The legal classification of hominin fossils: lessons from the Broken Hill skull

Since 2018, the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in Case of Illicit Appropriation has been discussing the case of the Broken Hill skull. Discovered in 1921, this Homo heidelbergensis skull sits in the Natural History Museum in London, although Zambia claims that it belonged to an ancestor and should be repatriated as such. This unprecedented ancestral claim to the remains of a being outside the species Homo sapiens raises the question of the legal classification of hominin fossils. This article therefore explores the legal status of hominin fossils, with a view to both inform scientific practice and spark an interest in hominin fossils as a point of legal interest. It concludes that hominin fossils are cultural objects under the law and should be repatriated as such, while ancestral framing finds little legal support and might be detrimental rather than conducive to achieving repatriation.