Oxford Archaeologist Dan Hicks Challenges Claims About Human Remains in British Museums
A debate over what, exactly, British museums hold in their stores has sharpened after new analysis questioned reassuring claims that most human remains in UK collections were locally sourced and legally excavated.
Museum newsletters had stated that “the vast majority” of human remains in British institutions were of UK origin and recovered under clear legal frameworks. Dan Hicks, a professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford who examined the data behind those statements, disputes that characterization. He argues that many collections include bodies and body parts taken from cemeteries or battlefields by British colonial officials and soldiers — material that, in some cases, was kept as trophies or used to support now-discredited racial science, including eugenics.
Hicks also raised concerns about whether institutions are following existing government guidance on the care and management of human remains. That guidance calls for remains to be stored separately, handled respectfully, and kept in controlled environments. It also encourages museums to publish inventories of the human remains they hold, a transparency measure that Hicks says many institutions have not implemented.
For Hicks, the issue is not only procedural but ethical: he argues that inadequate documentation and limited public accounting can extend the harm that began with the original removal of bodies from their communities. Treating human bodies as museum objects, he has said, reflects “the colonial violence involved in the taking and warehousing of human remains.”
Calls for structural reform have also come from Boateng, who has urged the UK government to establish a national register of human remains held across British collections and to set clearer rules for returning them to their countries and communities of origin.
Several institutions and sector bodies have responded by emphasizing existing standards while acknowledging the colonial history of many collections. The Museums Association, which represents UK museums, has recognized that many overseas human remains entered British institutions during the colonial era. Its director, Sharon Heal, said updated guidance and legislation could help museums work more closely with communities seeking the return of ancestral remains.
The Natural History Museum said it is committed to “high standards of care and stewardship” for the remains in its collection, adding that it has not refused repatriation requests when a clear connection to a community of origin has been established. Cambridge’s Duckworth Laboratory states on its website that it follows government guidance on the care and management of human remains.
The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Cambridge University declined to comment to the Guardian.
The dispute underscores a broader shift in museum culture: as institutions face intensifying questions about colonial-era collecting, the handling of human remains has become a test case for transparency, accountability, and the practical mechanics of repatriation.
