Oxford, museum withdraws shrunken human heads that inspired Harry Potter from its collections

The Pitt-Rivers Museum, attached to Oxford University, has decided to remove particular skulls from its collections as a result of a decolonization process the museum institution has begun to undertake.

These are tsantsa, trophy-heads of a slain enemy, reduced to the size of a fist by boning and mummification, but sporting natural-length hair to appease the victim’s wandering, vengeful spirit. A custom prevalent especially in the Amazon. Tsantsa have inspired several films, including a scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

The human heads, which have fascinated and at the same time terrified visitors to the Pitt-Rivers Museum for some eighty years, have therefore been removed, along with more than a hundred other “human” remains, including skeletons, skulls and mummies, in a decision to reorganize the collections to take into account the colonial past documented by one of the world’s leading ethnological museums.

Laura van Broekhoven, director of the Pitt-Rivers Museum, said within a lengthy note posted on the museum’s website aimed at explaining the institution’s changes with a view to decolonization, that “according to audience surveys, visitors often see the human remains preserved in the museum as a testament to savagery, primitiveness, and other cultures. Rather than gaining a deeper understanding of the ways of being of other cultures, displaying these remains becomes a tool of racism and stereotypical thinking that goes against the current principles of the museum. Therefore, the removal of human remains goes in line with the guiding principles and ethical codes of the museum.”

The removal is also part of a larger project aimed at raising awareness among visitors that many of the 500,000 pieces in the museum collection were taken violently from indigenous peoples during theBritish Empire’s occupation of their lands. In fact, many human remains removed from the collection came from India, Tibet, Malaysia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and Ecuador. It is not yet known if the removed human remains will return to their countries of origin.

Ph.Credit

Oxford, museum withdraws shrunken human heads that inspired Harry Potter from its collections

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