The return of the objects to the family was an acknowledgment that the family’s relationship to them — as the descendants of the man to whom they had belonged — was more authoritative than the institutional claim based on decades of custody.

That acknowledgment did not erase the history of how the objects had been held.

It could not restore the century during which they had been away from the family.

But it established a different relationship between the family and the objects, one in which the family had authority over what happened to them — including the authority to participate in a scientific study if they chose to, on their terms.

The Scientist and the Family