EVENT: ARCY2006 Archaeology of Death

This presentation will review two different recent projects in Kenya concerning the recovery of human remains, their treatment and the ethical issues involved. The first case study relates to a programme of excavation of a series of burial cairns requested by a Samburu pastoralist community in northern Kenya, and how the scientific results meshed with but also challenged local historical narratives, and vice versa. The second case study relates the collection biography of a large number of human remains held in Kenya’s Nairobi museum as a reference collection available for scholars to consult, and asks, in particular, given the particular circumstances that brought them to the museum, should they be there at all?