Keynote Presentation

“Our Quinquennium in Review“

The year 2020 marked a distinct period of reckoning with biological anthropology’s history of problematic acquisition and treatment of human skeletal remains for research. Community engagement – grounded in accountability and transparency – was centered on this transformation. Initial responses to the controversies that brought the discipline to a moment of reckoning fell into the category of crisis management. As we move toward developing more sustainable ethical practices, the past five years must be situated within our discipline’s broader historical continuum. This is critical to remaining grounded while moving into uncharted territory that requires us to operationalize our visions for what is possible.

Examples from my research involving African descendant communities and burial sites will be used to illustrate how visions for AAGPRA-type legislation can be operationalized in historically grounded ways. Among other complexities, case studies demonstrate collaboration without artificially bifurcating researchers and descendants. Examples also stress the importance of communication across intellectual lineages within bioanthropology, and engagement with disciplines that inform our current use(s) of social theory. I conclude by discussing how Black Feminist scholarship is contributing to the development of historically grounded, sustainable practices for the ethical treatment of human remains.

Background and Training

Dr. Rachel Watkins grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where her interest in anthropology was sparked after reading The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould in a high school history class. The book introduced ideas that shaped her understanding of science as both a field of systematic investigation and a reflection of the cultural and historical contexts in which it operates.

She attended Howard University, majoring in Anthropology with a minor in African American Studies. During her undergraduate training, Dr. Watkins became increasingly aware of the unethical sourcing of human remains used in research and teaching collections, particularly the disproportionate exploitation of marginalized communities. This awareness, combined with her work in the W. Montague Cobb Skeletal Collection and at the New York African Burial Ground, shaped her commitment to research that centers on ethics, accountability, and descendant communities.

Dr. Watkins carried this commitment into her doctoral studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation involved an in-depth analysis of skeletal remains and archival data associated with individuals whose remains are housed in the Cobb Skeletal Collection. Her findings revealed a spectrum of biological and social well-being among African Americans, reflecting varied strategies for navigating and mitigating limited access to resources and power. During this period, she also began examining the historical use of African-descendant skeletal remains in research that supported scientific racism, as well as its connections to contemporary unethical acquisition, research, and curation practices.

Research and Professional Work

Dr. Watkins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Associate Curator of the Biological Anthropology Section at the Penn Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on African American biological and social history, including skeletal biology, Black feminist critiques of science, the ethical treatment of human remains, and descendant community engagement.

In her curatorial and consulting work, Dr. Watkins collaborates with organizations dedicated to historic preservation and interpretation guided by descendant communities. Her scholarship emphasizes ethical accountability in the acquisition, research, and stewardship of human remains, as well as the historical and contemporary impacts of scientific racism within anthropology.

Selected Publications

• 2024 “Ethical futures in biological anthropology: Research, teaching, community engagement, and curation involving deceased individuals” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 185(2): 350-362. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24980 (co-authored with de la Cova, Hofman, Marklein, Scholts, Magrogan, and Zuckerman)
• 2022 “The Human Experience of Constructing Bodies and Persons: A Discussion” Historical Archaeology 56(4), 755–762. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-022-00374-z
• 2021 “[This] System Was Not Made for [You]: A Case for Decolonial Scientia.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 175: 350-362. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24199
• 2020 “An Alter(ed)native Perspective on Historical Bioarchaeology.” Historical Archaeology 54(1): 17-33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-019-00224-5
• 2018 “Anatomical Collections as the Anthropological Other: Some Considerations” In P. K. Stone (Ed.), Bioarchaeological Analyses and Bodies: New Ways of Knowing Anatomical and Archaeological Skeletal Collections (pp. 27–47). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71114-0_3