Physical Anthropology, Evolution, and Histories of Scientific Racism

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A CONTINUING CONVERSATION ABOUT MOVE AND THE PENN MUSEUM

MAY 12 

The recent revelations concerning the Penn Museum and human remains have raised a number of questions about the histories of anthropology and ethnographic museums, and about the practices of collecting, exhibiting, and researching:

• Why do so many people end up in museums?
• Within a forensic framework, the stated objective is to restore personhood to remains, but how is this possible when they are still held and addressed as specimens (which abstracts them from personhood)?
• What guidelines exist to support ethical practices in fieldwork and with collections?
• Should anthropology get out of the “body business”? Are there still important things human remains can tell us?
• What could a community-led approach to research, exhibiting, and collecting teach us?
• Listen to the conversation below.

Our guests Rachel Watkins (American University), Aja Lans (Syracuse University), and Delande Justinvil (American University) will help us think through these questions, and more…

OUR GUESTS

DELANDE JUSTINVIL

Delande Justinvil is a doctoral student in anthropology and 2021-2022 Peter S. Buck Predoctoral Fellow at the National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of African American History and Culture. His interests lie at the intersection of biocultural anthropology, cultural history, race and science, and Black study. His research mobilizes an anthropology of Black remains that brings together biological, archaeological, and archival methods to interrogate embodiments of violence in/as the afterlives of slavery, with a particular focus on the 19th and 20th century Mid-Atlantic. Delande has participated in excavations in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the U.S. as well as curatorial and collections-based initiatives concerning repatriation and racial equity in university museums. His dissertation project applies critical race theory and theories of violence to bioarchaeological analysis to investigate African American skeletal remains from recently discovered burials in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

RACHEL WATKINS

Rachel Watkins is a biocultural anthropologist with an emphasis on African American biohistory and social history, bioanthropological research practices and histories of (US) American biological anthropology. Initially trained in skeletal biology, her work focused on looking at relationships between health, disease, and social location in people whose remains are in the W. Montague Cobb anatomical collection and interred at the New York African Burial Ground. This research led to a broader interest in how African American skeletal remains and living populations were centered in the development of research practices and racial formation in US biological anthropology. Current projects continue to draw on intellectual and political work tied to Cobb and his laboratory from 1932 to the present as sites for understanding science as a social practice through a Black feminist lens. This includes: 1) traditions of Black scholar-activism contesting scientific racism; 2) our field’s efforts toward critiquing scientific racism without attending to structural racism; and, 3) the positionality of scientific researchers.

AJA LANS

I am a doctoral candidate in historical archaeology and cultural heritage preservation. My dissertation, ♀ Negro: Embodied Experiences of Inequality in Historic New York City, is a study of the skeletal and archival remains of black women who died in turn of the century New York City. Utilizing life course and intersectional approaches, I aim to better understand how race, gender, class, and place came to be literally embodied, and (re)insert physical remains into the wider discussion of black women’s histories in the United States.

PRE-READINGS / VIEWINGS

Blakey, M. L. (2020). “Archaeology under the blinding light of race.” Current Anthropology, 61(S22), S183-S197.
Justinvil, D. & Colwell, C. 2021. “US museums hold the remains of thousands of Black people. What can be done about it?” Available at:
Lans, Aja. 2020. “Decolonize This Collection: Integrating Black Feminism and Art to Re-Examine Human Skeletal Remains in Museums.” Feminist Anthropology DOI: 10.1002/fea2.12027
Watkins, Rachel. 2020. “An Alter(ed)native Perspective on Historical Bioarchaeology.” Historical Archaeology 53(4).
Reclaiming the Ancestors: Indigenous and Black Perspectives on Repatriation, Human Rights, and Justice, September 2020.

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