Grave Matters: The Controversy over Excavating California's Buried Indigenous Past

How do we reconcile the sanctity of Indigenous burial grounds with the desire to study them?

Whether by curious Boy Scouts and “backyard archaeologists” or competitive collectors and knowledge—hungry anthropologists, the excavation of Native remains is a practice fraught with injustice and simmering resentments.

Grave Matters is the history of the treatment of Native remains in California and the story of the complicated relationship between researcher and researched. Tony Platt begins hi...