Dorset auction condo withdraws Egyptian human skulls from sale – Guardian
An auction condo has withdrawn 18 damaged-down Egyptian human skulls from sale after an MP acknowledged promoting them would perpetuate the atrocities of colonialism.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the chair of the all-birthday party parliamentary community on Afrikan reparations, believes the sale of human remains for any applications would possibly presumably perchance presumably silent be outlawed, including that the alternate used to be “a spoiled violation of human dignity”.
The skulls of 10 men, 5 girls folk, and three folks of unsure sex, were listed by Semley Auctioneers in Dorset, with a handbook mark of £200-300 for every lot.
They were in the initiating mild by the Victorian British soldier and archaeologist Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers, who founded the College of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum in 1884.
The skulls, about a of that are listed as coming from Thebes and date to 1550-1292BC, were allotment of Pitt Rivers’ lesser-identified 2d sequence, which he displayed in a private museum on his estate in Farnham, Dorset.
Parts of the sequence were later offered by Augustus’s grandson, George Pitt Rivers, a eugenicist, who used to be interned by the British authorities in the course of the 2d world battle on account of his enhance for the fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
Ribeiro-Addy acknowledged: “This sinful alternate perpetuates a depressing legacy of exploitation, colonialism and dehumanisation. It’s miles a spoiled violation of human dignity and an affront to the memory of those whose lives were unjustly taken, or whose final resting locations were desecrated.
“We can’t allow profit to be product of the exploits of folks that on the entire hoped to seek out proof for their racist ideology. It’s miles imperative that we take decisive trail to discontinuance such practices and ensure that the remains of folks that were stolen from their homelands are respectfully repatriated.”
The UK has strict laws on the storage, treatment and repeat of human remains. However anyone can hold, aquire and sell human body ingredients as long as they were now now not received illegally, they most continuously assign now now not appear to be extinct for transplants, handiest for decoration.
A web based auction put on which the skulls were listed eradicated the tons after it used to be contacted by the Guardian. The Saleroom’s web put states that the itemizing of human remains or body ingredients is illegal.
A Saleroom spokesperson acknowledged: “These objects are factual on the market in the UK and are of archaeological and anthropological hobby. On the other hand, after discussion with the auctioneer we now private eradicated the objects whereas we now private in thoughts our space and wording of our coverage.”
A Semley Auctioneers spokesperson confirmed the tons had been withdrawn from sale.
Prof Dan Hicks, the curator of world archaeology on the Pitt Rivers Museum, which eradicated a sequence of shrunken human heads from repeat in 2020, acknowledged: “This sale from a legacy colonial sequence that used to be offered off in the last century shines a gentle on ethical standards in the art work and antiquities market. I hope that this is in a position to presumably perchance encourage a brand unique nationwide dialog referring to the legality of promoting human remains.”
Hicks, the creator of The Brutish Museums, which examines the looting of the Benin bronzes by British troopers in the leisurely 19th century, additionally noted that about a of the skulls listed on the market were inscribed with phrenological measurements by Augustus Pitt Rivers.
Phrenology, a 19th-century racist pseudoscience that claimed the form of the skull will most certainly be extinct to infer mental traits, used to be extinct to interpret white supremacy and slavery.
“The measurements of heads in declare to take a scrutinize at to make clear human forms or racial kind used to be one thing that Pitt Rivers used to be continuing to attain with archaeological human remains in declare to take a scrutinize at to add to his interpretations of the past,” Hicks added.
Pitt Rivers printed his measurements of the skulls in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Spacious Britain and Eire in 1882.
Hicks acknowledged Pitt Rivers’ theories and practices represented a transition from the racial “science” of early anthropology in the direction of the eugenics trail of the early twentieth century, of which his grandson, George, used to be allotment.
“George Pitt Rivers used to be a life member of the Eugenics Society and a member of the Nordic League, and a total host of fascist organisations from the 1920s onwards. At the comparable time, he used to be additionally director of the 2d Pitt-Rivers sequence,” Hicks added.
