An auction house in The Hague has cancelled the sale of four human skulls from Vanuatu following protests from the curator of the national museum of the island nation.

The skulls, painted and adorned with feathers, have a sacred status in the islands. Potential buyers had until Tuesday to put in bids for the skulls, which were expected to fetch between €1,500 and €2,500 each.

The objects were removed from the sale 48 hours after the curator of the museum sent an e-mail to the Venduehuis in The Hague requesting “the immediate withdrawal of our ancestral remains from your sale”.

The auction house also said it would mediate between the owner of the skulls and the museum about their return to the islands.

“We very rarely auction off human remains,” Venduehuis director Hans Huygens told Trouw. “But it is right that we are told off about this. We like to play a decent role in the ecosystem between buyer and seller.”

The tip-off about the auction came from Dutch historian Jos van Beurden. “I am against the trade in human remains, whether they are from former colonies or European battlefields. It shows a deep contempt for the dead and their descendants,” he told the paper.

In 2024, protests from scientists prevented auction house De Zwaan in Amsterdam from selling a skull from Benin, which then decided it would no longer deal in human remains.

Huygens is not in favour of a complete ban, which he said would include Catholic relics. “I would personally not mind the sale of those types of bones,” he said.

Huygens said the owner of the four skulls may decide to donate them to the museum, or another party could buy them and donate them. “In rare cases, we will do that ourselves,” he said.