UK Museums Hold Over 260,000 Overseas Human Remains, MPs Decry Colonial Legacy
The vast scale of overseas human remains held in UK museums has been decried by MPs and experts as a shameful legacy of colonialism, with many items kept in ways deemed sacrilegious. An exclusive investigation by the Guardian has uncovered that UK museums possess more than 263,000 items of human remains from across the globe, including whole skeletons, preserved bodies like Egyptian mummies, skulls, bones, skin, teeth, nails, scalps, and hair.
Findings from Freedom of Information Requests
Responses to freedom of information requests revealed that 37,000 items of human remains are known to originate from overseas, with thousands hailing from former British colonies. The countries of origin for an additional 16,000 items remain unknown. Of the 28,914 items known to come from outside Europe, 11,856 were identified as from Africa, 9,550 from Asia, 3,252 from Oceania, 2,276 from North America, and 1,980 from South America.
The institution with the largest collection of non-European human remains is the Natural History Museum in London, holding at least 11,215 items, including the biggest collections from Asia and the Americas. The University of Cambridge follows with at least 8,740 items in its Duckworth laboratory, featuring the largest collection of remains from Africa, totaling 6,223 items.
Institutional Failures and Lack of Records
Among the 241 museums, universities, and councils that hold human remains, only 100 disclosed an exact or estimated number of individuals represented, totaling around 79,334 people. The remainder admitted they did not know, often due to remains from different bodies being mixed together or gaps in records, such as undocumented items. Some institutions reported holding cardboard boxes of human remains without knowledge of the number or provenance.
Political and Expert Condemnation
Lord Paul Boateng, a former Labour cabinet minister, described UK museums and universities as "imperial charnel houses" where Indigenous peoples' bones, taken with disregard for spiritual sensibilities, are retained in unbelievable circumstances. Bell Ribeiro-Addy, MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations, labeled the warehousing of looted remains as barbaric, noting many museums lack records of ownership.
She added, "That our country allowed such a large collection of human remains to be taken from other places and keep no record of them points to some sort of crime. The way that these remains are stored and displayed shows a complete lack of respect. They're denied dignity, even in death. This is a great shame for our nation."
Contradiction to Government Guidance
Experts highlighted that these findings contradict a 2005 claim by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that most human remains in UK museums are of UK origin, excavated under uncontentious conditions. Dan Hicks, professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford, analyzed the FoI responses and stated that many collections include bodies looted from cemeteries and battlefields by British colonial forces, used as trophies or for racial pseudoscience like eugenics.
Hicks emphasized that museums are failing to follow government guidance, which advises storing remains separately in controlled environments and compiling public inventories. He added that this failure perpetuates "colonial violence involved in the taking and warehousing of human remains, the treatment of human beings as objects, and disregard for identity and proper treatment of the dead."
Calls for Action and Institutional Responses
Lord Boateng called the scale of collections "frankly sacrilegious and deeply spiritually offensive" and urged the DCMS to create a national register of human remains and issue mandatory guidelines for timely repatriation. The DCMS and University of Cambridge declined to comment on the matter.
The Museums Association acknowledged that many overseas remains were acquired during the colonial period and welcomed updated guidance and legislation on ethical treatment to support communities of origin. The Natural History Museum stated its commitment to high standards of care and stewardship, noting it has not refused returns where connections with requesting communities are established. The Duckworth collections affirmed adherence to government guidance on human remains care.
