Irene Hochgraf Cameron and Kelly Askew invite you to join us on Friday, April 12, from 3 to 4:30 pm at 411 West Hall for a panel discussion about a collection of human remains in the Department of Anthropology that until recently were unidentified.
Over the past three years, we were able to trace connections between our collection, collections at the American Museum of Natural History, and a skeletal collection housed at Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Berlin, Germany, all of which are associated with the nineteenth-century collector Felix von Luschan (1854-1924). For this panel we have invited three of our colleagues from the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte who helped us with this investigative work: Bernhard Heeb, Head of Collections; Barbara Teßmann, Biological Anthropologist; and Marius Kowalak, Scientific Assistant. We will have representatives from the University of Michigan’s Department of Anthropology as well as the University of Michigan’s Museum of Anthropological Archaeology (UMMAA).
We look forward to sharing the process of discovery that led to the preliminary and still incomplete answers that we have today, which required communication, collaboration, and problem-solving across disciplines, institutions, and international boundaries. We also wish to discuss the future of these human remains and the ethics and concerns that should guide us going forward.
This discussion is free and open to the public. Coffee and light refreshments will be provided.
