Book ID: CBB181840212

Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (2016)

unapi

In 1864 a U.S. army doctor dug up the remains of a Dakota man who had been killed in Minnesota. Carefully recording his observations, he sent the skeleton to a museum in Washington, DC, that was collecting human remains for research. In the “bone rooms” of this museum and others like it, a scientific revolution was unfolding that would change our understanding of the human body, race, and prehistory. In Bone Rooms Samuel Redman unearths the story of how human remains became highly sought-after artifacts for both scientific research and public display. Seeking evidence to support new theories of human evolution and racial classification, collectors embarked on a global competition to recover the best specimens of skeletons, mummies, and fossils. The Smithsonian Institution built the largest collection of human remains in the United States, edging out stiff competition from natural history and medical museums springing up in cities and on university campuses across America. When the San Diego Museum of Man opened in 1915, it mounted the largest exhibition of human skeletons ever presented to the public. The study of human remains yielded discoveries that increasingly discredited racial theory; as a consequence, interest in human origins and evolution—ignited by ideas emerging in the budding field of anthropology—displaced race as the main motive for building bone rooms. Today, debates about the ethics of these collections continue, but the terms of engagement were largely set by the surge of collecting that was already waning by World War II.

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Reviewed By

Review Brian Fagan (2016) Review of "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums". Journal of Interdisciplinary History (pp. 245-246). unapi

Review Noriko Aso (2017) Review of "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums". American Historical Review (pp. 1231-1232). unapi

Review John Mathew (2017) Review of "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (pp. 87-93). unapi

Review Phil Loring (2017) Review of "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (pp. 102-104). unapi

Review A. M. Lucas (2018) Review of "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums". Archives of Natural History (pp. 182-183). unapi

Review Karen A. Rader (2017) Review of "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 467-468). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB181840212/

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Authors & Contributors
Alessandro Riga
Tommaso Mori
Francesca Bigoni
Ciliberti, Rosagemma
Jacopo Moggi-Cecchi
Fulcheri, Ezio
Concepts
Anthropology
Museums
Science and race
Collectors and collecting
Natural history
Science and ethics
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
18th century
21st century
Places
United States
Great Britain
France
Africa
Peru
Netherlands
Institutions
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of Natural History (U.S.)
Brown University
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