ABSTRACT

This chapter will offer an overview of the recent developments in the debate on collecting and exhibiting human remains in Dutch museums by highlighting the case of the restitution of six human skulls from the collection of the University Museum of Utrecht to the inhabitants of the former island of Urk. By analysing this case, I would like to argue that the discussions on collecting and exhibiting human remains are connected to a recent process in the humanities in which the construction of a national or local identity is increasingly connected to the material presence of the past. This material presence refers to objects, things or even human remains. Drawing upon the idea of the so-called material turn or return to things, I will connect arguments used in the restitution case of the so-called Urker Skulls to what can be considered a significant shift in Western philosophy: the changing status of the body as a consequence of the return to things in humanities and social sciences.