From Bill White, Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, Museum of London
Rodney Dillon made some excellent points in his open letter to UK culture secretary Tessa Jowell, “Show ancient bones the proper respect” (14 February, p 18). Yet his article makes the claim that of the 20,000 sets of human remains in the Natural History Museum in London, “most were stolen from graves and traditional burial sites during the days of empire”. In fact, most of the skeletons came from within the UK.
Dillon, however, does reinforce the case for cooperation between the scientists who wish to perform research on the skeletal remains and the community who claim ownership of them. Would that the report of the working party had taken such a balanced view, instead of recommending automatic repatriation (for which read reburial).
However, his concern that indigenous Australian peoples are bearing the brunt of the proposed research on skeletal remains while others are not required to make such a “sacrifice” is nonsense.
Anthropological research is not parochial. Isolating specific remains in such a way would make our knowledge all the poorer and indeed the effect would be to denigrate the very people that Dillon would have us believe he is helping.
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London, UK
