Implementation of NAGPRA: the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard

This chapter addresses compliance by museums – that is, the process of repatriation, and is premised on an acceptance that, given that the bones of the dead are to be rendered back to their relatives,1 repatriation should be a seemly process.2 I write mainly from my experience in overseeing the efforts of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard (hereafter PMAE), one of America’s largest anthropology museums.