Hanseatic Citizens as Headhunters? Human Remains in the Ethnographic collection of the Hanseatic City of Luebeck

The aim of this project is to investigate the background of the acquisition of 26 human remains which are currently kept in the Ethnographic Collection of the Hanseatic city of Luebeck. The range of these objects reaches from musical instruments and drinking cups made of human bones from Nepal and from Oceania, a shrunken head from Ecuador and decorated skulls from Papua New-Guinea. But the collection comprises also undecorated skulls from Congo and Chile as well as some of unknown origins.

In a first step we want to establish the precise geographic identity of the human remains and learn more about their circulation before they were purchased by the museum. This research is based mainly on written sources. In a second step we try to contact the corresponding source communities in order to discuss the current cultural meaning and sensibility of human remains as well as the option of restitution.

Should it appear useful and ethically unproblematic, non-invasive anthropological examinations will be commissioned. Not only the presumed age and sex of the person to which the bones belonged will be of interest but also the circumstantial evidences for possible causes of death, indications of burial or preservation. The final aim of the research is to re-humanize and re-biographize these remains. An additional part of this endeavour will be the construction of a new storage area in the depot of the museum to keep the human remains in more appropriate ethic conditions, separate from the other collection.

(c) Zentrum für Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschung Lübeck