Category Archives: Research trips

Armadillo basket fashion

By Susana V. García, CONICET-Museo de La Plata

Among the zoological collections of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona, there is an armadillo basket, inventoried with the number MZB 99-1252. It was donated in 1999, along with other zoological specimens, and had been purchased a decade earlier at a street market in the city. This type of object, more frequently found in ethnographic, antiquities or curiosity museums, was accepted as a donation as a reservoir of genetic data. This basket is made from the armour, head and tail of an animal native to South America: the large hairy armadillo (Chaetophractus villosus),  called “peludo” in the Argentine pampas or “quirquincho grande” in other regions. This animal is found in Argentina (with a wide distribution), the “Gran Chaco” of Bolivia and Paraguay, and southern Chile.  It is one of 22 species of the order of mammals known as armadillos or tatúes(Cingulata) (Gallo, Superina y Abba, 2022). Dried armadillo carapaces and tails or stuffed specimens, easy to preserve and transport, have a long history in European cabinets and museums since the early 16th century (Egmond y Mason, 1994, Podgorny, 2012). It is interesting to mention, for example, that sixty years after Columbus’ arrival in America, armadillos could be found in the Constantinople market, as the French naturalist Pierre Belon observed (Belon, 1588). The history of these specimens in various private collections – and later state museums – is in large part a reflection of trade networks, collecting practices and fashions for new curiosities and collectibles. The “armadillo baskets” illustrate these interactions.

Around 1900 a new industry was generated around armadillos: the making of baskets. These were sold as “curiosities” or souvenirs and circulated around the world. The business was started by European immigrants with experience in the preparation of baskets or skins, seeking to apply their knowledge to the raw materials they found in America and perhaps inspired by indigenous artefacts. In Texas, a flourishing industry has developed around the nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus), a relatively new animal to the Texas fauna, which began to arrive in North America in the second half of the 19th century linked to human activity. The best-known enterprise was started by German immigrant Charles Apelt, a decade after he settled in Comfort, Texas. Applying his knowledge of basket making, Charles Apelt opened an armadillo basket factory in 1898, selling over 40,000 baskets in his first 6 years in the United States and other parts of the world (Smith y Doughty, 1984). Farmers and indigenous people from the Mexican border provided thousands of specimens for basket making and also for sale as pets (Newman, 1913). Some time later, the Apelt company was able to keep and breed these animals in captivity and form an armadillo farm. The business extended to the production of lamps and other decorative objects with these animals, as well as the supply of live specimens for zoological gardens and scientific laboratories (Smith y Doughty, 1984). The Apelt Armadillo Company and Farm, continued by family members, was active for around seven decades. The business declined in the early 1970s, although armadillo baskets continued to circulate in antique and curiosity shops and street markets.

Advertising of Apelt Armadillo Company

The basket preserved in the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona, made from a particular South American species not found naturally in Mexico or Texas, shows that this type of enterprise was present in other parts of the American continent. In Buenos Aires, for example, an Italian taxidermist who arrived in Argentina in 1894, presented himself a few years later as “inventor and manufacturer of armadillo baskets”. His business, like that of other taxidermists of the time, included the preparation of animal skins for various purposes: carpets, fur, ornaments for ladies and gentlemen, and embalmed specimens for the collections of wealthy landowners, schools and museums. At that time, armadillo meat, as in other parts of America, was a very popular dish and hundreds of specimens were readily available in the Buenos Aires market (García, 2008). By 1910, armadillo baskets, along with photographs, jaguar skins and mate-gourds, were the few local souvenirs that travellers could buy in Buenos Aires, as American naturalist William Jacob Holland, director of the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, recounted. Holland visited Argentina in 1912 to assemble the Diplodocus carneggi cast in the La Plata Museum and returned with several armadillo baskets, after several days of searching for local souvenirs:

“A certain amount of time was spent in endeavouring to pick up souvenirs. As at Bahia, so in Buenos Aires, I found this difficult. While there was displayed in the shops an abundance of beautiful silverware, bronzes, glassware, porcelain, and articles de luxe, which were at once useful and attractive to the eye, all of these were things made in Europe or North America, and could be purchased far more cheaply in Pittsburgh, or even in New York. A friend bent upon the same errand, who had the same thought, informed me that all which he had succeeded in finding, which in any sense might be regarded as characteristic of the country, and therefore fit to be souvenirs of a visit, were photographs, mate-gourds, armadillo-baskets, and jaguar-skins. He had discovered a place where these things were for sale, and he guided me to the spot. The poor little armadillos […] are sold in the markets as food. […] The most curious use to which these poor creatures are put is to convert their carapaces into baskets. The mouth is opened and the end of the tail is inserted into it, thus forming the handle of the basket, while the hollow carapace serves as a receptacle. The carapace is lined with silk. I bought several as souvenirs” (Holland,1913).

Hairy Armadillo basket sold in Buenos Aires in 1912 (Holland, 1913)

The trade in armadillo baskets continued to be very active in the 1920s, constituting part of the “national” or regional souvenir industry of several American countries. At that time, hundreds of armadillos were captured and prepared by indigenous people from the Chaco and the baskets were sold in taxidermy and art object shops in Buenos Aires. They were also produced in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, while they were also offered at street markets in Berlin.  It remains for future research to determine to what extent the fashion for these objects promoted in international exhibitions and catalogues, whose large-scale manufacture was undertaken by European immigrants in America, fostered a new craftsmanship among indigenous communities, sold as souvenirs to tourists or as ethnographic objects for museums in the second part of the 20th century. Today these baskets can be purchased on the internet as vintage objects or curiosities with a value that can be a hundred times higher than in the 1920s, when they were offered as Christmas gifts or as souvenirs to travellers.  Armadillo baskets are an example of the many layers of intertwined stories, commercial ventures, movements and fashions that lie behind the objects of many museums.

Acknowledgments

I am gratful to Eulalia García Franquesa, Head of Collections, and Javier Quesada, Curator of Vertebrates, of the Natural Sciences Museum of Barcelona for the consultation and data on this piece. I thank Agustín M. Abba, Armadillo specialist and researcher at CONICET (Argentina), for this determination and the information on this species.

Bibliographic references

BELON, Pierre, Les observations de plusieurs singularitez & choses memorables, trouuées en Grece, Asie, Iudée, Egypte, Arabie, & autres pays estranges, redigées en trois liures, Par Pierre Belon du Mans. Reueuz de nouueau & augmentez de figures. Paris : Guillaume Cauellat, 1588.

FLORIKE, Egmond and MASON, Peter, “Armadillos in Unlikely Places. Some Unpublished Sixteenth-Century Sources for New World “Rezeptionsgeschichte” in Northern Europe”, Ibero-amerikanisches Archiv, vol. 20, n° 1/2, 1994, pp. 3-52.

GALLO, Jorge A., SUPERINA, Mariella and ABBA, Agustín M., Chaetophractus villosus (Xenarthra, Chlamyphoridae), Mammalian Species, vol. 54, n° 1014, 2022, pp:186–201.

GARCÍA, Susana V. “Especies locales, mercado y transporte en las investigaciones embriológicas: el estudio de la poliembrionía en armadillos a principios del siglo XX”,  História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, vol.15, n°3, 2008, pp.697-717.

HOLLAND, W. To the River Plate and back: the narrative of a scientific mission to South America, with observations upon things seen and suggested, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913.

NEWMAN, Horatio H. “The natural history of the nine-banded armadillo de Tejas”,.American Naturalist, vol. 47, n° 561, 1913, pp.513- 546..

PODGORNY,  Irina. “Los conejos de calabaza”, en: El mundo atlántico y la modernidad americana, México: RGM. 2012, p. 222 – 237.

naturalis.fcnym.unlp.edu.ar/repositorio/documentos/sipcyt/bfa004253.pdf

SMITH, Larry L. and DOUGHTY, Robin W., The Amazing Armadillo: Geography of a Folk Critter, University of Texas Press, 1984.

Alejandro Martinez présente ses travaux à Angers

Bacilles, sauterelles et controverses scientifiques. Félix d’Hérelle (1873-1949) et les premiers essais de contrôle biologique des insectes nuisibles en Argentine.

Le 14 mars 2022 à 16h30 à la Maison de la recherche Germaine Tillion (5bis bd. Lavoisier Angers)

 De la fin du XIXe siècle jusqu’au milieu du XXe siècle, les infestations de sauterelles ont été l’un des problèmes les plus graves à résoudre pour les agriculteurs argentins. Différentes méthodes ont été utilisées pour les arrêter : barrières de métal ou de tissu, différents types de pièges, leurs œufs ont été détruits, des lance-flammes et toutes sortes d’engins ont été utilisés, qui se sont souvent avérés inutiles. Les moyens chimiques, tels que l’arsenic, ont également eu leur tour, bien qu’en raison de leur toxicité pour les humains et le bétail, ils n’aient pas été largement utilisés. Dans l’historiographie de la lutte antiacridienne, le récit de ces moyens “mécaniques” et chimiques plus populaires et plus connus a jeté une ombre sur l’histoire des moyens biologiques et leur rôle dans la gestion d’insectes économiquement importants.

En Argentine en particulier, la lutte biologique contre les insectes nuisibles a démarré relativement tôt, entre la fin du XIXe siècle et le début du XXe siècle. L’un de ses principaux promoteurs de l’époque, l’entomologiste Angel Gallardo, proposait de suivre l’exemple des États-Unis et de certains pays européens qui ont introduit des espèces exotiques pour lutter contre les parasites agricoles par des “moyens scientifiques”. Dans cette optique, Gallardo se rend en France en 1911 et entre en contact avec le bactériologiste Félix d’Hérelle, qui a découvert un bacille capable d’infecter et de tuer les sauterelles, et l’invite à tester sa méthode en Argentine. 

Il s’agissait toutefois d’une tentative de résolution d’un problème complexe – qui retient encore l’attention des scientifiques aujourd’hui – par le biais d’une solution qui, bien qu’innovante, nécessitait encore beaucoup de recherches et de tests. La lutte biologique n’était pas seulement en contradiction flagrante avec les méthodes chimiques, mais c’était une activité qui nécessitait également, et nécessite toujours, de développer une compréhension détaillée des relations écologiques qui n’étaient pas claires. Son efficacité restait à prouver et en ce sens, malgré l’enthousiasme manifesté par certains, beaucoup étaient réticents et méfiants quant à l’utilité réelle de cette “nouvelle” méthode. Ainsi, l’avis des “experts” n’était pas unanime et les contestations n’étaient pas rares.

Les différends avec d’autres collègues et groupes de recherche ont laissé une trace durable dans la carrière scientifique de Félix d’Hérelle. La plus célèbre d’entre elles, la dispute sur la priorité de la découverte du bactériophage, a été largement rapportée et discutée dans l’historiographie de ces dernières années. Dans le cadre de cette conférence, nous souhaitons toutefois nous concentrer sur les étapes précédant cette découverte, alors que d’Hérelle débutait dans la bactériologie et cherchait à se faire une place dans le concert scientifique international. Son séjour en Amérique latine a constitué une étape stratégique dans sa formation et sa future carrière. Nous sommes particulièrement intéressés par les essais réalisés en Argentine et les conflits qui ont surgi autour de cette expérience.

The reception of Cesare Lombroso’s theories in France: the case of Le Mans’ learned society

By Franco Orlandi, University of Turin

In 1876 Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), a professor of Forensic Medicine and Public Hygiene at the University of Turin and widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern criminology, published the first edition of The Criminal Man, one of the most famous criminological treatises ever written. In his book, Lombroso claimed that criminals were a subspecies of the human race and that they exhibited distinct physical and mental features than law-abiding individuals, such as unusual shapes of the skull, the presence of tattoos and a lack of moral sense. According to Lombroso, criminal behavior was not the result of a free will, but of a biological predisposition. Criminals were basically “throwbacks” to an earlier stage of human evolution, modern primitive men unable to control their violent and immoral instincts. The theory of the “born criminal” travelled all over the world and had an enormous influence on nineteenth century European culture, even though it had no scientific basis. This does not mean, however, that Lombroso did not encounter resistance to his ideas.

Cesare Lombroso. Photogravure. Credits: WikiMedia commons

This was particularly true in France, where Lombroso’s theories were rejected by the two leading representatives of the French School of criminology: Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904), magistrate and director of the Justice Ministry’s statistical service in Paris, and Alexander Lacassagne (1843-1924), professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Lyons. Unlike Lombroso, both scholars explained crime in sociological rather than biological terms. Tarde denied the existence of a “born criminal” marked by a cluster of physical anomalies and maintained that the similarities between offenders derived from their belonging to the same professional group. In Tarde’s view, criminality was a learned behavior that resulted primarily from the interaction with disadvantaged social environments rather than the product of a biological predisposition. Similarly, Lacassagne dismissed Lombroso’s atavistic explanation of crime and stressed the importance of poor living conditions in the etiology of crime. ‘The social milieu – he wrote – is the culture medium of crime; the microbe is the criminal, an element which only becomes active when it finds the medium to make it ferment’ (Lacassagne quoted from Renneville 2014).  

While the reception of Lombroso’s theories in France has been the subject of numerous studies in recent years, the way in which they were received by less known actors and in more peripheral contexts is still worth investigation. One interesting case study in this regard is represented by the learned society of Le Mans. Founded in 1761 by a royal decree of Louis XV, the Society of Agriculture, Sciences, and Arts of Sarthe is the oldest learned society in the Sarthe region. In 1840 it launched its own journal, which continues to be published to the present day. An analysis of all the volumes of the Bulletin published from 1840 to 1927 seems to reveal that Lombroso’s ideas did not spark much debate in the local scientific community. In fact, only one article refers to the controversial theories of the Italian scientist. The text was published in 1890 by Paul Hervé, a physician at the local hospital and a member of the Sarthe’s learned society, and reported the content of a communication he had presented a few months earlier to the Medical society of Le Mans. The article, which was entitled Essai sur la suggestion mentale (Essay on Thought Transmission), quoted the testimonies of several men of science of unquestionable credibility who had witnessed firsthand apparently inexplicable phenomena of thought transmission, mental telepathy and hypnosis, and concluded that the latter should be made the subject of serious scientific investigations. In the final bibliography, Hervé included two works written by Lombroso: the 1889 French translation of L’Homme de génie (The Man of Genius) and the 1886 second Italian edition of Studi sull’ipnotismo (Studies on Hypnotism). In addition to studying crime and criminals, Lombroso became in fact very interested in spiritualism, mediumship and hypnosis, publishing several works on the topic and even attending séances presided over by the world-famous medium Eusepia Palladino, an experience that produced a strong impression on him. After outlining the main theories that had been formulated hitherto to explain thought transmission, Hevré went on to discuss whether this phenomenon could be considered the product of a pathological condition. After all, he noted, most of the subjects involved in these experiments suffered from nervous disorders, hysteria in particular. Although he discarded this hypothesis, Hevré quoted in a footnote a passage from Lombroso’s L’Anthropologie criminelle et ses récents progrès (Criminal anthropology and its recent progress), in which the Italian criminal anthropologist had claimed that genius was often associated with pathology, especially with epilepsy and degeneration:

The fact that genius is frequently derived from parents either addicted to drink, of advanced age, or insane, certainly points to this conclusion, as also does the appearance of genius subsequently to lesions of the head. It is also indicated by frequent anomalies, especially of cranial asymmetry; the capacity of the skull being sometimes excessive, sometimes abnormally small; by the frequency of moral insanity, and of hallucinations; by sexual and intellectual precocity, and not rarely by somnambulism. To these we may add the prevalence of suicide, which is, on the other hand, very common among epileptic patients

(Lombroso 1890, pp. 110-111)
Cesare Lombroso attending a séance in Milan in 1908. Salt print photo. Credits: Cesare Lombroso Museum of Criminal Anthropology

In conclusion, an analysis of the Bulletin de la Société d’ agriculture, sciences et arts de la Sarthe seems to confirm that French scientists and physicians adopted a rather hostile attitude towards Lombroso’s theories. However, the article by Paul Harvé shows that Lombroso’s publication were read and discussed not only in intellectually thriving cities like Paris and Lyons, but also in more peripheral locations like Le Mans.

Selected bibliography

Paul Hevré, “Essai sur la suggestion mentale”, Bulletin de la Société d’ agriculture, sciences et arts de la Sarthe, 24 (1889), pp. 357-424.

Cesare Lombroso, L’anthropologie criminelle et ses récent progrès, Paris, Felix Alcan, 1890.

Marc Renneville, “Exploring the History of French Criminology (1885-1939): the Case of the Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle”, Criminocorpus, 2014, http://journals.openedition.org/criminocorpus/2753

Francesco Paolo de Ceglia, Lorenzo Leporiere, “Becoming Eusapia: The Rise of the ‘Diva of Scientists’” Science in Context 33, 4 (2020), pp. 441–71. doi:10.1017/S026988972100020X.

Carlos S. Alvarado, Massimo Biondi, “Cesare Lombroso on Mediumship and Pathology”, History of Psychiatry 28, 2 (2017), pp. 225–241. doi:10.1177/0957154X16686904.

Scientific police: an example of the technological transfer between the two sides of the Atlantic

By Silvano Montaldo, Cesare Lombroso Museum of Criminal Anthropology, University of Turin

The circulation of the technical knowledge of the scientific police is an example of the technological transfer between the two sides of the Atlantic, and of the existing tensions in the field of positivist criminology. The important body of letters received by Juan Vucetich (La Plata, Museo Policial) from European correspondents is an eloquent demonstration of this. His personal identification system, which replaced Bertillon’s anthropometric measurements with the collection of fingerprints, was adopted by the Italian forensic police after it spread to Latin America. In this process, what was weakened was the anthropological perspective of Lombrosian criminology, with its baggage of signs of degeneration and atavism, while a new perspective of institutionalization of scientific knowledge by the state was opening up.

Irina Podgorny, Silvano Montaldo and Nathalie Richard at the museums of Luján

On 10 December 2021, the three researchers went to present SciCoMove at the Historical Museum and the Ameghino House in Luján.

The Complejo Museográfico Provincial Enrique Udaondo incorporates the Museo Colonial e Histórico, which has a very interesting history. Founded by Enrique Udaondo (1880–1962) in 1918, this museum grew out of the transformation of its founder’s private collection into a public one; later its collections have been expanded through numerous donations and purchases of other private collections gathered by national history amateurs. Udaondo himself is quite a representative of amateur scholars, who collected the past often in a troubled political context and with partisan intentions. Belonging to the conservative circles, he collected traces of Argentina’s “colonial” past and did not radically oppose this past to the history of Argentina after its independence (María Elida Blasco, Un museo para la colonia. El Museo Histórico y Colonial de Luján, Rosario, Prohistoria ediciones, 2011). This scholar can be compared to his French counterparts who collected traces of France’s pre-revolutionary past after 1789 and whose private collections often enriched national or local public museums, such as the Musée Carnavalet in Paris (see Tom Stammers, The Purchase of the Past: Collecting Culture in Post-Revolutionary Paris c.1790–1890, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020). Exchanges with the museum’s management team were very productive and allowed to widen the reach of the SciCoMove project. The Historical Museum might be interested in the virtual exhibition prototype that will be produced at the end of the project, as well as in the MOOC for its staff.

From left to right: Mauricio Cano, Viviana Melloni de Mallol, Irina Podgorny, Nathalie Richard and Silvano Montaldo

Luján is also the city where the family of the naturalist Florentino Ameghino (1853–1911), coming from Italy, settled when he was still an infant. This paleontologist, author of a theory that made Argentina the cradle of the human species, was transformed into an Argentine national hero (Irina Podgorny, “Florentino Ameghino entre Luján et Moscou (1911–1954)”, Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines, 36/2020, 79-102, https://doi.org/10.4000/rhsh.4654; Irina Podgorny, Florentino Ameghino y Hermanos, Buenos Aires, Edhasa, 2021). His family home has become a small museum. The SciCoMove researchers met the museum team, and Irina Podgorny and Nathalie Richard were interviewed for a video dedicated to Ameghino on the city’s website. This visit was an opportunity to present the SciCoMove project and the local press reported on it.

Irina Podgorny at the Maison Ameghino

Irina Podgorny, Silvano Montaldo et Nathalie Richard aux musées de Luján

Le 10 décembre, les trois chercheurs sont allés présenter SciCoMove au Musée historique et à la Maison Ameghino de Luján.

De gauche à droite : Mauricio Cano, Viviana Melloni de Mallol, Irina Podgorny, Nathalie Richard et Silvano Montaldo

Le Complejo Museográfico Provincial Enrique Udaondo intègre un Museo Colonial e Histórico dont l’histoire est très intéressante. Fondé par Enrique Udaondo (1880-1962) en 1918, ce musée historique est issu de la transformation de la collection privée de son fondateur en collection publique et ses collections se sont accrues grâce à de nombreux dons ou achats de collections privées rassemblées par des amateurs d’histoire nationale. Udaondo lui-même est tout à fait représentation des érudits amateurs, qui collectionnent le passé, souvent dans un contexte politique troublé et avec des intentions partisanes. Appartenant aux milieux conservateurs, il collectionne les traces du passé « colonial » de l’Argentine et n’oppose pas radicalement ce passé à l’histoire de l’Argentine après son indépendance (María Elida Blasco, Un museo para la colonia. El Museo Histórico y Colonial de Luján, Rosario, Prohistoria ediciones, 2011). Cet érudit conservateur peut être comparés à ceux qui, en France, ont collecté les traces du passé prérévolutionnaire après 1789 et dont les collections privées sont venues enrichir souvent les musées publics nationaux ou locaux, tel le Musée Carnavalet à Paris (voir Tom Stammers, The Purchase of the Past: Collecting Culture in Post-Revolutionary Paris c. 1790–1890, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020). Les échanges avec l’équipe de direction du Musée ont été très enrichissant et ont permis de faire connaître SciCoMove à ce musée qui pourrait être intéressé par le prototype d’exposition virtuelle qui sera produit en fin de projet, et par le Mooc pour son personnel.

Luján est aussi la ville où la famille du naturaliste Florentino Ameghino (1853-1911), venue d’Italie, s’est établie alors qu’il était encore un nourrisson. Ce paléontologue, auteur d’une théorie qui fait de l’Argentine le berceau de l’espèce humaine, a été érigé en héros national argentin (Irina Podgorny, « Florentino Ameghino entre Luján et Moscou (1911-1954) », Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines [En ligne], 36 | 2020, 79-102, https://doi.org/10.4000/rhsh.4654 ; Florentino Ameghino y Hermanos, Buenos Aires, Edhasa, 2021). Sa maison famille a été transformée en petit musée. Les chercheurs du projet ont été reçu par l’équipe en charge de cette structure, et Irina Podgorny et Nathalie Richard ont été interviewées afin d’intégrer leurs propos dans une vidéo consacrée à Ameghino qui sera valorisée sur le site de la ville. Cette visite a été l’occasion de présenter le projet SciCoMove et la presse locale en a rendu compte.

Irina Podgorny à la Maison Ameghino

Museo de La Plata as the centerpiece of the SciCoMove

Museo de La Plata as an affiliated entity of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata is an important partner of the SciCoMove project. It holds an important collection of around 4 million pieces and specimens, most of them from Argentina and other South American countries. Moreover, the Museo is also a home to an archive that preserves the documents helping in research on the history of science.

Francisco P. Moreno, the founder and the first director of the Museo de La Plata. Photograph by Nathalie Richard.

On 7 December 2021, the team of the Museo de La Plata and the co-coordinators of the SciCoMove project, Nathalie Richard and Irina Podgorny, discussed the work to be done, research to be carried and the secondments to be implemented both to and from the museum.

Researchers Susana V. García, Alejandro Martínez, Ana Carolina Arias, Adriana Marvaldi, Guadalupe del Río, Sara Montemayor, as well as Analía Lanteri (Director of the Museo), Mariela Amor (architect qnd photographer) et Abogada Agostina Curcio (Directora of the Department of International Relations of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata) were present at the meeting which took place in a magnificent Council Chamber of the museum.

First SciCoMove secondments to La Plata (November-December 2021)

Nathalie Richard (Le Mans University), and Silvano Montaldo (Lombroso Museum, University of Turin) are now in La Plata.

Cast Skeleton of Diplodocus Carnegii, Museo De La Plata, Argentina (photograph by S. Montaldo).

Silvano Montaldo is working, with the help of the anthropology and Museum Archive teams at La Plata, on the circulation of Cesare Lombroso’s ideas on physical anthropology and criminology in Argentina (case study). He discovered some interesting archives in the La Plata Police Museum. This museum keeps the archives of Juan Vucetich, who devised a system of fingerprint identification in the 1890’s, and was in contact with Lombroso.

Nathalie Richard is working with the La Plata Museum team and the team at the Museum Archive, on communication and dissemination. She helps planning the training session on “archives and collections”, designed for PhD students (July 4-8 2022). Together with the La Plata teams, she is selecting interesting specimens and archive files, attesting to the circulation of collections between Europe and Argentina, which could be included in the mooc and the digital exhibition.

Sweating pots

By Irina Podgorny, CONICET/Archivo Histórico del Museo de La Plata, Argentina

This story begins in a warehouse of the FAMILLE Association, SOLIDARITÉ ET CULTURES located on the Boulevard de la Liberación in the city of Marseille. Or a little earlier, it is true, on a morning of torrential rain, impossible for a walk without a raincoat or protection of any kind, on a pause on that excursion that went in the direction of the Natural History Museum of the city. A journey – it was not known yet – marked by the administration of water.

Glazed container with the handle and the two holes in the upper section; the mouth to carry and the python – smaller – to drink. Photography: Adela Schäffner.

The Natural History Museum is located in the north wing of the magnificent Longchamps Palace, the twin wing of the one where, opposite, is the Museum of Fine Arts. It is a mansion that was inaugurated in 1869 to celebrate the end of the problems derived from the drought that devastated this Provençal port. Thanks to an engineering work that made it possible to transport the water from the Durance River to the homes of the people of Marseille, after more than 30 years of work, a complex network made up of 85 kilometers of channels and underground pipes managed to supply water to this city, where the sea ​​reigns but drinking water is lacking. For this reason, to commemorate this milestone, it was decided to build the Longchamps Palace at the end of the avenue of the same name in the upper reaches of the Les Cinq Avenues neighborhood. It was commissioned by the architect Henri-Jacques Espérandieu (1829 – 1874) who designed it as a true ode to water, as reflected in the allegorical sculptures of fertility and abundance. This Baroque-inspired complex is made up of a majestic colonnade and a central fountain known as the Chateau d’eau or Water Castle. The fountain depicts a cart drawn by bulls that carries grapes and wheat and above it three female figures stand, a symbol of life, with falls and waterfalls whose noise made the rain of that day sound more terrible than it really was. Although by then, it did not matter much either: in Liberación, the solidarity association sold umbrellas for a couple of coins and, for the same price, a little further inside, you could get toys, clothes, antiques, books, pots and glassware. There were also many shelves full of ceramics, earthenware and porcelain of all kinds, colors and tastes, one of the many human perditions, a sign of sedentary life and a declared enemy of suitcases and air travel. Among the tidal wave of objects given to charity and awaiting their new owners, a jug stood out, a cylindrical vase, with a glazed finish, marbled in shades of creams and browns. Probably Provençal, apparently a bit old. With that vintage consisting of an umbrella and a jug under our arms, we returned to Cassis.

“What is this called in English?” – the English-speaking colleagues from the Camargo Foundation asked the next day. “Botijo” – answered the Wikipedia version in that language, confirming the Spanish origin of the object. (1) But, nevertheless, to the Francophones he said something else: “gargoulette”, a name that ratified, instead, its Mediterranean and Provençal stamp. The encyclopedia also called them cachucho, piporro, pirulo, peche and rallo, forgetting about “glass and ceramic”, a word that is now in disuse and invented in 1809 by Jean Fourmy, a potter from Paris. A word that is linked to the studies and experiments carried out in the early nineteenth century where the physics and chemistry of materials were combined with the large-scale production of earthenware and the possibility of mastering the technologies that guaranteed the cooling of liquids.

“YDROCÉRAME”, Fourmy’s neologism, was composed of two words of Greek origin: “Ydros” which referred to sweat, and keramos, to clay pots. This designated the family of glasses that sweated and any container of earth whose permeability enabled it to cool its contents thanks to the property of cooling by means of the transudation mechanism.

When the mineralogist and chemist Alexandre Brongniart (1770-1847) in 1844 published his Traité des arts céramiques ou Des poteries considérées dans leur histoire, leur pratique et leur théorie, he took up Fourmy’s classification but added an H and an explanation reminiscent of the distribution of plants according to the climatic zones of the globe: a Hydrocerame was a type of ceramic that could be found in climates where the lowest temperature oscillated by an average of 15 degrees but also where it could rise well beyond 30. This type of glasses had the property of lowering the temperature of the liquids stored there to about 8 degrees with respect to the environment. The name given by Fourmy served, as in geology and mineralogy, to summarize in a single word all the regional names and, in this way, show that it was a technology shared by different regions dominated by the same problem. From India to Andalusia, passing through Egypt and the torrid area of ​​the American continent, with details in the manufacture that marked its origin, all, however, shared one characteristic: they presented a large surface that favored rapid evaporation that cooled the water while avoiding to go to the gaseous state. The secret: the porosity of the paste, achieved by the addition of fine sand, fired ceramics, clay loams, low-temperature firing, the incorporation of substances later destroyed by firing. Among them, the salt that, when dissolved, left the paste full of small vesicles. The forms were as varied as the names used in the most distant geographies; singular in more than one case but always respecting the principle of extending the surface to achieve rapid evaporation of the water.

Spanish botijo. In Description méthodique du Musée Cerámique de la Manufacture Royale de Porcelaine de Sèvres. Pair MM. A. Brongniart et D. Riocreux. Paris. 1845. Pl. XXII, Fig. 2.

One of the first to break down the manufacture of these vessels had been the citizen Louis Lasteyrie who in 1797 published a memoir on the Spanish alcarrazas in the Journal des Mines, previously read in the French Philomatic Society. It was about those vessels that were manufactured in various regions of the neighboring country, mostly characterized by their grayish bank. Madrid supplied itself with them in Anduxar, Andalusia, a town that obtained the land to model them in the Tamasuro stream. According to Lasteyrie, it was a form imported by the Arabs and was still used in Egypt and other parts of Africa and Asia, the East Indies, Syria, Persia, China. On the other hand, they were unknown in Sicily and also in France. Lasteyre said:

“Despite the neighborhood and relations with Spain, no traveler has so far been in charge of spreading the procedures used in its manufacture of this element, the introduction of which would be extremely useful for our country, not only to cool off in hot weather but also for a health issue”.

As a result, Lasteyrie had been informed about the exact way used to make the alcazarras (2), he had also brought a few to exhibit them to his compatriots together with the samples of the land used, examples that Citizen Darcet analyzed chemically . As a result, it was found that the materials existed on French soil and that producing them would not be onerous.

Lasteyrie was not the only one to propose the import into France of the cooling methods used in other Mediterranean countries. The historian of science Patrice Bret, one of the scholars of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt (1798-1801), has shown that one of the technologies most observed by the French in that territory was precisely the one that allowed the locals to maintain fresh water in a climate as overwhelming as that of the African desert thanks to its storage in “bardaks” or “qollehs”. In Egypt, the mathematician and geometer Louis Costaz (1767-1842) devoted himself to studying its thermal characteristics, which he later presented in Paris in a debate at the Society for the promotion of national industry created in 1801. For his part, Pierre Rouyer ( 1769-1831), the expedition’s chief pharmacist, published a historical and chemical study of Egyptian ceramic arts highlighting “the advantages that the adoption of ceramics destined to cool water would bring for France”. Shortly after, in 1802, a naturalist would once again exhibit a Spanish alcazarra and an Egyptian bardaca for analysis by Parisian scientists. It would be in this context that Fourmy would invent the name “ydroceramics” to bring together all known forms of refrigerant glasses, launching into the manufacture of them.

Brongniart, meanwhile, with an applied geologist’s eye, dedicated himself to promoting the creation of the ceramic museum of the Sèvres porcelain factory by publishing his catalog in 1845 that included various shapes of sweating vessels from, in this case, Spain. Portugal and Egypt.

At the end of the 19th century the gargoulette was already part of the material culture of Provence, and although some claim it from local roots, this story that began on a rainy day seems to indicate that its spread coincides with the period of the great works of hydraulic engineering held by the Palais de Longchamps. Those that brought water to the houses of Marseille.

Notes:

1. Botijo: Porous clay pot used to hold water and drink from it. It has a handle at the top and has a mouth where it fills on one side and a drinking spout on the other side. The glazed jug, also called winter jug, is used today preferably as an object of decoration. (We have respected the words in italics as they were in the original) In Alfares y alfareros de España. By José Guerrero Martín. Ediciones del Serbal, Madrid, 1988, p. 279.

2. Alcazarra: Porous clay pot that, thanks to the evaporation of the water that seeps, cools the one that remains inside. José Guerrero Martín: ob. cit. 1988, p. 277.

Museos de provincia: historias a uno y otro lado del mar

Por Irina Podgorny, CONICET/Archivo Histórico del Museo de La Plata, Argentina

En 1896, el escritor y lexicógrafo Frédéric Mistral fomentaba, bajo su mecenazgo, la creación de una comisión para dotar a Arlés de un museo regional de Etnografía. Arlés es una de las  ciudades del Ródano, uno de los ríos más caudalosos de Europa y un elemento clave en la organización de los territorios de su cuenca. El Ródano, además de haber sido un eje de la circulación de personas y mercancías desde los inicios de la ocupación humana de la zona, fue utilizado más de una vez como frontera política: recordemos que Arlés se encuentra muy cerca de Aviñón, que con Le Contat fueron propiedad de los Estados Pontificios hasta la reorganización territorial ocurrida durante la Revolución.

Fotografía: Facebook. Coll. Museon Arlaten-musée de Provence.

Mistral nació 40 años más tarde: en 1830 y en Maillane, en las Boca del Ródano de la Provenza francesa. Hijo de una familia rural acomodada, estudiaría abogacía en Aix-en-Provence al mismo tiempo que se comprometía con el renacimiento de la lengua de Oc u occitano, un idioma que, a mediados del siglo XIX, sus colegas y él empezaron a describir como “la primera lengua literaria de la Europa civilizada”. Medio de expresión de los trovadores, idioma de la administración medieval, el provenzal (y el latín), una variante del occitano, en el siglo XVI perdieron prestigio y protagonismo burocrático, sobre todo a partir de la incorporación de la Provenza al dominio del rey Francisco I. Ausente de los papeles del Estado, la gran caída del occitano, ocurriría, sin embargo, durante la Revolución, que impuso el francés como única lengua nacional para consolidar la unidad del país.

Una injusticia, a los ojos de Mistral quien, 300 años más tarde de la disposición de Francisco I, fundaría en 1854 el Félibrige, una asociación destinada a salvaguardar y promover la lengua, la cultura y todo lo que a su entender constituía la identidad de la región. En un primer momento, la acción se limitó al provenzal, pero entre 1878 y 1893 se extendió a un conjunto de idiomas que incluía al catalán. Mistral, por su parte, fue una encarnación viviente de esas contradicciones que llevaron el fervor por la región, propio de las revoluciones de 1848, al nacionalismo de la “Liga de la patria francesa” que, creada en 1898, agrupó a quienes sostenían la culpabilidad de Alfred Dreyfus.

En 1896 -el juicio a Dreyfus había ocurrido en 1894 y Émile Zola publicaría “J’accuse” en enero de 1898- Émile Marignan, médico provenzal y amigo de Mistral, se encargó de redactar las Instructions pour la récolte des objets d’ethnographie du pays arlésien (Instrucciones para la recopilación de objetos etnográficos de la región de Arlés), a fin de contar con un manual para promover los regalos y las donaciones a un museo todavía inexistente pero que hoy todavía se usan para definir un patrimonio que no deja de acrecentarse.

Los maniquíes ilustran a las damas en la sala de costura. Fotografía: Facebook. Coll. Museon Arlaten-musée de Provence.

La etnografía, decía Marignan, es una ciencia antropológica cuyo objeto de estudio es la descripción del estado social de las poblaciones cuyas costumbres, creencias, industria, artes, literatura, rasgos físicos y morales no han sido afectadas por la civilización moderna. Hoy -a diferencia de la propuesta de Mistral- el museo no descarta la cultura de la sociedad industrial ni los objetos producidos por el mundo contemporáneo. Pero, en la década de 1890, la etnografía era una disciplina relativamente nueva y los museos dedicados a ella, recién empezaban. Durante la Exposición Universal de 1878, la misma donde Florentino Ameghino expuso las colecciones de fósiles que luego vendería, el palacio de Trocadéro le había dedicado una muestra de grandes dimensiones. Allí mismo, en 1880 se abriría al público el Muséum ethnographique des missions scientifiques.

La etnografía provenzal quería distanciarse de la capitalina; mientras esta se ocupaba, sobre todo, de los primitivos y se olvidaba de los civilizados, Arlés se dedicaría a la etnografía francesa, “mucho más interesante e instructiva que la de los pueblos inferiores”. Una tarea urgente porque los trajes antiguos, los objetos y las tradiciones desaparecían delante de sus ojos, arrastrados a la velocidad del vapor por los aluviones del progreso.

Los museos etnográficos, recolección y exhibición de su patrimonio

Mistral y Marignan se proponían detener este reloj y, a través de las instrucciones, apelaban al concurso de todas las personas de la Provenza y de Bas-Languedoc a cooperar con esta empresa. Marignan ordenaba los objetos a recopilar y aclaraba que la lista estaba incompleta porque de lo contrario hubiese compuesto “un catálogo del museo antes de la existencia del Museo”. La obra estaba por hacerse y se basaba -adaptándolo a las condiciones locales- en el folleto publicado por Armand Landrin, comisario del Museo de Trocadéro: Instructions sommaires relatives aux collections d’objets ethnographiques des peuples civilisés (1888) que, en efecto, también podían aplicarse a los salvajes y, como vemos, a la Provenza.

Antoine Raspal: El taller de las costureras. 1760. En el Museo Réattu. Arlés, Francia.

Marignan repetía las grandes líneas de la clasificación de Landrin, ordenando las cosas en varias secciones que empezaban con la antropología, sus fotografías de tipos locales, hombres y mujeres de frente y de perfil, moldes de cabezas y de manos, moldes y fotografías de bustos femeninos, muestras de cabello y del color de los ojos.

El grupo dos estaba representado por la alimentación, la agricultura, la cría de animales, la caza y la pesca y comprendía panes y postres, muestras o reproducciones en cera de las preparaciones del país, licores, útiles de trabajo, arneses, marcas para el ganado y todo lo concerniente a los adornos de los toros, el mundo taurino y sus guardianes. Hoy algunos toros coleccionados entonces sobreviven -“embalsamados”- en sus depósitos cuyo ascensor, vale aclarar, se diseñó con el tamaño apropiado para moverlos de arriba para abajo y de abajo para arriba. 

El grupo tres seguía por la vida familiar, la vivienda, el mobiliario, los utensilios de la vida doméstica, los trajes, las joyas y los juegos, coleccionados en forma de modelos de algunos centímetros de altura, fotografías y objetos. Marignan le dedicaba un párrafo especial a los tocados y a las joyas de las arlesianas, así como a la orfebrería de la región.

Los grupos siguientes se referían al culto, las ceremonias religiosas, las tradiciones populares, la superstición, la brujería, a las huellas del paganismo y de los cultos ya desaparecidos; a las ciencias y a las artes tales como la medicina, las plantas medicinales, la astronomía, la meteorología, la contabilidad, la música y el dibujo hecho sobre los cuernos de los toros, las cajas de los quesos, los árboles y las piedras. Continuaba con la industria y el comercio, la vida social, los trajes y las fiestas populares. Terminaba con la bibliografía y la iconografía ya que la literatura provenzal, aunque gracias al Félibrige, no estaba en peligro de desaparecer, también contaría con una vitrina.

En 1897, Le Forum Républicain publicaba algunas de las donaciones recibidas: el dinero provisto por el conde Jean de Sabran-Pontevès, ocho estampas enviadas por un consejero de la corte de Aix e instrumentos para hilar entregados por una viuda. El comité agradecía y prometía reconocer a cada uno de los futuros donantes.

El Museo, que por entonces contaba con cinco mil piezas, abriría sus puertas dos años más tarde, en mayo de 1899, instalado en un corredor y en las seis salas situadas en el segundo piso del Tribunal de Comercio, un espacio puesto a disposición por el Consejo General de la Boca del Ródano. Pero a partir de 1904, el Museo lograría mudarse a un edificio especial para sus colecciones: gracias a la dotación del Premio Nobel de Literatura otorgado ese año a Mistral y los derechos de autor que este recibía por sus obras, el poeta adquirió y remodeló el Colegio Jesuita de la ciudad. Allí permanece este proyecto que, desde el inicio, incluyó el montaje de una serie de maniquíes en tamaño natural vestidos con los trajes antiguos y modernos del país. Así, el número de L’Aïoli del 17 de enero de 1896, mencionaba la importancia de los maniquíes para presentar el “traje nacional” de las mujeres de Arlés. Este periódico mensual publicado en Aviñón defendía la causa del sur, la lengua, el federalismo y la identidad cultural frente a los francófonos.

Con la elección de los maniquíes, Mistral y Marignan adoptaron un enfoque museográfico que había sido rechazado por los artistas del Comité Francés para la Presentación de Trajes Populares en la Exposición Universal de 1867, pero que pareció revivir en la década de 1880.  En este amplio debate que agitó los círculos científicos y folklóricos de finales del siglo XIX, el poeta conservó el efecto realista del maniquí y quiso aplicarlo a su museo. Su elección fue similar a las realizadas en los otros incipientes museos de etnografía tal como se ve, por ejemplo, en la Revue des Traditions Populaires que difundió la información al respecto. El ejemplo más llamativo del uso de maniquíes era el del museo de Quimper, creado en Bretaña 1874 pero reorganizado en 1881. En el Palacio del Trocadero, donde Mistral quizás haya estado durante sus viajes a París, los maniquíes se utilizaban para la presentación de objetos.

La mujer de Joaquín Frenguelli -de espalda y de frente-, modelo para los maniquíes del Museo de La Plata, cuando este era su director. Fotografías: Museo de La Plata. Fondo Frenguelli.

En el Museo Arlaten, Frédéric Mistral no se limitó a imitar esos modelos. En las Instructions, Marignan especifica que los maniquíes son necesarios para dar vida a las escenas, a un interior de una casa provenzal o a un pastor de la región de Camargo. Pero la novedad de Arlés reside en el hecho que Marignan recopiló las observaciones antropológicas realizadas sobre la población local y, con ellas en mano, pidió al escultor Claude-André Férigoule (1863-1946) que modelara los maniquíes a partir del natural, buscando obtener retratos realistas de individuos considerados arquetipos de la población provenzal. El escultor, asistido por su esposa, que había estudiado los maniquíes del museo de Chambéry, en Saboya, se esforzó por dar realismo a las figuras utilizando arcilla, yeso, pelo natural y ojos de cristal coloreado, pero evitando la cera, que daba a las figuras una complexión cadavérica.

Hoy, los maniquíes de Arlés, un medio de presentación cómodo y atractivo, se han convertido en un objeto de colección por derecho propio, una escultura etnográfica y uno de los motores que impulsa la visita. En la reciente renovación del museo fueron restaurados: además de limpiarlos, las pelucas fueron hechas nuevamente con pelo natural y apelando a técnicas ya en desuso pero recuperadas por los peluqueros a cargo de dicha tarea.

Sin embargo, a lo largo de las décadas, la importancia antropológica de los maniquíes se desvaneció. En el periodo de entreguerras, se reavivó el debate a favor y en contra de su uso en los museos, alimentados por los artículos de H. P. Touzet publicados entre 1929 y 1930 en la Revue des Provinces de France, las posturas de Arnold Van Gennep en la obra Le Folklore de 1924 y los comentarios de Albert Maumené en la revista La vie à la campagne creada en 1906. A partir de 1936, Fernand Benoît, arqueólogo, erudito y conservador del Museo Arlaten, previó ampliar estas representaciones a la sección de indumentaria del siglo XVIII, basándose en el interés de Frédéric Mistral por el cuadro de Antoine Raspal “L’atelier des couturières” (el taller de las costureras). En 1940 justificó la creación de una reconstrucción con maniquíes de tamaño natural presentándolo como un eco, un duplicado de los dioramas, un escenario de la historia del traje. Cuarenta años después de la apertura del Museon Arlaten, el ya anciano Férigoule recibiría ese nuevo encargo.

Los maniquíes en esta orilla del Atlántico

En la Argentina, los maniquíes aparecerían más o menos en esa misma época: primero en el Museo escolar Sarmiento, un museo educativo de Buenos Aires, donde hacia 1910 suscitaron varias críticas por la piel algo oscura de los héroes patrios. En el Museo de La Plata se usarían para presentar al público los trajes de los antiguos peruanos. En este caso, el modelo no fue ningún busto o foto de las colecciones antropológica sino la esposa del médico y geólogo italiano Joaquín Frenguelli, por entonces director del museo. Pero antes, en la década de 1920, habían aparecido en otro museo provincial: el Museo de Luján, el museo promovido por Enrique Udaondo, quien, alejado, muy alejado de la antropología de Marignan, estaba bastante más cerca de la deriva conceptual de Frédéric Mistral.

Para llevar adelante ese museo del período colonial, cuya historia analizó María Élida Blasco, Udaondo -como Mistral- dependió de la movilización de personas y objetos para crear ese espacio que se armó sobre estas voluntades y algo de inventiva. A diferencia de Mistral, Udaondo no era escritor, ni un personaje de fama o de éxito en el campo de la historia y las letras. Sin premio, sin derechos millonarios, el museo se fundó sobre la volatilidad de los fondos públicos.

El gaucho y su caballo. Reproducido en el catálogo del Museo Colonial e Histórico de Luján, así llamado en 1933. 

Como nos recuerda, Roberto Vega, al preparar la exposición titulada “Apero criollo. Arte y tradición”, buscaron el ingreso de una montura tipo “lomillo” que aparecía reproducida en una fotografía del catálogo del Museo de Luján, la que se aprecia sobre la figura de un caballo y al lado, de pie, el gaucho con su vestimenta. En ese momento sólo se hablaba de la existencia dos ejemplares de época del mencionado lomillo, tipo de silla de montar que desde la década de 1860 fue paulatinamente sustituida por el bastos. El de Luján hubiese sido un tercero. Ni el gaucho ni el caballo ensillado se encontraban en el patrimonio del Museo y se trataba de encontrar el origen de todo el conjunto. Grande fue la sorpresa cuando una de las carpetas del archivo lujanense reveló que el lomillo había sido hecho a solicitud de los donantes en una talabartería, no era antiguo, y respondía al encargo de los donantes -entre los que estaban los grandes coleccionistas de la época, todos amigos de E. Udaondo-, quienes atendían así el encargo del fundador y director del museo. La ropa del gaucho había sido adquirida en una casa de disfraces, en un marco ligado a la promoción del tradicionalismo a través de los concursos en los Carnavales. Allí mismo también habían comprado el maniquí al que vistieron con dichas prendas. Queda para el futuro resolver cuánto sabía Udaondo de los proyectos del poeta provenzal que, como el pseudónimo de Lucila Godoy Alcayaga indica, era un escritor que, por entonces, despertaba admiración a ambos lados de los Andes. Gabriela Mistral -el nombre literario de Godoy Alcayaga- sería la primera mujer iberoamericana en recibir el Premio Nobel: Mistral, sin dudas, un nombre de suerte.