The Conservation of Human Remains: Ethical Questions and Experiences in America

The ethics and deontology of the conservation-restoration of human remains in the United States is explored in this article. Most indigenous people venerate human remains. When considering care, treatment, storage, display, or research there are typically ideological intensions and ethics, cultural traditions of appropriateness, and legal regulations that must be considered. Conservators need to be responsive to legislative changes and to calls from descendant communities. Conservation has moved away from treatment to a responsive and collaborative role in research, analysis, or repatriation. This paper gives an introduction to propriety and impropriety of conservation related to NAGPRA.Cet article examine l’éthique et la déontologie de la conservation-restauration de restes humains aux États-Unis. La plupart des peuples indigènes vénèrent les restes humains. La conservation, la restauration, la présentation, le stockage, ainsi que l’analyse des restes humains soulèvent les questions éthiques de la finalité intellectuelle, du respect des traditions culturelles et du dispositif légal en vigueur. Les restaurateurs doivent rester attentifs à l’évolution du droit et aux demandes des populations concernées. Ils limitent désormais leurs interventions pour privilégier la collaboration éclairée dans la recherche, l’analyse ou le rapatriement. Cet article évoque aussi le cadre fixé par le NAGPRA, la loi fédérale sur la protection et le rapatriement des tombes d’Amérindiens

Chinchorro Twined Shrouds

The first inhabitants of the South Central Andes arrived to the Pacific coast of what is now Northern Chile and Southern Peru about 8000 BC. The early Chinchorro were fisher-hunter-gatherers that made use of two media for their artistic expressions, their own bodies and large canvases made from twined reeds and sedges. Mats and textiles were used for a variety of domestic and personal uses, including shelter, packaging and shrouding the dead. It is likely they were used as blankets for the living as well. The textile shrouds and stylistic mummification techniques employed by the Chinchorro culture predate pottery, agriculture and metal work Large shrouds made of semi-processed sedge fiber were probably made with a basic warp-weighted loom and twinning. Evidence indicates that they were initially painted and by 6000 BC they were embroidered with dyed camelid hair in a variety of geometric designs. Analyses of a decorated twined shroud from the Morro site in Arica, Chile together with contexts gathered from other archaeological evidence help build a more complex picture of the Chinchorros and their environment. Recent studies, including fiber, dye, construction and stylistic analyses reveal the experimentation and growth of technologies, materials and communication that are the beginning of the long and rich Andean coastal textile tradition. The textile studies plus the mortuary contexts provide new insight into the lives of these first settlers in the Americas