cemetery 462–465; author’s note 456–457; Brompton Cemetery 458–462; cisgender 456; epitaph 466; methods 458; museums of people 457; Tower Hamlets cemetery 465–466; transgender 457 Liboiron, Max 253n25

576

Index Light, Duncan 297 Linke, Uli 102n5 Lisle, Debbie 303n45 Lister, Joseph 31 Lister, Kate 330 the Living Dead Doll 170 Lloyd, Max 102n18 Loe, Louise 61n42 Loewenau, Aleksandra 102n4 Lofland, Lyn 396, 397, 400n33 Lohman, Jack 48n13 Lombardi, Guido P. 5, 76n8 Lombardo, Rosalia 53 London Museum 37, 130, 136 Longhi, Pietro 268 López Alanís, Gilberto J. 226 Loudon, J.C. 375, 384n6 “Love After Death” 389 Lucy, Sam 89n28 Lund, Håkon J. 235n16 Luther King, Martin, Jr. 120, 122, 124, 125 Luz Endere, María 500n43 Lynch, Shana 333n59 Lynnerup, Niels 58n1 Lyons, Kat 467–469 MacDonald, Sally 253n10 MacGregor, William 178 Macías, Santiago 288n48 Macintosh, Ann 96 Mackenzie, Compton 470n4 MacLeod, Suzanne 88n9 Maddrell, Avril 385n26 Madero, Francisco I. 353 Małecka, Katarzyna A. 400n20 Magness, Jodi 270n3 Magness, Perre 373n3, 373n4, 373n7 Magrath, Cornelius 269 Malcomb, Andrea 414n17 Malysheva, Svetlana 315n23–n26, 316n28, 316n29 Manchester Museum 239 Manias, Chris 139n12 Man, Narrabeen 95, 99–101 Mannix, Kathryn 396 Manolis, Sotiris 270n5 Mans, Jimmy 222n10 Manson, Charles 167, 168 Mantel, Hilary 397 Margalit, Avishai 288n30 Margolles, Teresa 154 Margulia, Marlyn I. 163n7 Marmolejo, L. 113n2

Márquez, Nicholas 232 Married Women’s Property Act 235n13 Martín, Conrado Rodríguez 76n8 Martínez, M. S. 113n1 Martin, Marie 253n17 Mate, Geraldine 186n5 Matich, Olga 316n30 May, Sarah 322 McClung Museum 11 McCollum, Kimberly 373n1 McCorristine, Shane 88n8 McDonald, Josephine J. 102n12, 102n13 McDowall, Fiona A. 138n4, 139n13 McGovern, Patrick 35n16 M’charek, Amade 133, 139n21, 141n43–n45, 141n47, 142n62 McIsaac, Peter M. 23n34 McKeown, C. T. 89n38 McKie, Robin 87n4 McKinley, Jacqueline 48n8 McKinney, Natasha 187n36 McNair, Denise 123, 125 McNair, Maxine 124 Medina, S. 116n52 Meguro Parasitological Museum 473 Memento Mori exhibition: artist’s inspiration 155–158; burial shrouds 447–448; celebration of death and life 159; crypt coffins 445–447; Dance of Death 158, 159; death and grief in visual arts 153–155; deaths and burials 444–445; dominican crypt of Vác 443–444; grave goods and sacred objects 448; installation 160, 161; interpretation and experiences 451–452; life and death of 18th-century people 448–451; memorial installation 157, 157; mental and physical scars 161; mummies of Vác 445; overview 443; picture frames 160; during renaissance 158 memorial spaces: cemeteries and mortal culture, USSR 308–310; cemetery research approach 307–308; death culture 310; funeral rites 309; Novodevichy Cemetery 310–313, 313; overview 306–307; rituals of symbolic burial 308 Mendelsohn, Daniel 300, 304n66 Mendelson, Zoe 357n15 Mendoza, Daniel 498n19 Mercury, Bristol 384n4 Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council (MLALC) 99, 100

577

Index Metropolitan Museum of Art 19, 79 Meza, Bradymir Bravo 73–74 Michael Huberman, A. 482n19 Miles, A.E. 235n17, 235n21 Miles, Matthew B. 482n19 Miles, Tiya 407, 414n21 Mimiaga, Ricardo 226, 235n3 Miskimen, Gage 413n2 Mississippi Civil Rights Museum (MCRM) 120–123, 126 Mitsuji, Fukunaga 344n7 Mlambo-Ngcuka, Phumzile 350 mobile pedagogy: public engagement 417–418, 421–424; walking 416, 421–424; the York Death and Culture walk 418–420, 423 Mohan Roy, Raja Ram 376, 379, 383 Monroe, Marilyn 20 Montgomery Ramirez, Paul Edward 7n13, 138n1 Montibeller, Moraima 76n3 Moore, Simon 35n34 Moraitis, Konstantinos 270n5 Morales, Roberto L. 107 Mord, J. 414n28 Morgan, Aaron 331n7 Morgan, Richard K. 397 Morton, Sarah 102n17 Moser, S. 89n35 Mostny, Grete 487, 497n3 Muller, George 383 multivocality approach 1 the Mummies of Guanajuato 104–116 mummification process 21, 28, 51, 53, 56, 57, 106–108, 112, 445, 491 mummy 11, 12, 19, 21, 56, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 110, 112, 133, 239, 242, 248, 453; Chinchorro mummy 489, 492; Egyptian mummy 3, 13, 19, 21, 51, 79, 238–252, 506; Lady of Cao mummy 67–69, 69; Peruvian mummy 493 mummy replicas, CT scan: alternatives to the exhibition of human bodies 491–495; artistic post-processing process 494; bioanthropological collection 488; Chilean anthropological and archaeological thought 490; Chinchorro infants 494, 495; civicmilitary dictatorship 488; Guide of the National Museum of Chile 486; human bodies’ scientific investigation 485–490; Inti Raymi ceremony 491,

492; mummified bodies on 20th centuary 486, 487; replica creation 493, 493 Municipal Cemetery 109 Munizaga, Juan 498n16 Muñoz, Iván 499n21 Muñoz-Schick, Mélica 496n2 Murkin, George 139n22 Murphy, Adrian 138n6 museum: collections 83; death in 78–89; history of 12–13; lessons 20; professionals benefit 4; Ripley’s franchise 20; strategic commitment 208 Muséum d’ Histoire Naturelle 17 Museum of Alexandria 22n4 Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) 80, 82, 84, 85, 86; corpse medicine to visitors 86; Dias de los Muertos 85; Rambaramp 82 Museum of Death 165–166, 172n7 Museum of Human Disease 473 Museum of London (MoL) 37–41, 44–47, 47n1, 47n2; archaeological archive 39–41, 45–47; Centre for Human Bioarcheology (CHB) 39–41; conservation 41–45; Department of Urban Archaeology (DUA) 39; overview 37, 38; taphonomic process 46 Museum of London Act 47n1 Museum of London Archaeological Archive 39–41 Museum of London Archaeology 39, 323 Museum of Memory and Tolerance 347 Museum of Mississippi History 121 Museum of Nature’s Mistakes 15 Museum of the University of Tarapacá 488 Mütter Museum 19, 208, 266, 472–476, 479; activities 480; dry and wet specimens 474; exhibit design 480; Hyrtl Skull collection 473, 480; interpretive texts 479–480; medical museums 472–473; methods 475–476; scholarly interrogations 476; verbatim quotes 477–479 NAGPRA 19, 74, 506 Naji, Ahmed 254n52 Nakamura, Hajime 344n7, 345n10 Nally, Claire 321, 332n29, 332n44 Náprstek Museum 209 Nardone, Mark 414n17

578

Index The Nation 15 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 120 National Building Museum 406 National Commission for Bioethics 105, 112 National History Museum 489 National Lottery Heritage Fund 458 National Museum of American History 293 National Museum of American Indian 218 National Museum of Australia 98 National Museum of Chile 486 National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (NMEC) 3, 242 National Museum of Egyptian Civilization 3 National Museum of Health and Medicine 473 National Museum of Natural History 485–490, 492 National Parks and Wildlife Act 99 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) 19, 74, 239, 506 Natural History Museum 13, 182 Navarro, G. 115n39 Naveh, Eyal J. 124, 128n17 Nazi Parties Final Solution policy 292 Neophytou, Georgina 314n2 Neruda, P. 115n26 Neruda, Pablo 108 Newkirk, Pamela 23n28 New Mexico Museum of Natural History 264 Nilsson, Oscar 136, 144n78 9/11 Memorial Museum 14, 299 no photography” policy 52, 54 Nordh, Helena 314n4 Novodevichy Cemetery 307, 308, 310–313, 313 Numen, Evi 6, 259–270 Núñez, Patricio 499n25 Nystrom, Kenneth C. 59n5 Oak Hill Cemetery 423 Oakland Cemetery 372 Objects and the Museum 26 Odegaard, Nancy 48n17 O’Gorman, Laura 332n40 Olalde, Iñigo 138n10, 139n16 Old Anatomy Museum 267, 268 Olías, Francisco J. 500n41 Olvera, C. 115n38 Omar, Hussein 255n56

O’Neill, Maggie 416, 425n1, 425n2, 426n28 “Only Death” 108 Oram, Nigel 185n3 Ordoñez, Maria P. 210, 214, 220, 222n4 Orozco, R.E. 115n36 Orzel, Carol 474 Osorio, G. L. R. 115n28 Outside the Box: Everyday Stories of Death, Bereavement and Life 396 Owen-Crocker, Gale R. 400n24 Pacheco, Aryel 497n10 Page, Ben 139n22 Pajuelo, Patricia A. 109 Panzer, Stephanie 60n16, 60n36, 61n43 Papuan coast: archaeological research 179–180; craniometric analysis 184; housed in selected museums 181, 182; human remains as artefacts 180–181; ownership and repatriation 183; pre-contact trade 178; Second World War 178–179; study area 177–178; 19th and 20th century European collecting 178; typological approach 183 Parent, Charlotte 252n3 Past Mortems: Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors 397 Pastrana, Julia 17, 226–234, 227 Patterson, Nick 139n17 Paz, Ireneo 235n6 Paz, Octavio 109, 115n29 Pearson, Mike P. 89n26 Peers, Laura 215, 216, 222n3, 223n36, 253n27 Pelle, Kimberly D. 22n23 Penfold-Mounce, Ruth 164, 172n3, 418, 420, 425n2, 425n4 people in place 136–137 Perales, Manuel 76n4 Perichi, Ciro C. 105, 114n9, 114n10 personal protective equipment (PPE) 57 Peruvian National Museum of Anthropology, Archaeology, and History (MNAAHP) 70 Pester, Patrick 89n34 Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology 243 Pezzia, Alejandro 498n19 Pharaoh’s Golden Parade 3 Philippi, Rudolph A. 486

579

Index Pietrusewsky, Michael 184, 185n1, 187n44, 187n48 Piklin, Örzse 452 Piñar, Guadalupe 56, 60n20, 60n21, 60n24, 61n40 Pino, Elva T. 74 Piombino-Mascali, Dario 59n4, 59n5, 59n6, 59n7, 59n9, 59n15, 60n18, 61n37, 61n39 Pirolli, Bryan 481n6 Pitsillides, Stacey 389 Pitt Rivers Museum 78, 208–210, 213–216, 220, 221n1, 221n2, 239 Plath, Sylvia 80, 88n16, 397 Platt, David 289n60 PNG National Museum and Art Gallery (NMAG) 180, 186n22 poetry 108, 326, 337, 396 Poirot, Kristan 127n4 Pole, Thomas 34n7 policy 39, 41, 52, 54, 75, 99, 251, 284, 292, 294, 351, 371, 417 Polzer, Natalie C. 59n11, 60n23 Pool, Heather 124, 128n16 Powell, Joseph 48n17 Preece, Michael 173n37 prehistory spaces in English Museums 130–133 Preston, Paul 287n7 Preuß, Dirk 253n7 Price, Rebecca H. 480n2 Price, Tia Tudor 5 Prince, Jordi R. 102n11 Prince, Rosa 303n64 protest and mourning 350–354 P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York 12 public engagement 417–418, 507 public history 7, 379, 404, 457, 508 Putnam-Farr, Eleanor 253n21 Queensland Museum 178 “Queerly Departed” programme 459, 461, 461 Querner, Pascal 60n19 Quevedo, Silvia 498n18 Quinnell, Michael 186n4 Quintanar, R. 116n51 Qureshi, Sadiah 22n20 Raiford, Leigh 128n7 Raine, Rachael 385n32 Ralph, Peter 139n15 Raree Shows 15

Rathje, William 289n60 Rauxloh, Peter 47n7 reaction 79, 135, 197, 208, 217–219, 301, 391, 407, 440, 477, 507 reclaim 98, 109, 158, 243, 277, 285, 321, 331, 352, 353, 456 Redbridge Central Library 390, 391 Redfern, Rebecca C. 5, 47n6, 48n10, 48n11, 48n14 Redman, Samuel J. 19 Redpath, Ellie 327, 333n60 Remondino, Fabio 345n17 renaissance paintings 2 Renshaw, Layla 286n2 repatriation 1, 3, 4, 6, 11, 17, 21, 41, 80, 83, 86, 95, 97, 98, 101, 177, 183, 185, 212, 220, 230–233, 244, 264 repository 37–39, 70, 95, 99 Retamal, Rodrigo 497n10, 499n20, 499n22 Reyes, Federico 270n5 Rhodes, Jim 179, 186n17 Richardson, Lorna-Jane 138n9 Richardson, Ruth 88n10 Richards-Rosetto, Heather 345n17 Riggs, Christina 252n4 Riis, Jason 253n21 Riley, Baxter 181, 187n28 Rint, František 436 Roberts, Brian 425n1 Roberts, Charlotte A. 48n15 Roberts, Dorothy 141n49 Robertson, Carole 123, 125 Robertson, Daniel 143n75, 143n76 Robertsson, Jim 345n17 Robinson, Johnnie 123 Robles Lacayo, P. 115n34, 116n54, 116n63, 116n65 Rodriguez, Agustin 76n4 Rodríguez, Rafael G. 106, 114n13 Rojek, Chris 385n33, 386n34 Romano, Renee C. 128n7 Rose, Drew 253n8 Rothschild, Liz 396 Rubenstein, Steven 212 Rugg, Julie 384n1 Rydell, Robert W. 23n30 Sabines, Jaime 109, 115n27 Sadat, Anwar 242 Saldana, Johnny 482n19 Saloni, Mathur 23n27 Samadelli, Marco 60n28 Sanders, Donald H. 345n18

580

Index Sandoval-Velasco, Marcela 141n48 Santoro, Calogero M. 499n21 Sappol, Michael 173n35 Scannell, Leila 386n39 Schaeffer, Terry T. 60n29 Schaming, Mark 302n29 Schneider, Walker S. 186n8 school group 96, 366 Schoot, Ignace 253n25 Schothauer, Andreas 222n2 Schramm, Katharina 253n7 Schultz, Cathy 165 Schurr, Theodore G. 203n52 Schwarzenberg, Prince B. 438 Schwarzenberg, Prince K. 436 Science Museum 79 Scott, Gertrude M. 23n26 Scott King, Coretta 125 Seaton, A.V. 508n4 Seaton, T. 386n37 Sedlec ossuary 437–439, 441 Segal-Kischinevzky, C. 35n17 Sells, Toby 373n2 Sepulveda, Francisco 226 Sepulveda, Sánchez 226 Shanks, Michael 289n60 Sharon, Douglas 76n5 Sharpley, Richard 302n3, 303n56, 400n34 Shaw, Wendy M. K. 200n5 Shefing, Scyld 395 Sheldon, Kristen 414n17 Shelley, Mary 397 Shellshear, Joseph L. 95, 96, 101n1 Shellshear Museum 99; history and context 96–97; human skeletal collections 98; indigenous remains in Australia 97–99; Narrabeen Man 99–100; overview 95–96; respectful curatorial relationship 101 Sheridan, Alison 140n33 Shilling, Chris 7n8 Shimada, Izumi 222n9 Short, Elizabeth 169, 170 Shrunken head 13, 19, 70, 208–225. See also tsantsa Shuar heritage 213, 221 Sidaway, James D. 385n26 Silva, Emilio 288n48 Silverman, Helaine 7n1, 7n9, 8n16, 508n3 Silverstein, Larry 297 Simmons, John E. 30, 34n2, 34n13, 35n18, 35n19, 35n23, 35n28 Simon, Antal 445

Simon, David 354, 358n28 Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie 139n14 Simpson, Ellie 140n39 Site Museum 71 skeletal remains 37–47, 43, 67, 68, 83, 96–99, 101, 261, 262, 433, 435, 436, 445, 479 skeleton 13, 29, 42, 66, 71, 74, 79, 80, 83, 84, 96–99, 108, 131, 134, 135, 158, 259, 262, 267, 268, 269, 435, 472, 474, 478, 479, 485, 488–490 Skinner, Gideon 139n22 skull 13, 19, 66, 67, 69–74, 79, 81, 83, 95, 96, 98, 123, 158, 165, 168, 169, 179–181, 183, 184, 209, 211, 218, 230, 259, 261–265, 267, 269, 326, 435, 436, 438, 440, 447, 472–474, 479, 480, 486, 487, 489, 491 Slide, Anthony 470n6 Sloane, Hans 13 Slovenian Museum of Ethnology 209 Smith, Claire 87n2 Smith, Joyce 385n19 Smith, Laurajane 193, 200n10 Smith, Shawn M. 123, 128n11 Smithsonian Museum 17 Snow, John 421 The Soap Lady 473 Society for Museum Archaeology 38 Sofaer, J. R. 89n31 Sokolova, Anna 309, 315n17 Soukup, Martin 186n23 Spiliopoulou, Chara 270n5 Spokes, Matthew 7n11 Squires, Kirsty 7n6, 59n4, 59n7, 59n15, 61n37, 61n39 Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst 239 Standen, Vivien 488, 499n21 Stannard, Georgia 186n19 Starn, Orin 23n31 Stemler, Steve 481n18 Stephan, Carl 140n39 Stevens, Maurice 347, 357n1 Stevenson, Alice 5 Stevenson, R. L. 397 Stier, Oren B. 128n14 Stirling, Matthew 222n23 A Stitch in Spine Saves Nine: Innovations in Spinal Surgery 474 Stoecker, Holger 253n7 Stoker, Bram 397 Stone, Jonathan 101n1 Stone, Philip R. 59n8, 172n6, 302n3, 303n56, 386n38, 400n34, 480n1

581

Index stopping decomposition 28–31 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) 126 Suchman, Lucy 391, 399n10 Sumartojo, Shanti 287n5 Summerhayes, Glenn R. 185n2 Superintendence for the Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Palermo 53, 55, 58 Svab, Petr 302n31 Švankmajer, Jan 438, 442n10 Swain, Hedley 41 Swensen, Grete 314n4 Swink, Renee C. 414n27 Sylvia, J. J. 349 Symmonds, John A. 463, 470n16, 470n17 Talbott, Mary S. 470n19 Tanyeri-Erdemir, Tuğba 202n30 Tarlow, Peter 302n4 Tarlow, Sarah 200n12 Technologies of the Human Corpse 396 Tennessee State Museum 19 Tennyson, Alfred L. 395 “Tenth Death” 108 Tepo, Lizbeht 5, 70–71 testimonies from curatorial staff: Central Coast 70–72; Central Highlands 73–74; Northern Coast 67–70; South Coast 72; Southern Highlands 74, 75 thanatological imagination 417–418 Theoharis, Jeanne 121, 127n6 Thomas, Jeannie Banks 405, 414n12 Thomas, Osborne 417 Thomas, R. H. 210 Till, Emmett 122, 123, 126 Till, Karen 292, 301n1 Timothy McKeown, C. 508n1 Tishkoff, Sarah 141n49 Tooru, Konno 344n7 Torres, Elva 5 tours for adults: scandals and scoundrels 367–368; true crime of Bygone Times 368 Tower Hamlets Cemetery 457, 465–466 Tragor Ignác Museum 443, 444, 446, 448, 450, 452, 453, 454n12, 454n13, 454n16, 454n17 trauma to tourism: artefact-reliant approach 301; consumerism 297–300; dark tourism 292; degree of social consensus 293–297; Ground Zero 14, 292, 293, 295–301; kitschification 297–300;

Nazi Parties Final Solution policy 292; tourist attractions 300; visitation and caring sites 301 traveling exhibitions 14–17 Treasure Act 37 Treatment of Dead Enemies 208 Trigger, Bruce G. 201n18 The Triumph of Death 153, 154 Troyer, John 396, 400n29 Truc, Gérôme 302n11 tsantsa: contextualising 215–217; COVIDforced break 219; critical changes in the museum 217–219; heads as trophies 211; Jivaroan peoples 209; lack of clarity 215; made for trade 211–213; overview 208–209; Pitt Rivers Museum records 209–210; Proyecto Tsantsa 213–214 Tsiaras, A. 270n7 Tunbridge, John E. 200n15, 294 Turco-Islamic heritage 199 Turkish Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) 191, 192, 194, 195; Anatolian-centred discourse 195; authorised view 196–197; ethnogenesis via ancient DNA (a-DNA) research 198–199; national identity and heritage 191; national identity written on bones 194–195; public view 197–198; theoretical framework 193–194 Turkish heritage 195 Turks, Seljuk 195 Turnbull, Paul 101n3, 102n8 Udall, Lindsay A.S. 375, 384n3, 385n12 Uden, Jeremy 219 Uhle, Max 486 Ulster Museum 243 Underwood, Charles 377 UNESCO World Heritage Site 336, 438 Universal heritage 251 University Museum of Human Anatomy 249 University of New South Wales (UNSW) 474 Uribe, Mauricio 497n10 Üstündað, Handan 202n47 Vagnone, Franklin D. 413n1 Valdez, Mario L. 232 Valentine, Carla 397 Valladolid, Clide 5 Valsalva, Antonio M. 30

582

Index Van Broekhoven, Laura N. K. 5 Van Dam, A. 35n32 Van den Haute, Sam 60n27 Van Der Ploeg, J. P. M. 35n32 Vanderwal, Ronald L. 179, 186n15 Van Pelt, Robert 301, 302n14 Verano, John 76n9 Victoria and Albert Museum 14, 22n7 Villarrutia, Xavier 108, 114n25 Viner, Mark 58, 61n44 Virtual heritage 2, 344, 507 visitor 11, 15, 18, 20, 26, 33, 45, 52–58, 69, 71, 72, 74, 79, 81, 82, 85, 86, 106, 108–110, 120–127, 130, 132, 136, 137, 196–198, 208, 209, 216, 218, 238–240, 243–245, 247, 267, 275–277, 279, 283, 285, 286, 292–294, 298, 299, 301, 307, 312, 323, 324, 326, 329, 336, 342, 364, 367, 368, 371, 378, 380, 382, 383, 392, 402–406, 408–413, 421, 431, 435, 438–441, 444, 449–453, 458, 472–480, 495, 507 visualising past people 133–136 von Hagen, Gunther 20 von Hofmann, Wilhelm 31 von Schwerin, Jennifer 345n17 von Villiez, Anna 102n4 Vreeland, James, Jr 76n2 Vrolik Museum 473 Wade, Breesha 395 Walker, Don 47n6 Walker, Kathryn 385n25 walking 2, 26, 169, 327, 336, 338, 343, 344, 366, 371, 381, 416, 417, 419–421, 420, 423–425 Wallace, William 109 Walsh, John 320 Walsh, Kevin 142n54 Walsh, Susan 141n50 Walter, Tony 172n2, 172n5 Warner, William L. 306, 314n1 Watanabe, Shōkō 344n5 Watson, Sheila 88n9 Wattenbarger, Madeleine 357n25 Weindling, Paul 102n4 Weiss, Avi 302n18 Wesley, Cynthia 123, 125 Westaway, Michael C. 5 Wester, Judith 385n25

Western European Hunter-Gatherers groups (WHG) 132, 134 wet and dry theory 169 Whitaker, Maja I. 87n3 Whitbread, Helena 470n10 White, Bill 47n5 Who Owns the Dead: The Science and Politics of Death at Ground Zero (Aronson) 14 Wiest, Julie B. 172n14 Wight, C. 386n37 Wilkinson, Caroline 133, 140n29, 140n31, 212 Williams, Michael V. 127n1 Williams, Rhaisa 124, 128n15 Wills, Korah H. 98 Wilson, Andrew S. 48n15 Wilson, Emily K. 88n14 Winkelmann, Andreas 253n7 Winslet, Kate 350 Winterthur Museum 406 Wintle, Claire 8n15 Wohl Pathology Gallery at Surgeons’ Hall Museums 26, 27 Wolfe, George C. 122 Wolgemut, Michael 159 Woodlands Cemetery 372 Woodley, Jenny 5 Wooley, Leonard 21n2 World Heritage Site by UNESCO 495 World’s Fairs and Expositions 17–19 Wright, Craig 302n10 Wright Mills, C. 417 Wrobel, Gabriel 5 Wyburn, G. M. 34n5 Yardumian, Aram 203n52 Yazýcýoðlu, Gökçe Bike 200n1 Yeltsin, Boris 312 York Castle Museum 419 York City Museum 419 York Death and Culture Walk 418–424, 420 Young, Katie 302n2, 303n65 Young Lee, Paula 22n4 Young, Ulysses 385n18 Yudell, Michael 141n49 Yusho, Miyasaka 344n5 Zagras, Judy B. 17, 22n24 Zahara, Alex 253n25 Zucker, Eve M. 354, 358n28

583