To the Science, To the Living, To the Dead: Ethics and Bioarchaeology

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Just My Type: Racism, Past and Present, and Human Remains . . . . . 205 Posthumous Rights: The Study and Repatriation of

Native American Remains. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Issues in the Classroom and among the General Public . . . . . . . . . . 214 Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

Seek Continual Dialogue and Reflective Critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Encourage Involvement and Training of Members of

Historically Marginalized Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Focus Increasingly on Cross-Cultural Treatment of

Indigenous Remains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Biological anthropologists who work with human skeletal remains frequently find themselves in a unique ethical situation. Like any other social scientists, they have an ethical responsibility to protect the interests and

rights of their research subjects, but the twist for skeletal biologists, bioarchaeologists, and forensic anthropologists is that they must fulfill these responsibilities without any direct input from the subjects. The latter are deceased, some for thousands of years, and often any descendants that can be identified are separated from the deceased by many generations. On top of the difficulties this entails, skeletal biologists have to deal with an unfortunate academic legacy: the forebears of what has become the science of skeletal analysis embraced scientific racism, alienated descent populations (especially when these were poor minorities), and often treated human remains with little respect. Such behavior has not fostered trust and good will among the groups whose ancestors, once dead, were often treated as little more than objects for study — particularly Native Americans and African Americans.