The Digitization of Human Skeletal Collections: New Challenges and Perspectives

Abstract

Human skeletal remains are a crucial source for understanding biocultural and evolutionary processes. Yet, their study and management are challenged by social, religious, and political factors, placing them in a ‘grey area’ within cultural heritage. Human skeletal collections often carry colonial legacies, raising ethical concerns and new challenges for research, curation, and public engagement in academic and museum institutions. In this context, digitization offers expanding opportunities for public exhibition and definition of human remains as part of our culture, while ensuring long-term preservation. Virtual approaches serve also as a useful tool to investigate human variability from evolutionary, bioarchaeological, and forensic perspectives. Moreover, digital access fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and research by enabling global scholarly engagement beyond physical limitations. Through the CHANGES project, we have initiated the digitization of the Documented Human Osteological Collections (DHOC) of the University of Bologna—one of Italy’s largest collections—making these resources available via the 3D data repository MorphoSource. This contribution provides updates on newly digitized material and reports on access requests received to date. We conclude by considering the emerging responsibilities of anthropologists in the use of virtual human skeletal collections, promoting best practices for the management of the anthropological digital twins.