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DEVELOPING A DECISION TREE MODEL AND PROTOCOLS FOR THE ETHICAL ACCESSION AND CURATION OF HUMAN REMAINS IN TEACHING COLLECTIONS

Abstract

The existence of human skeletal remains in university teaching collections is both well-known and fraught with ethical, moral, and legal issues related to the fact that most are not donated by the decedents themselves. The utility of these collections in research and teaching is unmatched but must be weighed against the potential societal impacts. Recently, Ivy League and other R1 universities have come under media scrutiny spotlighting issues related to the retention of remains of Indigenous peoples, NAGPRA-related concerns, forensically significant cases, and those of historically marginalized and persecuted populations. We analyzed these media spotlights to determine key commonalities, including a lack of transparency with administration and students, improper inventorying, few or no accession procedures, substandard curation, and even normalized indifference to these issues. Using a subsample of human remains that had yet to be accessioned into our teaching collection as a test case, we developed a decision tree for accession, use, display, curation, and storage. The decision tree was then applied to regularly used specimens to test its efficacy. After multiple revisions, the decision tree was found to be one hundred percent effective with the entirety of the collection. Research from the media spotlights and SOPs from other institutions were used to develop rules and procedures for collection use, and the inventory was moved to a cloud-based platform for increased accessibility for faculty and researchers. We also created a shareable learning module to engage students in the historical and cultural contexts behind teaching collections. While their use cannot be divorced from the inherent ethical and moral concerns of non-donated human remains in teaching collections, we believe our decision tree, standardized procedures for use, updated inventory, and teaching module can serve as a new standard of appropriate and honorable curation.

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