Ships and Bones: Violence contributing to and consisting in osteological museum collections

This work aims to identify how violence may have contributed to the creation of human remains collections and potentially continues to be present in them. It focuses on skeletal remains acquired during Austro-Hungarian naval expeditions to East Africa (1884–1887) that were later inventoried at the Department of Anthropology, Natural History Museum Vienna. For the first time, they are further contextualized by archival records detailing their acquisition circumstances and provenance, drawing on first-hand accounts of the collectors and collection instructions. As its major content, the study draws on an interdisciplinary understanding of violence that influenced the collection’s formation and discusses findings from non-invasive bioarchaeological analysis, separating them into pre– and post–curatorial settings. From this perspective, it differentiates when and which actors have affected the collection. Additionally, it assesses the significance of multiple bioarchaeological datasets compiled during the collection’s long museum inventory. Special attention is paid to the ethical challenges these present, in order to critically evaluate research practices and influence future guidelines for engagement with such collections. This also contributes to a better understanding of collections from colonial contexts in Austria, a country less often perceived as a colonial actor, and discusses implications for further scientific research and collection management of osteological museum collections.