SciCoMove Showcase
Digital Exhibition of SciCoMove – Scientific Collections on the Move: Provincial Museums, Archives and Collecting Practices (1800–1950)
Presentation: SciCoMove Showcase
The SciCoMove Showcase is the visual output of the international and transdisciplinary research carried out in the project “Scientific Collections on the Move: Provincial Museums, Archives and Collecting Practices (1800–1950)”, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie research and innovation programme.
This Showcase highlights objects from several institutions in Europe and Latin America organized in four sections related to themes of central importance to the project. In this showcase, you will meet museum specimens and documents whose stories illustrate the many moves behind collections.
Learn more about SciCoMove via our:
01
Networks & Practices of Collecting
Networks & Practices of Collecting
This section deals with the actors in the field, their practices, their networks, and their places of encounters. It focuses on the factors that foster connections between vocational science and the circulation of objects, information and people.
The cases reveal the diversity of the actors who collected on the field: photographers, charlatans, physicians, civil servants and politicians, missionaries, journalists, etc., who provided specimens to museums.
South American Potato Weevil
by Adriana E. Marvaldi & María Guadalupe del Río
South American potato weevil. Collection of beetles, insects of the Order Coleoptera, has always been an appreciated activity of both amateur and scientist collectors. Beetle collecting illustrates many different types of moves and dimensions, like natural history, evolution, cultural history, and ethnology.
Mummified Person from Nazca
In 2006, the BASA Museum and the Egyptian Museum of the University of Bonn received on permanent loan a collection of objects from the Americas and Egypt, including a mummified person from the Nazca plain. Until then, this collection had been part of the exhibition area of a provincial ethnological-archaeological museum in the Lower Rhine region, opened in 1989. At the time of the collection's arrival, the provincial museum was undergoing reconstruction.
Mammoth Tusk from the Neckar Basin
by Stefanie Gänger & Christian Stenz
In the nineteenth century, numerous quarries were opened along the Neckar basin and the river was increasingly canalized. In this process, miners, engineers and curious residents came across fossilized remains of animals from a bygone past. Among these remains were the bones and teeth of a huge mammal: the mammoth.
Lichens in the Herbarium Monguillon
E. Monguillon's herbarium (1865-1940) in the Musée Vert, Le Mans, holds 17.150 moss and lichen specimens collected across Europe from 1811 to 1939. Formed through exchanges with over a hundred botanists, this collection reveals a significant network of regional scientific exchange.
Copy of a Central Mexican Figure
The original statuette of this small-format figure comes from central Mexico and is most likely of Aztec origin. It is made from greenstone with inlays of what might be Koralle’s spondylus. The figure shows Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, the "Lord of the Dawn", representing Venus as the morning star, one of the representations of Quetzalcoatl, a creator god.
Asuncion's Dalmatic and François Machon
François Machon, a Swiss medical doctor, and his son Roger Machon, donated collections to the Swiss Musée d’ethnographie de Neuchâtel (MEN) in two different instances, in the 1920s and 1930s. On both occasions, they asked for a counterpart: A dalmatic, stolen in Asuncion in 1868 and later donated to the MEN, and an Iron-Age axe, from the director of the Neuchatel Museum for Archaeology, were sent to Argentina and Paraguay.
An Armadillo of the Salvador Collection
The armadillo has long been an iconic and exotic animal in Europe, particularly after the first specimens were brought. Their carapaces were common in early modern European pharmacies and collections, and live armadillos were often traded for gardens, kitchens, and zoos. By the 19th century, they had become emblematic of the Americas' fauna.
An Armadillo from Le Mans Museum
by Irina Podgorny & Nathalie Richard
This dried specimen of Tolypeutes matacus, or three-banded armadillo, is kept in the storage facilities of the Musée in Le Mans. Native to central South America, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed it as a threatened species. Our specimen comes first from Brazil and second from the natural science cabinet of Louis Maulny (1758-1815), a naturalist from Le Mans (France) who may have bought it from a natural history dealer or exchanged it with another naturalist.
An Armadillo from BASA Museum
by Alex Hohnhorst
In the cold deposit of the BASA museum in Bonn, we found a taxidermized Southern three-banded armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus). It measures only 21 centimeters in length but this small armadillo is emblematic for the dynamic history of Paraguay in the 20th century. During its lifetime, the armadillo roamed free through the warm, dusty woodlands of the Paraguayan Gran Chaco until it was captured in the early 1960s by the Mennonite teacher and hunter Jakob Unger.
A Glyptodon in Turin: The Argentinian Giant
The actors connected with the exhumation of the skeletons in Buenos Aires were the Genovese Nicola Descalzi (1801-1857) and the Neapolitan Pietro de Angelis (1784-1859). Since the 1820s they had both lived in Buenos Aires, where they tried to become providers of data, maps, artefacts, and museum specimens for European collectors and collections. Descalzi exhumed and arranged the bones of an extinct mammal that he called Mulita elefantina, the specimen that arrived in Turin in 1852.
02
The Trade in Antiquities, Bones & Casts
The Trade in Antiquities, Bones & Casts
The trade section deals with the interrelationship between the commercial and scientific value of specimens. The demand for fossil bones and antiquities triggered new activities linked to their replication. Fakes, casts, and duplicates, or fanciful reproductions, circulated in parallel with their originals. While casts and duplicates originated mostly from museum workshops, fakes and forgeries invaded the market and were introduced into the collections. Today, those objects are kept in the museums, and there is a growing interest in analysing and tracing the fakes kept all over the world.
Spanish Pomona
In 2013, a hundred fruit models were discovered at the country house owned by the Salvador family, apothecaries who kept for six generations a cabinet of curiosities in Barcelona. José Salvador y Soler (1804-1855), the last of the saga, produced about five hundred pieces in various materials as samples for Pomona española, a project which would be composed of the descriptions, plates and models of all the fruits that were grown in Spain.
Skeleton Botet
The Italo-Argentinean paleontologist Florentino Ameghino (1853-1911) is often remembered for his proposal of current South America as the cradle of humankind. Among the evidence he used, there was the skeleton of the “Man of the Samborombón”, which he classified as Tertiary, arguing for early human existence in South America.
Forgeries of the Horn Age
by Géraldine Delley & Marc-Antoine Kaeser
Made of bone and stag antlers, the ‘âge de la Corne’ (Horn Age) objects have been produced around 1882 by an amateur named Gottlieb Kaiser. According to his account, they were found in levels below the Neolithic layers, on the palafittic sites of Forel and Cortaillod (Lake Neuchâtel).
Forelimb Sloth
The forelimb of the specimen of Glossotherium robustum shown here, was carefully photographed to digitally reconstruct it through photogrammetry.
A Bust of the Neanderthal Man
by Marina Laura Sardi, Nathalie Richard & Irina Podgorny
This plaster sculpture (height of 54.6 cm) is part of the anthropology collection of the La Plata Museum (Argentina). It was inspired by the fossil skull fragment discovered in 1856 in the Neander Valley (Germany). This bust is the first known 3 D reconstruction of the Neanderthal man. It was created in the 1880s by sculptor Guernsey Mitchel, following the instructions of the US natural science dealer Henry Ward.
An Armadillo of La Plata Museum
This armadillo belongs to the species Dasypus hybridus, popularly known as 'mulita'. It is native to South America and is found in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil. This dried specimen entered the zoological collections of the La Plata Museum in 1907, along with many others from the embryological research of Miguel Fernández, a scientist at this museum.
Catalogue from Ward’s Natural Science Establishment
The American Henry Augustus Ward (1834-1906) was the most prominent natural history dealer in the United States, even when he went bankrupt in 1874 and 1884, the mass of material offered by Ward’s Natural Science Establishment surpassed the holdings of Fred L. Jencks of Providence, A. E. Foote of Philadelphia, J. M. Southwick of Providence/Boston Wallace and Hollingsworth of New York, dealers in minerals, shells, fossils, skins, and a variety of natural history specimens throughout the world.
Mummified Person from Nazca
In 2006, the BASA Museum and the Egyptian Museum of the University of Bonn received on permanent loan a collection of objects from the Americas and Egypt, including a mummified person from the Nazca plain. Until then, this collection had been part of the exhibition area of a provincial ethnological-archaeological museum in the Lower Rhine region, opened in 1989. At the time of the collection's arrival, the provincial museum was undergoing reconstruction.
Mammoth Tusk from the Neckar Basin
by Stefanie Gänger & Christian Stenz
In the nineteenth century, numerous quarries were opened along the Neckar basin and the river was increasingly canalized. In this process, miners, engineers and curious residents came across fossilized remains of animals from a bygone past. Among these remains were the bones and teeth of a huge mammal: the mammoth.
Copy of a Central Mexican Figure
The original statuette of this small-format figure comes from central Mexico and is most likely of Aztec origin. It is made from greenstone with inlays of what might be Koralle’s spondylus. The figure shows Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, the "Lord of the Dawn", representing Venus as the morning star, one of the representations of Quetzalcoatl, a creator god.
Asuncion's Dalmatic and François Machon
François Machon, a Swiss medical doctor, and his son Roger Machon, donated collections to the Swiss Musée d’ethnographie de Neuchâtel (MEN) in two different instances, in the 1920s and 1930s. On both occasions, they asked for a counterpart: A dalmatic, stolen in Asuncion in 1868 and later donated to the MEN, and an Iron-Age axe, from the director of the Neuchatel Museum for Archaeology, were sent to Argentina and Paraguay.
A Glyptodon in Turin: The Argentinian Giant
The actors connected with the exhumation of the skeletons in Buenos Aires were the Genovese Nicola Descalzi (1801-1857) and the Neapolitan Pietro de Angelis (1784-1859). Since the 1820s they had both lived in Buenos Aires, where they tried to become providers of data, maps, artefacts, and museum specimens for European collectors and collections. Descalzi exhumed and arranged the bones of an extinct mammal that he called Mulita elefantina, the specimen that arrived in Turin in 1852.
03
Preparing, Ordering & Classifying
Preparing, Ordering & Classifying
Preparing, mounting, naming, ordering and classifying are important tasks to organize collections. This section focuses on the many operations which gave meaning to specimens in the museums. These operations led to the development of new crafts and professions related to plant and seed preservation for long-distance travels, acclimatization techniques, taxidermy, mounting of large fossil animals, etc.
Tattoo Drawing from Alessandria (Piedmont, Italy)
by Cristina Cilli & Silvano Montaldo
The case study refers to Italy, in particular to the Tattoo Drawing Collection of the “Cesare Lombroso” Museum of Criminal Anthropology, University of Turin. Cesare Lombroso (Verona, 1835 – Turin, 1909), psychiatrist and anthropologist, is considered the father of modern criminology. In Turin, Lombroso founded a new discipline, Criminal Anthropology, asserting that criminals possess distinctive somatic traits.
Corals in the Herbarium
The classification of coral has long been uncertain, shifting between its consideration as either mineral, plant, or animal. This uncertainty reflects the evolving nature of scientific study, shaped by observation and changing classification systems.
Skeletons of Glypotodontinae: a Subfamily of Extinct Mammals from South America
The Glyptodon is a huge four-legged mammal with an armadillo-like carapace that lived and went extinct in South America, and which had been named by the English anatomist Richard Owen in 1839. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was one of the most wanted museum specimens. Along with Megatherium, both were used to depict the life in South American tertiary.
South American Potato Weevil
by Adriana E. Marvaldi & María Guadalupe del Río
South American potato weevil. Collection of beetles, insects of the Order Coleoptera, has always been an appreciated activity of both amateur and scientist collectors. Beetle collecting illustrates many different types of moves and dimensions, like natural history, evolution, cultural history, and ethnology.
Seleton Botet
The Italo-Argentinean paleontologist Florentino Ameghino (1853-1911) is often remembered for his proposal of current South America as the cradle of humankind. Among the evidence he used, there was the skeleton of the “Man of the Samborombón”, which he classified as Tertiary, arguing for early human existence in South America.
Lichens in the Herbarium Monguillon
E. Monguillon's herbarium (1865-1940) in the Musée Vert, Le Mans, holds 17.150 moss and lichen specimens collected across Europe from 1811 to 1939. Formed through exchanges with over a hundred botanists, this collection reveals a significant network of regional scientific exchange.
Forgeries of the Horn Age
Made of bone and stag antlers, the ‘âge de la Corne’ (Horn Age) objects have been produced around 1882 by an amateur named Gottlieb Kaiser. According to his account, they were found in levels below the Neolithic layers, on the palafittic sites of Forel and Cortaillod (Lake Neuchâtel).
Spanish Pomona
In 2013, a hundred fruit models were discovered at the country house owned by the Salvador family, apothecaries who kept for six generations a cabinet of curiosities in Barcelona. José Salvador y Soler (1804-1855), the last of the saga, produced about five hundred pieces in various materials as samples for Pomona española, a project which would be composed of the descriptions, plates and models of all the fruits that were grown in Spain.
Forelimb Sloth
The forelimb of the specimen of Glossotherium robustum shown here, was carefully photographed to digitally reconstruct it through photogrammetry.
Mammoth Tusk from the Neckar Basin
by Stefanie Gänger & Christian Stenz
In the nineteenth century, numerous quarries were opened along the Neckar basin and the river was increasingly canalized. In this process, miners, engineers and curious residents came across fossilized remains of animals from a bygone past. Among these remains were the bones and teeth of a huge mammal: the mammoth.
An Armadillo of La Plata Museum
This armadillo belongs to the species Dasypus hybridus, popularly known as 'mulita'. It is native to South America and is found in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil. This dried specimen entered the zoological collections of the La Plata Museum in 1907, along with many others from the embryological research of Miguel Fernández, a scientist at this museum.
An Armadillo from Le Mans Museum
by Irina Podgorny & Nathalie Richard
This dried specimen of Tolypeutes matacus, or three-banded armadillo, is kept in the storage facilities of the Musée in Le Mans. Native to central South America, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed it as a threatened species. Our specimen comes first from Brazil and second from the natural science cabinet of Louis Maulny (1758-1815), a naturalist from Le Mans (France) who may have bought it from a natural history dealer or exchanged it with another naturalist.
A Glyptodon in Turin: The Argentinian Giant
The actors connected with the exhumation of the skeletons in Buenos Aires were the Genovese Nicola Descalzi (1801-1857) and the Neapolitan Pietro de Angelis (1784-1859). Since the 1820s they had both lived in Buenos Aires, where they tried to become providers of data, maps, artefacts, and museum specimens for European collectors and collections. Descalzi exhumed and arranged the bones of an extinct mammal that he called Mulita elefantina, the specimen that arrived in Turin in 1852.
04
Applied Sciences & Collections
Applied Sciences & Collections
Many natural history collections result from economic activities in local, national, and imperial contexts. Pharmacy, horticulture, commerce, and industry generated collections either as an advertising device or in relation to knowledge and economic innovation. Models of fruits were produced as part of the forgotten discipline of pomology; botanical, zoological, and mineralogical collections were part of the teaching and practice of pharmacy; ethnographic artifacts were displayed in relation to commercial geography.
An Armadillo of the Salvador Collection
The armadillo has long been an iconic and exotic animal in Europe, particularly after the first specimens were brought. Their carapaces were common in early modern European pharmacies and collections, and live armadillos were often traded for gardens, kitchens, and zoos. By the 19th century, they had become emblematic of the Americas' fauna.
South American Potato Weevil
by Adriana E. Marvaldi & María Guadalupe del Río
South American potato weevil. Collection of beetles, insects of the Order Coleoptera, has always been an appreciated activity of both amateur and scientist collectors. Beetle collecting illustrates many different types of moves and dimensions, like natural history, evolution, cultural history, and ethnology.
Spanish Pomona
In 2013, a hundred fruit models were discovered at the country house owned by the Salvador family, apothecaries who kept for six generations a cabinet of curiosities in Barcelona. José Salvador y Soler (1804-1855), the last of the saga, produced about five hundred pieces in various materials as samples for Pomona española, a project which would be composed of the descriptions, plates and models of all the fruits that were grown in Spain.
Tattoo Drawing from Alessandria (Piedmont, Italy)
The case study refers to Italy, in particular to the Tattoo Drawing Collection of the “Cesare Lombroso” Museum of Criminal Anthropology, University of Turin. Cesare Lombroso (Verona, 1835 – Turin, 1909), psychiatrist and anthropologist, is considered the father of modern criminology. In Turin, Lombroso founded a new discipline, Criminal Anthropology, asserting that criminals possess distinctive somatic traits.05
Showcase Special: Armadillos & Glyptodons
An Armadillo from BASA Museum
by Alex Hohnhorst
In the cold deposit of the BASA museum in Bonn, we found a taxidermized Southern three-banded armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus). It measures only 21 centimeters in length but this small armadillo is emblematic for the dynamic history of Paraguay in the 20th century. During its lifetime, the armadillo roamed free through the warm, dusty woodlands of the Paraguayan Gran Chaco until it was captured in the early 1960s by the Mennonite teacher and hunter Jakob Unger.
An Armadillo from Le Mans Museum
by Irina Podgorny & Nathalie Richard
This dried specimen of Tolypeutes matacus, or three-banded armadillo, is kept in the storage facilities of the Musée in Le Mans. Native to central South America, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed it as a threatened species. Our specimen comes first from Brazil and second from the natural science cabinet of Louis Maulny (1758-1815), a naturalist from Le Mans (France) who may have bought it from a natural history dealer or exchanged it with another naturalist.
An Armadillo of La Plata Museum
This armadillo belongs to the species Dasypus hybridus, popularly known as 'mulita'. It is native to South America and is found in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil. This dried specimen entered the zoological collections of the La Plata Museum in 1907, along with many others from the embryological research of Miguel Fernández, a scientist at this museum.
An Armadillo of the Salvador Collection
The armadillo has long been an iconic and exotic animal in Europe, particularly after the first specimens were brought. Their carapaces were common in early modern European pharmacies and collections, and live armadillos were often traded for gardens, kitchens, and zoos. By the 19th century, they had become emblematic of the Americas' fauna.
A Glyptodon in Turin: The Argentinian Giant
The actors connected with the exhumation of the skeletons in Buenos Aires were the Genovese Nicola Descalzi (1801-1857) and the Neapolitan Pietro de Angelis (1784-1859). Since the 1820s they had both lived in Buenos Aires, where they tried to become providers of data, maps, artefacts, and museum specimens for European collectors and collections. Descalzi exhumed and arranged the bones of an extinct mammal that he called Mulita elefantina, the specimen that arrived in Turin in 1852.
Skeletons of Glypotodontinae: a Subfamily of Extinct Mammals from South America
The Glyptodon is a huge four-legged mammal with an armadillo-like carapace that lived and went extinct in South America, and which had been named by the English anatomist Richard Owen in 1839. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was one of the most wanted museum specimens. Along with Megatherium, both were used to depict the life in South American tertiary.
06
All Case Studies in Detail
Some of its specific features, such as the hirsute body, frown, red eyes, and teeth reflect what scientists from that period believed the primitive man looked like. Reconstructions of the physical appearance of human ancestors had been common since the 19th century. Frequently created by artists with the assistance of scientists, they exemplify the preconceptions concerning the greater or lesser differences between modern beings and their ancestors.
These reconstructions enabled the wider public to imagine what life was like in the prehistoric times.
This bust was sold at the end of the 19th century by the Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, in Rochester (United States), to the La Plata Museum. In the 19th century, natural science, anthropology and archaeology specimens circulated as casts or models.
Major natural history museums set up their own casting workshops for trading and exchanging with other institutions. Specialized dealers also created and commercialized models and casts to universities, schools and museums to reach a larger audience.
References:
- Paul H. Lambers, Margit Berner & Katrin Kremmler (2022): "From anatomy to palaeo-raciology: Two Neanderthal reconstructions at the NHMW 1924/25", in: Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien, Serie A, volume 123, pp. 33 - 64, <http://verlag.nhm-wien.ac.at/pdfs/123A_033064_Lambers.pdf>.
- Stephanie Moser (1992): "The Visual Language of Archaeology: A Case Study of the Neanderthals", Antiquity, 66: 831–844.
- Stefan Schlager & Ursula Wittwer-Backofen (2013): "Images in Paleoanthropology: Facing Our Ancestors", in: Henke, W., Tattersall, I. (eds): Handbook of Paleoanthropology, Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27800-6_70-1>.
- Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, inc. (1893): Catalogue of Human Skeletons, Anatomical Models, Busts and Masks. 6th ed. Rochester, N.Y.: Ward’s Natural Science Establishment, <https://wardproject.org/items/show/912>.
From the early 1840s, he had been in charge of the museum collections, directed by his brother, the geologist Angelo Sismonda (1807-1878), both active figures in Piedmont's academic scene.
In that occasion, Eugenio Sismonda (1851) reported on a series of bones donated to the Turin Museum by the Savoyard Baron Henri Claude Louis Picolet d'Hermillon (1797-1864), former general consul in Buenos Aires (1835-1848) and, by then, general minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia at the Brazilian Court in Rio de Janeiro.
The bones belonged to two fossil mammal genera endemic to the Americas, firstly Megatherium, established by the French anatomist Georges Cuvier in 1796, and secondly to a giant cingulate, presumably Glyptodon, first described by the British anatomist Richard Owen in 1839.
The actors connected with the exhumation of the skeletons in Buenos Aires were the Genovese Nicola Descalzi (1801-1857) and the Neapolitan Pietro de Angelis (1784-1859). Since the 1820s they had both lived in Buenos Aires, where they tried to become providers of data, maps, artefacts, and museum specimens for European collectors and collections.
Descalzi exhumed and arranged the bones of an extinct mammal that he called Mulita elefantina, the specimen that arrived in Turin in 1852. It was this specimen on which, in 1839, Richard Owen had created the new genus Glyptodon after a sketch and a tooth sent from Buenos Aires.
Sismonda reflected the debates about the anatomy and mode of life of the South American Megafauna in the process of mounting the Megatherium skeleton, an arrangement that was later lost with the bombing of the museum during the Second World War.
The carapace of Glyptodon is today presented at the new location of the Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali of Turin, being in fact the specimen whose tooth Owen received late in the 1830s.
In 1930, German-Russian Mennonites founded the Fernheim colony in Paraguay after having escaped religious persecution in the Soviet Union. The armadillo was specifically prepared in Fernheim for a collector in West Berlin called Walter Hausmann. Hausmann himself never set foot in the Americas, he was a print maker by trade. He set up his own small museum in his family home, featuring artifacts, life and taxidermized animals and exotic plants from his suppliers in Paraguay and Canada. From the 1960s to the 1990s, he maintained correspondence with the Mennonite families Unger and Klassen from Fernheim.
References:
- Paola Canova (2020): "Negotiating Environmental Subjectivities: Charcoal Production and Mennonite-Ayoreo Relations in the Paraguayan Chaco", in: Journal of Mennonite Studies 38, 61-84.
- Walter Hausmann (1962a): "Als das Gürteltier noch keinen Gürtel hatte”, in: Jugendblatt 1962/11, 1-2.
- – (1962b): no title [letter to the editor], in: Mennoblatt 1962/21, 8.
- nacht-depeche / N.N. (1967): "Eine Brücke in den Urwald. Völkerkundler aus Passion", in: nacht-depeche, 28.03.1967, 8.
- Naomi Rattunde (2020): "Donated, Purchased, Inherited, Investigated: Provenance and Potential of New Acquisitions into the BASA Museum", in: Daniel Grana-Behrens / Karoline Noack (eds.): From 'Bronze Rooster' to Ekeko: Impulses toward Ethnological Provenance Research in University Collections and Museums, Bonn: University of Bonn, BASA Museum, 45-58.
The label accompanying the specimen displays the taxonomic debates of the early 19th century: when the armadillo entered the museum's collection, the curator hesitated over the system and the name he should choose, including the French vernacular name ('Apar à trois bandes') and two binomial scientific names in Latin, 'Dasypus tricinctus, Linn' and 'Tolypeutes tricinctus' (Illiger).
A specific armadillo specimen at the Salvador Cabinet, Barcelona illustrates the trade of such specimens. Research has revealed that this specimen, which arrived in Barcelona in the 19th century, was taxidermized in South America using sugarcane. This finding offers valuable insights into the preparation and transport of these animals overseas.
In 1909, he proved the polyembryony phenomenon in the mulita. This species and the nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) are today the only mammals known to have "specific polyembryony": the fertilized ovum always gives rise to twins. By 1900s, this embryological research required a large number of pregnant females in various stage of development and Fernández was able to obtain many in delicatessen stores. At that time, the mulita was a highly priced meal and thousands of them were shipped from the countryside to the Buenos Aires and La Plata markets. Its gastronomic importance made it possible to assemble a large research collection.
It entered the public collection of Le Mans Museum in 1816, when Maulny's cabinet was acquired by the department of Sarthe. Their carapaces and tails were used in traditional medicine and for making musical instruments, baskets, and other decorative items, sold globally as 'curiosities' in the early 20th century. Additionally, subjects of scientific research on mammalian evolution, polyembryony, and heredity, Today, they are displayed in natural history, ethnographic, and folk-art collections.
References:
- Julianna Morcelli (2024): Un museo en la trastienda. Ciencia, comercio y naturaleza americana en la farmacia Salvador (Barcelona, 1669-1726). Rosario, Prohistoria. Ediciones Coleccion Historia de la ciencia, 12.
- Irina Podgorny (2012): "Los conejos de calabaza", en: El mundo atlántico y la modernidad americana, México: RGM, pp. 222 – 237.
- Egmond Forike & Peter Mason (1994): "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.
These exchanges between a minor collector and a peripheral museum help us to understand how the value of artifacts is negotiated, what makes the scientific reputation and moral respectability of a collector and what were the ethics of collecting (and donation) practices in small museums of the early 20th century. Looking into cases like this one helps us to understand both how these exchanges of artifacts had been perceived in South America and what has been the fate of these objects after they left Europe.
References:
Among other, he offered mounted skeletons of South American fossil mammals, such as the mighty Glyptodon and Megatherium. Ward’s models for these mammals changed along the years, the first were based on the Royal College of Surgeons specimens, the later ones, on the specimen from Paris. Establishments of this kind proliferated in London, Paris, Hamburg and many other European cities.
Paris had, among other, the Comptoir Central d’Histoire Naturelles and the Maison Émile Deyrolle, which runs until very recently. The oldest establishment of this kind still in business is located in Bonn: Dr. F. Krantz, Rheinisches Mineralien-Kontor, founded in 1833 and specialized in minerals and geological materials.
References:
- Sally Gregory Kohlstedt (1980): "Henry A. Ward: the Merchant Naturalist and American Museum Development", in: Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History (now the Archives of Natural History) 9, 647-661.
- José Antonio Pérez Gollán (1995): "Mr. Ward en Buenos Aires", in: Ciencia Hoy, Vol. 5, Nº. 28, 52-58.
- Susan Sheets-Pyendon 1985: "Henry Augustus Ward And Museum Development in the Hinterland", in: University of Rochester library bulletin 38, 38–59.
- The Ward Project: <https://wardproject.org/>, accessed March 22, 2025.
It is decorated with several symbols, including feathers for Quetzalcoatl and a radiated sun disk on the reverse with the sun god in opposition to Venus.
The original object was in the hands of Philipp Hainhofer (1578-1647), a German merchant and art agent from Augsburg, before it became part of the Kunstkammer of the Dukes of Württemberg, founded by Duke Friedrich I (1593-1608).
The original object’s journey from Mesoamerica to Europe initially ended in a treasure chamber, where it became something exotic, while it became subsequently part of the newly founded Landesmuseum Württemberg in Stuttgart, where it is now part of the collection on European history.
It was only through a faithful copy of the original statuette, i.e. through a secondary object and a secondary movement, that the actual object could 'virtually' become part of a collection related to America, the BASA Museum of the University.
In the early 1720s, Peyssonnel's research confirmed coral’s status as an animal, challenging the earlier belief that it was a "stone plant" (petrofiton). However, his findings were dismissed by the French Academy of Sciences until the 1740s.
Collections such as the Salvador Cabinet in Barcelona, Maulny’s collection in Le Mans, and the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris document this evolving perception of coral. It appeared in cabinets of curiosities, medical inventories, herbarium sheets, jewelry, tribute portraits, and paintings, illustrating its diverse significance across different fields.
References:
- Kristen Block (2019): "Jean-André Peyssonnel: un homme des Lumières, famille et esclavage dans la Guadeloupe du XVIIIe siècle", in: Bulletin de la Société d'Histoire de la Guadeloupe 183, 39–62, <https://doi.org/10.7202/1064936ar>.
- José Pardo-Tomás (2014): Salvadoriana. El gabinete de curiosidades de Barcelona, Barcelona, Ajuntament.
- Jean Antoine Peyssonel (1722): «Dissertation sur le corail, où l’on expose que ce corps marin, qu’on a cru jusque aujourd’hui plante pierreuse, est formé par une quantité de petits poissons, espèces d’orties nichées dans la croûte qui l’environne», [Ms 1260], <https://calames.abes.fr/pub/mnhn.aspx#details?id=PA2012336>.
The Uruguayan physician Teodoro Vilardebó attended the school of medicine in Paris in the first half of the 1800s. In 1857, he died in Montevideo during a bout of yellow fever. As a fossil merchant, he sold collections of fossil mammals from South America to the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. Among them, the forelimb of the specimen of Glossotherium robustum shown here, was carefully photographed to digitally reconstruct it through photogrammetry.
For Kaiser, these pieces testified to the existence of a new archaeological period that he named the 'Horn Age'. The variety of forms, the exuberance of decoration and the abundance of finds raised doubts among the archaeological community. In fact, the stakes were high. The new period to which these pieces testified, called into question the established state of knowledge. They undermined the credibility of Swiss lake-dwelling excavations and called into question the authenticity of the reference collections held in museums. Finally, like many other such controversies, this forgery case contributed to the development of the discipline. Firstly, the production of forgeries requires specific skills including a sense of observation and a mastery of technical gestures. Moreover, to be plausible, forgers have to align themselves with the expectations of science and try to respond to an epistemological demand.
Forgeries have also contributed to the development of analysis methods and techniques intended to unmask them, as well as to the establishment of new intellectual authorities – like commissions of experts – legitimised to provide proof by establishing reliability criteria for distinguishing between what is 'true' and what is 'false'.
References:
- Marc-Antoine Kaeser (dir.) (2011): L'Âge du Faux: L'authenticité en archéologie, Hauterive : Laténium.
- Marc-Antoine Kaeser (2024): «Les faux et les fraudes en archéologie», in: V. Negri & N. Schlanger (dirs.): 1941: Genèse et développement d’une loi sur l’archéologie, Paris: La Documentation française, 141-148 ; 868-873.
- Cloé Lehmann (2018): «L'âge de la Corne (1882-1887): analyse historique, épistémologique et archéologique d'un production suisse de falsifications lacustres », Artefact 6 31/05/2018, <http://journals.openedition.org/artefact/826>; DOI: <https://doi.org/10.4000/artefact.826, 77-91>.
Our research found 22 Navàs specimens in Monguillon's herbarium, labeled as exsiccata from Colegio del Salvador-Zaragoza. Notably, two duplicate specimens from the same collection of the lichen species Endocarpon miniatum were found with identical labels.
These findings underscore the importance of local herbaria by amateur botanists like Monguillon and Navàs, which provide valuable insights into historical botanical specimen and knowledge exchanges in Europe.
Some years later, in 1848, the documents mention again the finding of a mammoth not far from the university and a request for financial resources to commence a larger excavation.
It remains an open task to reassemble the historical records and the remaining objects to shed light on the history of the university collections and the trajectories of the various objects.
Its director had enlarged the collection of his father, who had gathered objects from Libya and Egypt in the 1930s. From the 1960s to the 1980s, he, the son, collected objects from the Americas, particularly Mexico and Peru, not least because of his many years of residence in Mexico. Through his activities as a tour operator, he met the German mathematician and researcher of the Nazca Lines, Maria Reiche, through whom he acquired the mummified person. When he was appointed director of the provincial museum in 1986, the entire collection of father and son was no longer in private hands, but belonged to the municipality that ran the museum.
In fact, this complete skeleton found in 1882 in Arroyo de Samborombón, Argentina, sparked scientific controversy due to its age and origin. Despite intense debate, there was insufficient proof of its old age. The remains were shipped to the city of Valencia, house of a huge collection of South American Pleistocene mammals since 1889.
Boscá defended the skeleton’s authenticity and antiquity. However, studies in the 1990s dated the skeleton to about 8000 years ago, in the Quaternary period.
References:
The Museo de La Plata has quite a few of these mammals on display, which are identified as being from different subspecies of the subfamily Glyptodontinae.
Glyptodon's skeletons are an interesting case to understand the cultural elements that define the material world of Argentine museums and the material culture of elementary education.
The solidity of the shell was created by museum displays and book depictions, and created a companion for the Argentines of the twentieth century, who accepted that the Glyptodon's shell was the first home of local prehistoric humans.
The following example illustrates the type specimens of a weevil species described by the French naturalist Alphonse Hustache, in 1933. The species Premnotrypes vorax is of great economic importance as a potato pest. Hustache described it originally from specimens reared from infested potatoes from South America and that arrived by commerce to Europe, currently deposited in the Hustache’s collection at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) in Paris. They were later studied by the Chilean entomologist G. Kuschel during a visit to European Museums, and by several other international researchers.
References:
- EPPO (2025): "Premnotrypes vorax. EPPO datasheets on pests recommended for regulation", <https://gd.eppo.int>, (accessed 2025-02-19).
- Alphonse Hustache (1933): "Deux nouveaux curculionides déprédateurs", in: Bulletin Du Muséum 5, pp. 376–380.
- Guillermo Kuschel (1955): "Nuevas sinonimias y anotaciones sobre Curculionoidea (Coleoptera)", in: Revista Chilena de Entomología 4, pp. 161-312.
José Salvador y Soler (1804-1855), the last of the saga, produced about five hundred pieces in various materials as samples for Pomona española, a project which would be composed of the descriptions, plates and models of all the fruits that were grown in Spain.
Now, after a careful restoration, the pieces have become part of the collections of the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona. Although produced in different contexts and periods, these collections shared an educational purpose and highlight the significance of fruit cultivation and the agronomic education in 19th century.
References:
- José Pardo-Tomás (2014): Salvadoriana. El gabinete de curiosidades de Barcelona, Barcelona, Ajuntament.
- Marta Pérez, Olga Muñoz, Eulàlia Garcia-Franquesa (2016): "Conservación-restauración de modelos botánicos de frutas del Gabinete Salvador", in: Ge-conservación 9, 83-95.
- Xavier Ulled Bertran (2024): Entre la curiosidad y la utilidad. Colecciones y públicos en la Barcelona de José Salvador y Soler, Rosario, prohistoria Ediciones.
The panel presented hear shows either a real person (Giovanni Mullé) or can be a palimpsest of tattoos of different people. It's commonplace to be an emblematic object of criminologists’ discovery of tattooing. It was exhibited for the first time in Rome in 1885, at the occasion of the first congress of Criminal Anthropology. Secondly it was sent to Paris, for the Universal Exhibition of 1889, into the anthropology section.
This document represents a double temporal dimension (the life of the French man who’s tattoos are portrayed and the research time of Lombroso) as well as two types of movements (the trips in Africa and in Martinique and the movements of his tattoos portrait in Rome and in Paris).
References:
- Cesare Lombroso (1887): L’homme criminel. Étude anthropologique et médico-légale, Félix Alcan – Bocca Fréres: Paris – Turin.
- Cesare Lombroso (1890): "Les progrès récents de l’Anthropologie Criminelle", in: Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie, XIII, I, June 1890, pp. 102-108.
- Cesare Lombroso (1894): Les palimpsestes des prisons, A. Storck – G. Masson: Lyon – Paris.
Eine virtuelle Ausstellung von
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101007579.
The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the SciCoMove consortium and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union.
Team
Simon Hirzel (BASA Museum)
Daniel Grana Behrens (BASA Museum)
Nathalie Richard (Le Mans University, TEMOS CNRS UMR 9016)
Irina Podgorny (Museo de La Plata / CONICET)
Impressum
BASA Museum (Bonn Collection of the Americas), University of Bonn
Oxfordstraße 15, 53111 Bonn, Germany
Prof. Dr. Karoline Noack
Dr. Daniel Grana-Behrens
+49 (0)228 / 73-5737
basa [at] uni-bonn.de
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