THE Smithsonian Institution used to be proud of its vast collection of human bones. These days it finds them a political embarrassment: curators have been working hard in recent years to identify which skulls and bones should be returned to which Native American tribes. So far they have managed to “repatriate” several thousand sets.
It’s a similar story in Australia, where museums have begun to return bones to Aboriginal groups. So shouldn’t other countries be doing the same?
In the UK, home to some of the world’s largest bone collections, especially from Africa, many anthropologists are unhappy about that prospect …
