ABSTRACT
Museums have collected, conserved, studied and displayed human remains for centuries. Their right to do this has gone unchallenged. Only recently, with the ever-widening and intensifying campaign for the repatriation of human remains has the concept of ‘giving back’ what has been considered museum property been considered. Since collecting began on a wide scale in the early nineteenth century, human remains were considered on a par with the flora and fauna collected and dispatched abroad, reflecting colonial attitudes to the indigenous peoples of the world.
