The Acquisition and Possession of Human Skulls: A Comprehensive Guide

Updated edition, May 2026, covering exclusively the legal situation in Germany and the United States. Other countries will follow in separate articles.

I was sitting at my computer, working on the final phase of my human facial reconstruction software, the project I have been refining for years and which I have described in detail in a separate article, when the phone rang. A young woman, friendly, matter of fact, with that slightly trembling undertone in her voice that signals someone is speaking from a situation that has just shifted dramatically, described the following set of facts to me. She had ordered an anatomical teaching skull from a Dutch supplier, an entirely ordinary teaching skull, calibrated, prepared, complete with springs, screws, and the detached calotte for inspection of the cerebral cavity, in other words exactly the kind of specimen that has been in the hands of generations of medical students at German anatomical institutes for over a century, without anyone ever considering criminal proceedings. In her case, however, the shipment did not go to her home but to customs, and from customs to the public prosecutor’s office, and from there back to her as a criminal investigation, with formal correspondence, with file numbers, with a request for a written statement. These criminal proceedings were aimed at her. They were aimed at the sender as well.

Because I am internationally well connected and almost everyone knows everyone in the small world of historical anatomical specimens, the sender was personally known to me. He runs an antiques business in the Netherlands, the skull came from the estate of his father in law, a physician who had acquired it decades earlier through entirely legitimate channels from a medical collection. There had been no grave robbing, no theft, no black market, just a perfectly ordinary anatomical teaching skull with a documented provenance from medical stock. The proceedings, as I had known from the outset, were eventually dropped. But between the order and the dismissal lay months, and lawyer’s fees, and a young woman who, with the entirely sincere intention of deepening her osteological knowledge, suddenly found herself listed as the suspect in a criminal offense whose statutory elements were obviously not satisfied in her case.

Such cases occur because neither customs authorities nor investigators inform themselves adequately, and because legal certainty in this area simply does not exist in Germany. A single phone call to an expert who works with human remains would, in many cases, be enough to avoid a costly procedure that will almost certainly be dismissed in the end. Instead, what happens in Germany in the worst case is the following. The criminal police pick up the skull, drive it to the institute of forensic medicine, where the identification of historical anatomical specimens is, as a rule, not nearly as well understood as the assessment of fresh crime scene remains, because that is a different specialty, and the procedure is dragged out over weeks or months, at the end of which there is a dismissal that was foreseeable on the very first day.

I can usually tell within seconds, from the preparation method of a skull, where it came from, in which workshop it was crafted, what era it belongs to. I maintain an extensive database of historical specimens that gives me comparative material on a scale that government bodies typically do not have. What I describe here is not self praise. It is, in the end, a question of specialization. Anyone who has worked with human remains for 20 years sees things that someone who handles 3 skulls a year simply does not notice. Precisely this discrepancy between the available expertise outside the authorities and the lack of expertise inside the authorities is the underlying problem this guide is trying to mitigate.

What made the case of the young woman particularly frustrating was an observation I make repeatedly in hundreds of similar cases. No one on the investigating side had ever attempted, before opening the proceedings, to place the sender in the Dutch antiques trade context, or to assess the skull itself by its preparation features. The mere fact that a human skull had appeared at customs was enough to set the entire machinery in motion. Complaint, file, file number, request for a statement, need for legal advice, attorney, hours in waiting rooms, correspondence with the prosecutor’s office. All of it could have been avoided if someone had paused for a moment and asked whether any statutory offense was even at issue here. Instead, the bureaucracy rolls along the way bureaucracy does, and the citizen pays in time, in nerves, and in money.

Anyone who thinks this is a uniquely German problem is mistaken. Similar cases run in the Netherlands, in Belgium, in France, and in the United Kingdom, sometimes with less formal overhead. What they all have in common is the gap between what the average official knows about historical anatomy and what would need to be known to classify such cases quickly and correctly. This gap is structural and difficult to close, because the subject matter is simply too specialized to feature comprehensively in standard training curricula. The only practical solution is the consultation of external experts before proceedings are opened, and that consultation is exactly what almost never happens in practice.

I will return repeatedly to practical examples in this guide, because the procedural law and the substantive criminal law in this area can only be properly grasped if one has concrete cases in mind, the kind of cases that arise when a skull falls into an official’s hands. The theory is in the legal text. The reality is in the case files. Anyone who wants to mediate between them has to know both.

A customs anecdote that captures the entire problem

About 10 years ago I acquired a human skull with a clean cut injury, unmistakably caused by a machete, an instructive piece I intended to use in expert training sessions. The recipient was me personally, or rather my institute. What, then, did the customs office do? They sent the skull to the official veterinarian for examination, in order to determine whether it might in fact be an animal bone. The veterinarian, to whom I do not wish to attribute any professional incompetence, because that would be unfair, charged me roughly 100 euros. His finding was, as expected, that the bone was human. Additional cost to the taxpayer, lost time for me, 100 euros out of my pocket, and above all a perfect example of how officials at the interface between customs and subsequent expert examination handle human remains when no clear procedural pathway is laid out for them. I still laugh about it today, though more out of resignation than amusement.

Out of all the proceedings I have accompanied as an expert in recent years, every single one was dismissed. I mean every single one, without exception. Including the case in which an entire bag of assorted human bones, ordered through Etsy, turned up at customs in Frankfurt. Including the case in which an Indian teaching skull, of a type that has supplied the European market with historical specimens since the 1970s, was discovered during a house search in an entirely unrelated investigation. Including the case in which the daughter of a deceased physician wanted to liquidate her father’s collection and turned to the responsible municipality, which promptly led to a criminal complaint under Section 168 of the German Criminal Code. There too it was eventually established that the skulls dated from the 1950s, had been acquired through legitimate medical sources, and that the father had used them throughout his career as a physician. Proceedings dismissed, as in every other case. The daughter spent half a year carrying a case number around her neck before the result came in, the result that had been obvious from day one.

Why was every one of these cases dismissed? Because the elements of the relevant criminal offenses simply cannot be derived from a fact pattern in which the origin of the bones cannot be verified by criminalistic means due to their age, and in which there are no concrete indications of an offense in the individual case. The radiocarbon dating regularly carried out in such proceedings produced results between 300 and 5,000 years. The oldest skull I have ever had dated came from Africa and clocked in at 5,270 years before Christ. It looked, from the outside, almost new. What at this point is supposed to be relevant under criminal law?

I am not talking about isolated cases or exceptions. I am talking about a routine practice that has developed over decades and which, in fact, represents the only legally correct outcome. Anyone who consults the standard commentaries on Section 168 of the German Criminal Code finds the nearly unanimous view of German criminal law scholarship that historical specimens without an active burial context fall outside the protective scope of the statute. This is not some creative judicial interpretation. This has been settled doctrine for decades. Yet proceedings continue to be opened, because at the investigating level the practice of legal subsumption has not kept pace with the doctrinal clarification.

The Wikipedia entry on Disturbance of the Peace of the Dead refers to the so called Skull Scandal of 2008, in which the prosecutor’s offices in Munich, Kiel, and Zweibrücken dismissed proceedings against 3 German Bundeswehr soldiers on suspicion of disturbing the peace of the dead (Wikipedia, Störung der Totenruhe, retrieved May 10, 2026). The Magdeburger Volksstimme reported in 2015 about a seller who had acquired a skull at a flea market 50 years earlier and was now offering it for 100 euros, and there too the police did not pursue criminal charges after handing the skull over to the State Office of Criminal Investigation for age determination (Volksstimme, November 4, 2015). The pattern in these cases is consistent. Whatever is historically old, whatever stands within a traceable collection context, whatever has not been torn from a current burial, is irrelevant under criminal law.

What a human skull is, chemically and biologically

Before we plunge into the legal analysis, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider the object itself, because the legal assessment is often distorted by mistaken notions of what a skull actually is. A prepared human skull, fully cleaned of soft tissue, is a bony residual object with a dry weight of between 0.8 and 1.2 kilograms in adults, depending on age, sex, and body type of the individual at the time of death, as well as on the completeness of the specimen, that is, whether the cranial base is preserved, whether the mandible has been mounted, whether the calotte has been separated. It consists of roughly 70 percent inorganic material, essentially hydroxyapatite, a calcium phosphate mineral with the chemical formula Ca₁₀(PO₄)₆(OH)₂, and roughly 30 percent organic matrix, predominantly type I collagen.

A historically prepared skull without soft tissue residue is, in biochemical terms, no different in material from an archaeological find recovered from a medieval row grave. It contains no biologically active cells, no reproducible DNA in pathologically relevant concentration, no infectious pathogens, no substances that would pose a danger to the surrounding environment under proper storage conditions. It is, plainly stated, an anatomical object made of mineralized matrix with organic remnants.

I am asked from time to time whether I do not feel uneasy in a room with so many skulls, whether the energies emanating from them do not affect me, whether one or another of the skulls does not appear to me in dreams. The honest answer is no, never, in not a single instance. No skull has ever spoken to me. There have been no paranormal manifestations, no supernatural occurrences, no spiritual encounters with the spirit of the deceased individual. Such notions are, with respect, simply nonsense. Anyone who has worked professionally with human remains for over 20 years thinks differently. They think not less respectfully, but rather more realistically. Respect for the deceased lies not in mystifying the bone, but in the clean, careful, professional handling of what the human being has left behind.

And yet, let me say this openly, I do not consider it appropriate when any random buyer places a real human skull on a mantelpiece because it looks deliciously creepy and photographs well for Instagram. Anyone who acquires a skull out of professional interest, out of scientific inclination, out of a deep and considered relationship to human biology, to anatomy, to anthropology, to forensic practice, in order to learn from it, to compare with it, to teach with it, stands within a tradition that has been the foundation of medical and biological insight for centuries. Anyone who, in contrast, places a skull on the mantelpiece out of ignorance or sensationalism is moving in a sphere that has nothing to do with science or teaching. Criminal law regulates this only within limits. But decency, I would argue, should do the rest.

This tradition reaches further back in time than most readers realize. Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy, supplemented his epochal dissection studies in the mid 16th century by collecting bones at night from gallows hills and execution sites, which would be questionable by today’s standards but was at the time considered an indispensable condition of scientific knowledge. The anatomical textbooks of the 17th and 18th centuries would never have come into being without unrestricted access to human remains. The same applies to forensic anthropology, which since Quetelet, and later since Aleš Hrdlička, has systematically measured, described, and catalogued the human skeleton in its full range of variation, which in turn forms the basis of modern identification techniques. Anyone who collects skulls stands within this tradition.

I say this because I speak from a professional practice in which the availability of real osteological material is what makes the difference between a well founded expert opinion and a guess. Plastic models, however detailed they may be manufactured today, do not reproduce the individual variability that is present in real skulls. They show the ideal type, not the spectrum. Anyone who works with real historical specimens sees the variation in the sutures, the individual peculiarities of cranial seams, the small anatomical idiosyncrasies that are not depicted in textbooks because textbooks must necessarily generalize. This experience is irreplaceable in the practice of expert assessment.

There is another aspect that is often glossed over because it is uncomfortable. Most of the skulls in circulation today are anatomical teaching specimens from medical collections that were eventually retired when the respective university or dental institute switched over to plastic. These skulls were not stolen from graves. They were not prepared in pressure cookers. They were not smuggled out of the Hong Kong back alleys. They are the result of an orderly, often documented medical procurement tradition that supplied the world market with high quality anatomical specimens, originating in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and parts of Southeast Asia, well into the second half of the 20th century. Anyone who holds a hand sawn skull with springs and screws and the imprint of an Indian teaching supply firm holds a piece of medical supply history, not a crime.

Germany: Section 168 of the Criminal Code, the heart of the matter

The private possession of a human skull is not generally prohibited in Germany. There is no statute that criminalizes mere possession as such. What criminal law protects is not the bone as an object, but the personal rights of the deceased that persist beyond death, as well as the social sense of pietas. This distinction is essential for the legal assessment.

The central statute is Section 168 of the German Criminal Code, titled Disturbance of the Peace of the Dead. The wording is clear, and I quote it in full because it is frequently misrepresented or distorted in summary. Subsection 1 reads: Whoever without authorization removes from the custody of the entitled party the body or parts of the body of a deceased person, a deceased fetus, parts thereof, or the ashes of a deceased person, or commits offensive mischief upon them, is punished with imprisonment of up to 3 years or with a fine. Subsection 2 punishes whoever destroys or damages a place of laying out, a place of burial, or a public place of memorial, or commits offensive mischief there. Subsection 3 of Section 168 declares the attempt punishable.

What this statute does not cover is the mere possession of a skull that has lawfully entered circulation. A historical preparation skull from a 19th century anatomical teaching collection, which has changed hands across generations through proper acquisition processes, stands on a fundamentally different legal footing from a skull that was removed from a grave. The decisive question is not what one possesses, but how it came into one’s possession.

For the practical application of Section 168 of the Criminal Code, the concept of the custody of the entitled party is central, and as the Leipzig criminal defense attorney Tommy Kujus correctly puts it, this concept is highly complex. It requires a factual relationship of stewardship and at the same time a normative right of stewardship, in other words not only the factual ability to dispose of the remains, but also the legal authority to do so (Kujus, T., 2026, Disturbance of the Peace of the Dead, kujus-strafverteidigung.de). The right of stewardship over the dead generally lies with the next of kin or follows the will of the deceased. Where the person with factual custody and the person with the legal right of stewardship diverge, the protection of Section 168 may already fail to apply.

Here lies the central legal point that this guide aims, above all, to make clear to the authorities. In the case of fully skeletonized historical bones with no recognizable connection to a current cemetery or current burial, no relationship of custody regularly exists any longer, because the original entitled party has long since died, and the bone has wandered through various hands, through collections, through international markets, without anyone in the meantime holding it within a burial context. Where there is no custody, there can also be no removal from custody, and where there is no removal from custody, the first alternative of Section 168 subsection 1 is not satisfied. This is not merely my private interpretation. It is the consequence of the wording of the statute and of the prevailing scholarly commentary.

The Federal Court of Justice, in a decision of June 30, 2015, handed down by the Fifth Criminal Division, clarified the reach of Section 168 with respect to the concept of ashes, holding that the dental gold remaining after cremation also counts as ashes within the meaning of the statute (BGH, decision of June 30, 2015, file reference 5 StR 71/15). This is notable insofar as the Federal Court of Justice in its interpretive reasoning circumscribes the scope of the statute precisely. What is protected is what physically remains of the deceased and stands in a concrete connection to a burial. A calotte from the 18th century circulating in the international collection market does not have that connection.

Third, according to prevailing case law, the act must, from an objective standpoint, appear grossly impious and socially offensive, a requirement that is generally not met by scientific use, by anatomical teaching, and indeed also by the private collection of historical osteological specimens conducted without recognizably disrespectful intent.

The body of legal commentary that has built up around Section 168 proceeds along similar lines on the question of the protective scope. The Schönke/Schröder commentary expressly notes that historical bone finds no longer standing within an active burial context fall outside the statute. The Munich Commentary discusses the question using the example of archaeological excavation finds, holding that the statute does not apply when the original burial context has been dissolved over centuries and no concrete surviving relatives remain whose sense of pietas could be protected. The Leipzig Commentary notes that even the removal of remains from a scientific collection does not automatically satisfy the elements of the offense, because the collection is not a place of burial and the bone held there is not an object of mandatory custody within the meaning of the statute.

These doctrinal observations are not merely academic. They have direct practical consequences for the authorities. Anyone who sees a skull intercepted at customs should ask themselves the following questions before opening any proceedings. Is there a concrete burial site from which the skull was removed? Is there a concrete entitled party whose custody was breached? Are there any indications of an act in close temporal proximity to a burial process? If the answer is no to all 3 questions, Section 168 of the Criminal Code is not applicable, and opening proceedings on this basis means tying up resources that are needed more urgently elsewhere.

There is a complementary perspective that the Leipzig criminal defense attorney Tommy Kujus consistently advances in his practice. The accusation of disturbing the peace of the dead is, in the investigative phase, often heavily moralized, because the subject is socially taboo and officials are reluctant to give the impression of being too lenient (Kujus, T., 2026, kujus-strafverteidigung.de). This moral coloration leads to proceedings being opened that would not survive proper subsumption, but which are difficult to withdraw later because of the gravity of the accusation. Only the dismissal practice of the prosecutor’s offices corrects this in the aftermath. The result is legally correct but procedurally inefficient. It burdens citizens without producing any criminal law effect.

A further note on the custody constellation. In the historical collecting practice it occurs that skulls are passed down through generations. Grandfather was a physician, bought the skull in the 1950s for his studies, passed it to his son, who used it as a physician himself, and so eventually it reached the granddaughter. Throughout all these transitions, the ownership of the skull changes lawfully, without anyone fulfilling the elements of Section 168. Whoever stands at the end of this chain holds an entirely legitimate object in their hands. The demand to provide a continuous provenance often fails simply because the heirs do not know where the grandfather originally obtained the skull. This gap in knowledge is irrelevant to the legal assessment. As long as there are no indications of an originally criminal acquisition, the absence of first hand documentation is not evidence of a crime. It is the normal consequence of an acquisition that took place decades ago.

Section 189 and Section 259 of the Criminal Code: what supplements the picture

Section 189 of the Criminal Code, the disparagement of the memory of the deceased, supplements the framework when human remains are used or publicly displayed in a manner that is recognizably aimed at degrading a concrete individual. The penalty range is up to 2 years of imprisonment or a fine. This offense requires a particularly grave insult with an individual reference, and is rarely relevant in normal collection or research contexts. Where it does apply, however, is in the staging of human remains in a manner that betrays any sense of pietas: the photograph of a human skull with a candle on top posted on Instagram as Halloween decoration, the skull as ashtray, the hashtagged staging as a lifestyle accessory. Here the fun ends, and at this point the line into criminal conduct under Section 189 has often been crossed, provided the required individual reference to the concrete deceased can be established, which often cannot be done with historically anonymized specimens.

When it comes to acquisition, Section 259 of the Criminal Code, the offense of receiving stolen property, plays a role. Anyone who buys a skull and either knows or at least accepts the possibility that it was obtained through a criminal act, for example through grave robbery, makes themselves liable as a receiver of stolen goods. Conditional intent, dolus eventualis, suffices for liability. In legal online forums one occasionally reads the claim that the buyer makes himself liable under Section 168 of the Criminal Code by purchasing a skull of questionable origin. This particular claim is, in fact, legally imprecise. Section 168 punishes the removal from custody, not the subsequent acquisition. Anyone who buys a bone that has already been removed from the custody relationship does not come into consideration as a perpetrator under Section 168, but at most as a receiver under Section 259. The distinction here is not merely academic; it is procedurally decisive in every case.

Federal burial law: all 16 states of Germany

Parallel to criminal law, Germany has a federally distributed burial law that, pursuant to Article 70 of the Basic Law, is a matter for the individual states. All 16 federal states have enacted their own burial laws, in some cases with substantial differences from one another (Wikipedia, Bestattungsgesetz, retrieved May 10, 2026). These laws regulate the period during which human remains in a burial site stand under the special protection of the burial law, the so called minimum rest period regulations.

In Baden-Württemberg, Section 6 of the Burial Act explicitly regulates the rest period in stages according to the age of the deceased. For children who died before the completion of the second year of life, the minimum rest period is 6 years. For children who died before the completion of the 10th year of life, it is 10 years. Otherwise, it is at least 15 years (Section 6 BestattG BW).

In Bavaria, the rest period is set under Article 10 of the Burial Act by the cemetery operator in consultation with the responsible health authority. Bavarian law does not prescribe a fixed minimum statutory period; what is decisive is the expected decomposition time under the concrete soil conditions. In practice, the cemetery regulations of Bavarian municipalities tend to fall between 10 and 25 years.

In Berlin, the minimum rest period is 20 years. In Brandenburg and Hesse, it is 15 years. In Bremen, it is 20 years for ashes and 25 years for earth burials, and Bremen has since the beginning of 2015 largely lifted the cemetery requirement. In Hamburg, Section 28 subsections 1 and 2 of the Burial Act sets the rest period uniformly at 25 years. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the minimum rest period is 20 years, as it is in Lower Saxony and Saxony. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the Burial Act leaves the precise determination to the cemetery regulations of the municipalities, with typical values ranging from 20 to 30 years. In Rhineland-Palatinate, a new burial act was adopted in 2025 that brought far reaching liberalizations in many respects, including allowing the storage of ashes outside cemeteries and their conversion into a memorial diamond. In the Saarland, the rest period varies expressly according to the age of the deceased, between 6 and 15 years. In Saxony-Anhalt, the burial law was reformed in 2025, with expanded options for ash dispersal and the joint burial of multiple persons. In Schleswig-Holstein, a new burial act took effect on December 31, 2024, and sets the rest periods in the respective cemetery regulations at 20 to 25 years. In Thuringia, the burial act prescribes a minimum rest period of 20 years.

The determination in each individual case follows, in nearly all federal states, the pattern of a statutory minimum period with the option for the cemetery operator, in consultation with the health authority, to set a longer period if soil conditions require it. The Karlsruhe Administrative Court, in a judgment of April 28, 2014, expressly confirmed that a 25 year rest period is not legally objectionable when heavy clay soils prolong the decomposition process (VG Karlsruhe, file reference 7 K 2374/13).

Decomposition time and the phenomenon of adipocere

Decomposition time in the soil is biologically variable. Under favorable conditions, with good soil drainage and balanced pH, a human body fully decomposes to skeletal material within 4 to 7 years. Under unfavorable conditions, in heavily moist soils or clay substrates with limited oxygen availability, this process can take more than 30 years, or be entirely halted by a special phenomenon.

That phenomenon is known as adipocere, also called grave wax or corpse wax in everyday speech. When the body lies under anaerobic conditions, that is, without sufficient oxygen, the body fats are converted by microbial and chemical processes into a waxy, brownish yellow to whitish substance. This substance, chemically describable as a fatty acid soap mixture, envelops the soft tissues and prevents further breakdown. Adipocere formation can begin within a few months and remains stable under suitable conditions for centuries. Adipocere preserved bodies have been documented at roughly a quarter of 1,000 surveyed German cemeteries, a finding that compels federal burial legislators to set longer rest periods in clay rich, moist soils.

Burial law uses the term corpse to denote a largely intact human body in which the natural process of decay has only begun. Fully skeletonized remains lying outside the custody of an active burial site fall in practice no longer under the burial law concept of a corpse. This is the legal framework within which historical osteological specimens from collections and the legitimate specialist trade can exist.

How the origin of a skull is assessed

The question of the legality of a given skull is, when viewed forensically, ultimately a question of provenance. Where does this object come from, and is its history of origin compatible with the prevailing legal norms? In many cases this can be narrowed down through systematic inspection, even if certainty is not absolute.

The first step is the visual analysis of the preparation technique. Historical anatomical skulls from the 19th and early 20th centuries show specific features of their period of origin: hand guided saw cuts at the calvaria and cranial base, drilled holes in standardized positions for hanging fixtures or fastening screws, lacquers and sealants from particular historical eras, and lead weights set into the cranial base to stabilize teaching specimens. These features are not reproducible and immediately convey to the experienced examiner the context of origin.

Dental analysis is one of the most informative approaches. Wear patterns on the occlusal surfaces of the molars reflect the dietary habits of the individual, which differ considerably across history. Pre industrial dentition shows a characteristically uniform abrasion from coarsely ground grain and unprocessed food, a wear pattern that does not arise in this form under modern dietary habits. Even more direct, however, are the dental restorations. The absence of any composite, ceramic inlay, titanium implant, or non noble metal alloy crown of the late 20th century strongly suggests, statistically, a death before the Second World War. A titanium implant, on the other hand, is an unambiguous time marker, because this material was developed only in the 1960s and came into widespread dental use from the 1980s onward.

Mineralization and surface alterations of the bone provide indications of the time in the soil and the soil conditions at the find site. With increasing time in the ground, minerals from the surrounding earth deposit into the bone tissue, which causes a discoloration ranging from creamy white through yellow brown to dark brown or black, depending on soil chemistry, soil moisture, and other factors. Under the microscope, histomorphometry, that is, the analysis of bone structure at the tissue level, shows characteristic patterns of degradation that allow an estimation of both the biological age of the individual at the time of death and the postmortem time elapsed.

For precise absolute dating, the radiocarbon method is the most reliable scientific instrument. Carbon 14 dating relies on the known decay process of the radioactive carbon isotope C14, which all living organisms absorb from the atmosphere and which is no longer renewed after death. The ratio between the remaining C14 and the stable carbon isotope C12 allows a temporal classification with a theoretical reach of up to about 50,000 years. A minimally invasive sample collection of a few milligrams of bone powder is sufficient for laboratory analysis. The result is a statistical probability interval, which in many cases can be narrowed down to a few decades and which for investigators and prosecutors is often the decisive factor in determining what happens next. In Germany, such a dating typically costs between 500 and 800 euros for private clients, while the conditions for authorities are, depending on the route of commissioning, considerably more favorable, and a single investigation that does not have to be opened, a single house search that is avoided, saves that amount many times over.

Before commissioning a dating, a systematic assessment based on high resolution photographs can in many cases already provide an evaluation that guides further action. Anyone who properly documents the calotte, the cranial base, the dental rows, the auditory canal, the inner side of the calvaria, and the notches for screw fixtures gives an experienced expert enough material to make a first classification. This assessment is significantly less expensive than radiocarbon dating and is, in many cases, sufficient to clarify the procedural question of whether further investigation is warranted at all. My urgent appeal to customs and law enforcement authorities is therefore: in cases of doubt, get an external expert on the phone before opening proceedings that are likely to be dismissed in any event.

The Ramses problem: why the demand for provenance refutes itself

I pose this question regularly at training sessions and in lectures, I pose it to prosecutors, to police officers, to journalists, to students, and the result is the same every time: astonished faces, a stunned silence, and the audible jolt in the room when the line of argument that the questioner thought he had in his pocket no longer holds. The question is: where, please, is the written consent of Ramses II?

No one will be able to show it to me. It does not exist, and it never existed. Ramses II was buried in the Valley of the Kings in 1213 BC, embalmed, nested in multiple sarcophagi, equipped with elaborate ritual provisions for an afterlife that were intended precisely to guarantee his undisturbed rest. No one asked him whether his body, roughly 3,200 years later, would be removed from his sarcophagus, transported to the capital, catalogued in the holdings of the Cairo Museum, flown to Paris in 1976 because of fungal infestation, received with full military honors at Paris-Le Bourget Airport, exposed to X rays, examined for tuberculosis and bubonic plague, treated against fungal damage, and finally put on permanent display in a climate controlled vitrine at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo. The persistent story that he was even issued an Egyptian passport for the trip, with the occupation listed as King, deceased, is demonstrably false, yet it survives precisely because it fits so well with everything else that was done to him. No one ever asked him about any of this. No one existed who could even have asked him, because his family has been dead for 3,000 years and his heirs are not in the phone book. The written consent of Ramses II does not exist. And yet there the man stands, brilliantly displayed, and no one has a problem with it.

So when I am now asked whether a historical teaching skull from an unknown Indian individual from the 1970s is legitimate in my collection because I cannot produce a written consent of the deceased, I ask back. Where, please, is the consent of Ötzi, whose over 5,300 year old mummy has been lying under glass at the Bolzano museum since 1998? Where is the consent of the Tollund Man from the Danish bog, who has been on display since 1952? Where is the consent of the Roman dead whose bones have been excavated and anthropologically examined at Kalkriese in the Osnabrück region since the late 1980s? Where is the consent of the countless plague victims whose mass graves in Marseille, in Vienna, in Cologne, in London, in Florence, in Krakow have been opened, measured, sampled, photographed, and documented in scientific publications for decades? Where is the consent of the Hallstatt Celts, of the Neanderthals from the Neander Valley, of the Bronze Age warriors from the Tollense, of the Viking ship burials from Oseberg, of the medieval monastic cemeteries whose skeletons are stacked in every German university basement? There is none, and there never will be any.

I should add, and this is important for the question of a concrete burial connection, that my own youngest skull is over 300 years old. 300 years, to put it in concrete terms. That means the human being whose skull this once was has been dead since 1726, was a contemporary of Bach and Handel, lived through the War of the Spanish Succession, and has no living relatives anywhere whose pietas could conceivably be protected. Anyone who wants to explain to me at this point that there is a disturbance of the peace of the dead taking place here should, at the same time, please explain why the Charité, the University of Jena, and the Bremen Übersee-Museum hold skulls that are on average significantly younger, without anyone considering investigating them.

So anyone who places a private collector under general suspicion because that collector cannot produce a written provenance for a skull prepared in a Calcutta workshop in the 19th century should first knock on the door of the British Museum and demand the consent forms of the over 6,000 human remains the museum holds by its own account. If they have those, then we can talk. If they do not have them, then there are 2 possibilities. Either the standard is nonsense, or the entire world of anthropology, archaeology, medical history, paleopathology, and forensic practice is one giant criminal organization. Both cannot be true at the same time.

The demand for unbroken written provenance for historical osteological items is a moral reflex that collapses upon itself in the moment of its articulation, because it can be applied to almost nothing other than a few contemporary special cases. It is a standard that fails on every attempt to use it. The Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz took over the anthropological collection of the Berlin Charité in 2011 and holds roughly 8,000 skulls from around the world in its depots, among them 200 from Tanzania, 900 from Rwanda, and 400 to 500 from Togo and Cameroon. The taz puts the total number of human remains stored in Berlin at roughly 11,000, the majority of them so far unexamined (taz, August 28, 2018; Dramiga, 2019). The Smithsonian Institution in Washington holds the remains of more than 30,000 individuals, the overwhelming majority without any form of consent or documented provenance chain that would meet today’s demands. The demand for full provenance is not used as a substantive standard. It is applied selectively and arbitrarily, and the pattern of its application is not difficult to discern.

Provenance research at German museums has increased considerably in recent years, with 3 restitutions of human remains to Namibia in 2011, 2014, and 2018, with returns by the Bremen Übersee-Museum to Hawaii in 2022 and to New Zealand in 2017, and with numerous further initiatives. This restitutional movement is legitimate and important. It does not, however, change the underlying finding that the overwhelming majority of human remains stored in collections worldwide do not possess the unbroken provenance record that is sometimes demanded of private collectors today. The critical engagement with the colonial heritage in German collections is justified and important. It should not, however, spill over into a blanket suspicion of private collecting, because the structures differ fundamentally. A scientific collection that systematically acquired skulls in subjugated territories on behalf of a colonial regime stands in an entirely different frame of justification from a private collector who acquired a teaching skull from an Indian workshop of the 1970s. The conflation of both spheres in media coverage is analytically wrong and damaging to the reputation of the collector scene. Whoever uses the legitimate discussion about colonial collecting practice to criminalize the private collection of teaching skulls is making a confusion that does not help the cause.

The burden of proof for a criminal origin lies with the law enforcement authority. The possessor of a skull is not obliged to prove his innocence. He is not obliged to demonstrate an origin that no one else can demonstrate for comparable objects. The absence of documentation is not grounds for suspicion. It is the normal state of affairs.

Why is the medical student permitted what is denied to the ordinary citizen?

This question is closely connected to the previous one and is, from a constitutional standpoint, at least equally interesting. In German anatomical institutes, medical students in their first or second semester pick up human skulls in classroom settings, analyze cranial sutures, identify the insertion points of the masticatory muscles, measure cranial capacities, and develop an anatomical understanding that they will use directly in their later clinical work. This is fully legal, socially accepted, and scientifically beyond dispute valuable.

The same activity, with the same object, in the hands of a passionate collector who has the same expertise, the same curiosity, the same care in handling the object, but no student ID, is suddenly viewed in public perception as questionable. Why is this the case at all?

Article 3 of the Basic Law prohibits the unjustified unequal treatment of comparable cases. Article 5 paragraph 3 protects science, research, and teaching, and not only within institutional frameworks. The Federal Constitutional Court has deliberately defined the constitutional concept of science in a broad manner. Science is any methodical, truth oriented pursuit of knowledge, regardless of whether it takes place at a university or in a private library. A self taught osteologist who has been collecting skulls for 20 years, reading the specialized literature, and exchanging insights with colleagues around the world, is engaged in science within the meaning of Article 5 paragraph 3 of the Basic Law, even without a registration number.

I know collectors around the world who regularly ask me questions that I would not necessarily expect from a third semester student. People who can distinguish sutures, place ossification stages, understand taphonomy, and discuss variations of the os sphenoidale more knowledgeably than many who work in forensic medicine. The line drawn between the medical student and serious collectors of this kind is not a line of knowledge, of respect, or of care. It is a line of institutional affiliation. And that line, viewed legally, is arbitrary.

The Gerlach case: where the line runs sharply, and where the media distort it

In early January 2026, a 34 year old man was arrested in Pennsylvania. His name is Jonathan Christian Gerlach, and his place of residence is Ephrata, about 20 minutes north of Lancaster. I happened to be having breakfast at the time, with a proper Bavarian Leberkäs sandwich in my hand, when the report came through on CNN. I saw the images, I saw the name, I recognized the face, and the sandwich quite literally fell out of my hand.

What Gerlach is accused of has, in the words of Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse, sent the investigators into a horror movie come to life (NBC10 Philadelphia, January 9, 2026). The indictment initially comprised 26 counts of burglary, 26 counts of criminal trespass, 100 counts of abuse of corpse, 100 counts of receiving stolen property, and 26 counts of intentional desecration of public monument. In all, the indictment comprises 496 individual counts, and according to reports from the Philadelphia Inquirer a plea deal is currently being negotiated (Philadelphia Inquirer, January 19, 2026; CBS News Philadelphia, March 13, 2026). Gerlach has been in custody since the arrest, because he could not raise the bail of 1 million US dollars.

According to the arrest affidavit, the period of the offenses ran from November 7, 2025 to January 6, 2026. During this time, Gerlach gained nighttime access to at least 26 mausoleums and underground burial vaults using crowbars, ladders, ropes, and a collection of additional tools, primarily at the Mount Moriah Cemetery between Philadelphia and Yeadon Borough in Delaware County. He pried open stone slabs weighing several thousand pounds, rappelled into vaults 10 meters underground, broke into sealed family mausoleums, and systematically removed human remains. At the time of his arrest, investigators found in his vehicle human bones, skulls, a crowbar, and a canvas sack. During the subsequent search of his residence in Ephrata, 100 human skeletons were recovered, plus 8 more from a rented storage unit. In his basement, a human torso hung from the ceiling, and skulls were lined up in collection arrangement on the shelves.

What does a man do with so many skulls? The answer is in the indictment and on his social media accounts: sale. Gerlach was a member of a Facebook group called Human Bones and Skull Selling, maintained an Instagram account active since 2023 on which he displayed skulls and bones, and according to investigators offered the pieces for sale (Philadelphia Inquirer, January 8, 2026).

That it pays is the economic background that makes such cases plausible in the first place. The American market for human remains is open, in 47 of the 50 states without explicit prohibition, and the prices reflect that. An ordinary historical skull from medical stock is traded for 1,800 to 2,500 US dollars. Pathologically interesting skulls sell for 3,000 dollars and up, with practically unlimited prices upward for rarities. A skull with documented syphilitic caries necrotica can fetch five figure sums on the international collector market. Whoever sells 50 skulls in the mid range has a new Mustang V8 in the garage. The economic incentive to do this clearly exists. Whether one should finance one’s dream car this way is another question. Most reasonable people would say, certainly not. But Gerlach apparently considered it sufficient to take on the risks that he is now offsetting in the form of a 1 million dollar bail and 496 counts of indictment.

My personal connection to Gerlach is tinged with a certain bitterness. I knew him from his Instagram account. He was one of many collectors with whom I had loose contact over the years. A few years ago I assessed one of his skulls for him, and he thanked me publicly on his account. When his arrest then went through the media and journalists began compiling all public contacts of the suspect, my name turned up in the search results, and suddenly I received hundreds of inquiries from American media outlets, hostile emails, accusations that I was part of an alleged Skull Mafia.

This so called Skull Mafia is, let me state this clearly, a media constructed entity that has little to do with the actual collector scene. Internationally there is a network of serious collectors, researchers, physicians, anatomists, anthropologists, and private research enthusiasts who exchange information about variations in human skulls, jointly document holdings, provide each other with assessments, and pass on insights through an informal knowledge network. That kind of structure is not a mafia. It is a scientific diaspora that operates in the gaps that institutional research leaves open. The fact that individual actors, like Gerlach apparently, abuse these structures for criminal purposes is tragic but does not change the fact that the scene as such is legitimate and overwhelmingly highly principled.

What struck me as a forensic practitioner when I saw the images of the searched house was that I immediately recognized that at least a third of the seized skulls showed no signs of Mount Moriah provenance whatsoever. They were hand sawn historical teaching skulls with the characteristic springs, screws, and lacquers familiar to me from European collections. These skulls Gerlach had probably acquired legally in Holland, Belgium, or other European countries, long before he had the idea of going on a break in spree in Pennsylvania. Whoever now indiscriminately throws everything into the same pot creates new injustice on top of the injustice that already exists.

Mount Moriah Cemetery: why the announced return of the skulls is practically impossible

Police Chief Henry Giammarco of Yeadon publicly stated that the remains would be returned to the families. Let us think this through for a moment, because here a competent coroner has already given the only honest answer.

Mount Moriah Cemetery was founded on March 27, 1855, by an act of the Pennsylvania legislature (Wikipedia, Mount Moriah Cemetery Philadelphia). The cemetery originally encompassed 54 acres, grew to 380 acres, and is today the largest cemetery in Pennsylvania. Official figures put the count at roughly 150,000 burials (Wikipedia, Mount Moriah Cemetery Philadelphia). The cemetery was closed for regular burial operations in April 2011, and since then there has been no clear owner. The Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery, a volunteer organization, has cared for the grounds since 2011 without sufficient resources for actual security.

How then does one return the remains that Gerlach removed from this cemetery to their original owners? DNA analysis from the petrous bone is technically possible, and it yields usable sequences even from bones several centuries old. But against which persons does one compare the obtained DNA? The direct descendants of persons buried at Mount Moriah in the 19th century have been dead for generations, their own descendants scattered around the world. A radiocarbon dating can narrow down the age of the remains, but it tells nothing about which concrete person the bones belonged to.

Whoever has spoken plainly is the coroner of Lancaster County, Stephen Diamantoni. His office took over the recovered remains and is keeping them until the conclusion of the criminal proceedings. Diamantoni publicly stated that an identification of the remains is, given their age, their condition, and the manner in which they have been intermingled, virtually impossible, and that his office will not undertake any identification attempts (Philadelphia Inquirer, January 16, 2026). That, frankly, is the honest answer here. A return of the majority of the remains to specific identifiable families is neither financially nor scientifically nor organizationally realistic.

The forensic triage in a case like the Gerlach case would have to proceed in several steps. Each individual piece would be photographically documented and stylistically classified. Pieces with unambiguous features of historical medical preparation would be separated from pieces without these features. On a representative sample, a radiocarbon dating would be carried out. The historical collection specimens identified as legitimate would be released, while the pieces assignable to Mount Moriah would be transferred to the cemetery administration. A blanket seizure of all pieces without this differentiating triage is legally and forensically problematic.

The American legal situation, by way of comparison

In the United States, no federal law exists that prohibits private persons from possessing, buying, or selling human remains, with a single important exception: the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, known as NAGPRA, places the possession and trade of remains of indigenous populations under federal protection and obliges institutions to return such remains to the respective tribes. Any skull that may be of indigenous origin is taboo throughout American territory, without exception and without statute of limitations.

Beyond NAGPRA, regulation is left entirely to the individual states. 3 states have explicitly restrictive laws (Marsh, T., 2024, Is it legal to sell human remains?, The Conversation). Louisiana prohibits the possession of human remains in principle, with exceptions for teeth, fingernails, gallstones, and ashes. Georgia permits possession within the state, but since a tightening in 2023 prohibits import, export, and any purchase or sale across state lines. Tennessee permits possession, purchase, sale, and exchange within the state, but prohibits transport to other states. Florida followed in 2025 with charges of illegal trafficking in human tissue. Minnesota enacted in 2024 the law HF3490, making the sale of human remains as curiosities or collector’s items a felony, with exceptions exclusively for medical institutions, FDA registered research organizations, and law enforcement agencies.

In the remaining states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, there is no explicit legislation prohibiting private possession of human bones. What is illegal is theft, grave robbery, and the interstate trade in stolen goods. The fundamental structural problem on the American side is the following. Where no explicit prohibition exists, there is also no obligation to demonstrate provenance. That creates a market in which proof of legal origin is in practice not demanded. This is a structurally different starting point from the German system with its clearly defined rest periods and its criminal sanction against receiving stolen goods.

eBay banned the trade in human bones in 2016, after a scientific study had documented that within a 7 month period 454 human skulls were listed on the platform (Halling and Seidemann, 2016, Journal of Forensic Sciences, 61(4), 867-871). Etsy followed in 2012. Trade has since shifted into social media groups and specialized online shops, where a calibrated historical skull from medical stock is offered for 1,800 to 2,500 US dollars.

What the authorities should actually do: a guide for customs, police, and prosecutors

This is the actual core of this article, because it is meant to give the other sections their practical effect. I call upon the officials of German customs authorities, the criminal police, and the public prosecutor’s offices to take to heart the following recommendations in proceedings involving human remains.

First, before opening proceedings, examine the facts in light of the elements of Section 168 of the Criminal Code. Is there a custody relationship of an entitled party that has been broken? Is there a concrete connection to a current burial site? Can offensive mischief with individual reference be demonstrated? If the answer is no to all 3 questions, the elements of the offense are not satisfied, and proceedings will most likely be dismissed. Save yourselves and the citizen the time and the cost.

Second, when a skull turns up at customs, first obtain an assessment based on high resolution photographs. Such an assessment costs a fraction of what a fully running investigation costs, and in most cases it already provides a robust temporal classification. If the photographs indicate a historical specimen from the 19th or early 20th century, the matter is settled.

Third, in cases of doubt, commission a radiocarbon dating. It costs between 500 and 800 euros for private clients, takes a few weeks, and yields a scientifically robust result. We carry out such datings through our institute, and authorities receive preferential rates. A result that places the skull in the nineteenth century or earlier ends the matter definitively.

Fourth, avoid the practice of sending an unclear skull to forensic medicine for initial assessment without explaining the context. Forensic medicine is excellent at the assessment of fresh crime scene remains, but historical specimens are a specialty that does not have the place in general forensic medical training that it would need for such cases. The first point of contact should be a forensic anthropological initial assessment by an external expert with experience in the historical collection segment.

Fifth, when a historical specimen without indications of a concrete offense has been seized, return it after the conclusion of the proceedings. The argument that the skull cannot be released without proof of provenance collides with the simple fact that most skulls in German university collections have no unbroken provenance either.

Who should and who should not own a skull

Anyone who works professionally with human remains, that is, physicians, forensic practitioners, anthropologists, anatomists, archaeologists, pathologists, forensic dentists, has a self evident interest in the direct study of real specimens. The same applies to seriously researching private individuals without a formal institutional framework, who through years of engagement with the material have reached a level of expertise comparable to or exceeding that of some of those working in academia. Here Article 5 paragraph 3 of the Basic Law applies, here scientific freedom applies, here the legitimate interest in obtaining knowledge from the real object applies.

Whoever, on the other hand, stages a human skull as Halloween decoration on Instagram with a candle on top is moving in a sphere in which I myself have no tolerance. This is not primarily a matter of criminal law, because Section 189 of the Criminal Code requires an individual reference to the concrete deceased, which is often impossible to establish with anonymized historical specimens. It is a matter of self respect and respect for the deceased.

The Indian export business in anatomical specimens is a story that is rarely told, but that is central to understanding the market. Over decades, from approximately the 1860s to 1985, Indian suppliers, predominantly from Kolkata and its surrounding areas, exported hundreds of thousands of complete skeletons and individual specimens to the entire western world. The bones came from deaths in the lower social strata, from prisons, from poorhouses. Under Indian law of the time this was legal, often even encouraged by the state, because it was a welcome source of foreign currency. India ended exports in 1985 after public scandals. The western market has since drawn from existing stocks, plus from ongoing dissolutions of medical collections. Precisely these pieces circulate on the market today. They are typically over 60 or 70 years old, many over 100. They have, in the sense of any properly understood burial law, long since been released from any active protective scope.

Anyone who buys a skull on the international market today should observe a few basic rules. First, buy only from sellers who can disclose their provenance to the extent possible. Second, prefer pieces with recognizable historical preparation features. Third, mistrust offers in which fresh pieces without preparation traces are offered. Fourth, note and document one’s own acquisition cleanly, with date, supplier, purchase price, description of the piece. This documentation is, in case of dispute, the best evidence of good faith acquisition. Fifth, when a piece gives reason for doubt, consult an expert before purchase.

The collector scene internationally: what the media do not tell

What rarely surfaces in media coverage is the fact that the international collector scene for historical osteological specimens has substantial scientific significance. Collectors in Germany, in the Netherlands, in Belgium, in France, in the United Kingdom, in Italy, in Spain, in the United States, and in Japan together hold a stock of historical skulls that exceeds, quantitatively and qualitatively, the holdings of some public collections. These private collections are in many cases better maintained, better documented, and intellectually more deeply engaged than their public counterparts, because a passionate private collector typically invests more time, more energy, and more personal commitment in his pieces than a salaried curator does in his archives.

That there are black sheep is part of every world. Gerlach is one example, comparable to other cases that have come to light in recent years. The Harvard morgue scandal, in which the morgue manager Cedric Lodge, together with his wife, sold human remains from anatomical donations to Harvard Medical School to collectors, is another (CBS News, June 16, 2023). These cases are real, they are reprehensible, they are punishable. But they are the exception, not the rule. The rule is a collector scene that operates with great seriousness and great respect for the pieces in its care.

Possession is not the crime, and never was

In Germany, the possession of a human skull is legal if it was not obtained through a criminal offense, if it was not removed from the active custody of a burial site, and if it is not used with recognizably disrespectful intent. What no statute requires is a particular purpose. Physicians, anthropologists, forensic practitioners, students, archaeologists, and serious private collectors equally have the right to possess historical human remains. The origin is the decisive factor, not the possession itself.

In the United States the same basic principle applies, but without the structural backstop of rest periods and without a federal provenance requirement. That makes the American market more accessible and at the same time more vulnerable to the inflow of illegally removed remains, as the Gerlach case exemplifies.

This guide refers exclusively to the legal situation in Germany and the United States. The legal situation in other European countries, in particular in the Netherlands, in Belgium, in France, and in the United Kingdom, as well as the situation in the Asian source countries such as India, and in the South American countries, will be the subject of separate articles to follow in the coming weeks and months.

Please note that the information on this website is general in nature and does not constitute legal advice. It should not be regarded as a substitute for professional legal advice. If you have a legal concern, please consult a licensed attorney whom you trust.

Revised edition: This article is a thoroughly revised and substantially expanded new edition of the original guide first published on 6 February 2025. The revised version incorporates recent legal developments in Germany and the United States, the Jonathan Gerlach case (Pennsylvania, January 2026), the ongoing restitution debate concerning human remains in German collections, and updated sources on forensic assessment practice.

References

Statutes and case law, Germany

• [Section 168 of the German Criminal Code, Disturbance of the Peace of the Dead, in its current version.]
• [Section 189 of the German Criminal Code, Disparagement of the Memory of the Deceased.]
• [Section 259 of the German Criminal Code, Receiving Stolen Goods.]
• [Articles 3, 5 paragraph 3, and 70 of the German Basic Law.]
• [Section 6 of the Burial Act of Baden-Württemberg. Article 10 of the Burial Act of Bavaria. Section 28 paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Burial Act of Hamburg. Burial laws of the further federal states.]
• [Federal Court of Justice, decision of June 30, 2015, file reference 5 StR 71/15, the dental gold decision.]
• [Karlsruhe Administrative Court, judgment of April 28, 2014, file reference 7 K 2374/13.]

The Gerlach case and Mount Moriah Cemetery

• [NBC10 Philadelphia (2026, January 9). Pa. man accused of stealing bones from cemetery in Delaware County.]
• [Philadelphia Inquirer (2026, January 8). Man charged with stealing skulls and bones from Mount Moriah Cemetery may have shared his stolen wares on Instagram.]
• [Philadelphia Inquirer (2026, January 16). Frantic families, unidentified bones: A week after alleged grave robber’s arrest, loved ones have questions without answers.]
• [Philadelphia Inquirer (2026, January 19). The theft of hundreds of remains from Mount Moriah Cemetery raises a question no one can seem to answer: How did this happen?]
• [Philadelphia Inquirer (2026, March 13). More charges added for accused Pennsylvania grave robber Jonathan Gerlach.]
• [CBS News Philadelphia (2026, January 14). How Mount Moriah Cemetery is enhancing security after alleged grave robber stole human remains.]
• [Wikipedia. Mount Moriah Cemetery, Philadelphia. Retrieved May 10, 2026.]
• [National Cemetery Administration, US Department of Veterans Affairs. Mount Moriah Cemetery Soldiers’ Lot.]
• [Philadelphia Congregations Early Records. Lists of burials for removal to Mount Moriah Cemetery, 1860.]

Provenance research and restitution

• [taz (2018, August 28). Streit um Rückgabe an Namibia: Nur 11 von 11.000 Gebeinen.]
• [Migazin.de (2018, August 29). Historisch: Die Rückgabe menschlicher Gebeine an Namibia.]
• [Dramiga, J. (2019). Provenienzforschung für menschliche Gebeine aus der Kolonie Deutsch-Südwestafrika. SciLogs Spektrum.]
• [Paust, E., Raddatz-Breidbach, C. M., Hoßfeld, U., Bauer, J., and Gerber, S. (2021). Ernst Haeckels koloniale Schädel. Jenaer Archäologische Forschungen, Volume 8.]
• [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (2017). Völkerkundemuseen beginnen mit Provenienzforschung.]

Criminal law and media coverage in the United States

• [Marsh, T. (2024). Is it legal to sell human remains? The Conversation.]
• [Bakhshay, S., and Haney, C. (2018). The media’s impact on the right to a fair trial: A content analysis of pretrial publicity in capital cases. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 24(3), 326-340.]
• [Halling, C. L., and Seidemann, R. M. (2016). They beg us ‘don’t tell anyone’: An examination of an unrecognized human osteology Marketplace. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 61(4), 867-871.]
• [Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, NAGPRA, 1990.]
• [Minnesota House File 3490 (2024).]
• [Fox News (2025, April 12). Florida woman charged with buying and selling human bones online: Wicked Wonderland.]
• [CBS Boston (2023, June 16). Legitimate bone collector condemns body part sale scheme.]

German contributions and discussions on the subject

• [Wikipedia. Störung der Totenruhe. Retrieved May 10, 2026.]
• [Wikipedia. Bestattungsgesetz. Retrieved May 10, 2026.]
• [Kujus, T. (2026). Störung der Totenruhe nach § 168 StGB. kujus-strafverteidigung.de.]
• [Volksstimme Magdeburg (2015, November 4). Totenschädel für 100 Euro.]

Forensic methods

• [Bowman, S. (1990). Radiocarbon Dating. British Museum Press.]
• [Ascenzi, A., and Bonucci, E. Standard literature on the histomorphometry of bone preparations.]