By Franco Orlandi, UNITO
Among the many skulls and casts preserved in the anthropological collection of the Museum of La Plata, the cast skull numbered 1745 in the catalogue complied by then-director Robert Lehmann-Nitsche (1872-1938) in 1911, is of particular interest to learn more about the circulation of scientific knowledge and collections between Europe and America in the 19th century.
The story of the cast 1745 begins in France in December 1864, when a group of quarry workers began excavating on a hill in the Quiberon peninsula to extract stones. The hill of Manné-Beker-Noz, located near the village of Saint-Pierre (Morbihan, France), had been known to the local people since time immemorial for the dolmen that surmounted its crest. During the excavation of the site, the quarrymen found by chance a prehistoric tomb containing the skeletal remains of an adult male and a terracotta urn of large size (fig. 1). After being informed of the discovery, Alexandre Gressy, a member of the learned society of Morbihan, went to the site to study and collect the bones and the artifact. In this he was helped by the colleague René Galles, who drew sketches of the archeological finds.

The discovery was reported a few months later on the journal of the Societé polymathique du Morbihan by its president, the physician Gustave de Closmadeuc (1828-1918). In addition to being the chief surgeon of the Vannes hospital, Closmadeuc was also an avid archeologist. In his article he explained that the importance of the discovery consisted first of all in the good state of conservation of the Man of Quiberon, which would allow for a detailed anthropological examination. For this purpose, Closmadeuc had taken upon himself the task of putting together the different cranial fragments found in the tomb and sent the reconstructed skull to the Laboratory of Anthropology directed by Paul Broca in Paris for analysis:
«By dint of patience I managed to match and glue together most of the cranial fragments. I was thus able to reconstitute the head, which is currently in the hands of Mr. Broca and Mr. Follin […] who offered me their help. […] We will then leave it to our eminent colleagues to inform us about the anthropological value of the skull that we have entrusted to their examination» (Closmadeuc 1865, pp. 42-3).
Paul Broca (1824-1880), the most famous anthropologist of nineteenth century France, published the results of his analysis on both the «Bulletin of the Societé polymathique»and the Bulletin of the Society of Anthropology of Paris. Like Closmadeuc, Broca stressed the extraordinary significance of the archeological discovery in Quiberon. «My dear confrere», he wrote in a letter to Closmadeuc in June 1865, «The skull of Quiberon that you sent us is one of the most important remains of the Stone Age» (Broca 1865, p. 47). Most ethnologists and linguists of the time believed that, during the Stone Age, Europe had been populated by a backward and racially homogenous human group marked by the brachycephalic head shape. This group, scholars maintained, was later replaced by the more civilized Indo-Aryan people, whose skulls were dolicocephalic. The Quiberon skull, however, seemed to tell a very different story: «This skull is the most dolicocephalic of all the Stone Age skulls that have been found so far in France» Broca pointed out with surprise (fig. 2).

Since archeological evidence suggested that the Man of Quiberon had enjoyed high social status, Broca decided to compare the measurements of his skull with those of 90 upper-class nineteenth century Parisians. He concluded that the Quiberon skull «bears, in relation to the average type of the modern French, many characteristics of inferiority similar to those which are present today in certain savage, or at least highly barbaric, races». For Broca, the shape of the Quiberon skull resembled that of «negroes and Neo-caledonians». In his works, he distinguished two types of dolicocephaly: the frontal dolicocephaly, found among the «Germanic races», and the occipital dolicocephaly, typical of «African and Oceanic races». The first was characterized by a highly developed frontal region and was therefore considered an indicator of high intelligence. The second, on the other hand, was marked by a highly developed occipital region at the back of the skull, which was believed to be the seat of instinct and therefore considered an indicator of a more primitive and animal mind.
By underlining its features of inferiority and characterizing its occipital dolicocephaly as primitive and African (and thus very different from the frontal dolicocephaly found among civilized people like Indo-Aryans), the French anthropologist tried to solve the contradiction that the Quiberon skull had exposed: the presence of early dolicocephalic skulls in Stone Age France. Rather than questioning the existing theories on the racial composition of prehistoric Europe, Broca resorted to the explanation that the Man of Quiberon belonged to a human group less racially evolved than Indo-Aryans.
The skull of Quiberon remained in Paris, where it became part of the collection of the Society of Anthropology. In 1874, however, a copy of it was sent to Buenos Aires. In fact, in that year Broca exchanged a number of specimens with the Argentinian amateur collector Francisco Pascasio Moreno (1852-1919), who he had never met in person but whom he knew through a mutual acquaintance with Carlos Germàn Burmeister (1807-1892), director of the National Museum of Natural History of Buenos Aires. Among the 15 casts that Broca sent to Argentina and that later became part of the collection of the Museum of La Plata was the Quiberon skull. The original specimen remained in France, probably to allow further studies of it. On his part, Moreno sent to Broca a series of Patagonian prehistoric skulls, although we do not know which ones and in what number. As a result of this exchange, Moreno was appointed correspondent of the Society of Anthropology of Paris and his article on the prehistoric cemeteries of Patagonia was published in its journal.
In conclusion, the (cast) skull of Quiberon tells us the story of specimens and ideas that travelled from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and not just from the peripheries to the centers. It also shows how 19th century collecting practices were closely intertwined with racial theory and physical anthropology’s attempt to elaborate a racial hierarchy of the world’s population.

Selected sources and bibliography
Claude Blanckaert, De la race à l’évolution. Paul Broca et l’anthropologie française. 1850-1900, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2009.
Paul Broca, Étude anthropologique du crane de Manné-Beker-Noz, «Bulletin de la Societé polymathique du Morbihan » (1865), pp. 47-49.
Gustave Closmadeuc, Tombeau découvert au Manné-Beker-Noz, Bulletin de la Societé polymathique du Morbihan (1865), pp. 39-46.
Máximo Farro, La formación del Museo de La Plata. Coleccionistas, comerciantes, estudiosos y naturalistas viajeros a fines del siglo XIX, Rosario, Prohistoria, 2009.
Robert Lehmann-Nietsche, Catálogo de la Sección Antropológica del Museo de La Plata, Buenos Aires, Coni Hermanos, 1911, http://naturalis.fcnym.unlp.edu.ar/id/20110709008868
Chris Manias, Race, Science, and the Nation. Reconstructing the Ancient Past in Britain, France and Germany, Abingdon, Routledge, 2013.
Irina Podgorny, Margaret Lopes, El desierto en una vitrina. Museos e historia natural en la Argentina, Mexico, Limusa, 2008 (2e éd., Rosario, Prohistoria, 2014).
Nathalie Richard, Travelling skulls. About some skulls and casts kept in the storerooms of the Museum of La Plata, 2022, https://scicomove.hypotheses.org/959