Repatriation

I recently finished reading Return of the Bones, a novel based on a true story of a New Mexican Native American woman who went to Washington, DC and Harvard to regain possession of ancestral bones that had been dug up on an archaeological mission in the early 20th century.  The lesson is that the skeletons are sacred and deserving of a proper burial, and that studying them for science robs the individuals (and tribes) of their dignity.  The US government now has a streamlined process for surviving Native Americans to regain their ancestral bones for reburial and other purposes.

Repatriation of such skeletons is clearly anti-science.  New methods, such as DNA analysis and modern dating techniques, can provide us with significant information about human migrations, evolution, ecology, how societies have managed climate change, and other very useful information.  The idea that the skeletons' spirits will be disturbed is as scientifically unfounded as the idea that humans arose by the hand of God some 6000 years ago.  Giving in to such belief systems cannot be good for the advancement of knowledge.

That said, we must also look at historical contexts to determine reasons for doing things as well as the best way to proceed.  Until recently, anthropology (and its branches such as archaeology and linguistics) has been a less-than-rigorously-scientific, racist endeavor.  Much of anthropology was about comparing societal or anatomical aspects to show that European civilization and anatomy was superior to all others, and also to rank societies/races accordingly.  Thus, in the not-so-distant past, digging up skeletons (not just in the Americas, but also Africa, Australia, Asia and Europe) for study was absolutely intertwined with White supremacy, and was in fact designed to augment White supremacy arguments.  Archaeology at that time was an agent of oppression, and one can definitely see why, in this context, Native Americans would be opposed to digging up of their ancestors for "science." 

As a comparison, there is very little outrage (and repatriation requests would not be taken seriously) when, for example, medieval burial sites in England are dug up to study medieval nutrition, plagues, etc.  (To note, Return of the Bones puts initial occupation by the Pecos and Jemez tribes in New Mexico in the 1200s.  These are not ancient skeletons, but are aged closer to the medieval period in Europe.  Truly ancient bones cannot be said, with any scientific certainty outside of DNA testing, to belong to any modern tribe.  This does not stop tribes from claiming such skeletons as their own due to mythologies that their people have existed in the same place since time immemorial.)

Current physical, archaeological and linguistic anthropology has been shedding its racist past and being put on more solid, rigorous footing as a science (though some might argue that it is still a "soft" science, with too much noise and variation in data to make definitive and predictive statements).  Old bones, tools, and structures can tell us much about our past, how we as humans have dealt with climatic disasters, as well as other information that will be useful in helping us prepare for the future.  We do need to acknowledge the use, in the past, of archaeology as a tool of oppression, but it must also be made clear that those days were mistaken and we have moved beyond, and learned from, our past.