We want to encourage a discussion and would very much appreciate your feedback. Please share your comments, critique and suggestions on our github discussion forum or in an email to Stephan Schiffels and Selina Carlhoff.
Thanks for putting this together! I have two suggestions to chapter one:
"The vast majority of human remains are stored in museums, or publicly or privately organized anthropological collections" - this is actually not true. Correct would be something like: "A major part of human remains used for archaeogenetic research is stored in museums, or publicly or privately organized anthropological collections". The VAST MAJORITY of human remains is actually housed in archives. The difference between collections and archives: COLLECTIONS only house SELECTED items, e.g. skulls or human remains from certain cultures/regions/ages. - ARCHIVES are obliged to house ALL items, e.g. all archaeological remains, among human bones, from excavations in Thuringia. Therefore, they store hundreds of thousands of bones. Objects that are stored in archives are usually NOT meant to be displayed (unlike objects in Museums or collections), but they can of course be requested for research purposes.
At the end of chapter 1.1. you cite the Virchow collection, and the whole paragraph sounds as if you are citing it as a bad example - I would clearly avoid that since it sounds accusing! Actually, the Virchow collection is very much concerned about repatriation, and the curator is currently working on that. Why not say it more generally: "As an example, collections that have received scrutiny in recent years are German skull collections of the 19th century which usually comprise specimens from a variety of backgrounds."
After having given a lecture about this, one feedback was that the notion of "human remains" as a "finite resource" in the title of our section two might lead to averse reactions. We should find a wording that doesn't seem like we don't recognise that human remains are more than a "resource" to many people.
Docsify does not provide a standard workflow for citation management.
There are other options to parse bibtex to html, but I wonder if it wouldn't be more easy for most collaborators working on this document to avoid the overhead of yet another system.
The bibliographies could as well be hard-coded at the end of each chapter.
Perhaps add https://en.unesco.org/cultnatlaws/list as a good starting point for finding out about documents governing legal requirements for working with cultural heritage items from other countries.
Hi @nevrome, we have added two references according to your suggestion to Chapter 3 (Shennan and Perreault). Please have a look whether they are i) correct and ii) in the right place. Thank you!