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Cover Page FootnoteAs always I am grateful to Bert Salwen, dear and sorely missed friend and teacher for 25 years. This paper on the continuing bond between the living and the dead is dedicated to him. I became interested in the "reburial issue" after he described a reburial ceremony at which he had been present. As an anthropologist, he was always well aware of the interplay between archaeology and the rest of society. I could not have written this paper without the generosity of many who gave advice, or who shared information and research results as well as

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R u tgers Un ivers it y Newark, New Jersey 07102 HE RELATIONSHIP of anthropologists to museums is a complex one, T marked frequently by a degree of contradiction. Anthropologists have often worked in museums; in fact, museums were at the core of anthropology when the discipline began,1-3 including on their staffs such prominent individuals as Boas, Wissler, Putnam, Holmes, and Powell. More anthropologists today, however, are found in universities than museums, and the latter are described as being outside "the center of gravity" in anthropology. [4][5][6] Museums themselves have changed dramatically over time, and the roles that anthropological museums have played in society have also varied. At the simplest level, museums demonstrate a tendency for the accumulation of "things" which is not limited to humans or even primates. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the early anthropology museums in Europe served as repositories for accumulated curios2 in keeping with the contemporary ignorance of and growing curiosity about the rest of the world. The first American anthropological museums were Du Simitiere's American Museum (opened in Philadelphia in 1782) and Dartmouth's Museum, opened in 1783.3 The concept of museums as educational institutions came early, although Boas in 1907, in describing 2 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES the functions of museums included that of being a resort for popular entertainment which would help keep people away from race tracks and sa100ns.~ Today anthropology museums can be seen as research and teaching centers, treasuries for accumulated wealth, and ritual centers where some of the most critical values of our society may be seen (either overtly or covertly) in the organization and presentation of material .a Most contemporary museums holding anthropological (and other) collections define their functions in terms of exhibition, research for scholars, and education of the public through a variety of methods.2,3,9~0 Another critical function, necessary if the others are to be successful, is the curation of collections. Museums are the most significant repositories for all types of anthropological collections, of material culture of past and present peoples, of human skeletal remains, of faunal and ethnobotanical specimens, and of paleontological, archival, and photographic materials.And yet, in spite of these collections, and the vast quantity of data available therein, the identifying attribute of an anthropologist, since Boas, has been fieldwork; the favored type of research has been with data one has collected oneself. In addition, the fact that data analysis takes much longer than data collection, combined with the pressure in the first part of this century to do "salvage" ethnography and archaeology, and collect information from fast-disappearing tribal societies, has resulted in the accumulation of material of many types that is often unanalyzed or underanalyzed.4,11 This situation is aggravated by a variety of factors ranging from lack of space to examine collections to lack of t...