Bone Rooms

Do you ever see a skeleton in a museum, and wonder “where did it come from?” Did this person donate their body to science? Was it dug up for display? Was it stolen from a Native American burial ground in New Mexico? For a culture that largely believes that human remains are sacred, we sure have a lot of them on public display. And for every bone on display behind glass, there are hundreds more hidden away—tagged, measured, and kept in boxes on shelves in temperature-controlled museum storage rooms. Where did they all come from? Who collected them? Why were they chosen?

Samuel Redman answers these questions and many more in Bone Rooms. In the late 1800s, to the early 1900s, massive human remains collections were fervently built, studied, and shown off at traveling fairs, medical schools, museums, research facilities, and in private homes throughout America. The urgency to collect human remains was fueled by ego, money, the pioneer's attitude, the drive to obtain knowledge, the desire to justify certain ideas, and the opportunity to hold the attention of the masses. Unlike collectors in Europe and elsewhere, Americans during this period collected these remains distinctly in the interest of developing, spreading, and calcifying their ideas about race.

In the prologue, he writes, “the gradually deteriorating bones mostly languished on museum shelves, but the ideas surrounding them constantly evolved.” The primary project of his book is the exploration and documentation of that evolution, specifically in America. He traces the history of bone room collections by tracing the stories, motives, ethics, and philosophies of the soldiers, doctors, archeologists, looters, treasure hunters, scientists, racists, phrenologists, private collectors, museums, ethnologists, and anthropologists who eagerly filled them—as well as the thinkers, activists, and lawmakers who eventually challenged them. These motives, ethics, and ideas were and continue to be divisive and questionable. Modern museums and scientists both build upon and reject the legacy of the bone collectors who came before them. While we as a society benefit from the careful study of these human remains, it is important to understand and honor the humanity within them. One way to do that is to know the history of how and why they were collected in the first place. Bone Rooms tells that history, even the ugly parts, with eloquence and dignity.