UK Museums Hold Over 260,000 Overseas Human Remains, MPs Decry Colonial Legacy
The vast scale of overseas human remains held in UK museums has been condemned by MPs and experts as a shameful legacy of colonialism, with many items kept in ways deemed sacrilegious. An exclusive investigation by the Guardian has uncovered that UK museums possess more than 263,000 items of human remains from around the world, including whole skeletons, preserved bodies like Egyptian mummies, skulls, bones, skin, teeth, nails, scalps, and hair.
Shocking Numbers and Origins
Responses to freedom of information requests revealed that 37,000 items of human remains are known to originate from overseas, including thousands from former British colonies. The countries of origin for another 16,000 items remain unknown. Of the 28,914 items known to come from outside Europe, 11,856 were identified as from Africa, 9,550 from Asia, 3,252 from Oceania, 2,276 from North America, and 1,980 from South America.
The institution with the largest collection of non-European human remains is the Natural History Museum in London, holding at least 11,215 items, including the biggest collections from Asia and the Americas. The University of Cambridge follows with at least 8,740 items in its Duckworth laboratory, featuring the largest collection of remains from Africa, totaling 6,223 items.
Inadequate Records and Storage
Out of 241 museums, universities, and councils that hold human remains, only 100 disclosed an exact or estimated number of individuals represented, totaling around 79,334 people. The rest admitted they did not know, often due to remains from different bodies being mixed together or gaps in records, such as undocumented items. Some institutions reported holding cardboard boxes of human remains without knowledge of the number or provenance.
Strong Criticism from Officials
Lord Paul Boateng, a former Labour cabinet minister, described UK museums and universities as "imperial charnel houses where the bones of Indigenous peoples torn from Britain’s empire in the past, with little or no regard to the spiritual sensibilities of its people, continue to be retained to this day in circumstances that beggar belief." He called the scale of collections "frankly sacrilegious and deeply spiritually offensive" and urged the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to create a national register and issue mandatory guidelines for repatriation.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations, labeled the warehousing of looted human remains as barbaric, noting that many museums do not know who they belong to. "That our country allowed such a large collection of human remains to be taken from other places and keep no record of them points to some sort of crime," she added, emphasizing the lack of respect and dignity in storage and display.
Contradictions with Government Guidance
Experts argue these findings contradict the DCMS's 2005 guidance, which claimed "the vast majority of human remains in UK museums are of UK origin, excavated under uncontentious conditions within a clearly defined legal framework." Dan Hicks, professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford, highlighted that many collections include bodies looted from cemeteries and battlefields by British colonial fighters, used as trophies or in racial pseudoscience like eugenics.
Hicks noted that museums are failing to follow government advice to store remains separately in controlled environments and compile public inventories. This failure perpetuates "the colonial violence involved in the taking and warehousing of human remains in museums, the treatment of human beings as objects, the disregard for identity and for proper treatment of the dead."
Calls for Reform and Response
The Museums Association acknowledged that many overseas remains were acquired during the colonial period and welcomed updated guidance and legislation on ethical treatment. The Natural History Museum stated it is committed to high standards of care and has not refused returns where connections with communities are established. The University of Cambridge declined to comment, while the DCMS did not respond.
This investigation underscores urgent needs for transparency, repatriation efforts, and ethical reforms in handling human remains, reflecting broader debates on colonialism and cultural heritage in the UK.
