[BCMA] [Fwd: CMA Clip Serv: UK museums avoid displaying human remains]

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*UK museums avoid displaying human remains 'out of respect'*
*Museums becoming 'over-sensitive' to the demands of minority groups, 
author claims*
Maev Kennedy, The Guardian (UK), Monday, October 25, 2010

Museums are increasingly getting cold feet about exhibiting human bodies 
and body parts -- despite surveys showing the public is fascinated and 
quite untroubled by such displays.

In a book published today, Tiffany Jenkins, a sociologist who is a 
visiting fellow at the London School of Economics's law department, 
argues mummies and other human remains have been displayed covered by 
linen wrappings, in dark cases that have to be illuminated by pressing a 
button, displayed with warning notices or been taken off display 
completely.

Examples she has uncovered in her book, Contesting Human Remains in 
Museum Collections, include bones showing rickets -- a disease of 
poverty and malnutrition which produced deformity of the legs -- taken 
off display at the Museum of London and the head of an iron age bog 
body, Worsley Man, removed at Manchester University Museum. Manchester 
also covered its mummies with linen sheets, but uncovered them after 
public protest.

The Egypt gallery at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery displays a body 
curved into a foetal position in a dark case that visitors press a 
button to illuminate, and displays its mummies with their coffin lids 
half closed.

The Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro shows no images of human remains 
other than wrapped mummies online or in publicity material.

In the last decade some museums, such as the Hunterian Museum in 
Glasgow, have returned human remains, including Maori heads to New Zealand.

However, Jenkins said demands for reburial were now coming from minority 
groups in Britain, including pagans and druids, while Manchester 
consulted the group Honouring the Ancient Dead, which campaigns for 
reburial of pre-Christian British remains, before removing the Worsley 
Man head.

Jenkins argued that museums were being being "over-sensitive" to demands 
both from minority groups, and in some cases their own staff, for 
greater "respect" for human remains.

"This is not driven by public demand, but professional insecurity. 
Unfortunately it will penalise the millions of people who enjoy learning 
from the display of human remains. It will also impact detrimentally on 
the research environment, making it more difficult to study this 
important material," she said.

"The profession is over-reacting to the claims of small minority groups, 
such as the pagan organisation Honoring the Ancient Dead. Curiously, the 
profession do not take into account the feelings of other pagan groups 
who advocate the use of human remains in research and display, such as 
Pagans for Archaeology."

A recent survey for English Heritage found that only 9% of people 
absolutely opposed museums displaying human bones, more than half 
supported such displays regardless of the age of the bones, and a 
further 27% supported them if the bones were more than a century old.

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