Congress Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnolog and Prehistory 2025
The scientific potential of anthropological collections current approaches and future perspectives
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.
To register for this conference, please send an e-mail to: vorsitz@bgaeu.de
Invited speakers:
- 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/Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz - 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 (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte)
- Irene Hochgraf-Cameron (University of Michigan)
- Marius Kowalak (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz - 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)
- 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 (Medizinische Versorgungszentren DRZ, Erbach)
- Barbara Teßmann (BGAEU)
- 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)