{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,8]],"date-time":"2025-10-08T16:46:48Z","timestamp":1759942008206,"version":"3.41.2"},"reference-count":48,"publisher":"Emerald","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,8,29]],"date-time":"2019-08-29T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1567036800000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/site-policies"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["JD"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,8,29]]},"abstract":"<jats:sec>\n<jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Purpose<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to investigate the documentality of human remains in museum and research collections. Second, to provide a rationale for a processual model of documentation, which can account for their repatriation and eventual burial.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec>\n<jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>This paper uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine the repatriation issue. It considers an ethical argument developed to support claims for repatriation: the nominal identification of a body as a universal criterion for its burial. Based on Igor Kopytoff\u2019s processual model of commoditisation, it looks to cultural anthropology to help explain how objects can move between a document and non-document state.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec>\n<jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Findings<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>Human remains can be understood as examples of information-as-thing. However, while document theory can readily account for the expanding realm of documentation, it cannot adequately accommodate instances where documentality is revoked, and when something ceases to be a document. When a human biological specimen is returned, the process that made it serve as a document is effectively reversed. When remains are interred, they revert to their primary standing, as people. The process of becoming a document is therefore not unidirectional, and document status not permanent.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec>\n<jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Research limitations\/implications<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>The implications of a processual model of documentation are discussed. Such a model must be able to account for things as they move into and out of the document state, and where the characteristics of documentality change through time.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec>\n<jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>This paper explores problematic material not usually discussed in relation to document theory. The repatriation movement poses a challenge to a discourse predicated on documentation as a progressively expanding field.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/jd-04-2019-0060","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,9,6]],"date-time":"2019-09-06T10:04:50Z","timestamp":1567764290000},"page":"258-270","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":5,"title":["Human remains as documents: implications for repatriation"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"76","author":[{"given":"Jim","family":"Berryman","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]}],"member":"140","reference":[{"unstructured":"Anderson, I. (2010), \u201cMurray black collection and the University of Melbourne\u201d, in Faulkhead, S. and Berg, J. (Eds), Power and the Passion: Our Ancestors Return Home, Koorie Heritage Trust, Melbourne, pp. 64-67.","key":"key2020021910240148000_ref001"},{"doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Appadurai, A. 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