Harvard returns two skulls of enslaved people to Brazil
Remains taken in the 19th century fed eugenics studies at the Peabody Museum, handover stalled until the Brazilian government intervened in late 2024
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A ceremony for the handover of the remains, at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Wednesday. Photograph: Ludmila Duarte/MDHC
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A wood engraving depicting enslaved people being abused on a Brazilian sugar plantation, English, 1845. Photograph: Granger/Historical Picture Archive/Alamy
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One of the boxes containing a skull, at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Wednesday. Photograph: Ludmila Duarte/MDHC
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Two skulls believed to have belonged to enslaved Africans or Afro-Brazilians arrived in Brazil on Wednesday, repatriated from Harvard University after roughly 190 and 160 years abroad. The remains had been used in eugenics studies at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; one was taken from Salvador, capital of Bahia state, the other from Rio de Janeiro.
Brazil received more enslaved Africans than any other country in the transatlantic trade and abolished slavery only in 1888. The skulls came home in padded boxes inside reinforced suitcases, carried on flights by Brazilian diplomats, and were received with ceremonies in both Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. One of the two is believed to have belonged to a man who took part in the 1835 revolt in Salvador, the most significant urban slave uprising in Brazilian history, in which some 600 African Muslims attempted to seize control of what was then the country's second most important city.
The existence of the skulls was revealed in 2022, and Brazilian researchers who asked for them back described a drawn-out process. What moved the repatriation forward was the Brazilian government, which joined the campaign in late 2024. In recent months, concerns grew that Donald Trump's conduct toward President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva could derail the handover altogether. It survived.
Researchers at Brazilian universities will now try to establish who the two individuals were. The skulls will not be displayed, their images will not be released, and the government has pledged to bury them with funeral rites once identification is complete. "It's very important to restore the dignity of these people, which was taken from them in life and in death," said Carolina Dias dos Reis, the Brazilian official who traveled to Boston to sign the agreement with Harvard.
At the ceremony in Rio, Ivanir dos Santos, a Candomblé cleric and history professor, poured a glass of water onto the ground before the suitcase was received. "You cannot deal with the remains of our ancestors without paying reverence to them," he said. "This is not a research object."