Recent archaeological debates over skeletons and definitions of “Native American” are largely intertwined with Native American repatriation, the implementation of NAGPRA, and moves toward the decolonization of archaeological practice in the United States.

After initial disciplinary protectiveness work and literature on repatriation by archaeologists working with skeletons has given way to an ethic of increased cooperation and attempts toward greater understanding.

The history of this rift between archaeologists and Native Americans is long and complex, but it was thrust onto the larger national stage in the late 1990s. In 1996, a single skeleton of great antiquity – the Ancient One or the Kennewick Man – drowned brought to national attention the persistent archaeological dependence on racial (or racialized) terminology in discussing skeletons, such as the disciplinary category of “Caucasoid.” As such, a wider critique was catapulted onto the archaeological and anthropological sphere. The skeleton’s crainological divergence from recent Native American people also spurred further osteological involvement in questions over the peopling of the Ameicas, fueling incipient doubts over direct ancestor-descendent relationships between the first peoples of the Americas and contemporary Native Americans. In the court case the scientist-plaintiffs and their allies asserted that the antiquity and morphology of the Kennewick Man and other ancient skeletons should preclude their repatriation to any Native group or groups. Arguing that because no contemporary Native American group would in theory share a cultural affiliation, there could be no claim to the remains. This case put a huge strain on the already tenuous archaeological/Native American relationship, further shadowing the years of collaborative work that has been taking place.

Furthermore, the complex brew of the heavy labor involved in repatriation, the intrusion of the cultural affiliation question, the emergence of indigenous archaeology, and disciplinary practices that privilege the publication of hypothesis-driven research articles has isolated many from participation in the breadth of cooperative and conflicted NAGPRA literature. Nevertheless, the last several years since the Kennewick Man case took place a new and different attitude has emerged in skeletal biology that engages repatriation as a growing element of archaeological training and practice. Three books that are leading the charge in the healing of this rift are Bioarchaeology: The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains; Biological Anthropology and Ethics; and The Nature of Difference. All of the authors nudge, prod, or strike at pressure points in archaeology’s articulation with repatriation and Native Americans. Written primarily for osteological, bioarchaeological, and biocultural audiences, all three of these books deserve a wider readership as they represent some of the varied osteological lenses currently envisioning repatriation, skeletons, and Native Americans.

Buikstra, Jane E.; and Lane A. Beck, eds. 2006. Bioarchaeology: The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains. New York: Academic Press.

Surely the entire collection Bioarchaeology: The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains will soon join Clark Larsen’s (1997) global bioarchaeological synthesis as an essential guidebook for bioarchaeology students and professionals. Buikstra and Beck’s larger project is to intellectually resituate the “bio” within “archaeology” through detailed explication of the historical and contemporary contributions bioarchaeology and its osteological predecessors have made to scientific understandings of the North American past. This is to remind us that archaeological work with skeletons has allowed us to appreciate the long and complex history of indigenous Native American peoples.
Furthermore, Buikstra’s and Beck’s elaborate treatment of repatriation distills crucial topics that should enjoy increased centrality in bioarchaeological training and discourse. The book is well-placed to influence the next generation of North American bioarchaeologists; a generation who will hopefully be equipped and even excited to tackle the cultural complexities that repatriation has guaranteed for the field.

Larsen, Clark S.; and Phillip L. Walker. 2005. The Ethics of Bioarchaeology. In Biological Anthropology and Ethics: From Repatriation to Genetic Identity. Trudy R. Turner, ed. Pp. 111-119. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Larsen and Walker (2005), after setting the scene for contemporary bioarchaeological practice with a brief explanation of the context of NAGPRA, center their discussion on three broad principles of bioarchaeological ethics that also intersect with more common cultural values: “1) human remains should be treated with dignity and respect; 2) descendants should have the authority to control the disposition of their relatives’ remains; and 3) because of the importance of human remains for the understanding of our common past, human remains need to be preserved when possible so that they are available for scientific research” (p. 114).

Each of these three principles are thoroughly covered and elaborated upon, providing an excellent addition to the ethical discussion on just how ancient human remains should be treated and studied in North America.

Turner, Bethany L.; Diana S. Toebbe; and George J. Armelagos. 2006. To the Science, To the Living, To the Dead: Ethics and Bioarchaeology. In The Nature of Difference: Science, Society and Human Biology. Society for the Study of Human Biology Series, Vol. 45. George T.H. Ellison and Alan H. Goodman, eds. Pp. 203-224. Boca Raton, CRC Press.

Turner et al. (2006) locate the ethical underpinnings of bioarchaeological conduct in the common racism of the anthropological past and the uncommon but still lingering practice of racial science in some subfields of physical anthropology today. They insist on the “necessity of blurring conceptual boundaries between past and present, academia and publics, specimens and people, and fact and conjecture” (p. 205) as they move through consideration of some of their own ethical recommendations. First, the authors, in a manner consonant with Larsen and Walker (2005), believe osteologists must respect skeletal remains and their descendants, wit the addition of “definite and possible” (p. 205) as modifiers to “descendants.” They also assert that researchers must strictly adhere to the limitations of their data sets and further cultivate an awareness of how diverse constituencies and communities may decipher, translate, or misunderstand osteological work. Finally, they insist that osteologists and other physical anthropologists open up their work and theories to the wider audience and larger disciplinary community. This is especially true in terms of bringing in Native Americans and their concerns into the investigation process.

Together these three books are providing a guide to the future generations of anthropologists, archaeologists, and osteologists. A guide that explicitly includes Native Americans and their voices in the overall disciplinary discourse.

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