Skulls in a museum? Intercultural aspects of the debate on the museification of human remains

Abstract

The paper examines the issue of the museification of human remains, focusing on a case study of two Tibetan objects from the collection of the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum: a skull-cup (thod pa/kapāla) that used to belong to the collection of the Jesuit Indian Museum, and a double-skull-drum (damaru) which came to the museum as part of the Skušek collection. In the first part the paper analyses the history of these two objects and their significance in traditional Tibetan society. The second part of the paper focuses on the collecting and exhibiting of objects made of human remains, and examines the intercultural aspects of these issues using the example of Tibetan objects made of human remains.