Abstract
Engaging love, care, and abandonment, but with an emphasis on care, I begin to question politics of care with human skeletal remains. This questioning strongly came to the fore while reflecting on preliminary observations of and interactions with skeletal remains that show evidence of postmortem interventions. These queries include, but are not limited to, the following: How does one not perpetuate colonialism when photographing and presenting bodies, eerily recalling colonial racial-documentation techniques? Are research objectives justifiable when these individuals cannot speak back? These kinds of caring and care-full concerns are important and disquieting. I ultimately ask to care differently about bioarchaeological practices, what they cite, and what they perpetuate. At stake is the importance of emergent politics of practice and tinkering with pointed questions.
Extracto
Al abordar el amor, el cuidado y el abandono, pero con énfasis en el cuidado, empiezo a cuestionar la política de cómo cuidar restos humanos esqueléticos. Este cuestionamiento se destacó al reflexionar sobre observaciones preliminares e interacciones con restos óseos que muestran evidencia de intervenciones post mortem. Estos interrogantes incluyen, entre otras, los siguientes: ¿Cómo no perpetuar el colonialismo al fotografiar y presentar cuerpos de una manera que se asemeja inquietantemente con las técnicas coloniales de documentación racial? ¿Son justificables los objetivos de investigación cuando los individuos no pueden responder por sí mismos? Este tipo de preocupaciones de cuidado y de respeto son importantes e inquietantes. En última instancia, pido que se cuiden y se aborden de manera diferente las prácticas bioarqueológicas, lo que citan y lo que perpetúan. Está en juego la importancia de la política emergente de la práctica y la manipulación de preguntas puntiagudas.
Résumé
Faisant appel à l'amour, la sollicitude et l'abandon, mais en mettant l'accent sur la sollicitude, je commence par m'interroger sur la politique des traitements apportés aux restes de squelettes humains. Ce questionnement est fortement passé au premier plan dans le cadre d'une réflexion sur les observations préliminaires et les interactions avec les restes squelettiques montrant des traces d'interventions post mortem. Ces interrogations incluent sans s'y limiter, ce qui suit : Comment éviter de perpétuer le colonialisme lors de la photographie et de la présentation des corps, ce qui vient rappeler de manière sinistre les techniques de documentation raciale de l'ère coloniale ? Les objectifs de recherche sont-ils justifiables lorsque les individus ne peuvent pas s'exprimer ? Ces types de préoccupations liées à la sollicitude et à la prudence quant aux traitements sont importants et troublants. Je demande en définitive de me soucier différemment des pratiques bioarchéologiques, ce à quoi elles font référence et ce qu'elles perpétuent. Ce qui est en jeu est l'importance des politiques émergentes de pratique et de reformulation de questions spécifiques.
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Notes
Although this phrase is often used when discussing dissections and autopsies, I borrow “postmortem interventions” from Zoê Crossland (2009a) and Shannon Novak (2017a). While in ways resonating with their use of the term, particularly in regard to relationalities and understandings that dissections, autopsies, and archaeological excavations produce, my interest in the term is slightly different. The interventions on which I mainly focus are the questions and uncertainties generated in movements with skeletal bodies.
Additional information on Caraher and Rothaus’s (2016) thoughts on “An Archaeology of Care” can be found at their blog, <https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com>.
Here, I allude to Jocelyn Chua’s (2014) chapter entitled “Tales the Dead Are Made to Tell.”
On a related note, with regard to the ways suicide bodies in Kerala come to tell tales and are read by a host of individuals, Chua refers to the possibility of a mystification process that elides complexities of mourning (Chua 2016:86).
Sarah Wagner (2014) discusses this aspect of deciding what is an “individual” in relation to commingled remains, reburial, and mourning in Bosnia.
Joanna Sofaer (2012:141) calls interactions in these spaces “inter-corporeal encounters,” noting a connection that is “particularly intimate.”
Given the carbon-date ranges (Graves 2009), some could, of course, be older, especially if one is dealing with teaching specimens (see below). There is also, interestingly, reference to burials of tributaries dating to the 1690s, recorded by priests in the San Marcos parish (Alchon 1991:96, table 5.1).
Ann Stoler (2008:192) refers to “imperial debris” as “the less dramatic durabilities of duress that imperial formations produce as ongoing, persistent features of their ontologies.” To consider these debris is to address “these more protracted imperial processes that saturate the subsoil of people’s lives and persist, sometimes subjacently, over a longer durée.”
De la Bellacasa’s (2017:109–112) text inspires my use of the speculative, but I employ it a bit differently to conceive “darker” possibilities of past lives. My use is similar, though, in that I use the speculative as an intervention of care to generate alternative practices by highlighting everyday-ness and interdependence.
In some cases, skeletal remains are known as assailants. Toon and Stone (2017), for example, discussed events surrounding Richard III’s identification and body, but osteologists’ sentiments are largely skirted.
Credit is owed to Dr. Azra Hromadžić for posing a variant of this question in seminar.
See Valentine (2003) for an argument in favor of a “good enough” ethics, rather than a “good enough” ethnography.
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Acknowledgments:
Gratitude is owed to Syracuse University’s Maxwell Dean’s Summer Fellowship for funding. For facilitating my skeletal research in Ecuador (and for many other things), gratitude is owed to Victoria Dominguez, Michael Harris, Valentina Martinez, and the people of Ecuador. For constructive comments and challenges on various versions and drafts of this manuscript, thanks are owed to Meredith Ellis, Pamela Geller, Shannon Novak, Guido Pezzarossi, Alanna Warner-Smith, and an anonymous reviewer. A special thanks to Shannon Novak for inviting me to contribute to this thematic collection. Special thanks are also owed to Azra Hromadžič for providing the intellectual space to begin an endeavor such as this in her classroom. Inadequacies are, of course, my own.
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Chamoun, T.J. Caring Differently: Some Reflections. Hist Arch 54, 34–51 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-019-00220-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-019-00220-9