Museum policies

Research policy

Research is the prime reason for holding human remains at the Museum of London. The Museum encourages ethical research of its human remains holdings by Museum staff and external researchers (see ‘Museum Policy on Human Remains’).

The Museum of London will produce and then keep under review a research assessment of its collections of human remains as recommended in DCMS 2005 (PDF 342kb)
Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums.

The Wellcome Osteological Research Database

The creation of the Wellcome Osteological Research Database (WORD) is intended to facilitate research into the Museum’s human remains collections. The Museum is committed to the active curation and development of this resource.

In addition to the direct use and acknowledgement of the raw data it is anticipated that WORD will be used to direct researchers to London archaeological sites and skeletal samples best suited for their MA/MSc/PhD, post-doctoral and other research. The osteological summaries in the database provide site-specific guidance on overall skeleton preservation, sample size, demography, physique, common and unusual palaepathology, etc.

The future

The Museum of London, through MoLAS, will continue to excavate, record and curate human remains from sites as a part of PPG16-led archaeological investigations (Planning policy guidance: Archaeology and planning (PDF 252kb)). Where there is a requirement for these remains to be analysed through planning conditions and/or requirements of the Research Framework, in-house MoLAS/MoL osteologists will undertake the research. Accordingly, skeletons from newly-excavated sites will be added to the research collection from time to time.