What are the conservation issues involved with the recovery of human remains?
The excavation, preservation and analysis of human remains are subjects that provoke strong reactions both within the scholarly community and outside it. Ethical and legal issues play an important role in this debate, especially where the burials or remains of first peoples are concerned. Of additional importance are the roles of the conservator, archaeologist and bio-archaeologist/physical anthropologist in the study and conservation of this material. Each specialty approaches the material from a slightly different viewpoint and has the potential for both aiding and obstructing the other specialties involved. Archaeological constraints and techniques can affect the amount of information that a conservator may be able to retrieve from a burial and its associated materials, conservators may compromise the osteological work through their choice of treatments, particularly if they are not aware of the techniques that may be used for analysis, and osteologists may not always think about th
