Seven-year project brings ancestral remains from Portugal to train next generation of archaeologists at SFU

An exciting new development in SFU’s Department of Archaeology will provide valuable opportunities for teaching, training and research for years to come.

As part of a project led by professor Hugo Cardoso, the department recently became steward of 58 identified ancestral remains on long-term loan from the municipality of Lisbon, Portugal.  

Cardoso has been advancing the project since 2016. He observes that in Canada, most human remains cared for in institutions are repatriated as a form of reparation for injustices suffered by Indigenous peoples in the past and can only be used for teaching with community consent. However, human osteology or human skeletal anatomy is a significant component of being trained as an archaeologist, and that requires access to real human bones and skeletons.  

To address training and research needs, the project was developed with the goal of obtaining unclaimed remains from modern managed cemeteries in Portugal, where they would typically be cremated or reburied in communal graves. Various Portuguese universities and museums are stewards of thousands of unclaimed remains and their local communities support their use for teaching and research.

There are several courses at SFU where students will benefit from access to these remains. Human osteology, a basic human skeletal anatomy class where students learn to identify every bone in the human skeleton — whether complete or fragmented — is one of them. Even with high quality replicas made of plastic or resin, many fine details that allow you to identify a bone from only a small piece of it are missing.

“Replicas and copies from a two or even three-dimensional image displayed on a screen will not provide you with the skills you need to go out into the field as an archaeologist and identify human remains properly,” Cardoso explains.  

He adds that in North America, burial grounds are some of the most important archaeological sites an archaeologist can be involved in, so training in human osteology is crucial. “It prepares you with the basic skills to be confronted with a very sensitive context.”

Another class is forensic anthropology, where students develop high level skills identifying individuals through an analysis of their skeleton to determine things like their sex and age. Cardoso says you need real skeletons of individuals who have experienced disease or injury throughout their lives so you can observe things like pathological changes and healed fractures.  

The collection of ancestral remains will not just benefit students. Archaeologists and the greater community will also be able to learn from them, as the Department of Archaeology expands its offerings to include workshops and courses open to other professionals who work with the human skeleton — like museum curators, law enforcement personnel or coroners. Various small research projects can also rely on these ancestral remains to refine forensic identification methods and further our understanding of the relationship between bone changes and disease or injury

Going forward, the remains will need to be catalogued and their original wooden coffins carefully cleaned and preserved. In the meantime, as part of the agreement with Lisbon City Hall, Cardoso says they are developing outreach activities and community engagement initiatives within the municipality. This includes public lectures and an exhibition planned for next summer, as well as a website dedicated to the project that will show a chronology of its history and regular updates.

Cardoso also hopes the project will contribute to ongoing discussions on the use of human remains for research and teaching as an example of how we can work with them ethically.