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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines two case studies of displayed collections of human remains—the Hyrtl crania at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA, USA and the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic—to provide a theoretical framework for the way we think about and approach the dead in public spaces.

Paper long abstract:

For archaeologists, scientists, and anthropologists, human remains provide direct evidence and unique insight into the past; in museums, there is hardly an “artifact” more visceral and informative than the physical bodies of the dead. The questioning of ethics surrounding the excavation, collection, and display of human remains is nothing new, especially in the last several decades during which concern over the provenance of skeletal remains has grown exponentiality, particularly of those collected as the result of racial and colonialist violence. Nonetheless, many public displays of human remains endure; in fact, such collections equally elicit feelings of fascination and repulsion that draw in crowds seeking education about the past as much as gross-out horror as part of the ever-popular “dark” tourism industry. It is not the goal of this paper to rehash arguments that have been made over the ethics of museums, repatriation, or even of the display of collections of the dead; instead, this paper will use two case studies—the Hyrtl crania at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA, USA and the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic—to examine how such sites come to exist, how they interact with their “difficult histories,” and their current objectives in both academic and public spheres. Moreover, it will provide a theoretical framework that can be used more broadly to ground and contextualize the way we think about and approach interactions with the dead in public spaces.