10 Chapter 10: Collections, Ethics and Ownership

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

• Identify and explain the issues and needs of archival collections.
• Identify and explain the issues and needs of three-dimensional collections.
• Describe current controversies regarding ownership of anthropological artifacts and human remains.
• Recall significant legislation pertaining to questions of ownership.

Not all anthropological research is done in the field. There is much to be learned from the collections of manuscripts and artifacts housed in universities and museums. These collections make it possible for anthropologists to study human cultures within the setting of special research laboratories that have been designed to preserve and organize materials collected and interpreted by scholars of the past.

Archives

Archival collections contain published, re-created, or original manuscripts that are deemed significant enough to be placed in conditions designed to preserve them against damage or loss. Such collections may contain correspondence, maps, drawings, original drafts of books, rare books, or other papers and media that need special care. Photographs are a major resource in many archives, and they need special handling. Preservation policies of archival collections include practices such as keeping resources out of direct sunlight and away from moisture.

While archives offer researchers a great range of valuable resources, they typically impose rather strict policies on those wishing to access these resources. Researchers typically must wear gloves when handling materials to prevent damage from the oils and acidity of human skin. Normally, archival collections do not circulate (i.e., cannot be removed from the host site), and researchers may have to apply for permission to enter the site or use any information. Archives may charge varying rates to make copies of material or to use images of the resources in their collection for publication. To access some archives, researchers must plan ahead by scheduling a time to visit and making previous arrangements to access specific collections. Some sites do not allow researchers to scan materials using flatbed scanners, instead stipulating the use of non-flash photography or overhead scanning. Some archives do not allow the patron to scan, photograph, or copy a manuscript in any way, with all arrangements for copies and reproductions having to go through the archive’s staff.

The first step in archival research is typically to review a list or similar finding aid that indexes and describes the resources available in a collection. These descriptive aids can help researchers determine whether a collection contains resources that fit their needs and can make a visit to a selected archive more efficient and worthwhile. Finding aids have become so well constructed that they may provide researchers with enough information to enable the researcher to request copies of specific materials and avoid the effort and expense of traveling to the archive in person. Most archives offer downloadable finding aids of their most important collections on their websites, and there may be additional printed finding aids available on request. Most archives will make requested copies for a moderate fee and will mail or email researchers a packet of the reproduced materials. The cost of procuring such copies is almost always much less than the cost of traveling to an archive site and paying for housing and meals. However, if a collection is potentially full of material important to a research project, it may be better to visit in person.

Three-Dimensional Collections

Three-dimensional collections of objects such as basketry and pottery are normally housed separately from manuscript collections. Such collections may host tens of thousands of individual cultural objects. These collections typically require much more care and management than manuscript materials. Extensive planning goes into determining the best way to contain and store each type of object in order to slow deterioration over time, with special attention paid to both the temperature and the moisture levels in storage areas. Handwoven baskets will be supported so that their fibers are not under stress, and all organic objects will have been previously frozen, perhaps several times, to destroy any insects that may live in the fibers. Collections of animal and human remains utilized by biological anthropologists or archaeologists must be properly stored and controlled against further degradation by reducing temperatures and maintaining moisture controls. Some very ancient organic collections may need to be chemically stabilized so they do not degrade. Objects made from organic materials—such as wooden canoes, basketry, reed sandals, or human remains—are particularly prone to degradation. Organic artifacts that have been sealed away from contact with the air for centuries, such as the famous wreck of Robert de LaSalle’s ship the La Belle (Figure 1) in 1686 will degrade fast once exposed to the air, so they may be kept permanently frozen or preserved with an ammonium glycol solution to stabilize decay.

All objects in collections storage must be well organized to make them accessible for further research opportunities. Collection materials that have been used to make claims about human experience or evolution must remain accessible to future researchers in case there are challenges or additional questions about their findings. In addition, if an anthropologist who donated and is responsible for overseeing a collection at one institution should die or move to another research institute, there needs to be a plan for the period of retention for the collection, or the time that the collection will remain in the archive. Many biological and cultural collections have been preserved in repositories since the day they were collected, with no plans to ever remove them from an archive. There are collections in the Smithsonian Institution that have been there since the institution was built in the 1850s. These collections continue to grow at museums and universities around the world.

In the early 20th century, many museums adopted the practices of painting objects with lacquer and spraying organic collections with pesticides such as DDT to prevent insect damage. These solutions were proven to ultimately be harmful. Lacquer tends to alter the color and chemical structure of objects and is thus not a good preservation material, and DDT and other pesticides pose health threats to humans. Both museum staff and tribal members who receive repatriated objects and human remains are very concerned about the hazards these chemicals pose to humans—and to the environment, if they should be reburied. Efforts to clean many collections are underway.

Ethics and Ownership

A question being asked by both anthropologists and subjects of research today is who owns the objects housed in material collections. In the past, anthropologists or their host institutions assumed ownership of anything they collected, along with the right to publish images of materials and sign over ownership of the objects to collections repositories. In recent decades, Indigenous communities and other subjects of research have begun asking questions about whether such objects really should be considered the property of these repositories. Many of these artifacts were not even collected by scientists but rather donated or sold by collectors, some of whom removed the artifacts from burial sites. Artifact hunting is a common cultural practice in many countries and laws to address this problem vary from one place to another.

Questions of ownership become particularly pressing when the objects in question are human remains. Until the 1960s, Native Americans in the United States had little or no power to repatriate their ancestors. Repatriation is the process of restoring human remains and/or objects of religious or cultural importance to the peoples from whom they originated. In the United States, repatriation is executed under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), passed into law in 1990. Prior to 1990, Indigenous peoples in the United States had no legal means to claim return of any of the millions of human remains that had been collected and placed in museums and archaeological collections since the 19th century. With this legislation institutions that receive Federal funds and Federal agencies must repatriate human remains and certain other cultural artifacts to lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations.

In 2017, after two years of planning and coordination, the U.S. Army Garrison Presidio of Monterey and the Army National Military Cemeteries hosted a ceremony with four Native American tribal nations in attendance (Figure 2). Directly a result of NAGPRA legislation, 17 Native American remains and around 300 funerary objects were returned for reburial. These peoples and cultural artifacts had been collected for several decades, between 1910 and 1985. This represented the first instance in Army history where repatriation and burial of Native American remains occurred within a military post cemetery (Quimby 2018).

From the start, however, NAGPRA had many problems that arose, including the requirement to “prove” affiliation with living Indigenous tribes for these human remains to be returned. One of the most famous examples of this was the around 8,500 year old remains of a skeleton found in Kennewick, Washington in the summer of 1996 which came to be known by scientists as “Kennewick Man” and Native tribes as “The Ancient One.” For several decades who should have access to and rights over the skeleton under NAGPRA regulations was adjudicated in courts with some scientists saying the remains were not closely related to living Native American tribes, thus ensuring that NAGPRA did not apply. In 2015 DNA evidence was shown to support the conclusion that the remains were linked to modern day Native people’s such as the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. Ultimately The Ancient One (Kennewick Man) was returned and buried on February 18, 2017 (Ghose 2017). Attempts to revise the NAGPRA law are ongoing, including announcement of an attempt by the Department of the Interior to consult with Tribal and Native Hawaiian community leaders during the revision process in July of 2021 (U.S. Department of the Interior 2022).

Generally, anytime a road is built or a building is constructed, there needs to be a section 106 review of the project because of the likelihood of encountering Native American cultural sites in almost all locations in the United States. Through the consultation process and cooperation between SHPOs and THPOs, decisions are made as to the status and disposition of any cultural objects recovered from cultural sites. Tribes typically advocate for the non-disturbance of human remains and the return of cultural objects to the concerned tribes. The NHPA is not perfect, as it does not completely halt construction that will destroy a cultural site and does not apply to collections placed in repositories before 1966.

In the early 20th century, the United States made it illegal for non-scientists to remove artifacts from archaeological sites on federal lands under a law called the American Antiquities Act (1906). More recently, NAGPRA made it possible for tribes to repatriate objects covered under the act, such as human remains and funerary objects. Under this law, more than 20,000 sets of remains had been repatriated as of 2010, but millions of artifacts and sets of additional remains are still in repositories. In addition, there are human remains and funerary objects of US origin in collections worldwide that are not subject to NAGPRA repatriation.

One problem surrounding repatriation is that many artifacts and remains lack clear provenance, or detailed information about where they were found. Lack of clear provenance also limits an object’s usefulness to researchers. In many cases, wide regions are provided as the origin of an artifact, making it unclear which specific culture it relates to. Objects that, for example, are labeled as coming from “New York” may have been created by members of dozens of tribes or groups of tribes. In general, the more specific a provenance is, the better. Narrowing an object down to Buffalo, New York, reduces its possible tribal sources to just a few. Objects that have too broad of a context are nearly impossible to repatriate because repatriation is supposed to return an object or human remains to the original tribe. In 2010, NAGPRA was expanded to allow for groups of tribes to repatriate objects of wide regional association back to a previously agreed-upon reburial or repatriation location. Under this expanded version of the law, a greater number of objects and human remains will be able to be returned to their communities.

Concerns about ownership have also been raised regarding the ethnological and ethnographic research collected in millions of documents in hundreds of research collections around the world. Some Indigenous communities have raised concerns that this material represents their ancestral intellectual knowledge and that it was taken from them without full disclosure of how it would be used. Many anthropologists published books and/or made tenure at their universities based on such research. Meanwhile, little was done with the information to help the peoples it described, who were struggling under political and legal pressures to assimilate. In some cases, Indigenous groups have implemented research projects utilizing these manuscript collections that have the explicit goal of helping their people with cultural recovery efforts.

One example of Indigenous peoples utilizing archive materials to their advantage is offered by Oregon’s Coquille Indian Tribe, which made use of archival documents to successfully restore their tribe to federal recognition in 1989 after the tribe was declared “terminated” by the federal government in 1954. Their restoration bid was made difficult by the fact that the records of their culture were collected in faraway archives. Essential to the tribe’s success was George Wasson Jr., who was aided by Leonard Frachtenberg. Wasson Jr. designed and implemented an effort to collect copies of anthropological manuscripts pertinent to the Coquille tribe from the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1995, 1997, and 2006, the Southwest Oregon Research Project—a project initiated by the Coquille Indian Tribe, University of Oregon anthropologists, and students from western Oregon tribes—collected 150,000 pages of documents about the tribes of western Oregon from the Smithsonian Institution and the National Archives. These materials have since become a major collection at the University of Oregon’s Knight Library Archives, special collections division, and additional copies have been given to 17 regional tribes.

These projects are examples of the repatriation of intellectual knowledge to the tribes that the information was collected from. Many libraries now have policies that allow Indigenous groups to repatriate their intellectual knowledge in the form of copies of collection materials for little or no cost. Recordings of songs represent a particularly sensitive and special type of cultural artifact. Archives have historically not been very attentive to the concerns of Indigenous people regarding their collections. For more information, consult the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials.

Terms You Should Know

Archival collections

Three-dimensional collections

Repatriation

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

National Historic Preservation Act of 1966

State historic preservation officer

Tribal historic preservation officer

Provenance

Study Questions

1. What is NAGRA? Can you explain it’s importance to Native peoples in the United States.
2. What are some limitations with implementing NAGPRA legislation?
3. Who was Kennewick Man and what was the final outcome of this case?

References

Ghose, Tia. 2017. Ancient Kennewick Man Finally Laid to Rest. https://www.livescience.com/57977-kennewick-man-reburied.html

Quimby, Laura Prishmont. 2018. Native American remains buried in the Presidio of Monterey’s post cemetery. https://www.army.mil/article/214008/native_american_remains_buried_in_the_presidio_of_montereys_post_cemetery

U.S. Department of the Interior. 2022. Department of the Interior Takes Steps to Enhance Compliance of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/department-interior-takes-steps-enhance-compliance-native-american-graves-protection

A derivative work from

Hasty, Jennifer, Lewis, David G., and Snipes, Marjorie M. 2022. Introduction to Anthropology. OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0