Human remains in storage : recommendations for care and use Edit

Direct encounters with human remains, especially prolonged and direct work with and on them, present various hurdles and raise questions that have hardly been considered in current discussions on the handling of human remains. Existing recommendations focus primarily on human remains that have been unjustly acquired by museums and university collections or whose provenance is unclear. The important topics of ownership, exhibition and communication as well as repatriation and restitution are discussed at length. Yet the authors of this text, who have worked intensively on collections with human remains in recent years, found little support in the existing recommendations for dealing with the actual, often precarious situation of human remains in the collection and storage context. In addition, not only is the direct handling different at each location, but in many places there is also a lack of conservation standards that are essential for an effective collection care. To address this, the authors have focused on what they consider to be the most important parameters for the dignified handling of human remains in the closed, non-public space of the depot and in comparable, non-visible locations in display collections. Recommendations for all those who come into direct contact with human remains as collection caretakers, conservators, taxidermists, anthropologists, historians, etc. have emerged from this. Source

@book{fuchs_menschliche_2020,
	title = {Menschliche Überreste im {Depot}: {Empfehlungen} für {Betreuung} und {Nutzung}},
	url = {https://wissenschaftliche-sammlungen.de/files/3515/7987/3438/Menschliche_berreste_im_Depot.pdf},
	language = {de},
	urldate = {2025-07-02},
	publisher = {Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung},
	collaborator = {Fuchs, Jakob and Gabler, Diana and Herm, Christoph and Markert, Michael and Mühlenberend, Sandra},
	year = {2020},
}