No Certainty on Origin of Human Remains Found on Campus

Freie Universität Berlin, Max Planck Society, and Berlin State Monuments Office present the findings of their investigation into human remains found on Freie Universität land. No 033/2021 from Feb 23, 2021 At an official public information event, experts from Freie Universität Berlin, the Max Planck Society, and the Berlin State Monuments Office ( Landesdenkmalamt Berlin ) presented the findings of their investigation into human remains found on the grounds of Freie Universität Berlin in recent years. The remains, which were first discovered in 2014, consist of around 16,000 human skeletal parts and bone fragments. A research team lead by archaeologist Professor Susan Pollock has analyzed the remains using a non-invasive osteological technique. The findings show that the bones are from male and female humans of all age groups. Adhesive residue and evidence of labelling on many of the bones, together with a lack of any sign of modern medical interventions, would usually signal that the bones could have originated from anthropological or archaeological collections, but not in this case. Professor Pollock explained that the way in which the bones present as a whole differs from the kind of collection that was typical for the nineteenth or first half of the twentieth century.