The Slow Death of Archaeology in the Name of ‘Repatriation’
What began as a respectful process of return has devolved into the wholesale destruction of archaeological knowledge.
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About the Author
Elizabeth Weiss is a professor emeritus of anthropology at San José State University and the author of On the Warpath: My Battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors.
Nearly thirty-five years ago the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)—which requires universities, museums, and other federally funded institutions to provide inventories of the Native American human remains being curated—was passed.
The purpose of NAGPRA was to enable present-day federally recognized Native American tribes to repatriate—and, if they chose, rebury—human remains deemed “culturally affiliated.” According to the original Senate Report, “cultural affiliation” was to be “established by a simple preponderance of the evidence.” Acceptable forms of evidence included “geographical, kinship, biological, archaeological, anthropological, linguistic, oral tradition, or historical evidence or other relevant information or expert opinion.”
In addition to human remains, three categories of culturally affiliated materials must also be repatriated and therefore included in institutional inventories submitted to the NAGPRA office. These are funerary objects, which are “objects that, as a part of the death rite or ceremony of a culture, are reasonably believed to have been placed with individual human remains either at the time of death or later”; sacred objects, defined as “specific ceremonial objects…needed by traditional Native American religious leaders for the practice of traditional Native American religions by their present day adherents”; and objects of cultural patrimony, or objects that have “ongoing historical, traditional, or cultural importance central to the Native American group or culture itself, rather than property owned by an individual Native American.”
By 2020, according to NAGPRA’s 2022 fiscal year report to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), 92 percent of culturally affiliated human remains had been repatriated, along with 2.1 million funerary objects. Yet as the 35th anniversary of the law approaches, there will likely be a wave of media stories criticizing universities and museums for failing to return remains and artifacts back to Native American tribes. Millions of artifacts, they’ll claim, are still stored away in curation facilities; thousands of “ancestors,” they’ll claim, are being held hostage in storage rooms. How do I know? Because it has happened many times before, including reports on Fresno State University’s alleged 38,700 artifacts, articles on the Arizona State Museum’s 2,700 human remains and 14,000 artifacts, and a national report claiming that 4.5 million sacred objects are still being held.
At first glance, it appears that this may be the case; after all, in NAGPRA’s 2024 fiscal year report to the GAO, the claim is that only “58% …of the Native American human remains reported have completed the NAGPRA process.” What happened to the 92 percent? The answer is that the 2024 figure does not distinguish between culturally affiliated and unaffiliated remains. Yet, NAGPRA’s intent was to return human remains to culturally affiliated tribes, not to “repatriate” all Native American remains. Repatriate to whom?
In 2023, the “final rule” regulations did not change the law itself but revised the guidance, effectively lowering the threshold for establishing cultural affiliation. The new guidance states “these regulations require deference to the Native American traditional knowledge of lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations.” Notably, the term “Native American traditional knowledge”—which conflates religious beliefs with empirical knowledge—was newly introduced and did not appear in the original statute. In short, the goalposts have been moved.
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Even unaffiliated remains are now being repatriated and reburied. For instance, the unaffiliated human remains held by Oklahoma’s No Man’s Land Historical Society are slated for reburial. Although the legal definition of human remains has not changed, the 1995 “final rule” exclusions for naturally shed biological material have been eliminated, and the standards for what counts as “freely given” have been tightened. As a result, items like hair clippings—previously not considered under NAGPRA—have become a major focus, with Harvard University alone issuing 105 repatriation notices involving such material. One particularly odd case involves the Mütter Museum’s model of a placenta, originally donated by a South Sea Islander patient to anatomist Josef Hyrtl. It is being repatriated as “human remains” even though the placenta was freely given and the actual curated object contains no biological material—it’s a wax model!
Perhaps the most troubling repatriation scandal is the expanding misclassification of materials as funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony. These classifications were originally intended to limit repatriation to clearly significant cultural items, allowing archaeologists, paleontologists, and other researchers to continue their work reconstructing past lives and environments. Museums could still display artifacts in meaningful and interesting ways. Now, nearly every item from excavation sites—no matter how trivial or absurd—is being classified under one of these categories. The result is an endless NAGPRA process that halts research, wastes public funds, and makes a joke out of the repatriation process.
Some examples of the most recent materials listed in the NAGPRA inventory database are as follows.
In Sacramento, the California Department of Parks and Recreation has reported 2,361 lots of funerary objects from a burial site dated between 1000 and 1500 AD. These include car parts, concrete fragments, electrical components, spark plugs, and plastic debris. Spark plugs weren’t invented until the 1860s, and automobiles didn’t appear in the U.S. until after 1890. Are we seriously to believe that nearly 400 years after the original burials, Native Americans returned to the site to inter car parts with the remains? Isn’t it far more likely that this debris accumulated later due to the site’s proximity to State Route 39?!
Sacramento State University has listed “plaster casts/impressions” and “unidentified objects” among their whopping 92,957 associated funerary objects from a single prehistoric site. Such exaggerated figures create a misleading impression that universities and museums are refusing to repatriate artifacts, but nothing could be further from the truth–they’re repatriating everything! Sacramento State University isn’t alone in repatriating unidentified objects. The McClung Museum at University of Tennessee is repatriating “17 lots of indeterminate/other objects” that are listed as funerary objects. Multiple notices for unmodified nonhuman bones, stones, ground stone, and soil can also be found in the NAGPRA databases. For example, among over 900 artifacts listed from Sonoma State University, soil samples, ground stones, and unmodified shells are identified as funerary objects and slated for repatriation.
Kansas State University has provided NAGPRA with an inventory of “19,174 funerary objects” that contains “8,397 unmodified stone, 7,004, burned/unidentifiable bone fragments,… two unidentifiable metal fragments, two bullets, one bolt, one plastic handle, one baseball.” Again, are these truly funerary objects—items intentionally buried with human remains? Or are they, more plausibly, just garbage? Yet repatriation advocates continue to push for the return of such items, keeping the federal funding flowing even when the objects lack meaning or context. When people hear that nearly 20,000 funerary objects remain unrepatriated, they’re not imagining plastic handles and unmodified stones. Kansas isn’t alone in repatriating plastics; the University of California, Riverside has also listed plastic items as funerary objects. And Michigan State University has accepted a repatriation request of a broken plastic comb under the same classification.
Materials made for trade, commerce or display were never intended to fall under NAGPRA. Nevertheless, Louisiana State University’s Museum of Natural Science is making replicas available for repatriation, such as the “modern clay pipe replica” acquired by William McIntire and Roger Saucier in 1952. Worse still, such objects are occasionally now being listed as sacred objects or objects of cultural patrimony. For example, Sacramento State University lists a baby cradle—made in the 1950s by Mrs. Rosie Fred, a member of the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians, and sold by another tribal member in the 1960s—as an object of cultural patrimony. But even if it were made for use, it wouldn’t meet the legal definition of cultural patrimony, which refers to items owned by a tribe collectively, not by individuals.
Similarly, baskets made by and purchased from Pomo Indians have now been reclassified as sacred objects in a notice from the University of California, Davis. At the University of California, Berkeley, a “big-head dance headdress” purchased in 1963 from its maker and owner, Vivian Fred, is now listed as both a sacred object and cultural patrimony to be repatriated. Even children’s clothing, such as a girl’s dress held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is being listed as a sacred object and an object of cultural patrimony!
I’ve previously written about the repatriation of human coprolites (fossilized feces), which provide valuable insights into ancient diets, diseases, and genetics. But the latest NAGPRA notices now include nonhuman coprolites as funerary objects. For instance, the University of Miami has listed alligator coprolites from the Little Salt Spring Site in Sarasota County, Florida—a site dated between 12,000 and 5,200 years ago—as funerary objects. While the site is believed to have served as a “mortuary pond” during some of that period, claiming that the coprolites were intentionally placed with human remains strains credulity. Isn’t it more likely these were simply the byproduct of alligators living in the area? Repatriation of coprolites may elicit a chuckle, but at this site and others nonhuman remains ranging from local faunal bones to fossils from millions of years ago being repatriated as well.
By repatriating these materials, scientists lose access to valuable research resources. Soil samples can be used to assess climate change, analyze DNA, and track disease patterns. Fossils reveal evolutionary links and help reconstruct past environments. Hair clippings allow for the analysis of stress, disease, and nutrition. Faunal remains aid in training professionals who work in criminal investigations. Meanwhile, museums are losing exhibition materials—some of which were purchased from Native American artists who created them specifically for display!
In their place, repatriation activists seek to peddle creation myths into our institutions of learning. Collections are being buried, fossils lost, and data destroyed—all to keep federal funding for NAGPRA flowing, even when it comes at the expense of scientific knowledge and replaces evolutionary concepts with religious ideologies.
Where is the outrage from my fellow scholars—archaeologists, curators, and evolutionary scientists?
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Here in Canada, on CBC radio, there's a once interesting program called Ideas. It's now totally woke, and one show featured an Indian lady who has an affirmative action PhD. She said that from now on all archaeology involving The Indigenous must first require a consultation with the spirits of the ancestors as to what research they want. The spirits will also advise as to correct conclusions. One of those received conclusions is that The Indigenous have always been here. They didn't come from Asia, firstly because that continent wasn't called Asia at the time, and secondly because white people cannot understand The Indigenous Way Of Knowing time which makes it possible for The Indigenous to have always been here. And no snickering please or you'll be cancelled.
I was surprised Spirit Cave Man was repatriated. Believe RC date was around 9400 bP. I am critical of anyone pretending they have cultural or biological affiliation with someone who died that long ago (w/b more in Calender years; likely more related does not mean affiliation, to me, BUT, a few papers relating I have not read yet; been out of the discipline for 20 years; used to love its robusticity and once emphasis on critical analysis of the data). Thanks for your views.