The Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University returned 39 sets of ancestral remains to the Naga people of India on November 9. The remains, primarily human skulls, had been held in the museum for more than a century after being taken during British colonial rule in India and Burma, now Myanmar. Almost 30 community members travelled from Nagaland to Britain for the handover.
A return after a century in the collection
The transfer concerns 39 ancestral remains, not the museum’s entire Naga collection. The Pitt Rivers says it holds the world’s largest collection of Naga artefacts. Many items were acquired between 1910 and 1940 by John Henry Hutton and James Philip Mills, who worked as anthropologists and colonial administrators.
The collection catalogue lists 219 items as Naga human remains: 39 ancestral human remains and 178 objects containing, or possibly containing, human hair. The November handover covers the 39 ancestors. The distinction matters because the wider collection includes different kinds of objects, and the return does not settle their status.
How the collection was formed
The museum acknowledges that colonial collecting was often entangled with violence, and that objects and remains could be seized during punitive military expeditions rather than given freely. Mills’s writing records an expedition to Pangsha village to demand “headhunting trophies”; he wrote that the museum would “get some fine specimens.”
Naga communities practised headhunting at the time, taking the heads of enemies as trophies, but also preserved and cared for the heads of their own chiefs. Anthropologist Dolly Kikon, a member of Nagaland’s Lotha-Naga community, has identified one of the remains being returned as a chief’s skull. The history therefore includes both colonial acquisition and Naga practices surrounding the dead.
Community work led to the handover
The Pitt Rivers removed all human remains, including Naga remains, from display in 2020. After that change, Kikon contacted museum director Laura Van Broekhoven and offered to connect her with Naga communities. The return followed work with Naga partners, including the Forum for Naga Reconciliation, tribal Hohos, elders, churches and communities.
The delegation from Nagaland travelled to Britain for the formal transfer. The museum’s action moves custody of the 39 remains back to Naga representatives after more than a century in the collection; it does not encompass the other catalogue entries connected with human hair.
Burial is the next step
Naga tribal leaders plan to bury the returned remains together in a joint memorial park. Dr Vihuto Asumi, president of the Sumî Hoho Naga tribe, said the community believes the dead’s spirits are not at rest and that burial could support spiritual healing for the ancestors and people affected by deaths during the headhunting period.
The concrete next step is the planned collective burial in the memorial park. The handover on November 9 has returned the 39 remains to Naga custodians; the burial will determine how the community gives them a place of rest.
Sources
- artnews.com — “Oxford Museum Returns Ancestral Remains to Naga People of India”
- thehindu.com — “Naga ancestral remains returning home from England museum – The Hindu”
- Euronews — “Oxford University museum to return remains of 39 people to India's Naga community”
- Daily Sabah — “Naga ancestral remains return home after century in UK museum”
- cbsnews.com — “Oxford University museum to return remains of 39 people taken during British colonial rule in India – CBS News”