Fossil Restitution

returning palaeontological objects where they belong

Ever since Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy published their Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain in 2018, the issue of restitution has risen to prominence in the landscape of European museums. Museum staff, civil society, and governments in the Global North and Global South alike continue to negotiate issues of ownership, stewardship, conservation, and justice. What started in the 1960s and 1970s as efforts by newly independent nations and, in parallel, indigenous communities to retrieve their cultural heritage from abroad has now blossomed into perhaps the most prolific discourse in the world of cultural heritage.

Its usual focus: sacred artifacts, ancestral remains, cultural goods. What is often overlooked is that many of these issues seamlessly translate to the world of natural history museums. In fact, these two types museums could even be considered as two sides of the same coin: they share an impetus of restorative justice, histories of looting and forceful removal, and the arguments in favour and against restitution overlap to a substantial degree. If you have ever visited Vienna, think about the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Naturhistorisches Museum: two major institutions, housed in twin buildings facing each other; the collections are different but tied together as a mirrored architectural ensemble.

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien mit Maria-Theresien-Denkmal
Naturhistorisches Museum Wien mit Maria-Theresien-Denkmal
The Kunsthistorisches Museum (left) and the Naturhistorisches Museum (right) in the heart of Vienna

This issue was among the first I encountered when beginning to take an interest in Law and Palaeontology. In the autumn of 2021, the controversy about the return of the type specimen of “Ubirajara jubatus” from a German museum collection to Brazil was among the hottest topics of Palaeotwitter, and I got to weigh in on #UbirajaraBelongstoBR with a thread that supplied a little of the legal expertise which had, until then, been entirely absent from the debate.

I ended up contributing to (Cisneros et al. 2022) as a co-author to some amazing, brave Brazilian researchers, I coordinated our correspondence with the relevant government officials in office at the time. In the summer of 2022, I was delighted to see "Ubirajara jubatus" finally returned to Brazil. This repatriation was voluntary, but in (Stewens 2023) I later argued that Brazil might have had a valid legal claim which it could have brought before a German court. To a somewhat lesser extent, I argue, this is also true for the type specimen of Irritator challengeri, a fossil that also hails from Brazil and has sat in another German museum since the 1990s, too. Researchers and civil society have gathered behind the #IrritatorBelongstoBR to achieve the repatriation of this fossil as well. I got to be among the coordinators of an open letter campaign that pursued this very objective and collected thousands of signatures. The Brazilian government has become involved diplomatically; negotiations surrounding the repatriation of Irritator challengeri and other Brazilian fossils from Germany are still ongoing.

Repatriation ceremony for the 'Ubirajara jubatus' specimen on 5 June 2023, showing the fossil as well as the team involved in the repartriation.
The repatriation ceremony for "Ubirajara jubatus" in Brazil
The Giraffatitan brancai on display at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin.
A fossil from Tanzania in the Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin)

In addition to research and advocacy on recent instances of fossil trafficking, I've also explored ideas on how to approach the return of fossils which were looted during the colonial period. In (Stewens, Raja, and Dunne 2022), two colleagues and I discuss the potential of international human rights law and, in particular, the right to participate in cultural life, as a framing for fossil return claims. In addition, we explore the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in Case of Illicit Appropriation as an alternative forum for such claims.

In our paper, we provide a case study of Kabwe 1, also known as Broken Hill man skull: the remains of a Homo heidelbergensis that were discovered in modern-day Zambia under British colonial rule, and to this day form part of the collections of the London Natural History Museum despite Zambian return claims. The list of fossil specimens that have been removed in situations of colonial violence, however, is long and remains to be fully explored. Better known examples include the Tendaguru collections in the natural history museums in London and Berlin, the Dubois collection housed in Leiden, or the Siwalik Hill collection in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Bibliography