{"id":16897,"date":"2015-10-19T14:35:30","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T18:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=16106"},"modified":"2024-08-09T07:42:35","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T11:42:35","slug":"researching-the-red-market-in-the-digital-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2015\/researching-the-red-market-in-the-digital-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Researching a Red Market in the Digital Age"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Researching a Red Market in the Digital Age\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n
\"Dayak
Dayak carved trophy skull. Image courtesy of a US gallery<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Smithsonian archaeologist to visit 杏吧原创 to speak about his work investigating the online trade in human remains on sites like Instagram<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, it is said that you can find anything online. The research of Dr. Damien Huffer, post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s Museum Conservation Institute<\/a> and Department of Anthropology<\/a>, as well as colleagues at the University of Sydney<\/a>, University of Technology, Sydney (Australia)<\/a>, and the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Springs, Maryland, USA<\/a>, certainly adds clout to this theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huffer, who will visit 杏吧原创 on October 22-23, 2015 is sponsored by the Department of History<\/a> and the Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture<\/a>, has been collaboratively researching the illicit trade of ethnographic and archeological human remains through online platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and eBay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The practice of purchasing and selling the physical remains of those who have passed is but a subset of a much larger global emporium of the human body known as the \u201cred market.\u201d The red market includes the sale of everything from human blood, organs and tissues to the trafficking of living human beings. Though there is a significant amount of academic study and effort put towards understanding the illegal channels of commerce used to buy and sell rare antiquities, Huffer explains that much less is known about the shadowy trade of the dead that exists within today\u2019s red market:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProfessor Duncan Chappell (a lawyer and criminologists from the University of Sydney, Australia) and I found there was a gap in the literature investigating this private trade in all types of human remains, so we began to combine our divergent but complimentary skill sets to find out more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe discovered there\u2019s a market for nearly all imaginable kinds of remains \u2013 Tibetan Buddhist paraphernalia such as drums and flutes made from human bone, mummies, so-called \u201ctrophy skulls,\u201d World War skeletons, etc. are all coveted to one degree or another. Collectors want a piece of authenticated history. It really is the story the sells the skeleton.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Antique
Antique decorated kangling (A flute made from human femora and tibiae). Image courtesy of a US gallery<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This unethical, oft-times shocking commodification of the dead is heavily sanctioned around the world, but, because there is little legal cohesion from country to country, there are some problematic loopholes in the enforcement of laws curtailing the illicit aspects of this trade. Consequently, many sellers have become quite resourceful in finding methods to move their products, and as demonstrated in Huffer and colleague\u2019s research, hiding-in-plain-sight seems to be one of their preferred avenues. In their recently released paper, The mainly nameless and faceless dead: an exploratory study of the illicit traffic in archaeological and ethnographic human remains<\/a><\/em>, the scholars depict a multitude of instances of how sellers have created online markets through the use of popular social websites like eBay, in addition to galleries and auction houses with a more public face. Considering the vastness of the internet, conducting the sleuth work necessary to track and record these occurrences took a great deal of time and concerted effort. This work has since expanded to Instagram, an unexpected marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy colleagues and I would often find ourselves lost down eBay and Instagram rabbit holes. We came to understand that sellers would introduce their auctions online, but would finish the sale offline. There is so much data to analyze and the sellers are crafty. They can make it rather challenging to follow their paths\u201d said Huffer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, many of these sites rely very heavily on self-reporting from vigilant citizens and thus don\u2019t police this phenomenon efficiently or effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Alleged
Alleged Huari trophy skull. Image courtesy of a German auction house.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As exemplified by Huffer\u2019s work, when archeology and the internet collide, a lot of new and important questions begin popping up. Professor Shawn Graham<\/a> of the Department of History<\/a> and member of the Collaborative MA in Digital Humanities<\/span><\/a><\/span>, who was instrumental in bringing Huffer to CU, believes this type of scrutiny is vital for a variety of reasons. \u201cDamien\u2019s work sits at the intersection of archaeology and the digital humanities in that it uncovers ways in which social media has real impact on the ground in the communities he works with. \u2018Digital\u2019 sometimes is imagined as existing \u2018somewhere else\u2019 – but what Damien\u2019s research shows is that the digital and the material are horribly complicated with each other. There is no \u2018virtual world\u2019. There\u2019s just this one!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graham also points out that Huffer\u2019s work confronts the increasingly pervasive reality that many of our historical artefacts and symbols are being destroyed for completely illegitimate reasons. \u201cDamien\u2019s research sheds light on a trade that is abolishing our communal world heritage. By fighting this trade, his research restores a measure of dignity to the dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his visit, Huffer will expand on the illicit trade in human remains and his collaborative work researching the murky regions of the internet. He will also address the realities of conducting archeological work in the online age. Huffer will certainly deliver a prudent and empowering message to the 杏吧原创 community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hope to explain that anyone can do the type of research I\u2019m doing. The good thing about the internet is that it is available to anyone, and simply put, we need more eyes watching this problem. There are a lot of terrible things occurring that we can all help monitor,\u201d said Huffer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Huffer will be meeting with graduate students and speaking to undergraduate students in the following courses: \u2018Introduction to Archaeology\u2019, \u2018Historian\u2019s Craft\u2019, <\/i>and \u2018Issues in Digital Humanities.\u2019<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you would like to meet Dr. Huffer while he is visiting 杏吧原创, please email Professor Shawn Graham: shawn.graham@carleton.ca<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Dr.
Dr. Damien Huffer<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Damien Huffer<\/strong> is a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian\u2019s Museum Conservation Institute and department of physical anthropology. His current research uses stable isotope geochemistry to investigate diet and movement over the lifespan, at the community level, and over time; most recently using museum collection from Jordan and Bahrain. He has been involved in excavations around the world, from Vietnam to Arizona, Polynesia to Australia. He also actively researches and tirelessly advocates for the documentation and exposure of the illegal antiquities trade.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Smithsonian archaeologist to visit 杏吧原创 to speak about his work investigating the online trade in human remains on sites like Instagram These days, it is said that you can find anything online. The research of Dr. Damien Huffer, post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s Museum Conservation Institute and Department of Anthropology, as well as colleagues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[52,90,70,151,115,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-fass-news","category-history","category-icslac","category-iis","category-research-2"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16897"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34219,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16897\/revisions\/34219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}