Questioning human remains comments
I read with interest, though some disquiet, Piotr Bienkowski's comment and analysis concerning the Human Remains Advisory Service (Museums Journal June 2007, p18).
As Bienkowski says, the Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums was primarily drafted to help museums deal with overseas claims and the evidence we have collected recently from them and overseas governments suggests that it is fulfilling that function very well.
But the guidance was also designed with UK claims in mind and was therefore a fully appropriate mechanism with which to assess the Melbourn claim.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) refutes Bienkowski's assertion that it 'mishandled' the Melbourn claim and 'abruptly pulled the plug' on the case.
The request for advice from Cambridgeshire County Council was allocated to three members of the Human Remains Advisory Service (HRAS) in September 2006, but by March 2007 they were still unable to reach agreement on the main issues involved.
Finally, with no sign of any resolution in sight, we decided that it would be unhelpful for the HRAS to offer conflicting advice and it was with great reluctance that we decided to terminate the work.
We were guided in reaching our decision by Cambridgeshire County Council's comment that 'if the case is highlighting a problem that the advisers cannot address, it might be better to acknowledge the problem rather than trying to solve it'.
The comment that 'the DCMS provides the HRAS with no guidance on procedure' is wrong. The procedures are set out in a Terms of Use document. Additionally, the three advisers engaged on the Melbourn claim received a commissioning letter outlining the task ahead.
On the issue of transparency, we had agreed with the council at the outset that it would publish the HRAS's advice once it had issued its decision. However, this point possibly arises from a misunderstanding about the way the HRAS works. The HRAS was never intended to operate like a DCMS advisory panel, such as the Spoliation Advisory Panel for example, which meets regularly and has a chair.
Instead, the HRAS was founded on the idea that a small team of advisers would be allocated to a particular claim, based on relevant skills and experience. The fact that we did not consult the full HRAS on the Melbourn claim was therefore consistent with the established policy and not a lack of transparency.
The DCMS welcomes the debate on these issues and will be looking very carefully at the future role of the HRAS in the light of the Melbourn claim. In doing so, we will clearly also need to reflect on the fact that after 17 months of operation, the HRAS has only received one request for advice.
Mark Caldon, secretary to the Human Remains Advisory Service, Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Bienkowski's comment on the HRAS contains a number of inaccuracies. In 2002, Melbourn Parish Council sought permission to rebury Anglo-Saxon skeletons in a newly constructed civic cemetery in the village.
English Heritage and the DCMS were both involved in consultations relating to the treatment of human remains held in museums and other collections and we considered it prudent to await the outcome of these consultations. So when the HRAS started, we contacted it for advice.
We were not, as Bienkowski suggests, 'unwilling to release any of the remains', but we were and still are exercising professional caution appropriate to curators. Our relationship with Melbourn Parish Council has always been entirely amicable and it accepted our stance that we should request a national opinion on this issue.
The HRAS did not appoint three advisers. It appointed two advisers and an independent arbiter. They would have used the DCMS guidelines to consider the strength of the claim, and the arbiter would have produced a balanced opinion based on this specialist input and written a report.
The question of both sides presenting their case completely misses the point of the HRAS: it has a set of criteria against which institutions holding human remains can assess claims, and was never set up to make decisions on reburial. The outcome is frustrating, but we continue to work with Melbourn Parish Council to reach a constructive solution.
The reference to the Advisory Panel on the Archaeology of Christian Burials In England guidance and the use of mausolea is irrelevant. This refers to Christian burials, and specifically excludes pagans such as these Saxons.
While some members of Melbourn Parish Council did suggest a method of reburial to allow any future retrieval, this was not universally supported with a strong feeling that once reburied they should stay reburied, thus removing them from future study.
I notice that Bienkowski is the deputy director of the Manchester Museum. I would be interested to know whether his comments reflect Manchester Museum policy or, indeed, the views of museum professionals more generally.
Quinton Carroll, manager, historic environment team, Cambridgeshire County Council
While the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology commends the interest shown by the people of Melbourn, we take issue with the more general arguments in the article.
Firstly, we disagree with the points made regarding the role of 'local communities' in decision making. A system where such decisions are made according to the existence of chance geographical co-location with concerned modern groups would be completely arbitrary.
And the term 'local' is vague and highly subjective. As the remains have significance far beyond Melbourn should other modern-day inhabitants of Cambridgeshire and beyond have equal say? Making decisions on such a basis would be impractical and discriminatory.
While we can see the value of storing remains near where they were found, we are sceptical about the practicability of an open-ended commitment to maintain a 'mausoleum', which would need to be suitably environmentally controlled and give easy access to researchers. And given the wider importance of the remains we should require a much stronger claim before countenancing outright reburial.
Secondly, we disagree with the statement that the guidelines are biased towards overseas claims. The DCMS document clearly delineates principles which are generally applicable. Bienkowski calls for 'different criteria' for assessing British claims, but gives no reason why.
In order to avoid discrimination, we must have common criteria for all. There may be any number of reasons why individuals feel a connection to ancient remains, but simple geographical proximity is a naive and unworkable principle for assessing claims.
Decisions relating to human remains should be made on behalf of the whole 'community' of the UK and not given more or less weight according to the degree of interest shown by people living close to excavation sites.
Martin Smith, the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology
V&A's maddening trail to nowhere
I agree with Felicity Heywood's criticisms of the Victoria and Albert Museum's treatment of Uncomfortable Truths, which commemorates the abolition of the slave trade (Museums Journal June 2007, p16). Some of the contemporary artworks are indeed stuck away in some very odd places, robbing them of context or import.
My main aim when I visited on 1 June was to see as many of the historic items in the Traces of the Trade trails as I could, but it was not a very rewarding experience. For one thing, some of the objects I most wanted to see, because they were new to me, were shut off.
(Your article, which I have read since, states that level two displays were closed from 23 April to 4 June, but while the items nearest the lift were accessible on my visit, I came across no indication of the closure until coming up against the red rope. A warning when being handed one's trail brochure would have helped.)
Of those objects which were found after long stretches of corridor and flights of steps, some were so small and among so many other objects, that their significance was quite dwarfed. Text panels - or at least some identifying symbol - relating to the trail, would have gone some way to redressing this.
On reflection, I think that trails such as these may be counterproductive. An exhibition, however small, in a dedicated space, could have done much more justice to the subject. It might therefore have been more effective in attracting back, rather than putting off, visitors of African descent or others who had come just to see it.
Tessa Hosking, author of Black People in Britain 1650-1850, Ascot, Berkshire
Learning from the Gulbenkian Prize
I agree with your concern about Pallant House Gallery in West Sussex winning the Gulbenkian Prize (Museums Journal June 2007, p4), but what interests me most are the ideas behind this decision.
Pallant House is essentially a laissez-faire museum, while Glasgow's Kelvingrove is interventionist. We had great debates about this very issue when the heads of both institutions worked with me in Glasgow.
The problem with the Pallant House approach is that it assumes that what it has is uplifting for others, which is not an assumption I think any museum, not even an art museum, can continue to make. It essentially invites people to join an elite.
This has obvious appeal to the Establishment. I define the Establishment as the small group of influential people who run things who don't think they exist as a group. Kelvingrove had a much more difficult challenge: to lead people to thinking without telling them what to think.
Unfortunately it does the latter more often than the former, because, I think, it omitted the crucial aspect of the planning that enabled the curators to communicate much more closely with the public.
The original vision was that the museum would be seen to be learning as the public learned. The Learning Museum. This is the breakthrough that's needed between laissez-faire and intervention.
The new displays were supposed to be a step on from the excellent Museon in the Hague, not just a mega-version. But that doesn't mean the judges' decision was right. The ambitions of both museums cannot fairly be compared.
Julian Spalding, author, Edinburgh
I read with interest, though some disquiet, Piotr Bienkowski's comment and analysis concerning the Human Remains Advisory Service (Museums Journal June 2007, p18).
As Bienkowski says, the Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums was primarily drafted to help museums deal with overseas claims and the evidence we have collected recently from them and overseas governments suggests that it is fulfilling that function very well.
But the guidance was also designed with UK claims in mind and was therefore a fully appropriate mechanism with which to assess the Melbourn claim.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) refutes Bienkowski's assertion that it 'mishandled' the Melbourn claim and 'abruptly pulled the plug' on the case.
The request for advice from Cambridgeshire County Council was allocated to three members of the Human Remains Advisory Service (HRAS) in September 2006, but by March 2007 they were still unable to reach agreement on the main issues involved.
Finally, with no sign of any resolution in sight, we decided that it would be unhelpful for the HRAS to offer conflicting advice and it was with great reluctance that we decided to terminate the work.
We were guided in reaching our decision by Cambridgeshire County Council's comment that 'if the case is highlighting a problem that the advisers cannot address, it might be better to acknowledge the problem rather than trying to solve it'.
The comment that 'the DCMS provides the HRAS with no guidance on procedure' is wrong. The procedures are set out in a Terms of Use document. Additionally, the three advisers engaged on the Melbourn claim received a commissioning letter outlining the task ahead.
On the issue of transparency, we had agreed with the council at the outset that it would publish the HRAS's advice once it had issued its decision. However, this point possibly arises from a misunderstanding about the way the HRAS works. The HRAS was never intended to operate like a DCMS advisory panel, such as the Spoliation Advisory Panel for example, which meets regularly and has a chair.
Instead, the HRAS was founded on the idea that a small team of advisers would be allocated to a particular claim, based on relevant skills and experience. The fact that we did not consult the full HRAS on the Melbourn claim was therefore consistent with the established policy and not a lack of transparency.
The DCMS welcomes the debate on these issues and will be looking very carefully at the future role of the HRAS in the light of the Melbourn claim. In doing so, we will clearly also need to reflect on the fact that after 17 months of operation, the HRAS has only received one request for advice.
Mark Caldon, secretary to the Human Remains Advisory Service, Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Bienkowski's comment on the HRAS contains a number of inaccuracies. In 2002, Melbourn Parish Council sought permission to rebury Anglo-Saxon skeletons in a newly constructed civic cemetery in the village.
English Heritage and the DCMS were both involved in consultations relating to the treatment of human remains held in museums and other collections and we considered it prudent to await the outcome of these consultations. So when the HRAS started, we contacted it for advice.
We were not, as Bienkowski suggests, 'unwilling to release any of the remains', but we were and still are exercising professional caution appropriate to curators. Our relationship with Melbourn Parish Council has always been entirely amicable and it accepted our stance that we should request a national opinion on this issue.
The HRAS did not appoint three advisers. It appointed two advisers and an independent arbiter. They would have used the DCMS guidelines to consider the strength of the claim, and the arbiter would have produced a balanced opinion based on this specialist input and written a report.
The question of both sides presenting their case completely misses the point of the HRAS: it has a set of criteria against which institutions holding human remains can assess claims, and was never set up to make decisions on reburial. The outcome is frustrating, but we continue to work with Melbourn Parish Council to reach a constructive solution.
The reference to the Advisory Panel on the Archaeology of Christian Burials In England guidance and the use of mausolea is irrelevant. This refers to Christian burials, and specifically excludes pagans such as these Saxons.
While some members of Melbourn Parish Council did suggest a method of reburial to allow any future retrieval, this was not universally supported with a strong feeling that once reburied they should stay reburied, thus removing them from future study.
I notice that Bienkowski is the deputy director of the Manchester Museum. I would be interested to know whether his comments reflect Manchester Museum policy or, indeed, the views of museum professionals more generally.
Quinton Carroll, manager, historic environment team, Cambridgeshire County Council
While the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology commends the interest shown by the people of Melbourn, we take issue with the more general arguments in the article.
Firstly, we disagree with the points made regarding the role of 'local communities' in decision making. A system where such decisions are made according to the existence of chance geographical co-location with concerned modern groups would be completely arbitrary.
And the term 'local' is vague and highly subjective. As the remains have significance far beyond Melbourn should other modern-day inhabitants of Cambridgeshire and beyond have equal say? Making decisions on such a basis would be impractical and discriminatory.
While we can see the value of storing remains near where they were found, we are sceptical about the practicability of an open-ended commitment to maintain a 'mausoleum', which would need to be suitably environmentally controlled and give easy access to researchers. And given the wider importance of the remains we should require a much stronger claim before countenancing outright reburial.
Secondly, we disagree with the statement that the guidelines are biased towards overseas claims. The DCMS document clearly delineates principles which are generally applicable. Bienkowski calls for 'different criteria' for assessing British claims, but gives no reason why.
In order to avoid discrimination, we must have common criteria for all. There may be any number of reasons why individuals feel a connection to ancient remains, but simple geographical proximity is a naive and unworkable principle for assessing claims.
Decisions relating to human remains should be made on behalf of the whole 'community' of the UK and not given more or less weight according to the degree of interest shown by people living close to excavation sites.
Martin Smith, the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology
V&A's maddening trail to nowhere
I agree with Felicity Heywood's criticisms of the Victoria and Albert Museum's treatment of Uncomfortable Truths, which commemorates the abolition of the slave trade (Museums Journal June 2007, p16). Some of the contemporary artworks are indeed stuck away in some very odd places, robbing them of context or import.
My main aim when I visited on 1 June was to see as many of the historic items in the Traces of the Trade trails as I could, but it was not a very rewarding experience. For one thing, some of the objects I most wanted to see, because they were new to me, were shut off.
(Your article, which I have read since, states that level two displays were closed from 23 April to 4 June, but while the items nearest the lift were accessible on my visit, I came across no indication of the closure until coming up against the red rope. A warning when being handed one's trail brochure would have helped.)
Of those objects which were found after long stretches of corridor and flights of steps, some were so small and among so many other objects, that their significance was quite dwarfed. Text panels - or at least some identifying symbol - relating to the trail, would have gone some way to redressing this.
On reflection, I think that trails such as these may be counterproductive. An exhibition, however small, in a dedicated space, could have done much more justice to the subject. It might therefore have been more effective in attracting back, rather than putting off, visitors of African descent or others who had come just to see it.
Tessa Hosking, author of Black People in Britain 1650-1850, Ascot, Berkshire
Learning from the Gulbenkian Prize
I agree with your concern about Pallant House Gallery in West Sussex winning the Gulbenkian Prize (Museums Journal June 2007, p4), but what interests me most are the ideas behind this decision.
Pallant House is essentially a laissez-faire museum, while Glasgow's Kelvingrove is interventionist. We had great debates about this very issue when the heads of both institutions worked with me in Glasgow.
The problem with the Pallant House approach is that it assumes that what it has is uplifting for others, which is not an assumption I think any museum, not even an art museum, can continue to make. It essentially invites people to join an elite.
This has obvious appeal to the Establishment. I define the Establishment as the small group of influential people who run things who don't think they exist as a group. Kelvingrove had a much more difficult challenge: to lead people to thinking without telling them what to think.
Unfortunately it does the latter more often than the former, because, I think, it omitted the crucial aspect of the planning that enabled the curators to communicate much more closely with the public.
The original vision was that the museum would be seen to be learning as the public learned. The Learning Museum. This is the breakthrough that's needed between laissez-faire and intervention.
The new displays were supposed to be a step on from the excellent Museon in the Hague, not just a mega-version. But that doesn't mean the judges' decision was right. The ambitions of both museums cannot fairly be compared.
Julian Spalding, author, Edinburgh
