Digitally Analysing Colonial Collecting

Abstract

The »Return, Reconcile, Renew Project«, a major research initiative funded by the Australian Research Council, has several aims. One important goal is the creation of digital resources for provenance research, primarily in connection with the repatriation of the bodily remains of Old People by Indigenous Australian communities. Digitally mapping the history of the collecting of ancestral bodily remains and important cultural property of Australian and other Indigenous peoples since the mid-eighteenth century can greatly enhance the kinds of provenance research that western museums now commonly find themselves obliged to undertake.