Scotland’s ancient people live on at new world-class 'bone store' of 2,200 human remains

Stories of Scotland’s ancient people will be secured for the future as a new world-class centre for archaeological human remains is created in Edinburgh.

Remains of more than 2,200 men, women and children are held at National Museum of Scotland’s (NMS) collections centre and span more than 8,000 years of human activity.

Human remains held by National Museum of Scotland are able to bring stories of the past and its people to life, such as that of Bishop Walter of Whithorn who died in 1235. His remains were used to produce this facial reconstruction of the senior clergyman. PIC: School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences, University of Bradford; Chris Flynn. | School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences, University of Bradford; Chris Flynn.

The centre, in Granton, is now set to grow in capacity by 70 per cent to meet increasing demand from researchers around the world to study Scotland’s people through time. It will also accommodate the expected numbers of remains yet to be found.

Dr Matthew Knight, senior curator for prehistory at NMS with responsibility for Bronze Age collections, said developments in scientific techniques had led to more people accessing the collection for research.

He said: “We hold human remains from more than 500 sites across Scotland throughout time and it is one of the most intensively researched aspects, certainly of the archaeology collections, because they are the very people of Scotland’s past.”

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The growth of the centre comes as the field of isotopic analysis, which can offer information about the diet of the person, the environment they lived in and migration patterns using bones and teeth, also expands.

Dr Knight said: “All of this together means that there are lots and lots of things that could be studied that could never be studied before. It is a really, really exciting time for this. As a museum, all of this research allows us to enrich the stories that we can tell.

“We are not just saying this is a person who died 4,000 years ago, we can say this is a person who lived 4,000 years ago. It is the people of the past that we are interested in, at the end of the day.”

More than £500,000 has been awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to expand the centre, with the funding also allowing NMS to adopt new working techniques at the enhanced site.

Crucially, NMS aims to set the standard for the ethical storage of human remains and will work collaboratively with other institutions to share knowledge and practice.

Dr Knight said: “I am very, very clear in my head that we are dealing with people. They are not specimens or artefacts or a resource. They are people who deserve respect, so we have to be conscious of the respect we give them in storage.

“I have spent a lot of time with them and it can be quite emotional working with them. You are working with the remains of people who had thoughts and feelings.

“It is very touching, it is very emotive in a way that artefacts aren’t always.”

Structured light scanners will create 3D models of bones with sampling of remains to now take place in Edinburgh. Usually, remains are sent off to researchers around the world to carry out this work, which raised “ethical challenges” and put the collection at “uncesssary risk”, Dr Knight said.

A curator will be appointed to directly care for the human remains collection for the first time.

Curators Dr Matthew Knight and Bethany Simpson, of National Museum of Scotland, examine archaeological human remains. Photo © Duncan McGlynn. | Duncan McGlynn.

Dr Knight added: “We are visited by researchers from Australia, from Japan for other parts of Europe and they are coming to study people from Scotland. What it ultimately allows us to do is situate this collection at an international level.

“I think people are always fascinated by human remains, but I think one of the captivating things about Scotland, certainly for the ancient past, is I think people just don’t expect it when you start to tell these stories.

“When you say there was a migration of people from Northern Europe, from parts of the Netherlands and Germany across the North Sea to Scotland 4,000 years ago and those collections are held in the Natoinal Museum, people think ‘wow’.”