Open debate: the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya (MAC) has kept the skeletons of two Vietnamese since the seventies, acquired for museography and for comparative studies in bones. The two bodies apparently come from the Vietnam War and were purchased in an international circuit that operated at the time, according to the memory that remains in the institution. The MAC is searching the old archives of the Barcelona Provincial Council – at that time the owner of the museum – in search of documentation that supports this memory. For now, there is a note in the 1974 report that reads: “In order to improve the practical exercises, a complete skeleton, some sectioned skulls and a disassembled skull with all its components have been acquired.” Is it one of those corpses?
The museum wants to gather all the information on the matter to propose some type of repair or dignified exit for the two skeletons, which have been used in the MAC rooms until recently.
Today they are removed in separate boxes in the paleopathology laboratory, awaiting a decision.
The director of the institution, Jusèp Boya, has opened a museum and ethical debate about his collection, in which logically there are numerous human remains, and in that work the thorny question of the two Vietnamese has appeared.
One certainly corresponds to a woman and is armed with irons that allowed it to be kept standing, for studies or exhibitions, although it is now stored, divided into parts.
The other is possibly a male, according to the estimates of Núria Armentano, professor of Biological Anthropology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and member of the Spanish Association of Anthropology and Forensic Dentistry. As an anthropologist at the MAC, this debate revolves around her.
“The museum must do this work. It has identified a problem and is addressing it, to be a more ethical museum, with a 21st century vision. We want to open our own path, a Catalan path, which we will offer to the rest of the country’s museums, to travel that path together,” says Boya.
“Perhaps we will have to think about repatriating these bodies or some type of reparation,” Boya anticipates.
Given the origin – a purchase – and the use to which they have been given, the two skeletons are not part of the museum’s inventory; If so, and by law, they could not be donated or destroyed. “That makes it easier to find a way out,” says the director.
The museum could apply the measure it used at the end of last year with a controversial corpse it kept: the mummified remains of a young girl that had been in its warehouses apparently since the 1960s.
The girl, anonymous, had then died at the Josep Trueta hospital in Girona from hydrocephalus. A doctor from that hospital knew that the eminent doctor Domènec Campillo, with anthropology tasks at the MAC, was studying this same disease in human remains found in medieval excavations and sent him the body from Girona; His family had not claimed him for a burial. Since then, that girl has been in the Barcelona warehouses.
For this reason, Boya contacted Cementiris from Barcelona and they agreed to give it a name. They called her Estel and on November 21 she was buried in the Montjuïc cemetery in a simple ceremony.
The line of debate opened by Boya is unprecedented until now in Spain: can human remains be exhibited or used in museums and their exhibition halls? How old? What to do with those human remains?
For now, the MAC has created a “bioethics working group” that has already held a meeting with museum directors and curators from its various locations.
“We want a more ethical museum, and with respect for the cultures that have left us human remains. In our museum we only have problems with two or three remains, but they do not come from excavations but from a practice that was common in many institutions, and from a market that was legal,” says Boya.
“We must adapt to the international reality of our environment,” he adds.
The institution is already organizing work sessions on this issue for September or October, under the coordination of Armentano, to which it is planned to invite experts in international bioethics and museography.
Great Britain has years of advantage in this area, with debates promoted by the Government for about twenty years.
The British have put a kind of indicative temporary barrier in the hundred years, and since 2019 there has been a lively debate about the elimination of human remains from museum display cases. They do not exhibit remains of those who died less than a century ago, although the proximity and cultural and religious contexts of each specific case must be taken into account.
“As a curator and osteologist, I consider that being able to learn from the skeletal remains of people from the past is a privilege,” says Jelena Bekvalac, curator of human osteology at the Museum of London, “and when museum visitors see these remains, I think they also “There is that feeling of experiencing and interacting with the past in an extraordinary way.” However, she adds, “the display of human remains should be carefully considered before being put on display and, if they are to be displayed, they should be done only if their inclusion adds to the narrative of the exhibition and not simply their being displayed lewdly. “If there are human remains displayed in a museum gallery, there should be notices to inform visitors in advance.”
“The public has the right to the knowledge that human remains provide, it can be very valuable. We must think about what it brings us and think carefully about how we display it and with what alerts or notices. And, previously, take into account if the exhibition offends someone or if someone has claimed those remains. But in any case, we must go case-by-case,” says Nicholas Márquez-Grant, associate professor in Forensic Anthropology at the British Cranfield University and an expert on the subject.
In Spain, heated debates have arisen with the graves of the Civil War, given the family proximity and time. Some excavation work was paralyzed due to the trauma it entailed in some families. In those cases, “what do we do? Shall we show the remains? The same has happened in the countries that suffered the two world wars, and there museums have had an exhibition challenge: explaining the war without the dead. With uniforms, gloves… With creativity,” says Armentano.
The MAC has a “star” element in the Iberian skulls pierced by nails from Ullastret. “I am in favor of showing them,” defends Boya. “Of course there is an economic and commercial component in this debate, they often have a pull among the public, and a museum should at least take that into account,” says Armentano. “But we must also take into account that today we are multicultural, with different sensitivities, and although the Mediterranean tradition tolerates the display of corpses in glass cases, this is not the case among Jews or Muslims.”
Hence, many museums already warn their visitors that certain pieces on display may offend sensitivities. “There is a lot of talk about respect: for the dead? And respect for visitors and knowledge? The debate is very rich,” questions the anthropologist.
The objective of the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya is to prepare a guide or protocol that cultural institutions can use in these cases. “But a law is not a 100% useful tool either,” continues the anthropologist, “because, as happens for example with the abortion law, very deep questions of conscience arise.”
