The German Lost Art Foundation is currently funding a short project dedicated to researching the provenance of three human remains at the museum.
The main focus is on three human skulls from different colonial contexts. The palaeontological collection contains the skull of an individual from Papua New Guinea with ritual engraving and colouring. It was delivered to the museum by Heinrich Christian Umlauff, Hamburg. The Umlauff company specialised in the international trade in cultural artefacts, sold collections and contributed "collected items" to "Völkerschauen". The circumstances of the individual's acquisition are currently unclear and will be analysed in this project. In recent years, the skull has not been used for exhibition, research or teaching purposes. However, it is possible that it was used for teaching purposes before the 1990s. This is at least suggested by the former storage context in a cabinet on the "History of Human Development", which contains skeletal parts and skulls for teaching purposes. A photograph of the skull was on display for years on the website of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
During a review of the palaeontological collection, a skull of an individual from Cameroon that had not yet appeared in previous research was also documented. According to current knowledge and research carried out to date, the individual has neither been exhibited in the museum nor used in teaching in recent years. There is no inventory number, but there is a handwritten inscription on the occipital bone: "Kamerun". This is an indication of the context of the comparative osteological collection of palaeontology, as many inventoried "collection objects" there have a similar colour marking.
The individual from Cameroon belongs to a group of 15 human remains of unknown provenance. A colonial acquisition context must also be assumed for a third individual from this collection from the Sunda Islands. In addition, it is planned to document the collection in detail and examine it for suspicious facts. Other human remains from a suspected colonial context were in the museum's collection. Their whereabouts are currently unknown and their former presence can only be proven through photographs and written documentation.
Over the next six months, the project will provide insights into the Museum für Naturkunde's handling of human remains from colonial contexts and provide more detailed information on the three individuals at the centre of this research. Further information can be found in this article on human remains in our collections as well as on the Colonial Contexts page.