Bones in Auction–A History of Creating, Acquiring, and Selling Human Relics

Bones in Auction–A History of Creating, Acquiring, and Selling Human Relics

On December 13 and 14 2022, the Vanderkindere auction house in Brussels organized a seemingly insignificant sale entitled ''Art et Antiquités''. Presented on this auction, lot no. 405 (Figure 1) provoked strong reactions for the following reason: the lot was composed of two skulls and one fragment of a skull brought back in the 1890s from the Congo by Namur physician Dr. Louis Laurent.