Curating Human Remains: Caring for the Dead in the United Kingdom

How to care for, store, display and interpret human remains, and issues of their ownership, are contentious questions, ones that need to be answered with care and due consideration. This book offers a systematic overview of the responses made by museums and other repositories in the UK, providing a baseline for understanding the scope and nature of human remains collections and the practices related to their care. The introduction sets UK practices within an international context, while subsequent chapters, all written by leading experts, cover a wide range of topics through key case studies: legislation and ethical obligations; issues of both long-term and short-term care; differing perspectives associated with human remains collections in different parts of the UK; a comparison of attitudes and approaches in large institutions and small museums; the creative use of redundant churches; and challenges facing research/teaching laboratories and collections resulting from recent archaeological excavations.