The Body as Data: from human remains to digital files. A review of current literature

The digitization of human remains is transforming the ways in which biological anthropology, museums, and heritage institutions engage with the dead. While digital technologies promise greater accessibility, reproducibility, and preservation, they also introduce complex ethical, legal, and cultural questions. This paper reviews current literature on the implications of converting human remains into digital data, focusing on key themes such as ownership, sharing, reproduction, and display ethics. This review adopts a descriptive and systematic approach, drawing primarily on peer-reviewed publications, professional guidelines, and emerging ethical frameworks published between 2000 and 2025 within anthropological contexts. Although digital surrogates are often seen as ethically safer alternatives to displaying physical remains, scholars increasingly argue that they require equivalent levels of ethical scrutiny, especially in relation to descendant communities and culturally sensitive materials. Reproducibility, while offering educational and scientific benefits, raises concerns over unauthorized uses and loss of symbolic meaning. Across the reviewed literature, recurring patterns emerge, including persistent ambiguity regarding ownership and intellectual control, uneven implementation of consent and access protocols, and growing concern over the decontextualization of digital remains through unrestricted dissemination. The literature review underscores the need for shared standards and context-sensitive guidelines to govern the lifecycle of digital human remains, to bridge technical innovation with ethical responsibility in the digital afterlives.