The Rise of Ethical Discussions on Human Remains in Scientific Publications

Presentation Given at the 23rd Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (BABAO)

Abstract (250 words) Recent years saw a growing interest in ethical considerations associated with excavating, analysing, and curating human remains, leading to a publication increase. This paper explores the reference to ethical issues associated with human remains, aiming to assess emergent trends and significant concerns. Data were retrieved from an online publications database (Dimensions), using a Boolean query to search titles and abstracts mentioning topics related to Ethics and Human Remains. The analysis considered the year of publication, source data, and relevant terms used in the publications aiming to explore emerging patterns. A total of 181 publications were identified, published between 1990 and (July) 2022, with an increase in publications since 2014. Most were published in journals (n=111) the remaining in books and encyclopedias. The most co-occurrence terms were “Archaeology”, “Museum”, “Study”, “Use” and “Collection”. Publication trends showed a higher focus on ethics within archaeology. Not only archaeology was one of the most used terms in titles and abstracts, but archaeological journals had the higher number of publications (3 to 5 papers) on ethics. Although most papers were published in a wide diversity of journals, those usually featured only one or two publications. The most cited article, also with a high atlmetric alternative score, was in aDNA published in 2018. Showing an increasing interest in aDNA by scientists and the public. Results suggest the need for the continuing discussion of ethical matters regarding human remains in biological anthropology, and for journals to feature a higher number of publications on the matter.

Video Also available @https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhvjDnRo48Y