In the mid-1980s, one of many Kabayan mummies in the bodega of the National Museum was displayed to the public in a glass case. I brought my students there, pointing out the tattoos clearly visible on the smo... CDNDigital
in the bodega of the National Museum was displayed to the public in a glass case. I brought my students there, pointing out the tattoos clearly visible on the smoked skin of this anonymous woman’s arms and back. History and anthropology are allied disciplines that reconstruct life from traces, and in this case, human remains. Back in the classroom, we discussed other considerations.
The University of Michigan ReCollect/ReConnect Initiative recently hosted a study group from the Cordilleras headed by Dr. Analyn Salvador-Amores that went over artifacts in the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology and photographs in the Bentley Historical Library. They held a ritual at the door of the museum bodega to honor the traces of their ancestors’ clothes, weapons, everyday objects, and perhaps even human remains if they have a long handle made from a human jaw.
There is brewing debate on such collections abroad often fueled by feelings of oppression and victimization during our colonial past. This requires reevaluation based on facts from primary source documentation, not emotion. The Michigan artifacts were collected by scholars that wanted to understand the subject peoples and cultures. Their collecting methods and aims are way different from those of the 21st century.
While historians work primarily with manuscripts and books, I sometimes come across human remains. The earliest one I encountered was Emilio Aguinaldo’s pickled appendix. One had to ask the curators at Aguinaldo’s home in Kawit to open the medicine cabinet where it was stored in a small bottle together with bottles of eye drops that Aguinaldo used in his old age. The appendix used to be preserved in alcohol that had dried up so it is not in a good state of preservation.
Most of Jose Rizal’s mortal remains lie in a box under the monument in Luneta, but a small piece of his vertebra is displayed in a reliquary in Fort Santiago. According to family lore, the backbone is chipped where the bullet hit him. In 2003, I disapproved a request from doctors who wanted to exhume Rizal’s skull. They explained that they wanted to bore a hole in the top of the skull to fill it with mongo seeds. This would determine the size of his cranial vault.
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