The list of repatriations from England, Wales and Northern Ireland was created by Tamara Newton. It does not include ancestral remains. Newton interprets repatriation as physical transfer and legal transfer of ownership.
Recipient countries all have histories of British colonialism, with many returns made to Indigenous communities. The study identifies increasing diversity in repatriated materials and destinations over time, as well as notable regional gaps, contributing to debates on ethics, responsibility, and ownership in cultural heritage repatriation.
Over the studied period we see that repatriations are conducted inconsistently year-on-year but increase slightly. By putting our data into a linear graph (see ) we see there are notable large spikes in repatriation in 2011, 2019, and 2022, but most years have less than 30 items repatriated, with 2012 and 2018 having no items repatriated at all.
The average number of repatriations every year is 37, but with a much lower median of 9. This shows that repatriations on a national scale are not being conducted systematically and reflects the case-by-case approach institutions have when conducting repatriations.
The study focuses on both repatriated human remains and cultural heritage material so that differences in repatriation practices can be investigated. Results showed that 2/3 of all material repatriated were human remains (338), with 153 items being other cultural heritage materials.
Most repatriations were conducted by national museums, accounting for over half of all items repatriated, with independent not-for-profit museums and university collections together accounting for around a third of the repatriated items.
However, university and local authority museums conducted almost double the number of repatriation cases compared to other institutions. The majority of institutions conducting repatriations are classed as “huge” or “large” institutions meaning they have over 50,000 annual visitors.
