[Addressing colonial injustice-provenance research on the historical skull collection at Leipzig University...

For years, a growing number of museums and scientific institutions have been taking responsibility for their past by initiating provenance research in their collections and addressing the contexts of injustice uncovered in the process. This article presents a project at the Institute of Anatomy in Leipzig, which is examining the provenance of more than 600 human skulls and heads from colonial contexts. These ancestral remains are part of a historical skull collection at the university, which is to be dissolved in the long term. The authors provide insights into their approach to involving today's countries and communities of origin and report on initial research findings. These relate to the history of the collection, the deceased individuals, the collectors and their networks, and the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of ancestral remains. Finally, repatriation as a goal of provenance research and the challenges associated with it are discussed.