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Contribution short abstract:

Self-managed community museums have been established in Bolivia to ensure that archaeological heritage remains in the custody of the neighboring communities. Using ethnographic data, this talk explores the negotiation of relationships between living people and Andean human remains in museums.

Contribution long abstract:

In the early 2000s, several small museums (museos de sitio) preserving mummified human remains were established in indigenous communities of the southeastern Lake Titicaca region as part of archaeological projects. In Bolivia, instead of being transferred to state archaeological museums or university research museums in the nearest cities, material finds are to remain in the custody of the autonomous governments of the respective sites (Ley 530 de Patrimonio, 2014). Community museums have been created as both repositories and tourist attractions, but like state and university museums, they can also function as places of encounter with human remains.

The cultural sensitivity of human remains as museum objects lies not only in the possible contexts of injustice of their collection, rooted in colonial power relations, but also in their ontological ambivalence as objectified subjects. In the Andean region of Bolivia, skulls and mummies are ascribed a benevolent yet potentially threatening agency, while at the same time benefiting from the ritual care of the living. As objects of collection, looting, and research, they have been recontextualized, with implications for the practices and relationships that surround them.

In this talk, I use ethnographic data to critically examine the potential of community museums as sites for the development of decolonial museum practice and collaborative knowledge production, using the example of human remains and the influence of different institutional forms of museums on the relationships in which they are embedded.