Can museums and archaeology harm the dead?

An Indigenous archaeologist from Brazil challenges traditional approaches to studying human bones. Her work reveals how standard practices—such as assigning catalog numbers to ancient bodies—are violent and biased. As she encounters the remains of a 700-year-old child in a university museum, their stories intertwine, highlighting issues of ethics, coloniality, and ethnic erasure. This encounter prompts a discussion on how archaeology and museums can address historical wounds and counter the silencing of Indigenous histories.

Mariana Petry Cabral is a Brazilian archaeologist whose research interests focus on Indigenous archaeologies, collaborative practices, and how people produce and use historical knowledge to understand who they are. She received her Ph.D. from Universidade Federal do Pará (Brazil) and is a permanent professor of the department of anthropology and archaeology at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil). She was a visiting scholar at Brown University in 2023 and is working on a project about the relevance of archaeological narratives about the past to imagine more inclusive and diverse futures.

Check out these related resources:

• "Finding Footprints Laid at the Dawn of Time”
• "Indigenous Cultures Have Archaeology Too”
• Museum of Natural History and Botanical Garden, UFMG
• "From Structures to Bodies and Beings: The Perishable Vestiges of Lapa do Caboclo, Diamantina, Minas Gerais”
• Follow the Indigenous archaeologist Bibi Nhatarâmiak on Instagram