Public Engagement and Ethics
The Institute for Historical Biology (IHB) is putting power back into the hands of descendant communities, changing how we explore history.
The IHB was founded to institutionalize the theory and practice of the African Burial Ground Project. These include engagement with truly empowered descendant communities who have the right of informed consent and the democratization of scientific knowledge that occurs when descendants contribute to a project’s research questions. We have increasingly used our accumulating experience to facilitate descendant community organization over the past decade. Our promotion of the ‘clientage model’ for engaged archaeology and preservation has been influential at diverse historic sites like James Madison’s Montpelier, Colonial Williamsburg, Belle Grove in the Shenandoah, Jamestown’s Angela Site, the ‘Remembering Project’ for the Virginia General Assembly, and as a rare model for collaborative bioarchaeology presented by The Commission for the Ethical Treatment of Human Remains, American Anthropological Association, in its international conversations (2022-2024). We believe ours is the ethical anthropology of the future.
Our promotion of the ‘clientage model’ for engaged archaeology and preservation has been influential at diverse historic sites
African Burial Ground National Monument: "For all those who were lost, For all those who were stolen, For all those who were left behind, For all those who were not forgotten."
Ryukyu (Okinawa, Japan) Royal Tomb that had been looted by anthropologists, visited by The Commission for the Ethical Treatment of Human Remains in 2023.
Supporters of the preservation of Moses (African American) Cemetery in Bethesda, Maryland, protest to affirm their case at the State Supreme Court, January 8, 2024. The IHB advises the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition.
