Swan Fine Art Auctions in Oxfordshire withdrew 22 lots of human and ancestral remains this week following an international outcry from affected communities. The auction house also pulled a signed photo of Jimmy Savile.
Here's a quick summary of what happened, followed by an in-depth explainer with commentary on my own experience of watching the auction.
Story in a flash
The "Curious Collector Sale" auction from Swan Fine Art — hosted by The Saleroom and Easy Live Auction websites — was supposed to include the remains of at least 25 people from ethnic groups around the world, but by the time live bidding began on Wednesday (Oct. 9), all of the human remains were withdrawn.
Academics and affected communities like the Naga people of India and Myanmar and the Shuar people of Ecuador and Peru mobilised against the auction, writing letters and voicing their concerns online. Swan Fine Art, also called The Swan at Tetsworth, withdrew all of the human remains on Tuesday (Oct. 8).
"We looked into it, we respected the views expressed and we withdrew the items," Swan Fine Art owner Tom Keane told the Guardian.
The lots originally included 19th and 20th-century human skulls of the Naga people, the Ekoi people from Nigeria and Cameroon, the Kota people from Gabon and Congo, the Kongo people and the Vili people from Central Africa, the Fon people from Benin, the Dayak people from Borneo, and people from the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. There were also two tsantsa shrunken heads from the Shuar people.
A curious auction
I first became aware of the "Curious Collector Sale" last week. This was a big auction, featuring more than 900 lots, but the first two pages on The Saleroom website carried the most controversial listings.
To find the human remains, I had to scroll past vintage sex worker "tart cards," Hugh Hefner fake money, guns and a signed photo of Jimmy Savile. The signed photo, dedicated to Elvis, disappeared from the auction at some point before the auction.
Swan Fine Art Auction confirmed it had removed the Jimmy Savile photo when I asked for comment. "We decided that it was not suitable for auction and it was withdrawn," the auction house said.
When I first saw the 22 human lots, I got tunnel vision on one of the tsantsa shrunken heads – Lot 52. Swan Fine Art's description stated that the tsantsa used to be in Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion, and with a starting price of £18,000, I thought, well, that's a story! And it was a story. However, a much larger story was developing.
Timeline
Dr Laura Van Broekhoven, director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, and Naga anthropologist Dr Dolly Kikon, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, helped organise a response to the auction. I spoke with them both to understand the timeline of events.
Dr Broekhoven told me that someone flagged the auction to the BBC, and then the BBC approached the Pitt Rivers Museum on Monday.
"When I followed the link to look at what was being auctioned, obviously, I was astonished," Dr Broekhoven said.
When Dr Broekhoven saw the remains of so many different communities from the Global South up for sale, she quickly contacted people in her network.
"With several of these communities, we have long-term relationships because we have human remains of those communities in the [Pitt Rivers] collection," Dr Broekhoven said.
Pitt Rivers has the largest collection of Naga material culture in the world, with more than 200 Naga ancestral remains. Ancestral remains of the Naga people were looted during the days of the British Empire.
In recent years, Dr Kikon and her colleagues have been working on a research project to address issues surrounding this history and ignite conversations about repatriation for the first time. You can learn more about the origins of Dr Kikon's work with Pitt Rivers and the impact of colonialism on the Naga people by reading this commentary in Edinburgh Impact — part of The University of Edinburgh — and by visiting the Recover, Restore and Decolonise (RRaD) website.
The point is that these burgeoning conversations about repatriation meant that the Naga community was alert to the issue and quick to mobilise this week when they heard about the auction and Lot 64 — "A 19th century horned Naga human skull," starting price: £3,200.
"My ancestor is not your aesthetic!!"
Dr Kikon took to X on Monday afternoon, calling for the auction to be stopped, and triggering a flurry of responses. On Tuesday, the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) wrote a letter to the Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio.
"The FNR condemns this inhuman and violent practice where Indigenous ancestral human remains continue to be collector's items in the 21st century," The FNR wrote. "Such auctions continue the policy of dehumanization and colonial violence on the Naga people."
Chief Minister Rio responded by writing to India's external affairs minister Dr. S. Jaishankar, seeking intervention. By Tuesday afternoon, the story was hitting the Indian press, and the auction house was presumably getting a lot of emails.
Swan Fine Art withdrew the Naga lot first, but the Naga people weren't the only ones outraged. Notably, representatives of the Shuar people were also quick to call for the removal of the tsantsa.
David Mauro Tankamash Juank, president of the Shuar Interprovincial Federation (Federación Interprovincial de Centro Shuar, or FICSH), outlined their objection in a letter, which Dr Broekhoven shared with me.
"Tsantsa are important, sacred and powerful human remains that are culturally extremely
significant to the Shuar Nationality." the Shuar president said. "Their handling in disrespectful manners, their sale and holding by private collectors is, for us, a continuation of colonial violence against the Shuar people."
The letter noted that the FICSH had raised the issue with the Ecuadorian Government and also called on the UK Government to work with indigenous nationalities to ensure their cultural heritage and ancestral remains aren't subject to this in the future.
Dr Broekhoven noted that other communities from across the globe also mobilised alongside activists and academics.
BABAO task force
On Tuesday afternoon, I realised the story was about to make headlines, and reached out to some of my UK contacts.
I learnt then that a group from the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (BABAO) had independently got wind of the sale and also sent in a letter. The BABAO Trading and Sale of Human Remains Task Force investigates human remains trade and the objectification and commodification of the dead.
"It is ethically objectionable to commodify the remains of people into objects that can be bought and sold for commercial gain," the BABAO group wrote in their letter to the auction house.
They went on to say that "human remains from regions such as the Solomon Islands, Congo, Nigeria and Papua New Guinea may have been obtained in circumstances that were unethical and entrenched in colonial histories."
The letter cited a 2011 PhD thesis about colonial collecting in the Solomon Islands by Aoife O’Brien, highlighting that at least some human remains were taken from shrines "with disregard for local ideology, custom and sensitivities."
I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but by Tuesday night, all of the human remains were withdrawn. Again, Swan Fine Art owner Tom Keane told the Guardian: "We looked into it, we respected the views expressed and we withdrew the items."
But it was too late. The story went global. After making waves in the Indian press on Tuesday, BBC News, the Guardian, CNN, France 24 and many others wrote articles about the auction on Wednesday.
You might be wondering why it's taken me so long to get this blog out if I knew about the auction, checks notes, 10 days ago! Well, it's been a busy few weeks, and when I saw the story blowing up, I decided to wait for the dust to settle before trying to understand it all. Follow me on X for live-ish human remains reporting.
Auction time!
The auction went ahead without human remains on Wednesday afternoon. I tuned into a live stream to see what some of the remaining lots fetched. The first lot of "tart cards" sold for £48, a deactivated submachine gun sold for £180, and the Hugh Hefner "Monopoly" money sold for £10.
No humans under the hammer, but some of their property remained. A carved "skull suspension hook" from the Iatmul people of Papua New Guinea sold for £1,000, a "19th century Solomon Islands currency roll" sold for £2,500 and a pair of "18th century green beetle earrings" from the Shuar people sold for £6,000.
I found the auction a bit surreal at first, but once we were well clear of the cultural artefacts and the old man accused of sexual assault fake money, I started to get drawn in. There's something undeniably captivating about auctions, particularly when the lots are as varied as these.
A leopard skin rug sold for £200, a black rhino head sold for £5,500 and a complete 14 ft-tall giraffe fetched a whopping £11,000! I'll discuss the nuances of collecting dead animals vs. dead people in a future post.
Eventually, I dragged myself away from the livestream and turned my attention back to the human remains.
What's next?
The human remains that made international news have now presumably returned to the people for whom Swan Fine Art was auctioning them. And presumably those people will still want to sell.
From investigating the trade, I've learnt that human skulls and other body parts often pass through many different hands in the collectors' market, and these high-end 'pieces' tend to circulate.
Some collectors see themselves as caretakers for remains and, after keeping them for a while, will sell them on to buy something else — or because they need the money. While they may be private people, buying and selling human remains can leave a trail of breadcrumbs on social media and in traditional media.
I did a bit of sleuthing and found several of the auction lots on private collectors' social media pages. In some cases, I found the same skull on multiple pages. Like I said, they circulate. I also found plenty more skulls from some of the same communities affected by this auction. That's a problem for many, but it's also an opportunity.
Collectors aren't spending tens of thousands of pounds unless they're genuinely interested and passionate about what they're buying. They're also often quite easy to engage in conversation about their hobby. In fact, I usually find it much easier to talk to private collectors about human remains than I do museums. Put two and two together.
Final thoughts
I could conclude this blog by saying that with the remains back in the hands of collectors, things are back to the way they were before the auction. But I don't think that's true. Every time something like this happens, there are more and more academics, activists and, most significantly, affected communities around the world mobilising against the sale of human remains.
Dr Broekhoven wrote in one of her X posts that "when it matters and when we organise, we can move mountains together." Well, I think the mountains are starting to move.
Some of the people I spoke to this week were surprised and puzzled to learn that the sale of human remains is not illegal in the UK. I'll devote my next post to the law part of the warren.
Thanks for reading!
Comments