via Isis. A Journal of the History of Science Society, March 2023: I really enjoyed reading this paper by Paige Madison on an early controversy related to the discovery of Homo floresiensis, the pereceived theft of the LB1 bones. This paper puts the dispute in the context of differences in culture, and invites us to consider better ways of collaboration.
After LB1 was carefully unearthed by the team and transported to Jakarta and shown to Soejono and Morwood, the team began to discuss the question of who should analyze this potentially important, unprecedented find. Morwood wanted to ask a paleoanthropologist from Australia, while Soejono wanted, once again, to ask Jacob. A contract had previously been drawn up by Morwood and signed by Soejono, stating that any findings from Liang Bua could only be examined by researchers from the two main institutions involved, Soejono’s and Morwood’s, (Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional and The University of New England, Australia, respectively). Therefore,Morwood argued, inviting a paleoanthropologist from his university was permissible, but inviting Jacob from Gadjah Mada University was not.83 (See Figure 4.)
The agreement overlooked two major aspects of scientific practice at Liang Bua and Indonesia more broadly. First, it ignored the arrangement Soejono and Jacob had had for decades with the objects from the site, in which Jacob examined any human remains—an arrangement that was devised in response to colonial rule, to allow local scientists to establish themselves as experts on their own objects. Second, the contract failed to address the different ways scientific disciplines and institutions had been constructed in the two countries. Whereas Australian universities house different branches of anthropology within a single university, science in Indonesia looked quite different. The government had funded a set of independent institutions, such as Soejono’s focused on archaeology, which were separate from university laboratories such as Jacob’s. In Indonesia, then, multiple prehistoric disciplines were not combined in one place. Thus, in hindsight, the agreement made it impossible in the case of LB1 for any Indonesian scientist to analyze the remains, given that no paleoanthropologist was employed at the archaeological institute—although this was potentially unintentional.
Source: Tug of War | Fossil History
