By Nathalie Richard, Le Mans Université
The historiography of science museums has mostly emphasized the circulation of specimens from the Souths to the Nords or from the peripheries to the centres. The skulls and casts kept in the collections of the anthropology section of the Museum of La Plata (Argentina) tell a more intricate story.
Certainly, many specimens related to the history of physical anthropology were collected in Argentina and sent to museums in the Western world, for example to the Natural History Museum in Paris or to the Anthropology Society of Paris. But other specimens traveled in the other direction. The catalogue of the anthropology section of the Museum of La Plata, compiled by the director of this section, Robert Lehmann-Nitsche, in 1911, demonstrates this, as well as specimens currently kept in the reserves.
Among these specimens from Europe, many belonged to the collection of Francisco Pascasio Moreno (1852-1919), a wealthy amateur who had built an important collection, kept in a family estate. He donated this collection to the Province of Buenos Aires, allowing the foundation, in 1878, of the Anthropological and Archaeological Museum of the Province, of which he was appointed curator. Moreno travelled to Paris in 1880-1881, where he continued his anthropological research and strengthened his contacts with French scholars, for example with Paul Broca (1824-1880). The Société d’anthropologie de Paris (1859), of which he was the founder, was then an important center for Western physical anthropology. The methods, models of interpretation and practices it promoted served as an inspiration for the creation of many similar associations in Europe and North America. Back in Argentina, Moreno devoted his efforts to the creation of a national museum of which his anthropological museum would be the core. This project failed, and another museum in the city of Buenos Aires became the national museum, but Moreno’s efforts led to the foundation of the Provincial Museum of La Plata, which was gradually established from 1884 onwards in the new provincial capital, where his collections were transferred (see bibliography).
These collections reflected Moreno’s scholarly explorations in Argentina, but also his contacts with scientists and merchants, both locally and abroad. It is thus not surprising that the anthropological series gathered by Moreno contained not only American but also French and European remains. Paul Broca, the Society and its Laboratory of Anthropology founded in 1867 were important providers. Thus, the Museum of La Plata now possesses, among others, original French skulls from the 17th century collected by Broca in Parisian cemeteries.

Among the skulls from France kept at the La Plata Museum, some have traveled more than others, since they have crossed the Atlantic twice. This is the case, for example, of the skull numbered 1760 in the 1911 catalog (Fig. 1). This cast from the Museum of Natural History in Paris demonstrates the existence of exchanges in both directions between La Plata and Paris (also Lyon, since some series came from the Museum of Natural History in that city). It is an outcome of the relationship established between Moreno and the professor of anthropology of the Paris Museum, Armand de Quatrefages. In 1874, the former sent five skulls to Paris. In return, Quatrefages sent him twelve casts of American busts and skulls (from the north and south) taken from the Parisian collections for his collection, which was still private at that time (Farro 2009). This skull bears an inscription that tells more about its history: “Skull of the ancient inhabitants of the coasts of Peru found in the huacas or tombs of the ruins of the temple of Pachacamac, situated 6 leagues south of Lima – given by Mr. J. Deville”. This important site was excavated in a more systematic way from the end of the 19th century onward, but it was explored by curious and collectors well before this date. In France for example, Joseph Dombey brought back an important collection of ethnographic and archaeological objects of Peru, for part coming from this site in 1785, and gave it to the Royal Cabinet in 1786. From this time on, a somewhat imprecise geographical area called “Peru”, associated with a somewhat vague “Inca” civilization, became an object of curiosity and covetousness among French amateurs of archaeology and from institutions. Numerous objects from this region thus entered private and public collections, through the agency of scholars, often commissioned by institutions, but also through soldiers and merchants (Riviale, 1996). The skull #1760 is the result of this history, while the arrival of its cast in Argentina is related to the will of the Argentinian amateur Moreno to establish his reputation and a dialogue with more famous professional European scholars. Later the transfer of the cast from the private collection to the public museum was the result of Moreno’s strategy to establish his influence on the natural, archaeological and ethnographic sciences in Argentina through the foundation of a museum that would be under his control.
Thus, the French skulls preserved in the Museum of La Plata tell us of connections between scholars, of histories of private and public collections, and of strategies of distinction and reputation based on these collections (for a comparison, Corsi 2008). They also point to a common territory in which scientific methods (anthropometry) and theoretical interpretative frameworks were shared, that of the physical anthropology of the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century. This anthropology, for which Paris was one of the main centers, used “race” as its central concept and considered skulls to be the most important part of the skeleton for assessing anatomical differences between human groups. Based on the identification of what they called “racial types”, the scientists of the time reconstructed the population histories of the various regions of the globe, including the Americas. Moreno, his collections, and later the collections of the Museum of La Plata, participated in this common space in which specimens circulated as much as ideas, and in both directions.
Selected bibliography
Pietro Corsi, Fossils and Reputations. A Scientific Correspondence: Pisa, Paris, London, 1853–1857, Pisa, Edizioni Plus – Pisa University Press, 2008.
Máximo Farro, La formación del Museo de La Plata. Coleccionistas, comerciantes, estudiosos y naturalistas viajeros a fines del siglo XIX, Rosario, Prohistoria, 2009.
Irina Podgorny, “Du Musée au Panthéon en Argentine. Le destin des collections anthropologiques dans l’Argentine contemporaine », Politika, 2019, https://www.politika.io/fr/article/du-musee-au-pantheon-argentine
Irina Podgorny, Margaret Lopes, El desierto en una vitrina. Museos e historia natural en la Argentina, Mexico, Limusa, 2008 (2e éd., Rosario, Prohistoria, 2014)
Pascal Riviale, Un siècle d’archéologie française au Pérou (1821-1914), Paris, L’Harmattan, 1996 (traduction espagnole, https://books.openedition.org/ifea/3568 ).