South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 11: 21–26, 2013 21 AN HISTORICAL NOTE AND PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF THE HUMAN SKELETAL REMAINS FROM SOUTHERN AFRICA STORED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM ALAN G. MORRIS 1 & YVETTE SCHOLTZ 2 1 Department of Human Biology, University of Cape Town, Observatory, 7925, South Africa E-mail: alan.morris@uct.ac.za 2 Department of Anatomy, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X323, Arcadia, 0007, South Africa ABSTRACT The actions of early travellers and scientists in Britain’s vast colonial empire in Africa have resulted in the accession of many human skele- tons of African origin in British institutions. Many of the skulls and skeletons were collected as representative specimens of ‘racial types’, but others came from a wide range of sources including military trophies, medical curiosities and ‘objects of interest’. This brief note is not intended to be a thorough examination of all African specimens in British institutions, but has instead focused on the presence of Khoe-San specimens in three major collections of human remains: the Natural History Museum, London (54 specimens); the Duckworth Collection at the University of Cambridge (11 specimens); and the Department of Anatomy at the University of Edinburgh (six speci- mens). The context of the collections is considered for each institution. Key words: United Kingdom, trophy skulls, Natural History Museum, Khoe-San, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh. INTRODUCTION The museums of the United Kingdom were at the hub of one of the largest colonial empires of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. The ethos of the age determined that curiosities from the colonies were catalogued and stored in these metro- politan museums, and as a result many of the older scientific institutions have human skeletons originating from Britain’s overseas possessions. Most of the collections fell under the ambit of ‘natural history’ rather than anthropology or archae- ology. By 1900 there were already 250 museums of natural history in the United Kingdom. The largest of these, most specifically the Natural History Museum in London, had a policy of trading or purchasing specimens of interest (Sheets-Pyenson 1988). The object of the collections was to gather a corpus of biological data that could be used to explain the nature of life (Fortey 2010), and it was no accident that colonial human remains were considered to be a special focus. This was especially true after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. The ‘primitive’ colonial specimens were needed as comparative material in order to show how evolution had shaped and perfected the Europeans who stood at the apex of human advancement. Two attempts have been made in recent years to collate the information on the human skeletons in British collections. Under pressure to form a policy on what to do with human remains when calls were made for repatriation, a Working Group (2004) was constituted to survey the museum collec- tions in the United Kingdom. In all, 132 of 146 cultural heritage or scientific institutions surveyed were found to have human remains in their collections, but the project was not envisioned as a catalogue and the contents of these collections were not discussed. Roberts and Mays (2011) examined the kinds of studies that had utilised human skeletons from archaeological contexts in the United Kingdom. They estimated that over 80 000 individuals were represented in museums and other institutions, but their focus was solely on archaeologically derived material from excavated sites within the country. Most of the sites were from the late medieval era and were also skewed towards urban environments because the excavations were primarily of historical cemeteries. Roberts and Mays (2011) were not interested in the specific repositories, only in the excavation sites analysed and therefore did not provide a complete list of repositories. No mention was made of ‘foreign’ skeletons. As a result, we have a good idea in general of where skeletons are in the United Kingdom, but have little informa- tion about the skeletons themselves and almost nothing about African skeletons specifically. Sadly, it was not possible to systematically survey all of the collections in the United Kingdom in the 2004 Working Group report, but between the two authors we have a considerable amount of information on three of the collections and direct observations on a number of the African skeletons. One of us (Scholtz) has examined the specimens at the Natural History Museum (see Table 1) and the information about the other collections is a combination of first-hand examination of specific specimens and information from unpublished and published documents. Although this must not be seen as a complete survey, this preliminary note will discuss what data we have with specific reference to the three collections: the Natural History Museum in London, the Duckworth Collection in Cambridge, and the Department of Anatomy at the University of Edinburgh. How many other collections are there in the UK with skeletons of African origin? We simply do not know and there is clearly a need to get out there and ‘do the legwork’. THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON The British Museum was created by an Act of Parliament in 1753 in order to house donations of art including manuscripts, books, coins, and ‘objects’ of interest (Hudson 1987). There was no focus on natural history and ‘objects’ in this category were disordered and neglected, especially because the important collections of comparative anatomy were already well curated and stored at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) in London by the turn of the 19th century. It was only in 1856 that the natural history collection was given its own Department with the appointment of Richard Owen as curator, and even then the collections continued to be under- valued because of difficulty in accessing the material in the cramped quarters assigned for their storage in the building (Hudson 1987). Owen was responsible for pushing through the construction of an entirely separate Natural History museum (Stearn 1981). When the new museum was opened in South Kensington in 1881, all ethnographic as well as human skeletal material was included because it was thought that ‘uncivilised