Netzwerk Provenienzforschung in Niedersachsen

Von Donnerstag, 27.03.2025 bis Freitag, 28.03.2025

BGAEU Congress 2025

https://www.bgaeu.de/kongress2025.html#Date/Termin

Date/Termin: 27.–28.03.2025

Location/Ort: PETRI-Berlin, Kleine Gertraudenstraße 8, 10178 Berlin

The colonial heritage of European nations plays a major role in current discourse. The collection history of the BGAEU is largely linked to the colonial history of the German state, which is why the question arises on an ethical-historical level as to how it should be dealt with scientifically today and in the future. The first step is to clarify what cognitive value these collection items still have today. The starting point for an approach to this topic could be the research that has been carried out on these objects in recent years. What future research questions could emerge from this? At the planned scientific meeting, we should first clarify the fundamental positions in dealing with human remains today and their position within the larger topic of a critical examination of the colonial legacy. To this end, we should endeavour to bring together the most important voices in the post-colonial discourse and representatives of collections with comparable objects. It would then be important to ask all those colleagues who have worked scientifically with human remains from more recent historical contexts in recent years to comment on this issue. This includes all anthropological university institutes and departments, as well as the various laboratories that deal with human DNA. The discussion should be open-ended, also in the knowledge that a negative answer to the question of the usefulness of such a collection in today’s world will inevitably confront us with the problem of how to deal with it in the future.

Sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

To register for this conference, please send an e-mail to:

Program:

Thursday, March 27, 2025
Berlin’s colonial heritage in the current discourse

10:00	Raiko Krauß Historically grown anthropological collections and post-colonial debate – challenge of our time
10:15	Barbara Teßmann The anthropological collection of the BGAEU
10:30	Decolonize Berlin Coordinating Office for the City-wide Process of Addressing Berlin’s Colonial Past: Developing a Just and Dignified Approach to Repatriation Demands of Ancestral Remains from Colonial Contexts
11:00	Bernhard Heeb & Marius Kowalak One Individual, two Continents: Problems and Potentials of a historical anthropological Collection

Coffee break

Anthropological Collections and their Historical Background

12:00	Jan Novacek Historically grown anthropological collections from archaeological contexts. Current possibilities and challenges, even without a context of injustice
12:30	Irene Hochgraf-Cameron & Maureen Devlin Recovering Lost Contexts: Tracing the Forgotten Histories of Osteological Teaching Collections
13:00	Ana Luísa Santosk Identified osteological collections (19th–20th cent.) from the University of Coimbra: Contributions to the field and current challenges

Lunch break

14:30	Karin Wiltschke-Schrotta, Margit Berner, Doris Pany-Kucera Human remains in Natural History Museums, chances, challenges and perspectives
15:00	Albert Zink The Bavarian State Collection of Anthropology – Challenges and opportunities of collecting, conserving and interdisciplinary research
15:30	Oleksandra Kozak Ancient History of the Ukrainian Steppe and Forest in anthropological collections of the Institute of Archaeology in Kyiv

Coffee break

Human Remains in their Context

16:30	Wanda Zinger Bio-Anthropological Data and Holistic Approach: Toward a Comprehensive Understanding of Oceanian Anthropological Collections
17:00	Caroline Polet The potential of anthropological collections in reconstructing the way of life of ancient populations
17:30	Csilla Líbor Significance of Investigating Post-Medieval Human Remains in Hungary

Friday, March 28, 2025

10:00	Johannes Krause The potential and challenges to use anthropological collections for archaeogenetic studies
10:30	Sandra Lösch The importance of identified skeletal collections
11:00	Martin Friess Of babies, baths and skulls – the future of anthropological collections

Coffee break

Current Studies on Human Remains

12:00	Andreas Winkelmann Human Remains are ambiguous and contested traces of past lives of deceased individuals as well as scientists
12:30	Stefan Exner A Central European anatomical collection of the industrial age reflects changing environmental conditions and health status and enables new radiological diagnoses
13:00	Roman Sokiranski Modern procedures for the digitization and visualization of historical human remains. Examples from Egyptology and Embryology

Lunch break

14:30	Cosimo Posth The value of interdisciplinary investigations on ancestral remains from museum archives
15:00	Ben Krause-Kyora The importance of well-curated collections as archives for biomolecules

Coffee break

Challenges and future prospects

16:00	Tara Chapman & Patrick Semal Recommendations of the HOME (Human Remains Origin(s) Multidisciplinary Evaluation) project and future perspectives in Belgium
16:30	Ewa Dutkiewicz Anthropological collections, historical heritage and responsible handling for the future

Margit Berner (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien)
Tara Chapman (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences & Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Maureen Devlin (University of Michigan)
Ewa Dutkiewicz (BGAEU/SPK – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte)
Stefan Exner (Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Centrum für Anatomie, Institut für Zell- und Neurobiologie, Berlin)
Martin Friess (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris)
Bernhard Heeb (SPK – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte)
Irene Hochgraf-Cameron (University of Michigan)
Marius Kowalak (SPK – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte)
Oleksandra Kozak (Institute of Archaeology National Academy of Science of Ukraine, Kiev)
Johannes Krause (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig)
Ben Krause-Kyora (Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel)
Raiko Krauß (BGAEU/Universität Tübingen)
Doris Pany-Kucera (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien)
Csilla Líbor (Hungarian National Museum, Budapest)
Sandra Lösch (Institute of Forensic Medicine, University of Bern)
Jan Novacek (Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie, Weimar)
Caroline Polet (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels)
Cosimo Posth (Institute for Archaeological Sciences, University of Tübingen)
Ana Luísa Santos (Universität Coimbra)
Patrick Semal (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences)
Roman Sokiranski (Medical University Varna)
Barbara Teßmann (BGAEU/SPK, Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte)
Karin Wiltschke-Schrotta (Naturhistorisches Museum Wien)
Andreas Winkelmann (Medizinische Hochschule Brandenburg, Neuruppin)
Wanda Zinger (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris)
Albert Zink (Institut für Mumienforschung, Bozen)