Übersee-Museum in Bremen examines skulls of colonial origin using computer tomography

The aim is to in­ves­ti­gate the bi­o­log­i­cal sex of the in­di­vid­u­als con­cerned as well as their age, dis­eases and caus­es of death, there­by con­tribut­ing to the re­hu­man­iza­tion of the skulls, which have been anony­mous up un­til now. The com­put­er to­mog­ra­phy was car­ried out in close co­or­di­na­tion with the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um & Art Gallery Papua New Guinea at the hos­pi­tal Klinikum Bre­men-Mitte. The re­sults will be pub­lished when the three-year prove­nance re­search project comes to an end in au­tumn 2022.

The an­ces­tral skulls from the col­lec­tion at the Übersee-Mu­se­um are over­mod­elled with clay and wax and ar­tis­ti­cal­ly dec­o­rat­ed with shells, beads and paint. The skulls over­mod­elled with wax come from the is­land of New Ire­land, while those over­mod­elled with clay are from the area of the Sepik, the longest riv­er in Papua New Guinea. The skulls were pre­sum­ably col­lect­ed in the pe­ri­od 1884-1914/18, i.e. dur­ing the colo­nial pe­ri­od in what was then Ger­man New Guinea. In to­tal, the mu­se­um’s col­lec­tion com­pris­es 125 skulls from Papua New Guinea.

The ques­tion of the ori­gin and the ac­qui­si­tion of the skulls is a key fo­cus of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­der project lead­er Bet­ti­na von Brisko­rn. She is sup­port­ed by an­thro­pol­o­gist Swan­t­je Grohmann, who is us­ing CT scans to de­ter­mine the bi­o­log­i­cal sex of the vic­tims as well as their age, dis­eases and caus­es of death. For over­mod­elled skulls, on­ly a CT scan al­lows a more pre­cise view of the skull.

“The re­sults of an an­thro­po­log­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion, es­pe­cial­ly with the help of CTs, sup­port re­hu­man­iza­tion of the skulls be­cause it helps us gain some idea of what hap­pened to these name­less in­di­vid­u­als – a mu­se­um ob­ject be­comes a hu­man be­ing again,” says Bet­ti­na von Brisko­rn. The anal­y­sis of the CTs can of­fer clues that are cru­cial to clas­si­cal prove­nance re­search, too. In this way, an­thro­po­log­i­cal find­ings are com­pa­ra­ble to the in­for­ma­tion in old mu­se­um in­ven­to­ries.

The com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing in the Riv­er Sepik area over­mould­ed the skulls of their an­ces­tors with clay, and these were very pop­u­lar with col­lec­tors from Eu­rope dur­ing the colo­nial pe­ri­od. It is as­sumed that the skulls of en­e­mies were of­ten over­mod­elled with clay, too, and fash­ioned as an­ces­tral skulls to be giv­en to col­lec­tors in ex­change for cov­et­ed goods such as ax­es and knives. In the case of the over­mod­elled skulls, the CT im­ages may en­able re­searchers to de­ter­mine whether or not the in­di­vid­u­als con­cerned died a vi­o­lent death.

The aim is to re­turn the skulls to Papua New Guinea, pro­vid­ing their ori­gin can be iden­ti­fied with suf­fi­cient pre­ci­sion.