Conservación e investigación en el área de Antropología Biológica del Museo Etnográfico J. B. Ambrosetti (Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Abstract

This paper details part of the activities about conservation of human remains carried out during 2012 in the Area of Biological Anthropology (Ethnographic Museum J. B. Ambrosetti, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina). This Integral Plan of Management of Osteological Collections aims to develop a protocol based on the ethical treatment of human remains, highlighting the concepts of custody, identity and respect. It covers several aspects that are divided into four main areas: ethics, education/research, conservation and heritage. Within this framework, the specific procedures developed to safeguard and minimize the deterioration of a set of human remains affected by environmental agents are discussed. The interaction between students from different disciplines in order to implement conservation tasks from an integrative perspective is emphasized. This approach provides new strategies that include the need to develop detailed conservation procedures and to analyze scientific information in a framework that prioritizes the bioethical aspects of management policies. The results obtained are promising for the characterization of the collections housed in the area, including the identification, documentation, preservation and warehousing of prehistoric human remains from different regions of the world. The implementation of this proposal is an example of the approach that comes from bioanthropology to address human remains investigations from a holistic perspective. It is intended to contribute to raising awareness among researchers interested in the analysis of human remains about the importance of their participation in the generation of conservation protocols.