Category Archives: Ideas

Nathalie Richard, “From Dinan to La Plata. How a prehistoric axe travelled from a small provincial city in France to the La Plata Museum in Argentina”

 

 

Fig. 1 – Neolithic axe from France, Ameghino collection, La Plata Museum (Argentina). On the label « Robenhausien. Arr[ondissement] de Dinan. Côtes du Nord ». @N. Richard

 

On May 10, 1881, Gabriel de Mortillet (1821-1898), one of the prominent French prehistorians of his time, wrote to Fiorentino Ameghino (1853-1911), a scholar from Argentina who was then living in Paris. He offered his “colleague”, as he called him, three prehistoric objects and enclosed a sketch with his letter (Figure 2).

Fig. 2 – F. Ameghino, Obras completas. Vol. XX Correspondencia científica, La Plata, Taller de impresiones oficiales, 1935, p. 203.

 

All three objects came from French sites. A polished diorite axe, dated to the so-called “Robenhausian” period corresponding to the early Neolithic, and a bronze votive axe representative of that period, came from localities in the Côtes-du-Nord, now Côtes d’Armor, in northern Brittany. A carved point, representing the Solutrean period, came from Le Placard cave, in the Charente department.

The letter and the sketch are evidence, among others, of one of Ameghino’s key activities during his stay in Paris. Since the early 1870s, this teacher from the city of Mercedes in north-central Argentina had been searching the area and collecting both fossil bones and archaeological remains. By the mid-1870s, he was arguing that man had been contemporary with the great extinct animals of the Pampas and that human antiquity in these southern regions of America was equal to the antiquity now accepted in Europe. Circulating his ideas in the scholarly circles of Buenos Aires and in the Argentinian press, Ameghino also wrote to European scientists about his discoveries. In this way, he engaged in the debates about the antiquity of the American man that had been unfolding on both sides of the Atlantic for a decade.

In 1878, Ameghino traveled to Paris with his collection. He was in charge of the organization of the Argentinian exhibition of anthropological, archaeological and paleontological material at the 1878 World Fair. He spent three years in Paris and took advantage of this stay to meet influential scientists, mainly paleontologists, geologists, anthropologists and prehistorians. He attended several international congresses and became a member of the Société d’anthropologie de Paris in 1879, then of the Société géologique de France in 1880. While in Paris, he wrote a catalog of the items exhibited in the Argentinian anthropological exhibition, published together with Henri Gervais, the son of the professor of the National Museum of Natural History Paul Gervais, a catalog of the fossil mammals of South America, considered to be one of the most complete available at the time, and produced a long article in the Revue d’Anthropologie summarizing his ideas on the antiquity of man in the Pampas (Revue d’Anthropologie, 1879, 2, pp. 210-249). He also visited prehistoric sites and carried out excavations at Chelles (Seine-et-Marne), a site 20 kilometers northeast of Paris discovered in 1874, which he and Mortillet believed to be the oldest then known in France.

During his stay in Europe, Ameghino also put a lot of energy into selling and trading specimens exhibited by Argentina in 1878. He sold and bartered duplicates and casts from his own collection and collected, thanks to these exchanges, a set of European prehistoric objects and casts which allowed him to carry out comparisons with the remains discovered in Argentina. In his letters, he mentioned a total of more than 4000 European prehistoric objects so obtained through purchases, exchanges, donations and in excavations. The three items sketched by Mortillet were part of this set.

In 1886, Ameghino sold his collection to the province of Buenos Aires for inclusion into the Museo de La Plata, which had recently been founded by Francisco Moreno. He was then deputy director of this museum, before leaving to run the National Museum in Buenos Aires. The archaeological collection of the Ameghino is thus one of the important historical collections in the Museum of La Plata. It is now inventorized by the museum’s team of archaeologists under the direction of Mariano Bonomo, a task sometimes complicated by the lack of information on the provenance of the pieces. The Argentinian part of the collection is more easily studied, especially because the artefacts provided the factual basis for the important work that Ameghino published in 1880-1881 under the title La antigüedad del hombre en el Plata. The two volumes contain many plates, and the drawings are sufficiently precise to provide additional information about the objects. Some details can also be found in Ameghino’s catalogue of the Anthropological and Paleontological Section of the Argentine Republic at the Paris World Fair of 1878. Such is not the case for the European objects, for which no inventory was made at the time. Some of them carry indications written on labels or directly on the item. But others are completely devoid of such indications. Therefore, only a minority of these objects will probably be fully documented.

The Dinan axe sketched by Mortillet is one of the pieces that can be documented. It is the only one of the three specimens mentionned in the 1881 letter that has been found so far. Its shape and the inscription on the label, on which Mortillet’s handwriting can be recognized, allow us to identify it with certainty (Figure 1). This axe may have come from Mortillet’s own collection, or from excavations carried out in the area by the amateur Jules Lemoine, a watchmaker and jeweler from Lamballe, who gathered a remarkable set of stone and bronze axes in the 1870s and 1880s. This axe is typical of the duplicates that museums and private collectors kept specifically for exchange. It was given to Ameghino in return for fossil bones that he himself had donated to the Ecole d’anthropologie de Paris where Mortillet taught prehistoric anthropology.

This axe is fully representative of the economy of bartering between collectors. Its travel underlines the crucial role of duplicates in the circulation of objects. It also highlights the fluidity of the boundary between public and private collections. This axe may have been withdrawn either from Mortillet’s private collection, or from the Musée des antiquités nationales de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where Mortillet was in charge of the prehistoric collections. In any case, it came as compensation for a donation made to another institution, the Ecole d’anthropologie de Paris, in which Mortillet was a teacher. The trade occurred between some French public institutions and one or two private collectors. The intricacy of the exchange underscores the fact that the movement of specimens did not occur solely out of private into public collections – the only move that museum historiography has tended to focus on –, but that specimens also moved from public museums into private collections.

The Dinan axe in the La Plata Museum also illustrates the significance of types in the construction of collections and the interpretation of prehistory in the 19th century. It was chosen by Mortillet because it was, in his opinion, representative of the period called the Polished Stone Age, or “Robenhausian”. These type objects, which helped identify and place finds in a relative chronology, were described by Mortillet in an illustrated work setting out a form of canon, Le Musée préhistorique (1881). This book was a reference and guide for many prehistorians of the time, including Ameghino. The researchers tried to build up the most complete collections by gathering a series of artifacts corresponding to the one represented in the Musée préhistorique. The dissemination of these types allowed Mortillet to promote the timeline of prehistory that he had designed in the early 1870s. Furthermore Mortillet argued, as did many of his contemporaries, that the succession of industries observed in Europe had universal value, and that the European timeline was applicable throughout the world. Ameghino partly shared this conception and dated the remains found in Argentina by comparison with European objects and fauna-object associations. The European series brought back to Argentina and exhibited for a time in the Museum of La Plata thus provided a comparative reference.

To conclude, Mortillet sending Ameghino artifacts from the late Paleolithic and Neolithic periods may not be innocent, as the two scholars disagreed on the age of the remains found in Argentina. Ameghino claimed that some remains (incised bones and carved flints) proved the antiquity of the American man to be equal to that of the European. Mortillet was not convinced. In 1873, he examined, at the request of Paul Gervais, similar flints from Argentina and estimated that they dated from the early Neolithic (Journal de zoologie, 1873, 2, p. 233). In the Musée préhistorique, a single Argentinian flint is depicted. It is included in a plate dedicated to the Neolithic period (Musée préhistorique, 1881, pl. XLIV).

 

References :

Simón, C.; Bonomo, M.; Lanzelotti, S.; Suarez, G.A. “Materiality and Images: Ameghino’s Collection of La Antigüedad del Hombre en el Plata in the La Plata Museum, Heritage 2023, 6, 1605–1621. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage6020086

Irina Podgorny, El sendero del tiempo y de las causas accidentales. Los espacios de la prehistoria en la Argentina, 1850-1910, Rosario, Prohistoria, 2009.

Irina Podgorny, Florentino Ameghino y hermanos: empresa argentina de paleontología ilimitada, Buenos Aires, Edhasa, 2021.

Nathalie Richard, Inventer la préhistoire. Les débuts de l’archéologie préhistorique en France, Paris, Vuibert-Adapt, 2008.

SciCoMove Training Session:  a participant’s experience

By Emilia Mac Donagh, UNLP

From the 4 to the 8 of July, the postgraduate course “HISTORIA NATURAL, COLECCIONES, ARCHIVOS Y MUSEOS. SIGLOS XIX Y XX” took place in the Museum of La Plata. As a PhD fellow at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, I enrolled. But honestly in the beginning I was only moved by how catchy I found the name and it´s affinity to my thesis topic. At that moment I wasn’t aware of the fact that the academic proposal had its origin in a SciCoMove workshop/training session. But the surprise could not have been more gratifying. The fusion of both opened the gates of the SciCoMove Project and allowed people with different backgrounds and from different points of Argentina to take a look at the work that’s currently being done within this project.

It was an intense week of hard work and exchanges. The course offered expositions and testimonies by professionals from different places like Switzerland, France, and Argentina. But, moreover, it was marked by the constant promotion of dialogue and exchange among everyone who was involved. And that included those of us who were taking it as a postgraduate course, the teachers, and the PhD student members of the SciCoMove Project.  Being able to debate, share ideas, and co-create with people from different places and academic backgrounds, and who participate in projects like SciCoMove, represents a great opportunity of academic and professional growth.

Throughout the week, Irina, Susana and Natalie invited us to review the history of all museums as institutions, focusing in the particular case of the La Plata Museum, where we actually were. Being inside the museum was not a minor detail when breaking down it’s emergence story, and understanding that it is not as lineal and fluid as it is usually portrayed.

We wandered around the museum, and visited the exhibitions, the deposits, and the archive. For some this implied their first time in the museum and its guts. And for others like me, this meant a known place unveiling new connotations and possibilities. The study and analysis of collections, archives and objects that are or have been a part of the museums allows to revisit and rethink how the boundaries of the scientific field are and have been historically built. From that perspective the course proposed a guide to consider what (and who) are conceived inside those borders as well as how this is constantly being reshaped.

One of the things that blew my mind during the course was the idea of objects in museums and collections as artifacts. This is one of the pillars in which the SciCoMove project strands in order to tell how these objects have been moved around different places.  I was familiar with the concept of artifact and its traditional application in archaeology. Artifact, as a concept is traditionally used in opposition of what is pristine and untouched. So, anything that has signs of being exposed to some kind of human work, becomes an artifact. Of course, all tools found in an archaeological context easily fit this classification. Now the interesting part comes when we define what is this “human work”, and how it impacts the objects.

Sometime ago a friend archaeologist had revealed to me that this concept had many more possibilities, as he implied in his work that the soils and strata where the archaeological objects were found could be seen as an artifact too. And I found this somehow related. Just as the soils, the “natural” objects often found in the museums are normally conceived just as a part of nature, portraited in the exhibitions, or safeguarded in the collections. Then, for example, we could think about a piece of dinosaur bone. It probably has been dug out, reconditioned after, placed in a particular place according to one particular bone structure, and displayed in a room charged with conjectures about it. All those procedures involve changes in the objects, even if they are meant for preservation. When thinking about it, to classify, arrange chronologically, restore, build up, and all other actions that take place when working within museums and collections are human work. The same goes to any type of object, no matter how “natural” or “cultural” we might think it is, from the point when an object becomes something collected, categorised, saved, etc. it begins to be conceptualised. And that is the key to start talking about artifacts, because to give meaning is one of the firsts and most basic human works.

From a historical perspective, with case-study examples and in line with the goal of the SciCoMove Project, the course aimed to make evident that when constructing scientific knowledge, no man nor woman of science acts alone. Neither in the past or present.

At the beginning of the week, Irina Podgorny insisted that we let aside the idiomatic barriers and size the situation to meet other people and even make friends. Following her advice, along the week we saw how the theoretical and conceptual talks slipped out of the classes and continued unto the bars. There´s no better empiric proof than that of what role company, assembly, and the collective play for the generation of knowledge.

Thereby, my bond with museums has a long history. Since I started studding anthropology in the Collage of Natural Sciences, which is associated with the Museum of La Plata. And now I am carrying out my PhD studies considering museums as spaces of science communication and heritage safeguard, and on how to problematize that, within the construction of scientific knowledge. With that in mind, participating of the course has been a very valuable and rewarding experience, especially considering the opportunity to get in touch with the SciCoMove Project.

I have a Bachelor´s Degree in Anthropology by the Facultad de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), where I now also taught. In 2021 I got a University Diploma in Public Science Communication, by the UNICEN. Currently I am carrying out my PhD, working in the Laboratory of Applied Ethnography Investigations, and with a scholarship from the UNLP, under the tutoring of Gabriela Morgante (LINEA UNLP-CIC) and Mariano Bonomo (Dept. Arqueología, Museo de La Plata). My thesis centers  on museums as places for the collective construction of knowledge and the heritage safeguard, and takes place in Molinos (Calchaquí Valleys, Salta)

SciCoMove Training Session:  La experiencia de participar

By Emilia Mac Donagh, UNLP

Del 4 al 8 de Julio en el Museo de La Plata, se desarrolló el curso de posgrado “HISTORIA NATURAL, COLECCIONES, ARCHIVOS Y MUSEOS. SIGLOS XIX Y XX”. Como estudiante del doctorado en Ciencias Naturales de la Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, me inscribí al curso, honestamente impulsada sólo por lo llamativo del título y la afinidad con mi tema de estudio. Ignoraba, al momento, que partía de la propuesta de un taller y un curso de formación de SciCoMove con título homónimo. Pero la sorpresa no pudo haber sido más grata.  La fusión de ambas instancias permitió a abrir las puertas de SciCoMove, y que personas con diferentes formaciones y de diferentes puntos de la Argentina pudiéramos dar un vistazo al trabajo que están realizando actualmente desde el proyecto.

Fue una ardua semana de trabajo e intercambios. El curso brindó exposiciones y testimonios de profesionales de diferentes lugares, como Suiza, Francia y Argentina.  Pero, sobre todo, estuvo marcado el fomento del diálogo y el intercambio, entre todas las personas que participan. Y esto incluye a las personas que lo estábamos tomando como curso de posgrado, a las docentes a cargo y a los doctorandos de SciCoMove. Debatir, compartir ideas y construir con personas de otras formaciones, de otros lugares representa una gran oportunidad para el crecimiento personal y profesional.

A lo largo de los encuentros las docentes del curso nos invitaron a revisar la historia de los museos, en general, y tomando como caso particular el Museo de La Plata, donde además nos encontrábamos físicamente. Estar allí no resultó menor a la hora de desglosar el relato del surgimiento de este espacio, y comprender que no es tan lineal y fluido como a veces se lo presenta.

Pudimos recorrer el museo, las muestras, los depósitos y el archivo. Para algunos implicaba conocer por primera vez el Museo y sus entrañas, aunque para otros representaba un espacio ya conocido, cotidiano, o hasta nuestro espacio de trabajo, develando nuevas connotaciones y posibilidades. El estudio y análisis de colecciones, los archivos y los objetos que forman o han formado pate de museos permite rever y repensar cómo se construyen hoy en día, y cómo se han construido históricamente las fronteras del campo científico. Desde allí el curso nos proponía una guía para ver qué (y quiénes) se conciben dentro de estos límites, pero también cómo estos últimos se reformulan constantemente.

Uno de los aspectos que más me fascinó del curso fue la propuesta de concebir a los objetos, que se hallan en los museos, como artefactos. Este es uno de los pilares del Proyecto SciCoMove para el estudio del movimiento de estos objetos. Por mi formación de gado, estaba familiarizada con la aplicación más tradicional que el concepto artefacto posee para la arqueología. “Artefacto” suele usarse en oposición a lo que se piensa prístino e intacto. Así, cualquier cosa que presente signos de haber estado expuesto a algún tipo de trabajo -acción- humano, se convierte en artefacto. Las herramientas halladas en un contexto arqueológico, por supuesto que encajan fácilmente en esta clasificación. Ahora, la parte más interesante llega cuando intentamos definir qué es “acción humana”, y cómo impacta en los objetos.

Algún tiempo atrás, un amigo arqueólogo me había revelado que este concepto posee muchas más posibilidades, el mismo insinuaba en un trabajo que los suelos y los estratos donde se hallan los restos arqueológicos pueden ser vistos como artefactos también. Encuentro esto de alguna forma relacionado con lo que se planteaba en el curso. Como los suelos, los “objetos naturales” que comúnmente encontramos en los museos, suelen concebirse como una parte de la naturaleza expuestas en las muestras, o salvaguardadas en las colecciones. Podríamos, por ejemplo, pesar en un fragmento de hueso de dinosaurio entonces. Probablemente fue excavado, extraído, reacondicionado, colocado en una posición particular de a cuerdo a una estructura ósea particular, y presentado en una habitación, cargada con conjeturas sobre el mismo. Todos esos procedimientos involucran cambios en los objetos, incluso si persiguen fines de preservación. Al pensarlo, clasificar, ordenar cronológicamente, restaurar, reconstruir, y todo el resto de las acciones que se llevan a cabo con el trabajo en museos y con colecciones, son acciones puramente humanas. Y lo mismo aplica apara cualquier tipo de objeto, sin importar que tan “natural” o “cultural” creamos que sea, desde el momento en el que un objeto pasa a ser algo recolectado, categorizado, guardado, etc. pasa a estar conceptualizado. Y esa es la clave para empezar a hablar de artefactos, porque dar significado es una de las acciones humanas más básicas.

Desde una perspectiva histórica, con ejemplos de estudios de caso, y en línea con los objetivos del proyecto SciCoMove, el curso pretendía dejar, en evidencia que a la hora de construir conocimiento científico ningún hombre o mujer de ciencia actúa sólo. Ni en el pasado, ni hoy en día.

Al empezar la semana, Irina Podgorny (una de las docentes a cargo del curso) nos insistió en que dejáramos de lado las barreras idiomáticas y aprovecháramos la ocasión para conocer a otras personas y hasta incluso “hacernos amigos”. Siguiendo su consejo, vimos como lo largo de la semana, las charlas conceptuales y teóricas terminaban filtrándose fuera del aula y seguían en los bares. No hay mejor comprobante empírico que este del rol que juega lo colectivo, la compañía y el encuentro para la generación de conocimiento.

Mi relación con los museos se remonta ya a un tiempo atrás. Estudie la licenciatura en antropología en la Facultad de Ciencias Naturales de la UNLP, que está asociada al Museo de La Plata. Mi especialización en comunicación pública de la ciencia, influyó en que actualmente para mi doctorado me centre en y considere a los museos como espacios de comunicación de ciencia, además de salvaguarda del patrimonio, y sobre como problematizar esto en el marco de la construcción de conocimiento científico. Entendiendo esto, fue una experiencia muy valiosa y gratificante haber participado del curso, con la oportunidad de entrar en contacto del proyecto SciCoMove.

Estudié Antropología en la Facultad de Ciencias Naturales de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, donde actualmente soy docente. En 2022 terminé una Diplomatura universitaria en Comunicación Pública de la Ciencia, en la UniCen. Actualmente cuento con una beca doctoral de la UNLP, con lugar de trabajo en el Laboratorio de Investigaciones Etnográficas Aplicadas, bajo la dirección de Gabriela Morgante (LINEA UNLP-CIC) y la co-dirección de Mariano Bonomo (Diisión Arqueología, Museo de La Plata). Mi tesis se centra en los museos como espacios para comunicación y construcción colectiva de conocimiento, así como para la puesta en valor del patrimonio, en la localidad de Molinos (Valles Calchaquíes, Salta).

Mobility on Track: the past and the future of railway in the Yucatan peninsula

By Hamid Alberto Abud Russell, Heidelberg University, Germany

Mobility in the Yucatan Peninsula is in a state of flux. The Mayan Train, the controversial project of current Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, promises to upend decades of neglect in terms of federal investment in the region’s infrastructure and bring about an era of unprecedented economic growth. The Tren Maya, as it is known in Spanish, would connect the largest cities of the region in an effort to improve communication and mobility between the Peninsula’s urban and cultural centres.

Image: Museo de los Ferrocarriles de Yucatán

Although public rail as a means of public transportation is currently non-existent, this was not always the case. Up until the end of the 1970s, a service existed between the cities of Campeche and Merida, two of the largest urban centres of the Yucatan Peninsula at the time. Nevertheless, as Mexico sought to emulate the United States’ development model, federal and local authorities invested in highways in a move to transfer the cost of transportation to the individual. The prevalence of this model saw the creation of a vacuum where public mobility stood, a void that was immediately filled by the rise of buses and colectivos,[1] both operated by private providers. The Tren Maya seeks to offer a public sector option to those who cannot afford to buy a car but who are disappointed by the limited and limiting options of the private sector.

Even if it is true that the train service will offer other mobility options to locals, most of its revenue will come from the influx of tourists to the Yucatan Peninsula. As currently planned, it will connect the major tourist cities of Cancun, Playa del Carmen, and Tulum with the large archaeological sites of Calakmul and Palenque. Cities such as Campeche a Merida stand to benefit from the large influx of people who will no doubt stop to rest and recharge on their hours long journey. As the Train Maya’s income becomes ever more reliant on foreign tourists, the project risks to alienate locals both in terms of destinations and price, making the only public option a luxury that only wealthy locals will be able to afford.

Image: Museo de los Ferrocarriles de Yucatán

Those in charge of the Tren Maya stand to learn a lesson from Mexico’s past. The use of trains to transport commodities alienated people of the late 19th and early 20th century from what was then a revolutionary technology. The reintroduction of the train in the Yucatan Peninsula could either reinforce patterns of neoliberal alienation, favouring the economy that both relies on and is geared towards the foreign market, or it could mean a true shift in the region’s mobility paradigm.

For this purpose, it is imperative that we preserve and highlight the role that spaces like the Railways Museum of Yucatan (Museo de los Ferrocarriles de Yucatán) play in our ability to study the past of said processes. Their collection is a vivid reminder of the evolution of the train as a means of both public and commodity transportation and of the impact of market forces, rather than the needs of locals, on the shifts and balance between one and the other.


[1] Colectivo is a Spanish word that literally translates into English as collective. In the transportation sector, this refers to vans that serve as means of cheap public transportation that offer services to small villages or marginal communities in the Yucatan peninsula, whichare otherwise not serviced by larger bus companies.