Documentation, research, conservation, restitution and exhibition of human remains

collections at university museums in Argentina.

The case of the Museo Etnográfico Juan B Ambrosetti in Buenos Aires

By Anne Gustavsson

May 2008

Supervisor: Adriana Muñoz

Master´s Dissertation in International Museum Studies

Museion
Gothenburg University
ABSTRACT
In this dissertation we discuss and analyze the development of the
management of human remains collections at the Museo Etnográfico J.B. Ambrosetti
(MEA), one of the university museums with the largest human remains collections in
Argentina. This has been achieved by carrying out semi structured interviews with
people who have or are working with human remains collections or collections
management and by consulting publications and unpublished documents such as annual
reports, collections management projects, inventory lists and catalogues. The point of
this research is also to contextualize the situation at the MEA by discussing the case of
human remains at the Museo de Ciencias Naturales de La Plata (MCNLP) and the local
debate and praxis concerning indigenous human remains and heritage management. A
basic description of the human remains collections which have been entered into the
inventory of the Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti (MEA), with a special focus on the
first ones ever entering the museum, is presented to get an understanding of how the
museum related to human remains during the formation of its collections. This study
suggests that there has existed a resistance to perceive human remains collections as
sensitive heritage or a public good which is in need of a systematic register and that
these type of collections have historically held little value for the institution.

Keywords: human remains collections, ethics, collections management, history of collecting,

Museo Etnográfico Juan B. Ambrosetti

2
Table of content

ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................5
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES........................................................................................................6
METHOD...................................................................................................................................7
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK.............................................................................................9
Ethnographic and Natural History museums: a colonial legacy...................................................9
Why the Museo Etnografico Juan B. Ambrosetti?.......................................................................13
Terminology......................................................................................................................................16
A) DEBATE AND PRAXIS OUTSIDE ARGENTINA..........................................................18
1) Museum collections, Archaeology and Ethics: an international debate.................................18
i) The reburial issue and the World Archaeology Congress........................................................18
ii) The institutions, organizations and professionals respond......................................................19
2) Claiming and owning a heritage: materializing discourse.......................................................22
i) Historical cases of repatriation of human remains....................................................................22
ii) Consultation and shared Management......................................................................................24
iii) Summarizing the main issues....................................................................................................25
B) DEBATE AND PRACTICE IN ARGENTINA..................................................................27
1) Attempts to save a national heritage..........................................................................................27
i) The government and academics alert: collections are in poor conditions...............................27
ii) Solutions........................................................................................................................................28
iii) Resistance to claims from non-specialists.................................................................................28
2) The recognition of indigenous rights..........................................................................................29
i) Pre existence and the return of identified indigenous chiefs....................................................30
ii) The Llullaillaco mummies and the “Declaración de Rio Cuarto”............................................31
iii) A new policy at the Museo de Ciencias Naturales in La Plata regarding American human
remains..............................................................................................................................................32
iv) Declaration at the Congreso Nacional de Antropología Biologica........................................33
C) COLLECTIONS AT THE MUSEO ETNOGRAFICO J. B. AMBROSETTI..................33
1) Introducing the collections at the MEA.....................................................................................34
2) The development of Collections Management..........................................................................35
i) From restoration to preventive conservation.............................................................................35
ii) Current collections management at the human remains storage............................................37
iii) Exploring the catalogues............................................................................................................39
iv) To revalue a collection...............................................................................................................43

3
 3) Human remains collections: a basic description.......................................................................45
i) Size, Origin and Collectors..........................................................................................................46
ii) The first human remains at the MEA........................................................................................48
iii) The repatriation of the Maori Head from the Ethnography Section.....................................56
CONCLUSIONS......................................................................................................................57
i) Many obstacles in the care of human remains collections at the MEA...................................57
ii) What kind of heritage is human remains?................................................................................58
Acknowledgements...................................................................................................................59
References................................................................................................................................60
Published sources:............................................................................................................................60
Internet sources:...............................................................................................................................63
Unpublished sources:.......................................................................................................................64

4
INTRODUCTION

My first interest in human remains collections developed in the beginning of 2007, during the
module “Material Culture and Collecting” of the Master´s programme in International
Museum Studies at Gothenburg University, when a group of students, including myself, was
given the task to document, store and later exhibit an unidentified cranium stored at the
Naturhistoriska museet in Gothenburg. While in Argentina, during my work placement at the
Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti between September and December 2007, I became
interested in understanding how human remains collections were managed in Argentina.
Fortunately, between February and April 2008, I got the opportunity to participate in the
inventory and rearrangement project which was being carried out in the human remains
deposit since the beginning of 2007. My experience at the deposit and my access to the
original catalogues of the museum have made it possible to write this thesis.

5
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

This study has two aims. The first one involves discussing and analyzing the development of
the management of human remains collections at the Museo Etnográfico J.B. Ambrosetti
(MEA), one of the university museums with largest indigenous human remains collections in
Argentina, in order to gain insight into how it is positioning itself in the international debate
concerning the documentation, conservation, restitution and exhibition of indigenous human
remains. Some key questions which have guided the research are: has this type of
management suffered any changes recently? If so when, what and why? Although
international recommendations and standards will be stated, the point of this research is to
attempt to present the local point of view and discuss the current situation by taking into
account the situation at the Museo de Ciencias Naturales de La Plata (MCNLP) and the local
development of the debate and praxis concerning indigenous human remains and
archaeological heritage management. In this fashion, the research aspires to contribute to an
international debate with a local perspective. The second aim is to make a basic description of
the human remains collections which have been entered into the inventory of the Museo
Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti (MEA) with a special focus on the first ones entering the
museum, since such a document doesn’t exist to my knowledge. Hopefully this will contribute
to the ongoing revalorization of the collections stored at the human remains storage of this
museum.

6
METHOD

Part of this study involves rescuing the voice, opinions and experience of museum
professionals who have worked with human remains collections at the MEA and using these
together with documents to understand current and past collections management at the
museum.

The object of study is the development of various museum practices related to

collections, which means that different sources of information will be needed. To obtain an
understanding of current issues, semi-structured interviews with museum staff which have
managed or are managing human remains at the MEA were carried out. Documents such as
annual reports, collections management policies, inventory lists, catalogues and project
presentations were used to compliment the testimonies.
A reconstruction of the history of the collections and a documentation of how
the collections were managed since the creation of the two museums surpasses the objectives
of this research. What will be attempted in this study is to describe moments in which major
changes in the storages and collections were undertaken which help explain the current
conditions of the collections. The same sources will be used to make a basic description of the
human remains collections, which will hopefully serve as a tool for future management of
these particular collections.
In order to contextualize the major moments of changes and major occurrences
which are identified, it is important to take into account the international debate and examples
of ethical collections management as well as the development in Argentina of guidelines and
legislation on heritage management, of indigenous organizations and of Anthropology as a
discipline to be able to discuss to which extent these have been factors which have influenced
the way human remains have been and are documented, conserved, exhibited, repatriated,
researched upon, valued and stored in this country.
As all research this one also has its limits in that it only covers the development
of the management of human remains and not other so called sensitive material such as
funerary objects. The interviews carried out attempt to illustrate the museum’s position in the
debate. It is of primordial importance to, in the near future, follow up on this research and
document the opinions and testimonies of representatives from indigenous communities in
Argentina in order to obtain from primary sources their stance and points of view. In this

7
study the activity, point of view and participation of indigenous communities will be
contemplated but only by turning to existing literature on the matter.

8
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Ethnographic and Natural History museums: a colonial legacy

Argentina declared independence from Spain in 1816 and ratified its first
Constitution in 1853 but never achieved cultural independence from Spain and European
ideals. As the Argentine nation was being consolidated at the end of the 19 th century,
European positivistic science and education was the model to follow and museums were seen
as the tool to achieve a homogeneous national identity (Perez Gollán 1995). For instance, it
was common in all of South America that departmental keepers formed in Europe often
doubled as natural science professors in the local university (Pyenson and Sheets Pyenson
1999:139).

What starts emerging in the late 19th century are what we can call “colonial”
museums which look to Europe for inspiration and perform a type of internal colonialism as
they perceive as their mission to do the same as European museums: to collect exotica and all
material remains of the exotic and conquested “other”; the indigenous population which was
perceived as being on the verge of extinction. In this sense, the formation of human remains
collections both at European and “colonial” museums far after the end of colonial economical
and political ties reproduce culturally colonial power structures.

In Argentina one can even state that in some cases the newly founded museums
and their collections were the result of the symbolic and physical violence which
accompanied the consolidation of a nation state which neglected in its social contract the
inclusion of the ethnic groups which had lived for thousands of years in the territory. The
national universities and scientific institutions holding collections had a central role in
exploring the national territory (Podgorny 1988). This is especially clear in the case of the
Museo de Ciencias Naturales de La Plata (MCNLP) which was founded in 1888 by Francisco
Moreno who in 1878-9 participated along with the scientific commission in the so called
“Conquest of the dessert”, today seen as a mission sent by the Argentine government to
exterminate the indigenous population in order to incorporate more land and establish national
boarders. Some of the recently killed indigenous resistance leaders were taken to the museum
for their skeletons to be put on display. Some of the ones who survived were taken to the
museum where they performed different services such as making handicrafts to enlarge the
ethnographic collections. When they died their different body parts became part of the

9
Anthropology collections (Politis and Podgorny 1990-92). The human remains taken by
Zeballos from recently made tombs were donated to the museum and entered into the
collections (Zeballos [1878] 1986). In Leihmann Nietsche´s catalogue from the Anthropology
section of the museum the date of death of the individual and sometimes even the name are
stated (Peralta 1997 & Leihmann Nietsche 1910).
There is no direct proof that the Museo Etnográfico J. B. Ambrosetti, which was
founded in 1904, was involved in situations of violence when it was forming its collections.
Nonetheless, since it was an Ethnographic museum, the object of study was necessarily the
prehispanic past and the contemporary “primitive” societies, making it into yet another
scientific institution which followed the European tradition of collecting the “other”, non
European. Since many of the heads of collections and directors were scientist or scholars
formed in Europe1, indicating a clear link between science in the center and in the periphery
(Pyenson and Sheets Pyenson 1999), we need to keep in mind what was happening in the
scientific world both in Europe and in Argentina during the late 19 th century and the early 20th
century when the majority of the human remains collections at the Museo Etnográfico J B
Ambrosetti (MEA) and the Museo de Ciencias Naturales de La Plata (MCNLP) were being
formed.
In Europe the modern museum2 sees its rise in the mid 18 th century and is linked
to a new way of constructing knowledge. In contrast to the cabinets of curiosa, the new point
was “to assemble a collection that would serve as a tool for its collaborative project to reform
knowledge…. This systematic collection aided the construction of a universal taxonomy and
mirrored the order of nature”(Pyenson & Sheets Pyenson 1999:128). This type of logic guided
the classification and collection of objects at modern museums. Nonetheless, it wasn´t until
the 19th century that there was a dramatic expansion of museums, some of which owed their
establishment to an eccentric individual collection, to the great number of objects amassed by

1
The MCNLP´s first Director, Francisco Moreno, seemed to have had a keen preference for German scholars. At
this museum the areas of Natural Sceinces, Geology, Zoology, Anthropology and Mineralogy were respectively
headed by the following Germans: Santiago Roth, Walterio Schiller, Carlos Bruch, Robert Leihmann-Nietsche
and Moises Kantor (Arenas 1991). Robert Leihmann-Nietsche who came to Argentina in 1897, kept his position
at the museum for 33 years while he taught Anthropology at both the University of Buenos Aires and later at the
University of La Plata. In 1930 he went back to Germany (Podgorny 1999). Another example of an influencial
German scholar is Karl Hermann Konrad Burmeister, also known as Germán Burmesiter, who was born in
Stralsund, Prussia and graduated in medicine at the University of GreisfSwald and in Philosophy at the
University of Halle. With the support of his teacher. benefactor and protector, Alexander von Humboldt, he
made his first voyage to South America where he became the Director of what today is called Museo Argentino
de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavía (MACNBR) in Buenos Aires and held it between 1862 and 1892
(Arenas 1991).
2
Such as the British Museum founded in 1759, the Natural History Museum, Stockholm founded in 1739 and
Teyeler´s Museum, Haarlem Netherlands founded in 1788.

10
a geological survey or put together for an exposition. In 1881 the “new museum idea” was
inaugurated with the opening of the new British Museum, which set the example for national
museums across the world with its rich collections and its physical separation between public
exhibits to instruct non-specialists and rooms for the study of collections (Pyenson & Sheet
Pyenson 1999:128).
In Argentina, the first spacious museum which clearly separated exhibits from
research was the monumental MCNLP founded by Francisco P. Moreno in 1884 in the newly
inaugurated city La Plata. With its Greco-roman architectural structure it served as a great
symbol of Western Civilization. Other historically important museums were the Museo
Publico de Buenos Aires3, first founded in 1812, and the MEA, founded in 1904. Even though
considered prestigious research centers, they needed to fight institutionally for space as their
collections grew. At the beginning of their existence, exhibits for the public held an
ambiguous role in the life of these institutions.

The existence of vast collections of human remains today stored at Ethnographic

and Natural History4 museums around the world is due to the fact that during the late 19 th and
early 20th century collecting human bones and measuring live people in the name of
comparative anatomy and the new science which studied the “Natural History of Man” was
encouraged at al levels. During this time period people’s physical appearance such as shape of
head, length of body and hair and eye colour were studied and used to classify people into
categories in order to make an inventory of human diversity.

The studies carried out on live human beings and human remains in Sweden
serve to illustrate the scientific spirit and the importance of comparative anatomy in Europe.
The tradition in question can be traced back to Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) who not only
classified plants and animals but also attempted to classify people in his Systema Naturae.
Later, in the middle of the 19 th century, Anders Retzius (1796-1860), professor in Anatomy at
the Karolinska Institutet, came up with a cranium measurement system, a type of cranium
index. His cranium studies led him to distinguish long skulls from short skulls which further

3
This museum was from the beginning founded by the city in 1812 as the first Natural Science museum in South
America but didn´t have a proper building. Later, in the beginning of the second half of the 19 th century, the
University of Buenos Aires provided the museum with a building and installed a new laboratory, a library and
private department for the director (Arenas 1991).
4
Many Natural History museums have anthropological collections and divisions since at their foundation they
were aspiring to show, within the framework of the dominant ideology at the time, the evolution of all life forms
including man which necessarily meant showing the examples of primitive people which had not evolved as
much as the white europeans. The Museo de Ciencias Naturales in La Plata Argentina was no exception and still
today has this type divisions for its collections (see Trigger 1980).

11
led to the establishment of the human classifications dolichocephalic and brachycephalic
(Ljungström 2002).
The kind of data that was collected for Gustaf Retzius´ survey 5 on the physical
aspects of the Swedish population in the late 19 th century, as well as the great number of
human remains from scientific expeditions, which were deposited in museums throughout
Sweden, sheds some light on the scientific mindset of the time. It was of utter importance to,
in the spirit of nationalism, document and make a physical anthropological map of the
Swedish nation’s population. The processed data led Retzius to conclude that Sweden was a
country that was racially homogeneous and harmonious, meaning that the Swedish population
was considered as a large family with closer blood bonds between each other than with
anyone else6. Although one cannot call Gustav Retzius a race biologist his work was later
used in race biology and racial hygiene7.
Carnese, Cocivolo and Goicochea (1991-92) have divided the development of
Biological Anthropology in Argentina into three periods. The first period, between 1850 and
1920, saw the contribution of Florentino Ameghino to the study of man with a positivistic
project based on evolutionary theory aspiring to establish the antiquity of man in the
Argentine territory. The first Anthropology courses at the University of Buenos Aires in the
beginning of the 20th century concerned biological variability and human races. These were
first taught by Robert Leihmann-Nietsche and then by Felix Outes, who both contributed
significantly to the discipline with their studies on the human remains of ethnic groups such as
Ona, Chiriguano, Choroti, Mataco and Toba (Arenas 1991).
How are museums suppose to deal with their colonial legacy in a new context
of national multiculturalism? As Gala puts it; “The immediate challenge for museums is to
explore the historical background to the relationship between museums and indigenous
5
The results were published in the volume Anthropologia Suecicas in 1902. During 1897 and 1898 Hultkrantz
went to the Northern and Middle part of Sweden to document the length, hair and eye colour and facial shape of
21-year-old boys while Gustav Retzius took on the same task, including cranium measurements, in Southern
Sweden. Retzius encouraged taking measurements from the tip of the chin to the eyebrows and across the
cheekbone so that the facial index could later be calculated.
6
It is most likely that Gustav Retzius had an influence over the establishment of the idea of a Nordic Type.
7
Race biology became a respected and prestigious discipline as worries around the future of the Swedish type
and the results of miscegenation grew and became accepted ideas in Swedish society at the beginning of the 20 th
century. The state even invested money to research further by creating in 1922 the State Institute for Race
Biology in Uppsala with Herman Lundborg as professor and head of the institute. Lundborg´s well known book
"Race biology and racial hygiene" was concerned with miscegenation and was based on his famous study on
how hereditary traits and diseases were passed on in a family in Blekinge (Dahlgren, 2002). The link between
physical anthropology and race biology is described by Ljungström when he states that both shared an interest in
finding correlations between race, social status, diseases and good and bad customs. He further explains that the
difference between the two is that the latter carries a negative message in that it assumed that there is a loss of
racial order which threatens the future (Ljungström, 2002: 393).

12
peoples. This requires museums to address the colonial constructions of what constitutes
“indigenous” along with the associated discourse of control and dispossession” (in Edson
1997:146).One way to explore this issue is to address matters concerning the study and the
ownership of indigenous human remains stored at scientific institutions. The current debate on
ethics in collections management, museums and archaeology is the result of many decades of
debate and conflicting interests between different social groups. The development of the
debate will be described bellow.

Why the Museo Etnografico Juan B. Ambrosetti?

“ ...I will make the MEA into a scientific research center not only open to the students and
the professors from our university but also to all specialists or studious who desire to work
there and take advantage of the collections there stored”8
Juan B. Ambrosetti, Director of MEA, 1905

“The Ethnographic Museum is an institution dedicated to the research, diffusion and

conservation of the historical and anthropological heritage it holds. It bases its activities on
a perspective which takes into account social processes and respect for cultural diversity. It
possesses vast archaeological, ethnographic and bioanthropological collections. Even
though there is a main focus on indigenous populations from the current argentine
territory and from other parts of the American continent, the museum also values objects
which come from other parts of the world.”9
Current Mission statement, 200810

8
“…haré del Museo Etnográfico un centro de investigación cientifica abierto no sólo a los estudiantes y
profesores de la casa, sino tambien a todo los estudiosos y especialistas que deseen trabajar allí y aprovechar las
colecciones en él depositadas”. Cited from Letter to the Dean of the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Dr. Norberto
Pinero from Juan B. Ambrosetti, Buenos Aires, 26th of June 1905 (Archive MEA) [author´s translation]
9
“El Museo Etnográfico es una institución dedicada a la investigación, difusión y conservación del
patrimonio histórico y antropológico, desde la perspectiva de los procesos sociales y el respeto por la
pluralidad cultural. Posee vastas colecciones de arqueología, etnografía y antropología biológica. Aunque
se ha interesado principalmente en las poblaciones aborígenes del actual territorio argentino y de otras
áreas del continente americano, ha valorado también objetos procedentes de diversas partes del mundo.”
[author´s translation]

10
Source: http//etnografico.filo.uba.ar/portalMuseo.html , accessed 10/05/08

13
 The MEA was founded in 1904 when Juan B. Ambrosetti, who was its first
director, received a collection of 16 archaeological objects which were donated by Dr. Carlos
Indalecio Gómez and which came from his ranch in Pampa Grande, province of Salta, North-
western Argentina. It is important to mention that Ambrosetti´s expedition to Pampa Grande
was the first ever to be funded by a Latin-American university (Calvo & Arenas 1988). It was
from the beginning a university museum and still today receives its funding through the
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (FFyL) of the University of Buenos Aires 11.
It was the first museum in Argentina which specialized in archaeology and
anthropology. Since 1903 Ambrosetti was the substitute professor for the course American
Archaeology at the FFyL and saw the chance to use the newly founded museum as a way for
the archaeology students to not only receive the theoretical aspect of the course but also have
the possibility to carry out some practical hands on work on actual archaeological material. So
it was decided that an annual expedition to the Calchaquí region 12 would take place, in which
both professors and students would participate. It would give the students experience in field
work and then once back in Buenos Aires they would analyse the material in laboratories at
the museum.
By looking at its history and the difference between the two mission statements
quoted above, one realizes that there has always been a tension between its role as a scientific
institution with a focus on research and its role as a public institution with a focus on
informing the public about its collections. There has always existed a slight tendency to
prioritize research and its laboratory function rather than educational aspects for a general
public. Still today it is a strong academic centre. Many researchers have their offices in the
building where they work on archaeological material which isn’t part of the museum’s
collections but that is actually on loan from the different provinces where it has been
excavated. Anthropology courses are still held in one of the only temporary exhibition spaces
a few hours every week.
During the past two decades, under the management of José Antonio Pérez
Gollán, the MEA has undergone many changes and is today recognized by museum
professionals as a pioneer in the field. During this time the building has been completely
renovated and preventive conservation has replaced restoration principles when it comes to
collections management. Today the education and general public departments are the ones
11
At the Faculty of Philosophy and Languages it is today possible to study Anthropology with two orientations:
Social Anthropology and Archaeology. For further literature on the history of Anthropology and Archaeology in
Argentina see Fernandez, J (1982) and Ramundo, P. S. (2006)
12
The region covers the provinces of Tucumán, Salta and parts of Catamarca in North western Argentina

14
with most personnel and the newest computers. Following contemporary trends in
Museology, interdisciplinary teams have dealt with the exhibition process. According to staff
all has been achieved with a minimal budget.
The most important document produced to understand the current organizational
structure and exhibitions is the strategic plan which was presented in 1988 by José Antonio
Pérez Gollán and Marta Dujovne and then the evaluation which was made 8 years later (Perez
Gollán & Dujovne 1988, Perez Gollán & Dujovne 1996). One of the main goals during the
1990´s was to make a complete inventory of all the collections to afterwards work on
conservation issues in order to assure the preservation of the heritage. As the report pointed
out these were viewed as two important steps which were fundamental to achieve the
museum’s larger purpose: to be accessible and interesting to a larger public.
A workshop organized together with experts from the Smithsonian Institution
made it possible to train staff in new Museology and Museography techniques and to make
exhibitions more visitor oriented. Today there is a group of guides who welcome the visitors
as they enter and are available for questions both upstairs, where one can visit the permanent
exhibition “De la Puna al Chaco”, which explains social processes in prehispanic north
western Argentina and bordering countries, and downstairs where there exists three
permanent exhibitions: “Entre el exotismo y el progreso” ( Between Exoticism and Progress)
about why collecting and rescuing the exotic in the name of Progress was so important in the
beginning of the 20th century, “En el confín del mundo” (At the end of the world) about the
aboriginal groups which lived in Tierra del Fuego and how they were perceived by European
explorers and missionaries, and finally “Mas allá de la Frontera” (Beyond the frontier) about
the aboriginal groups which lived in the Pampa and Patagonian region in the 19th century.13
An interesting collections access project is being carried out which will in the
future allow public access to the Ethnographic deposit. A total refurbishment has already been
completed. There are only a few minor details to be adjusted before making it into an open
storage which can be visited by the museum´s public.
As seen above, many aspects of the museum’s exhibition and storage spaces
have been changed. Nonetheless, it is interesting that little has been done in terms of
expressing the current situation of indigenous population in Argentina and no contact seems

13
Guided tours with different themes are offered every weekend at 4 pm and school classes are received every
morning of the week during the scholar year. Visitor numbers are still on the rise. From October 2006 to October
2007, the museum has received 15 000 visitors without counting school classes, which is about 15 percent more
than 2005-2006.

15
to have been established between the museum and the originating communities of the
collections stored at the museum.
The MEA, a historically significant scientific institution in Argentina, holds one
of the oldest and largest human remains collections in the country due to the fact that it
accounts for both the collections amassed by the MEA and all the ones which belonged to the
Ethnography, Anthropology and Archaeology sections at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias
Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia (MACNBR). A project to make a complete inventory of
these collections was initiated as late as in 2007. This curious fact makes one wonder why
such an initiative was delayed for so many years when other departments in the museum were
flourishing.

Terminology

Human remains are considered as any material which once was an organic part
of a human being: nail, hair, bone, teeth and mummified tissue. It is also important to take
into account that in museum collections, human remains can be found as a part of an artefact
made up of material such as pottery, wood or stone.

Source or originating community is a term used to describe the people which

are, or claim they are, culturally affiliated to the objects or human remains in museum
collections. They can also be the people who inhabit the territory where the item was taken
from.

In this study we understand that a museum collection is made up of a number of

collected items or material which have suffered a rupture from their original or prior meaning,
use and order and have been rearranged by a new logic. This definition also applies to human
remains collections since once the remains enter the museum they become objects of study
and exhibition and can be arranged by region, race or tribe just like other ethnographic and
archaeological material. These categories and classification systems, which might be modified
over time, are directly linked to changing logics and ways of making sense of the world. That
is to say “the collection has a character; it is made up of many separate collections and
collection minds, and reflects the changing taste of different periods and individuals. It is, as a

16
whole, an entity reflecting the community, curators, private collectors and other organizations
who have contributed to its growth”14.

In this study, Collections Management is understood as the way a collection is

cared for in terms of access, storage, conservation, documentation, exhibition and ethics. This
type of management and practice is usually regulated by a collections management policy.
The policy can cover every activity affecting collections such as acquisition, disposal, loan,
access procedure etc.

There exists many types of collection management policies which all deal with
key issues such as access, research, storage, documentation, but, nonetheless, in the light of
the international debate on indigenous rights and the restitution of museum collections an
ethical dimension to museum practice can no longer be ignored. The question is how and by
whom the ethical conducts and standards are established. How are we to deal with a collection
of human remains stored at a museum today? Who decides what to do with human remains
collections? The archaeologist, the conservator, the indigenous community which claims the
remains, the museum public or a court of law?

Podgorny and Miotti (1994:16-17) make an interesting point when they assert
that “the tasks of researchers aren´t the target of questioning, but rather the interpretation and
the control of the past and the history that certain institutions hold without knowing and
taking into account the differences and conflicts of the social or ethnic groups which have
been marginalized from the processes of construction of the current societies”15.

In this study, the ethical dimension is understood as: when dealing with a
collection of human remains it is imperative to remember that these were people with rights
and beliefs and that these might have been neglected at the time of collection. There exists a
moral obligation to conserve the material and document providence and form of recollection
in case this is missing. This is the only way of making the content of deposits available to
those who inquire about it.

A) DEBATE AND PRAXIS OUTSIDE ARGENTINA

14
From the Art Gallery of Ontario Policy, quoted in Pearce 1992
15
“lo que se cuestiona no es la tarea de los investigadores, sino principalmente, la interpretación y el control del
pasado y de la historia por parte de ciertas instituciones que desconocen las diferencias y los conflictos de los
grupos socials o étnicos marginados de los procesos de construcción de las sociedades actuales” [author´s
translation]

17
As follows, the discourse and actions that are challenging values which seem undisputable,
like the progress of scientific research and the role of national states as guardians of cultural
heritage will be discussed. As will be seen, there are very few examples of partnerships and
collaboration when it comes to the management of indigenous human remains at museums.

1) Museum collections, Archaeology and Ethics: an international debate

There are many occurrences which illustrate how the debate about the
management of human remains and other “sensitive material” has increased in importance
internationally over the past thirty years. In most cases, the debate springs from the clash of
value systems between scientists, museum professionals and indigenous communities.
Nonetheless, it is important to avoid generalizing by being aware that each group doesn’t
constitute a uniform unit and can express quite heterogeneous ideas.

i) The reburial issue and the World Archaeology Congress

A good summary of the main claims involved in the debate which was generated
around the so called reburial issue constitutes: the return of human remains and funerary
objects stored and exhibited in museums for reburial and the prohibition to excavate
cemeteries and sacred sites on lands which belong to or are claimed by ethnic communities
(Miotti & Podgorny 1994).
From the very beginning the debate has been the result of claims being made on
behalf of representatives of indigenous communities, sometimes with the help of supportive
archaeologists and historians, in defence of their right to their heritage, beliefs and culture.
They question the role of museums as custodians of their heritage and ancestors and disagree
with the argument that collections need to be kept in institutions where they become universal
heritage and can be studied for the sake of scientific knowledge production on the past. One
common and powerful position is that they relate differently to objects, ancestors and the past
and aren’t interested in research, storage and conservation for the future.

ii) The institutions, organizations and professionals respond

As a result of reburial claims made by such actors as the International Treaty

Council, which was formed in South Dakota in 1974 with delegates representing 97 Indian

18
tribes and Nations from across North an South America 16, the first Code of Ethics concerning
human remains collections at museums was approved at the second World Archaeology
Congress which took place in Venezuela in 1990(see World Archaeology Bulletin 1991).
Although the debate saw its origins in the United States and Australia with strong reburial
claims from indigenous organizations at the end of the 1980´s (Hubert 1988) today there are
many international organizations and other countries around the world which are producing a
range of different types of documents which recommend how to store, display, exhibit, and
research on what has come to be considered “sensitive material”17.

As follows, some examples from the diverse body of documents, which is

dedicated to the ethical dimension of museum practice, will be presented and discussed to
illustrate how the point of view and the beliefs of indigenous communities in the caring,
exhibiting and studying of sensitive material are acquiring a growing importance.

The following articles are from the ICOM Code of Ethics from 2006
(http://icom.museum, accessed 21/04/2008):

3.7 Human Remains and Material of Sacred Significance

Research on human remains and materials of sacred significance must be
accomplished in a manner consistent with professional standards and take into
account the interests and beliefs of the community, ethnic or religious groups
from whom the objects originated, where these are known.

4.3 Exhibition of Sensitive Materials

Human remains and materials of sacred significance must be displayed in a
manner consistent with professional standards and, where known, taking into
account the interests and beliefs of members of the community, ethnic or
religious groups from whom the objects originated. They must be presented with
great tact and respect for the feelings of human dignity held by all peoples.

16
American Indians Against Desecration (AIAD) is a project which belongs to the International Treaty Council,
which was formed on the Standing Rock Reservation of South Dakota in 1974 with delegates representing some
97 Indian tribes and Nations from across North and South America. It holds non-governmental status in the
United Nations. The American Indians, as represented by the American Indians Against Desecration (AIAD),
intend to retrieve all Indian human remains from all over the world, and to rebury them.
17
Sensitive material is most of the time understood as human remains, associated funerary goods and other
objects considered sacred by originating communities.

19
 4.4 Removal from Public Display
Requests for removal from public display of human remains or material of
sacred significance from the originating communities must be addressed
expeditiously with respect and sensitivity. Requests for the return of such
material should be addressed similarly. Museum policies should clearly define
the process for responding to such requests.

6.1 Co-operation
Museums should promote the sharing of knowledge, documentation and
collections with museums and cultural organisations in the countries and
communities of origin. The possibility of developing partnerships with museums
in countries or areas that have lost a significant part of their heritage should be
explored.

6.2 Return of Cultural Property

Museums should be prepared to initiate dialogues for the return of cultural
property to a country or people of origin. This should be undertaken in an
impartial manner, based on scientific, professional and humanitarian principles
as well as applicable local, national and international legislation, in preference
to action at a governmental or political level.

6.3 Restitution of Cultural Property

When a country or people of origin seeks the restitution of an object or
specimen that can be demonstrated to have been exported or otherwise
transferred in violation of the principles of international and national
conventions, and shown to be part of that country’s or people’s cultural or
natural heritage, the museum concerned should, if legally free to do so, take
prompt and responsible steps to co-operate in its return.

Similar issues are dealt with in the following articles from the Code of Ethics for
museums issued by the UK Museums Association in 2002
(http://www.museumsassociation.org/asset_arena/text/cs/code_of_ethics.pdf, accessed
21/04/08):
7.4 Inform originating communities of the presence of items relevant to them in
the museum´s collections, wherever practical.

20
 7.5 Respect the interests of originating communities with regard to elements of
their cultural heritage present or represented in the museum. Involve
originating communities, wherever practical, in decisions about how the
museum stores, researchers, presents or otherwise uses collections and
information about them.

7.7 Deal sensitively and promptly with requests for repatriation both within the
UK and from abroad of items in the museum´s collection, taking into account:
the law; current thinking on the subject; the interests of actual and cultural
descendants; the strengths of claimants´relationship to the items; their
scientific, educational, cultural and historical importance; their future
treatment.

In the above stated cases we can see that there is, in the discourse of museum
practice, a large emphasis on establishing a dialogue between originating communities and the
museum when it comes to sensitive material. What seems problematic is that what is deemed
sensitive material will be decided by the museum until the originating community is informed
of what the museum possesses. This places the main issue on access to collections and
actively informing the originating communities of them. The formulation of Article 7.4 is
interesting since it addresses this issue when it states a museum should inform the originating
community of material relevant to them but only when deemed practical. As will be further
discussed bellow, it is almost never practical to involve the community in museum matters. In
practice it nearly always seems to entail complicated and conflicting situations.
In a few countries the issue of human remains collections has acquired such
complex dimensions that laws have been created to help resolve in a systematic way the
disputes over the care and rightful ownership of human remains and other sensitive material.
In the case of the United States, the Native American Grave Protection Act
(NAGPRA), an act which became a federal law in 1990, demands, amongst other things, that
museums, which receive federal funding, make inventories of all material which is identified
as Native American. NAGPRA provides immediate restitution of human remains and cultural
objects found on federal or tribal lands after 16 November 1990 to lineal descendants or,
where those descendants are unknown, to the tribe on whose lands the objects were
discovered or with the tribe that “has the closest cultural affiliation with such remains”

21
(Barkan and Bush 2003:169). The sanction for not following NAGPRA is the loss of federal
funding.
In Australia the Federal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage
Protection Act from 1984 support the repatriation of human remains and cultural material to
aboriginal communities from within the country and also from abroad. Generally in Europe,
as a result of a lack of national policy and legislation on repatriation, these issues are
established on a case to case basis depending on the museum in question (Endere 2000).

2) Claiming and owning a heritage: materializing discourse

The prescriptive content of these documents are accompanied by a growing

number of repatriations, restitutions18 and projects aiming to promote collaboration between
institutions and source communities.

i) Historical cases of repatriation of human remains

Many repatriation and reburial actions are in some way connected to the first
World Archaeology Congress (WAC) which took place in Vermillion, USA in 1989. A few
cases of repatriation and reburial were set as objectives and were actually fulfilled as a result
of the congress. For instance, a complete skeleton of a Australian aborigine, stored as with the
study collections at the London Medical School for over a hundred years, was sent back to
Australia in 1989 thanks to the pressure from archaeologists and the chief Tomaka´s cranium
which had been brought to Europe by French Anthropologists in 1840 from Madagascar, was
successfully repatriated to its place of origin Sogayé the same year (Miotti & Podgorny 1994).
The same year the human remains claimed by the American Indians against desecration since
1985 were reburied in Wounded Knee close to Vermillion, according to Sioux ritual and
Seminole. The remains had been separated from their tombs during the construction of a
highway and had been handed to the Archaeology laboratory at the University of South
Dakota. The ceremony was attended by archaeologists, politicians and indigenous
18
Restitution is when it concerns objects which have been stolen or illicitly acquired against the international
laws and the UNESCO Convention of 1954 and 1970. Repatriation involves the return of material which is
legally owned, according to international norms, but is claimed by its traditional owners or descendents
challenging the national norms and museum policies (Simpson in Endere 2000).

22
representatives and was broadcast on NBC (Miotti & Podgorny 1994). In addition, as a result
of the NAGRPRA law, in which a wide spectrum of evidence showing cultural affiliation is
accepted to make a valid claim, hundreds of human remains have been repatriated in the USA
since 1990.
In Sweden, there is no national law concerning repatriation although specific
cases of repatriation have still taken place. In 1990 a Maori cranium was returned to the
indigenous population on New Zealand. In 1997 another cranium was returned to Tasmania.
In 2004 the Swedish State returned the human remains from 13 aborigines to Australia. As a
result of this last large repatriation process, the government gave the Ethnographic Museum in
Stockholm and 13 other state funded institutions the task to make an inventory of their
collections of human remains (Thyselius 2007). The inventory task was completed during the
fall 2005. The idea is that detailed information about the provenance of the human remains
should be available so that the ones who are concerned have the possibility to put forward a
repatriation claim.
Another interesting case is the so called discovery of the Kennewick man in
1996, which was proved to be very ancient (8400 and 9300 BP) and had an important
scientific value due to the fact that the remains didn’t appear to be Native American.
Nonetheless, the remains were handed over to the Umatilla tribes which claimed them on a
basis of having a valid land claim where the remains were found (Endere 2000). This is
interesting since usually ancient remains from for example archaeological digs are considered
hard to claim since proving cultural affiliation is very hard. The case shows us what a strong
repatriation vehicle NAGRPRA is.

ii) Consultation and shared Management

Museums are developing special management policies for sensitive material and
as follows I describe some initiated partnerships and projects. In 1992 the former National
Museum and the National Gallery of New Zealand were integrated to form the Museum of
New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in a decolonialization effort. The new building was opened
in 1997 and its architecture together with the inclusion of Maori staff and a new focus on
increasing the number of Maori visitors are attempts to materialize the national bicultural
discourse (McCarthy 2007:169). The Auckland War Memorial Museum in New Zealand
follows this trend since the traumata provides advice to the governing trust board regarding

23
management of the treasures held within the museum (Kawharu 2002). It is important to
mention that these examples of partnerships and total shared curatorial power are exceptions
in the museum world. Most of the time, museums work on a project basis with source
communities. Something which Adrian Munoz (2008 forthcoming), curator of South
American collections at the World Culture Museum is quite critical about: “one big mistake is
that efforts at putting the museum in another position, bringing the users, the owners and the
collections together or making the collections accessible, have always been done as parts of
projects; this means that it is not incorporated in the daily praxis of the museum and not in a
yearly budget either”.
When it comes to isolated projects of shared curatorial management, some
argue that connecting source communities with collections which can be associated to them is
a way to enrich the knowledge about the collections but can be complicated since this contact
doesn´t assure a process of conciliation between the museum and the group. This was the case
when Laura Peers (2003) at the Pit Rivers Museum decided to contact the Ojibwe community
of Red Lake, Minnesota, USA, from where some samples of hair were collected in 1925. She
could never have imagined the strong feelings the strands of hair awakened in the community.
Lagerkvist (2006) also writes about shared curatorial power on a project basis. This took place
during the development of the Project “Advantage Göteborg” which involved members of
communities in Gothenburg who came from the Horn of Africa. The project entailed conflicts
regarding project ownership and the authority of interpretation for the exhibition Horizons
voices from a Global Africa.
Unless established as partnerships from the very beginning, experiences
involving consulting and shared curatorial power entail difficulties and time consuming
negotiation. If no conciliation is reached there might be a risk that collections presented to
originating communities be claimed back. Some institutions who feel this might be the
outcome of consultation might avoid contacting source communities to avoid problems which
will take time to resolve.

iii) Summarizing the main issues

Material stored at the museum can have different meanings and value
depending on who you ask. That human remains belong in institutions where they can be
studied by scholars for the sake of universal advancement of knowledge has started to be

24
questioned. New currents in archaeology are showing how these ideas are impacting the
profession and its paradigms (Endere 2007). The World Archaeology Congress (WAC) is a
central actor in the sense that it serves as a forum for these questions.
The debate is complex and involves many social actors which raise many
different issues which can be summarised as follows:

1) Rightful ownership of human remains and sacred objects. Who owns the
remains of an individual? The relatives, a museum, a university, the state, the
province, the archaeologist or scientist, the source community, the taxpayers?

2) Repatriation and restitution claims of indigenous remains are driven by

different interest and agendas. They aren´t always initiated by the source
communities

3) Archaeologists have a moral obligation to consult indigenous communities

before excavating or carrying out research on material, which is claimed as their
heritage. How does this ethical posture effect old museum collections which
were collected without following this ethical standard?

4) The need to empower a minority which has suffered a history of denied

identity and rights.

5) The fact that different value systems are acquiring the same legitimacy and
thereby are starting to clash.

25
B) DEBATE AND PRACTICE IN ARGENTINA

In Argentina, different laws have been passed to guarantee the preservation of a heritage of
national scientific interest but none have really been functional in practice. Today many
museum collections around the country are in critical conditions, yet museums, which are
responsible for the collections, have stressed their scientific value and have been reluctant to
respond favourably to claims of restitution. With the dawn of new rights of indigenous
communities, a debate has started in academic circles and museums concerning the ethical
dimension of dealing with indigenous human remains collections.

1) Attempts to save a national heritage

26
 At the beginning of the 20th century the Argentine state showed an interest in
developing the “national science” and building up a national heritage of scientific interest.
This is reflected in the 9080 law passed in 1913, which established a federal jurisdiction over
archaeological and paleontological sites of scientific interest- even when found on privately
owned land- and appointed three national museums, MCNLP, MEA and the Museo Argentino
de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavía (MACNBR), as the custodians of this type of
heritage and responsible for implementing the law which was actually never carried out
(Endere 2001 & Berberian 1992).

i) The government and academics alert: collections are in poor conditions

The current situation of collections is critical in many museums in Argentina.
Bad storage conditions, incomplete or out-of-date catalogues and inventories, difficulties in
identifying provenance due to the absence of labels and records, and lack of public access to
archives are common problems in many museum collections (Endere 2007). Americo Castilla,
the former National Director of Heritage and Museums, Department of Culture , was aware of
the critical situation in 2003 and called for a policy to reactivate Argentine museums and
implement professional standards (Castilla 2003).
Many different factors have been identified as contributing to the current
situation. There exists a long tradition in Argentina of letting posts at museums be vacant to
minimize spending in cultural institution funded by the National State (Castilla 2003). This
has become even worse with the economic crisis of 2001 and the drastic budget cuts in public
spending (Endere 2001)

ii) Solutions
Some argue that the answer lies in a clearer and more coherent legal framework.
The National State´s role in the preservation of both cultural and natural heritage was
reinforced in the 1990´s in the National Constitution in 1994 (Endere 2007) and in June 2003,
when the national law 25.743 was passed to create, amongst other things, an official Register
of National Cultural Heritage, which includes archaeological and paleontological objects and
collections both privately owned and the ones stored at state owned institutions. The law
states that the Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano (INAPL),
which depends on the National Secretary of Culture, is responsible for its implementation.

27
Another initiative worth mentioning, although it doesn´t affect neither the MEA or the
MCNLP, since they are university museums, is the resolution from the 16 th of august 2002
approved by the National Secretary of Culture and obliging all museums which depend on it
(23 in total) to complete an inventory of their cultural objects within 180 days
(http://www.cultura.gov.ar accessed 21/04/08). This resolution doesn’t apply to any university
museums, where the biggest human remains collections are stored. So far there has been no
initiative from the government which demands national museums to make a specific
inventory of their human remains collections.

iii) Resistance to claims from non-specialists

Protecting a national heritage has meant since the first law 9080 from 1913 that
what should be protected by the state should be of scientific interest above all. This tradition
is still strong. Following this reasoning, it is clear that saving this national heritage has to do
with keeping it in museums and away from actors who don’t value it scientifically.
A good example is the quantity of frustrated attempts at restitution of identified
human remains belonging to Indigenous chiefs which have been put forward to the MCNLP.
For instance, between 1973 and 1975, a commission of neighbours from Tranque Lauquen
without the participation of representatives of indigenous communities claimed the custody of
the chiefs, Califulcura, Gherenal, Indio Brujo y Chipitruz, who were defeated by the national
army in the 1880´s, with the objective to rebury them in a Mapuche Pantheon Monument in
the same city but to no avail (Podgorny & Miotti 1994).
It is important to note that any claims of this type were interrupted by the last
dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983 (Podgorny & Politis 1992 & Endere 2000). In
1987 the project was continued, this time by the indigenous community “cacique Pincén”
which again started the negotiations with the Universidad de La Plata claiming that these
craniums had been taken as war trophies during the so called “Conquest of the Dessert” but
this led nowhere. The same thing happened in 1989 when the remains of the cacique
Inakayal19 were claimed by the Centro Indio Mapuche Tehuelche, province of Chubut. The
19
“Inakayal, an Indian chief whose father was Pehuenche and mother was Tehuelche, lived with his people in
northwestern Patagonia. In October 1884 he and another chief called Foyel were taken prisoner when they went
to parley with a National Commander who had located a fort in their land… Eighteen months after their capture,
the Director of the Museum of La Plata, Dr Francisco Moreno, obtained permission from the government to give
accommodation to Inakayal, Foyel and their families. Inakayal died in the Museum on 24 September 1888. He
was not buried; his bones, brain, scalp and death mask became part of the museum collection. His skeleton was
displayed in the Anthropological Galleries of the museum until 1940 when it was stored in the deposit” (Politis

28
argument used in 1992 by the Academic Council of the Facultad de Ciencias Naturales de la
Universidad de La Plata (to which the Museum of La Plata is accountable) was that the
archaeological collections were public property which belong to the nation and therefore
could not be claimed as part of the private dominion (Podgorny & Politis 1992). In 2002, the
Pueblo Pampa Mapuche Lonko L.C. Pincén community claimed the return of human remains
and ceremonial objects of the Mapuche-Tehuelche people stored at the MCNLP.

2) The recognition of indigenous rights

In Latin America, both restitution claims in general and especially successful

restitutions are unusual. This cannot only be explained by legal impediments since it is a fact
that in most Latin American countries indigenous communities are dealing with basic issues
of survival such as land claims and daily subsistence. Other reasons are related to a lack of
knowledge about the existence of human remains in both national and foreign museums as
well as a lack of updated catalogues on collections and the difficulty to access such
information (Endere 2000). In other words, the right of indigenous people to their cultural
heritage shouldn’t only be recognized in legislation but also by professionals such as
scientists, conservators and museum staff. In Argentina, the rights and recognition of
indigenous people is still in an early phase in which some of the necessary legislative
modifications have been carried out but the debate in professional circles is still very fresh.

i) Pre existence and the return of identified indigenous chiefs

In 1994, an amendment to the National Constitution declares in art. 75, clause
17, that the argentine indigenous communities are ethnically and culturally pre-existent and,
in addition, guarantees respect for their identity and assures their participation in the
management of that which is of interest to them (Endere 2000a). This can be interpreted as
giving indigenous communities the constitutional right to intervene in the management of
cultural resources which are culturally affiliated to them, but in no way does it serve as a legal
disposition in Argentina which allows for restitution or repatriation (Endere 2000a). For a
country which has, since its birth, promoted a culturally homogeneous society, this
amendment means the dawn of a new discourse which recognizes minorities and finally

2001:98).

29
accepts its multicultural reality. Nonetheless, Endere (2000a) highlights the need for Congress
to pass a whole set of new laws in order to live up to the amendment.
So far, there have been two cases in Argentina in which indigenous remains
have been restituted or given back 20 to indigenous communities. Both involve the MCNLP.
“On 19 April 1994, ‘The Day of the Aborigine’ in Argentina, the remains of Inakayal returned
to his homeland in a National Air Force airplane and were buried in the small Patagonian
town of Tecka in a mausoleum… Direct descendants of Inakayal were present at the
ceremony. The event was made possible by a law proposed by the National Senator from the
Patagonian Province of Chubut, Dr H. Solari Irigoyen, and was supported by indigenous
organizations. The law was approved by the National Congress in 1991 as number 23,940
and it required the Museum of La Plata to return the remains of Inakayal to his descendants”(
Politis 2001:98)
Politis who, at the time, worked at the MCNLP accompanied the remains of the
Tehuelche chief Inakayal to Tecka and offered an apology on behalf of the museum.
Nonetheless, he points out that this didn´t mean that most of the archaeologists and physical
anthropologists of the museum agreed with the return nor respected the rights of indigenous
people in the disposal of their dead. Even though a specific law (23.940) ordered the return of
the remains in 1991 the actual restitution wasn´t carried out until 1994 due to political and
academic resistance and bureaucratic problems (Endere 2007).
The second case, which consists in the restitution of the Ranquel chief
Panghitruz Guor, also known as Mariano Rosas, to the Ranquel Community in La Pampa
Province took place in 2001 thanks to another specific law (25.276) passed in 2000 (Endere
2007 & Pepe, Suarez & Harrison 2008). It is interesting to note that in both cases the remains
have a known identity and that they have taken place thanks to specific laws.

ii) The Llullaillaco mummies and the “Declaración de Rio Cuarto”

In 1999, the excavation of three Inca mummies from the Llullaillaco volcano,
Province of Salta, by an international archaeology team directed by Johan Reinhard and
funded by the National Geographic Society was undertaken without consulting the local
indigenous people. As a result, the indigenous community ‘Los Airampos’, who considers the
peak where the mummies were found a sacred site on indigenous territory and the mummies

20
Endere wouldn´t use the word repatriation in these cases since the claims are usually supported by the local or
provincial governments and the remains are treated as national war heroes being brought back to the province
where they came from (2000).

30
as part of the communities, filed a suit, alleging that their rights had been violated (Curtoni &
Endere 2000 & Politis 2001). The claim, which constitutes the first attempt to get a legal
recognition for a sacred site in Argentina, was turned down by the federal attorney, alleging
that the archaeological expedition had fulfilled the legal requirements to carry out the
excavation by receiving a permit from provincial authorities (Endere 2007).
Even though the trial was unsuccessful, the case of these mummies generated a
debate in scientific circles. Later the same year, the University of Salta organised a round
table to discuss the ethical implications which such a discovery has for archaeologists (Politis
2001 & Endere 2007). In 2004, at the XV Congreso Nacional de Arqueología Argentina
(CNAA) in Rio Cuarto, province of Cordoba, the first forum between indigenous
representatives and archaeologists took place. The declaration, which was signed as a result of
the debate generated in the forum, considers, amongst other things, that there is a need to
establish a dialogue based on mutual respect between archaeologists and indigenous people. It
also announces that the latter wasn´t consulted nor mentioned as actors in the current national
law on archaeological heritage (24.743/03), thereby violating the National Constitution. The
declaration also recommends, amongst other things, the non exhibition of the Llullaillaco
mummies and suggests for all museums around the country with collections of human
remains to follow the example set by the MEA in its policy against this type of display. It is
also recommended to mutually collaborate for the restitution of indigenous human remains
which are part of private or public collections and to consult indigenous communities before
undertaking archaeological research on their cultural heritage21.

iii) A new policy at the Museo de Ciencias Naturales in La Plata regarding American
human remains
Since 2006, a group of advanced Anthropology students from the Facultad de
Ciencias Naturales y Museo (FCNM), Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), by the
name of Grupo Universitario de Investigación en Antropología Social (GUIAS) has worked
towards the identification and restitution of human remains collections from the MCNLP. So
far, 35 individuals have been identified, three additional restitution claims have been put
forward and some remains of Inakayal which hadn´t been returned in 1994 have been
identified (Pepe, Suarez and Harrison 2008). Fernando Miguel Pepe, a member of the group,

21
See Declaración de Río Cuarto. 2005. Primer Foro Pueblos Originarios – arqueólogos. Río Cuarto, Argentina.
Comentarios. Revista de Arqueólogia Suramericana 1 (2). Pp. 287-293

31
is well aware of the institutional and academic resistance to this type of work: “In our group
we are all students. We don´t have anyone with a degree or who is a doctoral candidate. There
are professors and other professionals who could work with us but nobody dears since they
don´t want to loose their job”22 (Badenes 2006).
A historic decision was made by the Academic Council of the Facultad de
Ciencias Naturales de la Universidad de La Plata on the 1st of September 2006 when a
resolution was issued stating that the MCNLP museum would no longer exhibit American
indigenous human remains and would communicate to the public the reasons for this, would
guarantee appropriate conservation and documentation conditions, and finally would support
the restitution of identified indigenous human remains (Anonymous 2006).
As a result, the physical anthropology exhibition room was closed to the public,
a sign was hung on the door explaining why the area was closed and a special storage room
with climate control was created for the mummified material and the identified remains which
had claims on them. Mariano del Papo, who works in the Anthropology section at the
MCNLP, explains that he is the Head of a one year long project which aims at reopening the
exhibition room without displaying human remains in October 2008 (personal
communication). The project is a cooperation between the Department of Anthropology of the
MCNLP and the museum´s Conservation and Exhibition area.

iv) Declaration at the Congreso Nacional de Antropología Biologica

There is yet no professional code of ethics concerning the management of
human remains collections in Argentina although a draft was presented by the Asociación de
Arqueólogos Profesionales de la Republica Argentina (AAPRA) in 1999 but no official
version has been issued to this date (Ramundo 2006). Nonetheless, certain guidelines are
established by the so called declarations made at Congresses, as is the case of the CNAA in
Rio Cuarto mentioned above. The Asociación de Antropología Biologica Argentina (AABA),
which exists since 1993, issued a declaration concerning ethics and the study of human as a
result of the debate generated during the VIII Congreso Nacional de Antropología Biológica
in October 2007.
In it the AABA declares, amongst other things, that; the scientific study on
biological human remains are in the interest of all of humanity; the care of this type of material
should be in the hands of professional curators, preferably bio anthropologists; the formation of a
22
“Nuestro grupo somos todos estudiantes. No tenemos ningún graduado, ningún doctorado. Hay profesores y
licenciados que podrían trabajar en el tema, pero nadie se anima para no perder su trabajo” [author´s translation]

32
commission which can draft a Code of Ethics for the study of human remains is needed; it is
necessary and desirable to make possible the restitution of remains with a known identity and
name while other cases should be discussed; and finally the non exhibition of human remains is
recommended when so claimed by indigenous communities23. Here it is interesting to note the
emphasis on that Anthropologists should preferably be in charge of the care of human remains
rather than conservators and that the only remains which should be returned to source
communities are the ones with names.

C) COLLECTIONS AT THE MUSEO ETNOGRAFICO J. B. AMBROSETTI

At the MEA, collections have suffered from moves, lack of space and different cataloguing
systems. Unfortunately, the collections in the so called Anthropology section, mostly
consisting of indigenous human remains, are currently in a poorer condition than the other
collections in terms of documentation, conservation and access since only in 2007 has a
project to make a systematic inventory of all the collections in the section been initiated. This
late development can be understood by looking at how human remains have been valued in
the recent past and during the formation of its collections.

1) Introducing the collections at the MEA

Juan B. Ambrosetti was a great impellor when it came to the formation of

collections. They grew at the fastest rate from 1908 to 1918, which partly coincides with his
period as director. During these years an average of 2000 objects were added to the
collections per year (Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Catálogo N. 1-7).
The rapid growth was due to the archaeological expeditions organized by the
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras but there were also other reasons for their rapid expansion.
Ambrosetti was interested in representing not only the American prehistoric societies but also
the diversity of contemporary cultures worldwide. With this in mind he used different types of
networks and strategies to enlarge the ethnographic collections. He would for instance
convince a well-off acquaintance to buy an object he would have picked out in a European
catalogue and encourage its donation to the museum by assuring a room will carry the donor’s
name (Pérez Gollán 2004). Another strategy was that of exchanging local objects which had
23
See http://www.fcnym.unlp.edu.ar/aabra/

33
supposed “doubles” at the museum for objects from internationally well recognized
institutions such as for example the Smithsonian. As was common in European modelled
museums in the periphery, Ambrosetti used European practices and methods as the measure,
believing that a proper museum had to include objects of universal value as well as materials
of local interest. Reputations depended upon the number of specimens amassed, with
considerable cachet attached to the acquisition of exotica from abroad (Pyenson & Sheets
Pyenson 1999:141).
In order to increase the ethnographic collections from Argentina without having
to count on expeditions, Ambrosetti wrote instructions which were passed down through the
bureaucratic national channels of the army so that the employees of the state would collect a
certain type of material and be careful in registering the condition and situation in which it
was found to then pack it and send it to the museum (Pegoraro 2005). The museum stopped
massively acquiring collections in the middle of the 20th century like most ethnographic
museums around the world but still accepted donations once in a while. The last MEA
expedition took place in 1944. After this, all objects which were entered into the museums
collections did so under different circumstances.
When it was founded, the museum didn’t actually have an official physical
space except for in the basement of the Faculty where it remained until 1927 when it was
transferred to its present building. In the 1930´s, one of its directors, Felix Outes, remodelled
the building to make it more adequate to its purpose as an institution open to the public. He
complained about the regrettable state of collections and the lack of such things as; a scientific
structure, systematic numeric labels on the accumulated material, a laboratory, working space
in general, ventilation and indispensable equipment (Outes 1931). At this time the space in the
building was shared between the museum and the Dirección General de Estadística. He also
wanted the MEA to change name and to be called the “Anthropological” museum. The
Physical Anthropology section especially concerned him. It would be renamed Department of
Physical Anthropology and Human Palaeoethology and a separate space was designated for
its material (Outes 1931).
Today the collections are divided into three categories and are stored in separate
deposits: ethnography, archaeology and physical anthropology24.The way the collections have
been organized and stored will be analyzed later. The majority of the collections is
archaeological and comes from north western Argentina and Patagonia but there are also
some objects from different parts of the world such as archaeological material from different
24

34
parts of the Andes, Greece, Japan and Central America and ethnographic objects from the
Easter Island and Africa to name a few (Pegoraro 2005). According to the museum’s web
page, the human remains collections is very large with an inventory of 10 000 elements. In
total, the museum´s collections hold around 60 000 objects or pieces of objects.

2) The development of Collections Management

i) From restoration to preventive conservation

The following description of general collections management is based on
interviews and personal communications with the current Head of the archaeology deposit,
Gabriela Amiratti, at the MEA and staff working in the Exhibition and Conservation area at
the MCNLP.
Although there doesn´t exist a general collections management policy or
regulation at the MEA it is clear that during the 1990´s preventive conservation principles
replaced the practice of restoration. Gabriela Amiratti speaks of her work experience at the
MEA. Before she entered to work in the deposit there already existed a project to unify the
collections into one register with the numbers 1-60000. Around 20% of the objects in the
Archaeology storage have been assigned new numbers which are identifiable since they are
marked between bars on the object and have been entered into the database. The idea is that
there would be in the future an intranet allowing each deposit access to the unified register.
This is currently not the case. Only the Archaeology and Ethnography storages have access to
the new database. The human remains collections were assigned 10 000 numbers.
Amiratti explains that she learnt about conservation and collections management
by working at the deposit with a conservator in 1996- 1997 and by taking the course offered
by Fundación Antorchas at the Taller TAREA in 1998-99. She was one of the fourteen people
who were selected. The current head of the Archive and the Library at the MEA also
completed this course. She stresses that the workshop organized by the Smithsonian
Institution held at the MEA in 1996-97 for people who worked at Ethnographic or
Anthropology museums around the country only focused on conservation in exhibition not in
the deposit since the main point was to learn about the exhibition process. She also studied
conservation and treatment techniques for one year in the USA. In 2000 when she became the

35
Head of the Archaeology deposit she explains that this represented a historic moment since it
was the first time the deposit was headed by someone who wasn’t an archaeologist.
Silvia Eliana Marcianesi and Myriam Hara, both from the Exhibition and
Conservation area at the MCNLP, explain that a similar workshop was held at their museum
in 1999-2000, also organized by the Smithsonian Institution but this time for museum staff at
Natural History Museums in Argentina. As a result, the currently functioning exhibition and
conservation area was created, in which preventive conservation principles were implemented
(personal communication).
As the above testimonies indicate, the importance of professional conservation
and collections management has traditionally been underestimated by researchers and
awareness has only started to be present in the past decade. Endere has reached similar
conclusions and states that only recently have undergraduate and graduate courses started
being offered in the country (2001). Since the profession is so new in Argentina, it is not
strange that the current aim is to fill deposits with people with knowledge in the science of
preventive conservation. At this stage we see the professionalization of collections
management. This might explain why there is no talk, for the moment, of letting non
specialists such as source communities decide how material be stored as is happening in other
countries.

ii) Current collections management at the human remains storage

The following description of collections management is based on; my own
participation in collections management at the human remains deposit from February to April
2008, personal communications with the new Head of the deposit, the collections
management project document and the annual report presented in 2007.
In 2006 a recently graduated anthropologist, who had been collaborating ad
honorem at the human remains deposit since 1997 when she was a student, presented a project
to make a complete inventory and rearrange the human remains collections at the
Ethnographic Museum. As the Proyecto de inventario y reubicación de los restos humanos
ubicados en el depósito de Antropología Biológica del Museo Etnográfico J. B. Ambrosetti 25
states, the situation of the collections at the end of 2005 was far from ideal: “Numerous
elements are not yet inventoried and usually they are difficult to find or they don´t have a
precise location.”26

25
Project of inventory and rearrangement of the human remains stored in the Biological Anthropology deposit of
the Ethnographic Museum J.B. Ambrosetti [author´s translation]

36
 To summarize, the project presented argued the need to: 1) Remove
accumulated dust on installations and collections 2) Recondition old storage boxes and
construct new ones based on preventive conservation principles 3) Complete the inventory
and rearrange collections on shelves using a geographic and regional classification system to
facilitate finding the material one looks for 4) Incorporate a system of signs on the shelves to
facilitate identification of each element 5) Create and keep an updated database of the
collections which contains important information such as location of element, description,
date of entry, results from former studies and analysis etc (Aranda 2006). The project was
accepted and a Head of the Human Remains Deposit was finally appointed after having been
vacant for more than 10 years.
An annual report was presented at the end of 2007 which showed how the first
steps taken towards responsible collections management involved rethinking and rebuilding
the deposit in order for it to meet the minimum conservation standards. In the past, the deposit
had been a shared space between researchers and collections. In order to mark the limits
between the researcher’s quarters and the storage room the whole space was measured and a
remodelation plan was made in order to maximize the use of space. The material which
belonged to each sector was moved and a durlok wall was raised between the two newly
created spaces.27 Once the remodelling was completed the reinventory of collections was
initiated.

26
“Numerosas piezas óseas no están aún inventariadas, y usualmente son difíciles de encontrar o no tienen una
ubicación precisa” [author´s translation]

27
Since the Ethnographic museum is a university museum which receives all funding from the Facultad de
Filosofía y Letras, University of Buenos Aires, the museum has special characteristics which differentiate it from
other museums. It is closely tied to academic activity in the sense that the temporary exhibition room is used as a
university class room for anthropology courses and many spaces of the museums are the official working spaces
of archaeology research teams financed by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
(CONICET), the main organism dedicated to the promotion of Science and Technology in Argentina.

37
 Figure 1. human remains at the MEA

During 2007 a number of volunteers called “interns”, usually students who

study Anthropology at the UBA, collaborated by taking on different tasks. The group of
interns was divided into three working areas: Mummies, Ethics and reinventory of human
remains in general. Most effort and volunteers was dedicated to comparing the content of the
last produced inventory of craniums (1996) and the actual location of these in the deposit. For
every cranium which was matched with the data in the catalogue, the material would be
entered into a new data base in the computer, documented digitally before and after the
cleaning procedure, placed temporarily in an acid free plastic bag until the cost of making
paper boxes is approved.

38
iii) Exploring the catalogues28
The number of catalogues and the way different collections have entered the
museum and been reinventorized can cause quite a lot of confusion when trying to find
information about osteological material as is our case. There exist three different sets of
catalogues. The first set includes the seven general catalogues which cover all entries of
collections into the museum from 1904 to 1991, no matter if they are later classified as
anthropological, ethnographic or archaeological in the annual reports and the publications.
The second set includes the 12 catalogues from the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales
Bernardino Rivadavía (MACNBR) which were transferred together with all the collections
from the Archaeology and Anthropology section to the MEA in 1947. All the above
mentioned catalogues are kept in the Archaeology deposit. The third set of catalogues
includes three catalogues on osteological material at the MEA. These are kept in the human
remains deposit, which make them the only resources available when currently making the
new data base.
The first set of catalogues, also known as the General Catalogues, have never
been published or printed which makes it hard to distinguish when different comments and
inventory numbers were added. There are original catalogue numbers and new numbers added
in a different font and color between columns. These “newer” numbers most likely
correspond to an inventory project initiated by Juan Ignacio Benito in 1976 which aspired to
enter all collections into one unified register by using the cataloguing system recommended
by UNESCO and already used in the MACNBR. In this system every object or element
should have a number which is divided into two parts by a bar or a slash, the first representing
the year in which it was entered and the second, the order of entrance that year (Ex: 05-233
would mean that the object was entered into the register in 1905 and it was the 233 rd object to
be entered). All the collections which arrived from the MACNBR have this type of
numeration. Today there are a series of folders with cards which are the result of the project.
As is evident when looking in the General Catalogues all objects up until the last catalogue
(Catalogue #7) have been given a new catalogue number which corresponds to the type
mentioned above. But for some unknown reason, the series of folders don´t seem to be
consulted. Instead the old original catalogues are consulted by researchers and collections
28
A catalogue is understood in this study as a register containing information about the type and quantity of
collections entered into the museum at a certain time. As time goes by it is necessary to make an inventory of the
collections which actually exists in the museum and to register their precise location. The main difference
between a catalogue and an inventory is that the latter contains information about what is actually in the deposit
while the former only contains information about what should exists because it was once entered into the
museum collection.

39
management staff. One explanation might be that the number was never attached to the
corresponding object making it impossible to find the right object when consulting the
folders. A change in directors and government might have interrupted the project.
The second set of catalogues, which are originally from the MACNBR, are the
toughest to deal with since they are numerous, cover a long time period, have been separated
from the original catalogues (most likely still kept at the MACNBR which today exists
without an archaeology and anthropology section) and result from two different cataloguing
systems. The oldest one has no precise date but the title “Extract from the so called ´First
inventory book of the Museo Publico, later National Museum of Buenos Aires´ from 1850
29
and from the time of Dr. German Burmeister” indicates that it the oldest one. It mentions
the page from the original catalogue where ethnographic, anthropological and archaeological
objects are mentioned. Its last entry is from 1891.
The following catalogue goes under the name of “Ancient collections at the
Museo de Ciencias Naturales Bs As” 30 and is marked with the number two written in it and
covers 1897-1920. It seems to be a general register since the material entered includes coins,
arrows, a tehuelche toy, pottery, rope, medals, collections of bills from Banco Nación,
cranium and jaw from a Calchaquí Indian etc. The other type of information which is
available is the original number (from #3676-4887), date (day and month because the year
was stated as a title of each page), object, provenance (locality and country stated), type of
acquisition (donations, expeditions, bought) and observations. A current number in red pen
seems to have been added at a later point (the numbers going from 1947/37- 933 and 1904-
1920/46). Since it says 1947 it is possible that these numbers were added after the objects and
catalogues arrived at the MEA.
These two first catalogues are followed by a series of five catalogues in which a
common cataloguing system (year of entry followed by number of entry that year) is used
covering the years between 1924 and 1943. As independent units we find two small books,
the Zavaleta collection catalogue and the catalogue produced by Eric Boman after his
expedition to La Rioja in 1914.
If we look at the third set, we see an attempt to unify all osteological material at
the MEA in one register. This is visible in the oldest catalogue of the last set which dates from
April 1968 and is titled “Catalogue of Osteological Material, the present catalogue is a faithful

29
“Extracto del llamado ´Primer libro de inventarios del Museo Publico, despues Museo Nacional de Buenos
Aires´ del 1850 y de la Epoca del Dr. German Burmeister [Author´s translation]
30
“Antiguas colecciones del Museo de Ciencias Naturales Bs As” [Author´s translation]

40
copy of the parts of the General Catalogues of the Ethnographic Museum which correspond to
the osteological material”31. It is divided into many different sections since it seems to
include, as its title and index suggests, the osteological material from the twelve catalogues
from the MACNBR and from the seven General Catalogues, originally from the MEA. The
numbers assigned to every confirm this, since in the first twelve sections most of them are
written using the MACNBR system (year entered followed by number indicating order of
entrance that year) and in the remaining seven sections the numbers don´t include a bar or a
slash. It is important and interesting to mention that this register includes data such as number
of catalogue from where information was extracted, the original number of the object, type of
material and providence (in some cases the ethnic group is stated such as Aimara, Chiriguano,
Mocoví, Toba, Yámana, Araucano, Mataco, Pilagá, Ona, Tehuelche). But, the location of the
element in the deposit is not stated. This indicates that the making of the volume wasn´t
necessarily accompanied by a systematic inventory of existing collections at the deposit at the
time.
The second catalogue of the last set comes in two volumes and has the title
“Physical Anthropology Catalogue 1988, Annual Research project Secretary of Science and
Technology, CONICET-PID n.256, Genetics and Microevolution of populations from the
Andean area, Operative cataloguing model PIA-UBA F1I018, Director of the project: Lic.
Carlos Reynoso, Stage: cataloguing and inventory, responsibles: Pablo R. Bonaparte, A
Sebastian Munoz, Ricardo Guichon”32. The content of this catalogue shows us that yet again
the information on osteological material was looked up and reproduced from the original
registers (both from the MEA and the MACNBR) since there is a column with the title
“catalogue” and in it we find the numbers one through seven, corresponding to the General
catalogues at the MEA, and the letters CN, which stands for Museo Argentino de Ciencias
Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia (MACNBR). A difference from the last catalogue from 1968
is that in this one a current collections number appears next to an old collection number. The
category of “current numbers” go from 1-66 746 but not in consecutive order, many numbers
are skipped. These figures are hard to interpret since the MEA´s total size of collections is
supposed to be around 60 000. Nonetheless, by the looks and size of the number, this leaves

31
“Catálogo de Material Osteológico, el presente catálogo es copia fiel de las partes de los catálogos Generales
del Museo Etnográfico, que corresponden al material osteologico. [author´s translation]
32
“Catalogo de Antropología Física 1988 Tomio 1 y 2, Proyecto de investigación annual secretaría de Ciencia y
Tecnica, CONICET-PID n. 256 Genetica y Microevolución de poblaciones del area andina, modelo de
catalogación operativa PIA-UBA FI018, Director del proyecto Lic. Carlos J. Reynoso, Etapa: catalogación e
Inventario, responsables: Pablo R. Bonaparte, A. Sebastian Munoz, Ricardo A Guichon” [author´s translation]

41
out the hypothesis that the numbers are related to the type of cataloguing system carried out
by Benito in the 1970´s. Although it remains a mystery as how the new cataloguing system
works it is evident that yet another attempt to unify the collections is made at the end of the
1980´s.
Since the catalogue is printed it is easy to determine what information has been
added at a later time. The column with the title “location” (referring to the location of the
material in deposit) is printed but the actual information in the column bellow the title has
been filled in using a pencil. There is also a column with the title catalogue which indicates
which original catalogue the entered information was retrieved from. This indicates that,
although the collections might have been unified into one register, once again we face a
catalogue which doesn’t constitute a complete inventory but only a working document which
is filled as the element is identified, probably studied and later given a location in the deposit.
The last catalogue of this set is from 1996 and is titled “Catalogue of collections,
inventory of Craniums and Mandibles, survey corresponding to the period 1989-1996 by
Andres Sebastián Muñoz”33. It represents a selection of around 2220 craniums and mandibles
from the entire collection. The criteria used when making the selection, although not stated,
seems to be that of provenance. There isn´t one entry in the catalogue which lacks information
about provenance. When compared to the last catalogue which was organized by numerical
order this one differs since it is organized by provenance (Continent, country, province,
locality). As is clearly stated in the title, this catalogue is an inventory of a part of the existing
collections in 1996, which is confirmed by the fact that every entry has information on its
assigned location in the deposit. According to Dr. Ines Baffi, a researcher who currently has
her office at the MEA, the whole inventory process was abruptly interrupted when in 1992 the
water started leaking into the deposit. All the material was moved to another space until the
old storage was repaired. This might be one reason why the inventory covers such a small part
of the human remains collections.
These catalogues reveal many interesting things concerning collections
management at the MEA. Firstly, there have been at least two attempts to unify the collections
into one register; the first time with Juan Ignacio Benito´s project and later in the 1980´s a
new project. There seems to be no connections between the two which leads us to conclude
that collections management effort suffer from lack of continuation. Secondly, according to
the existing catalogues, a complete inventory of the existing human remains collections was

33
Original title: Catálogo de Colecciones, Inventario de Cráneos y Mandíbulas, Relevamiento Correspondiente
al Periodo 1989-1996 por Andres Sebastián Muñoz [author´s translation]

42
never completed. Thirdly, inventories of collections are most of the time a means not an end
in themselves. The catalogues are tools which serve larger research projects. This is evident
by looking at the title of the catalogue from 1988. Another observation which indicates this is
that inventories are partial. Only the material which will be studied is located. In the recent
history of the deposit we see that the end of collections management is research not
necessarily access in general.

iv) To revalue a collection

By speaking to the current Head of the bioanthropological collections, a

researcher who has worked with the collections for the past twenty years and the former
Director of the museum it is clear that different values are attributed to the collection in
question and that, in comparison to the ethnographic and archaeological collections stored at
the very same museum, the human remains ones have been little prioritized in terms of human
resources and budget.
Dr. Inés Baffi remembers when she became a CONICET 34 researcher and started
having her work place at the Ethnographic Museum in 1984 just after the end of the last
dictatorship. Together with Ricardo Guichon, another CONICET researcher, they started
studying the human remains in what she recalls as an abandoned deposit. Baffi focused on
remains from the Valles Calchaquies in Northern Argentina and Guichon on remains from
Patagonia. She points out that the museum was their designated work place because they both
dedicated themselves to biological anthropology but that they weren´t in charge of collections
although they generously offered their help if other researchers needed to study the
collections. She was able to produce research results anyways. She collaborated because she
knew her way around the deposit. There was no direct need for an official head of the deposit.
Her collaboration and assistance was recognized between 1990 and 1995 when she received a
small salary from the museum but the type of work that she performed didn´t alter over the
years. She didn´t necessarily take on a new role at any given time. During her time with the
collections students would work with the inventory (Sebastian Muñoz and Fabiana
Frascaroli). When mentioning the MCNLP she states that the human remains collections at

34
Stands for Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, the main organism dedicated to the
promotion of Science and Technology in Argentina.

43
the MEA are different since the only ones who are identified with names are African, Asian
and European, not Indigenous from the Americas (personal communication).
José Antonio Pérez Gollán asserts that researchers who have knowledge about
collections aren´t always interested in caring for a whole collection. They would rather work
on the material which they need for their research purposes. They prefer if someone else
works with the inventory of the entire collection. On the other hand, the staff did not have the
proper training to care for collections. Being conscious of this problem he saw the need to
promote professionals who could care for collections in terms of making an inventory and
working on preventive conservation. Thanks to the workshop in collaboration with the
Smithsonian Institution and the training in preventive conservation of part of the staff at the
MEA, he states that today some of the best professionals in the field of conservation and
collections management work at the museum. These professionals are publishing papers in the
science of conservation nowadays. When asked if this applies to the human remains deposit as
well he admits that none of the staff which was trained showed an interest in taking on this
deposit. The focus was elsewhere since the human remains collections make up only a small
portion of the collections at the MEA and historically occupied a minor role in terms of
scientific production. He stresses that this isn´t the case at the MCNLP since this museum
collected and studied contemporary races much more than the MEA. Most of the collections
at the MEA came from archaeological excavations (personal communication).
Claudia Aranda, the current head of the human remains deposit, sees a double
value in the MEA human remains collections: educational and scientific. She sees the
possibility to teach democratic values through the study of bones affirming that “we are all the
same under the flesh and work the same way”. It was her own personal initiative to present
the collections management project to the board of the MEA. She saw the need for a Head
and a reorganization of the deposit and felt she had enough experience to take on the job since
she had been working ad honorem during many years. The research team she was part of
shared the space with the human remains collections. The collections needed an updated data
base and inventory, the storage facilities needed reconditioning and the collections which had
accumulated much dust needed cleaning. She recalls that it was at times very hard to locate
certain material which needed to be studied. The information about location of material in the
catalogue didn’t correspond to its physical location (personal communication).
She stresses that many studies can be made today on these collections. They are
irreplaceable and invaluable for the study of populations from the past in Argentina and from
other parts of the Americas. Since she is a researcher herself she knows what researchers need

44
and what they look for when coming to a storage room. She says she was part of a new wave
of students studying Anthropology who specialized in biological anthropology. She also sees
the lack of worth attributed to this type of collections and the lack of interest to create a
program for the public about the study of ancient human bones. She finds that it is a pity that
some archaeologists and museums don´t share her vision. In her point of view Education is
included in the Ethical dimension of caring for the collection. She wants to make a library
with literature on Bioarchaeology and on ethical issues around the handling of human
remains. She is conscience of the need to care for the collection in a respectful matter. Since
they were people the least one can do is to gather as much information as possible about them
and keep the remains in good conditions. In her opinion the deposit is a dynamic space where
researchers and students interact and where future anthropologists receive training in
managing osteological material (personal communication).
As we can notice in their testimonies, both Ines Baffi and José Antonio Perez
Gollán differentiate the human remains collections at the MEA from the ones at MCNLP in
the sense that, at the first one, most material came from archaeological excavations and that,
in the second one, the study of human diversity was well developed and the collections from
contemporary ethnic groups greater. From a disciplinary and historical perspective, one would
logically think that it would be the other way around: that a natural history museum would be
more interested in ancient bone material and that an ethnographic museum would me more
keen to collect any remains from contemporary ethnic groups. It is also quite clear from the
testimonies that an educational as well as scientific value is now attributed to these
collections, although Claudia Aranda is the only one who mentions an ethical dimension
when it comes to handling human remains.

3) Human remains collections: a basic description

Above we have seen how the new collections management project being carried
out is the result of a revalorization of these collections. From both a professional and ethical
point of view one could also argue that it is imperative for a museum to know what material
has been lost or destroyed over time and what still exists. In order to identify existing
collections and make an updated inventory, a panoramic view of what has been registered
over time as part of the human remains collections at the MEA can be a great tool. In this
fashion this basic description will hopefully contribute to the great task headed by Claudia

45
Aranda. Another question which will be explored by analyzing the classification of the
indigenous human remains in the catalogues, annual reports and inventory lists is the colonial
legacy of the MEA.

i) Size, Origin and Collectors

An estimation has already been made at 10 000 human remains elements

according to the project presented by Aranda and the MEA´s website. This number can only
be confirmed once the updated inventory of human remains is completed. It is important to
note that this constitutes aprox. a sixth of the total size of collections which is estimated at
60 000.
Nonetheless, by looking in the catalogues we can get an idea of the quantity of
human remains which have been entered into the MEA by either being assigned a new
number or keeping an old one from another institution (such as the MACNBR). According to
the volumes from 1988, there are around 11 400 elements in total. It is important to keep in
mind as stated above that this catalogue is not an inventory, only some elements have been
assigned a location. The register from 1996 only includes craniums and jaws with known
provenance. In it craniums and jaws have been entered separately with different numbers.
Around 220 jaws and 2000 craniums are listed which make a total of 2220 human remains
elements. According to the conservation project initiated in 1990 there are 53 mummified
elements stored at the deposit (http://momias.com.ar/articulos/ramomias2.htm, accessed
19/03/08). This indicates that the craniums and jaws with provenance and the mummies (a
total of around 2300) are what have been valued scientifically in the past two decades. The
rest of the material, around 9000 elements have no record of being inventoried systematically
ever35. Out of this number only 365 elements lacked information about provenance in 1988.
By looking in the General Catalogues of the MEA and the 1968 catalogue we
can see in a chronological order where the human remains which entered the MEA were from;
between 1904-1910 craniums from Salta (Arg.) and Jujuy (Arg.) and skeletons from France;
between 1908-1912 craniums from Pukará in Jujuy (Arg.), Santa Maria in Catamarca (Arg.),
Ancon in Peru, skeletons from Tierra del Fuego (Arg.); between 1912-1915 skeletons and
craniums from Laguna del Juncal in Rio Negro (Arg.) and Tilcara in Jujuy (Arg.); between
1915-1918 craniums and jaws from Sillustrani in Peru, craniums from Chaco and Campo
35
Inventory in the sense that the information in the catalogues are corroborated with the existence of the material
in the deposit and the location being registered.

46
Morado, Tílcara and Quebrada de la Huerta in Jujuy (Arg.), from Hospital Muniz in Buenos
Aires and skeletons from San Martin de los Andes (Arg.); between 1918-1924 craniums from
Humahuaca and Yacovaite in Jujuy (Arg.) and from the USA; between 1924-1941 human
bone material (no craniums), 40% from Tilcara in Jujuy (Arg.), 40% from Laguna del Juncal
in Rio Negro (Arg.) and some from Cosarangas in Bolivia and between 1941 and 1991
craniums from La Ciénaga in Jujuy (Arg.). In the above cases we can see a continuous interest
in the province of Jujuy in North Western Argentina.
Most of the 2000 craniums listed in the 1996 catalogue come from North-
western Argentina and Patagonia, mostly from the provinces of Jujuy, Salta, Chubut and Rio
Negro. Other places of origin are the provinces of Catamarca, Buenos Aires, Entre Rios and
San Luis in Argentina as well as Peru, Bolivia, France and Belgium to mention a few. Around
half of the craniums (1000) were transferred from the MCNBA to the MEA in 1947. Of these
thousand craniums, 160 were collected by Zavaleta in 1895, over 100 by Casanova in 1938,
1941 and 1943 and over 200 by Pauletti in 1942 36. The smaller collections are from
Burmeister (1884, 1887, 1897), Palavecino (1930, 1939, 1940), Holmberg, Instituto
Geografico, Gatto (1936,1938, 1940), Wagner Brothers (1913, 1928), Boman, (1914),
Sanchez, Outes, Torres, Haedo (1937), Alvear Chamoide (1912), Cortese, J. Valentin,
Instituto Geográfico Militar , Pozzi (1903), Carcelles Daguerre (1932), Gobierno militar de
Com. Rivadavia, Rojo, Aramendia (1918, 1929), Lopez (1940), Illin, Bordas (1939),
Machelio, Artayeta (1945), Deodat (1943), Thompson, Ameghino (1905) and Breyer (1945).37
The majority of the collections at the MEA were formed by the material
collected by the expeditions organized by the museum and some private donations
(Ambrosetti 1912). The expeditions which brought back a significant number of human
remains were the 2nd in 1906, 3rd in 1907, 4th in 1908, 5th in 1909, 6th in 1910, 14th in 1918, 15th
in 1915, 17th in 1921, and 24th in 1929. Some human remains were also brought back from the
9th expedition in 1913, 10th in 1914, 12th in 1916, 13th in 1917, 18th in 1922 and 23rd in 1928.

ii) The first human remains at the MEA

36
It is important to note that in the catalogue these names are attached to the element but it is hard to know if this
is the name of the person or patron who bought the collection once collected by someone else and then donated it
to a museum or if it is the name of the person who actually collected the material. It isn´t certain whether the
year corresponds to when the material was collected or to when it was entered into the register.
37
The data appears as presented in the catalogue. Where information of a time frame is available it has been
stated in brackets.

47
 In the following section we take a closer look at the formation of human remains
collections at the MEA. We are interested in the type of material which was collected and the
way it was classified. The consulted material constitutes the 1 st General Catalogue covering
all entries into the MEA from 1904 to 1910 (Archaeology Storage at MEA), Ambrosetti´s
published Memoria del Museo Etnográfico, 1906-1912, the annual reports by Ambrosetti
from 1915-1917 (Archive MEA) and an inventory of the anthropology collections from 1916
(Archive MEA).
The following table presents a summarized version of the data on the human
remains material which was entered into the First General Catalogue of the MEA which
covers the years 1904 to 191038.

Original # and Where is it Classified Who was the Observations

Year when from? as… collector or
collected donator?
# 21, 1905 Ancient Cranium and 1st expedition of
Cemeteries at mandible FFyL39
Rio Negro
#203, 1905 Pampa Grande, Funerary urn, 1st expedition of It contained the
Salta Calchaquí FFyL remains of a child
civilization
#403-450, 1906 Poma, Craniums 2nd expedition of #423,437 and 438
Calchaqui FFyL have been
Valley, La Paya, destroyed
Cachi and
Payogasta
#621, 1906 Trelew, Chubut Human Donation
cranium Manuela de
Basaldua
#682-687, 1906 La Paya Sacro
humano,
humero, tibia

38
Note: the second general catalogue at the MEA starts with entries which are from 1908 which shows that there
is overlapping and that the year most likely refers to the year the material was collected and not when it was
entered into the catalogue.
39

48
 and femur
#1435-1437, Abra de Cranium, foot, 3rd expedition
1907 Normayo, Jujuy arm and hand FfyL
of mummies
#1485-1536, La Poma Craniums 3rd expedition entered as a group
1907 FfyL in the catalogue,
not one by one
# 2481-2484, Bolivia Aimara Donation Nicolas
1907 craniums Suarez
#2485-2499, (La) Paya and Craniums 2nd expedtion
1906 Fuerte Alto FFyL
#3100-3152, La Poma (Salta) Calchaqui 3rd FfyL
1907 y La Paya Craniums expedition
#3153-3184, Isla and Pukara, Craniums 4th FfyL #3168, 3174,
1908 expedition 3181, 3183 have
been destroyed
and #3154, 3158,
3159, 3162 were
sent to the
Museum of the
American Indian
#3185-3189, La Paya Craniums 3rd FfyL
1907 expedition

#3190-3194, La Poma Craniums 2nd Ffyl # 3191 has been

1906 expedition destroyed
#3839-3900, Paya, Poma, Craniums 2nd, 3rd, 4th and # 3842, 3846,
1906-1909 Kifrón, Pukara 5th FfyL 3849, 3852, 3853,
de Tilcara, expedition 3861, 3864, 3866,
3867, 3875, 3880,
3887 have been
destroyed
#5000-5078, Poma, Isla de Craniums and 3rd, 4th, 5th FfyL #5016, cranium,

49
1907-1909 Tilcara, Pukara other human expedition from Pukara de
de Tilcara remains Tilcara, 5th FFyL
expedition
exchanged with
University
Museum of
Tokyo
#5060, 1909 Tapalqué Cranium Donation Dr. Name: Cecilia
province of microcephalus Alejandro Korn Farías 40 years
Buenos Aires, old, died single,
16th of July 1909
#5061, 1909 Buenos Aires Cranium Donation from a19 year old
Dr. Angel Roffo, Argentine
#5062, 1909 Buenos Aires Cranium Donation from 1 month and 8
Dr. Angel Roffo days old argentine
#5063, 1909 France Fetus skeleton Bought from
France
#5064, 1909 Buenos Aires Fetus in Donation from 7 months old
formaldehyde Dr. Irma Vertica
#6303-6306, Carmen de Craniums Donated by Otto
1910 Patagones, Prov Becker
Buenos Aires
#6307-6314, Geneva, Replicas of bought
1910 Florence, craniums
Australia, New
Guinea
#6327-6361, Pukara de calchaqui 6th FfyL
1910 Tilcara craniums expedition

The seven replicas of craniums from Geneva, Florence, Australia and New
Guinea have been listed since even if they aren’t actually human remains, they were a part of
the Anthropology collections of the museum. The funerary urn has been included in the list to
point out that many times the human remains inside of these urns were disposed of before the

50
urns entered the museum. As is written in the catalogue the urn contained human remains but
these were never entered into the catalogue.
From the above table we can make certain observations. The total number of
human remains entered into the museum register between 1904-1910 is 394 of which 20 were
labelled as destroyed. The human remains only constitute aprox. 6,2 % of the total 6361
objects entered. All but 14 of the 394 human remains pieces are from FFyL expeditions. As
we saw above it is during this time that the expeditions organized by the FFyL bring back
most osteological material. In 1916 the scenario looks almost the same with a total of 21 572
items entered into the general catalogues, out of which 975 are craniums and skeletal parts,
which corresponds to aprox. 4,5 % of the total (Annual report 1916 and inventory sheet
1916).40 If we compare this with the current percentage (17% of the total is material from the
Anthropology deposit which doesn’t only include human remains) we realize that 90% of the
bioanthropological collections entered the museum after 1916. This means that almost all the
human remains material entered the museum by other means than the museums
archaeological expeditions. It also means that the majority of the human remains collections
arrived to the museum after the period in which the general collections of the MEA grew at
the fastest rate.
Since the year written in the general catalogue refers to when the object was
collected and the order in which the material is entered into the catalogue indicates when it
was actually registered, we can notice that certain material from the same expedition was
entered later than other. For instance, the human remains material seems to have been entered
after the archaeological material from the same expedition. On two occasions, craniums
which were all collected during different expeditions were entered together (see #3839-3900
and #5000-5078). The other material wasn´t entered in this fashion. All of the above suggests
that the human osteological material could lay around without being registered much longer
than other material. This leads us to assume that this type of material was less important to the
institution´s activities at this early stage than other type of collections.
The material is classified by region and type of material but there is no
information, except in the case of the term “calchaquí civilization” about cultural affiliation,
ethnic group or race. In the published memoria and unpublished annual reports covering the

40
The inventory mentions only craniums and skeletons while loose bones are sometimes entered with separate
numbers into the general catalogue. This could make the numbers somewhat inaccurate but they serve to give us
an idea of the low percentage of the collections which constituted the Anthropology section. For a photo of the
inventory sheet see appendix 1.

51
period 1906-1917 we find more references to contemporary ethnic groups such as the Onas,
Yamanas, Mocovís, Chiriguanos, Pilagás and Tobas.
The memoria doesn´t describe all collections but summarizes the most important
ones and is divided into different parts: Anthropology Section, Archaeology section,
Ethnography section followed by a list of donations to the MEA (Ambrosetti 1912). The
Anthropology section, which comes first is organized in the following way: Argentine fossils,
Exotic fossils, Argentine craniums and skeletons, American craniums and skeletons, Exotic
craniums and skeletons, and busts and portraits. The listing of Argentine and American
craniums and skeletons has been reproduced bellow:

“Argentine Craniums and Skeletons:

- Special Calchaquí collection: 448 craniums from La Paya, from La

Poma, from Pukara, from Isla de Tilcara, and a small series from Fuerte
Alto, Kipón and Santa María
- A series of child craniums
- There are many skeletons, some mounted and a great number of loose
bones.
- The museum also possesses a great number of bones with pathological
alterations
- A mummy of a child from Chania, Jujuy
- A skeleton in its shroud from La Poma
- Chaná Indians from Baradero – a complete skeleton, various craniums
and bones from different skeletons
- Chaná Indians from Entre Rios – various craniums and parts of
craniums and bones from the skeleton from the mounds from
Gualehuachú and Mazaruca, these last ones donated by professor Outes
- A cranium from the isle of Lechiguanas
- Santa Fé- A cranium from Coronda
- Province of Buenos Aires – a cranium from Chascomús, four craniums
from Carmen de Patagones, a microcefal cranium and a skeleton from
an idiot
- Rio Negro – an ancient deformed cranium, a cranium from Viedma

52
 - Chubut – five craniums and a mold from another ancient Patagon
- Santa Cruz – a child´s cranium from Cabo Blanco
- Tierra del Fuego - Various craniums and skeletons from Indians Onas
and Yamanas
- Chaco- Two craniums Toba and one Mocoví. Four skeletons from
Chiriguanos
- Santiago del Estero- a cranium from the department Matará

American Craniums and Skeletons:

- Four Aimara craniums and two mummies, a woman and a child, from
Bolivia
- A mummy from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
- 21 craniums from the cemetery of Ancón, close to Lima, Peru”

In the annual report presented by Ambrosetti, covering the activities of the

museum during 1913 and 1914, there is no mention of ethnic groups but of the remains of a
certain indigenous chief Illirí and his son. The list of new material entered into the
Anthropology section includes the following:

- Two craniums from Chubut

- Two from Chaco
- One from Neuquén
- 33 craniums from Rio Negro
- Three craniums from Peru
- Three craniums from Japanese
- Three skeletons from Tierra del Fuego
- Two skeletons from Chaco (from the cacique Illirí and his son)
- 15 skeletons and 600 bones from Rio Negro41

41
For a photo of the original document see Appendix 2

53
 According to the annual report of the MEA signed by Ambrosetti the 1 st of
April, 1915, during the past year the following material was entered into the Anthropology
section:

- 19 skeletons, one mummy and 18 craniums from San Juan

- Five craniums from Chubut
- Three skeletons and two craniums from Chaco
- 36 skeletons from Rio Negro
- One Peruvian mummy
- One Japanese cranium
- Two European craniums
- One Arab cranium42

In the annual reports from 1916 and 1917 we see the entrance of many remains
belonging to contemporary ethnic groups. According to the annual report of the MEA signed
the 26th of April 1916, the following material has entered the Anthropology section:

- One cranium from Chubut

- Four skeletons from Chaco
- One Pilagá skeleton
- Eight craniums Matacos and Chiriguanos
- One head of a Peruvian mummy
- 40 craniums from Silustrani with with Aimara deformation
- Four European craniums
- One mold of a cranium from the Caribean with a typical deformation
from Cuba43

It is interesting to add that the same annual report reveals that many objects
from Matacos, Chirguanos and Pilagas entered the ethnography section of the MEA the same
year. Were the human remains collected at the same time as the ethnographic objects? Were
contemporary cemeteries or ritual sites excavated?

42
For a photo of the original document see Appendix 3
43
For a photo of the original document see Appendix 4

54
 In the MEA annual report from the 20th of April 1917 the information on the
yearly accomplishments are presented in a different way. There are no lists, but accounts of
how each collection was acquired which serves our purpose quite well. In contrast to the early
years of the museum, when almost all human remains came from archaeological excavations
carried out by the FFyL expeditions, during the 1910´s more material came in contexts which
weren´t necessarily archaeological.

“A small expedition undertaken by Dr. Salvador Debenedetti to the Quebrada de

Humahuaca discovered a new archaeological site to the east of Tilcara…which
resulted in the exhumation of thirteen craniums and 148 diverse objects of a
very ancient type…From the Chaco region, the museum received a donation
from Mr. Cáseres, consisting of three toba skeletons and twelve ethnographic
objects from Mr Elías Niklison… From the territory of Santa Cruz the museum
has received a tehuelche cranium by purchase; 51 stone objects were donated by
Mr José Pozzi; and four incomplete tehuelche skeletons, sent by Mr. Francisco
Cubas… In addition, the museum has received: an idol from the Easter Island by
purchase; and by donations: two replicas of fossile craniums from the National
Museum; three human craniums given by Alejandro Korn and three others by
Dr. Angel Roffo. This material has entered the Physical Anthropology
section.”44

It is hard to know how the donors of remains from ethnic groups came over the
material. This would be interesting to follow up by studying correspondence between the
museum director and the donors or collaborators with the museum who were based in far
away places. Andrea Pegoraro has been working with this type of material and has written
about the way Ambrosetti used bureaucratic networks to get employees working for the state
in remote places to identify, gather and to send to the MEA ethnographic material from
indigenous groups living in the region (2005).

iii) The repatriation of the Maori Head from the Ethnography Section

44
For a photo of the original document see Appendix 5

55
 In may 2004 the MEA repatriated a toi moko, a mummified head tattooed as a
Maori warrior, to the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The initiative
was taken by the Director of the MEA, José Antonio Pérez Gollán, in 2003 when the
ambassador of New Zealand in Argentina visited the museum. This head, which entered the
catalogue as # 11 961 in1910 as part of a greater collection of highly valued objects from
Polynesia, was one of the few human remains which had entered the ethnographic section
instead of the anthropology section (Pegoraro & Pérez Gollán 2004 & Borruat de Bun 1964).
Ambrosetti got Antonio Devoto to buy and donate the collection which he had spotted in a
catalogue sent to him from the well reputated merchant Mr. W. O. Oldman established in
London. In this catalogue we find the following description of the object: “ conserved head of
a maorí chief, beautiful Moko tattoo, these heads are now extremely rare. Ear decoration
made of a tiger shark tooth covered in red wax. A part of the head has been shaved. It is
accompanied by a croquis of a Moko. New Zealand” (original catalogue cited in Pérez Gollán
& Pegoraro 2004).
According to Perez Gollán and Pegoraro´s testimony of the occurrences (2004),
the description above together with the fact that the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand is
especially committed to the repatriation of these kinds of heads and that there is literature on
the context in which these heads became trade goods seem to be important factors in the
decision of the repatriation. Is this then what differentiates this case from the rest of the
human remains collections at the museum?

CONCLUSIONS

i) Many obstacles in the care of human remains collections at the MEA

During the most important years of collection formation at the MEA, human
remains constituted a fairly small proportion (only around 4-6 %) of the entire collections in
comparison with today when it constitutes around a one sixth of the total number of items.
They were also entered in such a fashion which makes one doubt their scientific value for the

56
institution at the time. There is one exception to this tradition which constitutes Outes,
director of the MEA in the 1930´s, who showed interest in human bones when he renamed the
section and assigned these collections a separate deposit in the new building. In 1947, a great
amount of human remains entered the MEA when the whole Archaeology and Anthropology
section of the MACNBR was transferred to this museum, causing the sudden expansion of the
Anthropology section. These transferred human remains collections were never entered into
MEA´s original catalogues, contributing to dispersing documentation and information.
During the management of Pérez Gollán, 1986-2005, the Ethnography and the
Archaeology sections were prioritized. In my opinion, this has to do with the new policies and
aims the museum adhered to: work on collections which could be showed to the public
combined with adhering to a non-exhibition of human remains policy. As a result, the human
remains collections had a possible scientific value but lacked a public or educational value
during the past two decades. The new aims are also reflected in the general development of
collections management at the MEA. During the 1990´s the care of objects became more
professionalized in the Ethnography and Archaeology deposits from a growing conscience
promoted by amongst other things the workshop organized by the Smithsonian Institution
which focused on conservation issues in an exhibition context where ethnographic and
archaeological material was used. Something close to this development wasn´t reflected in the
Anthropology storage until 2007.
In the past, inventory projects and unifying cataloguing systems were
discontinued and never followed up, as Juan Ignacio Benito´s project in the 1970´s illustrates.
There hasn’t only been a lack of sustained projects in time but also, in the case of the human
remains collections, many partially completed inventories, which have been the result of
cataloguing efforts which were the means to a greater end, that of research. Resistance to
perceive collections as a public good and prioritizing research instead if general access by
avoiding to make a systematic inventory of collections has been identified as a key obstacle in
the development of collections management in the human remains deposit at the MEA.

ii) What kind of heritage is human remains?

In general in Argentina the archaeologists and museum staff seem to

differentiate ancient remains from remains with known identity and direct descendants. This
is explicit when the testimonies from MEA professionals and researchers distinguish the

57
human remains collections in the MEA from those in the MCNLP, in that the former were
mostly from archaeological expeditions and the latter from more contemporary ethnic groups.
This division is also reflected at other levels of discourse and practice. Both times restitution
took place at the MCNLP, it involved remains of individuals whose identities, life stories and
type of death were well documented and in the AABA declaration it is stated that only
restitution claims on human remains with known identity are supported and encouraged,
indicating that these types of contemporary and well documented remains have a value which
exceeds the scientific one. Does the classification of human remains affect the chances of
being seen as heritage which is claimable? Did the fact that the Maori head was stored as an
ethnographic object from a strongly represented contemporary indigenous group play an
important role in the repatriation process?
Human remains have been classified as either ethnographic or anthropological
in the case of the MEA. It is also clear that many human remains have been collected at
archaeological excavations, nonetheless they are not explicitly considered archaeological
material in the annual reports and memoria. Once having entered the museum, all human
remains, no matter if they came from archaeological or other contexts, came together in the
Anthropology section. According to the above description of the first collections, the antiquity
and type of recollection of the material seems to vary. Does avoiding to dig further into the
institution history of collecting human remains unconsciously constitute a way of overcoming
dealing with sensitive issues at the MEA? This is hard to tell. Nonetheless, it is a fact that a
history of a lack of value and space together with partial inventories of collections have led to
storing thousands of human remains with little documentation. The challenge for the MEA
today is to deal with its colonial legacy by guaranteeing the continuation of the collections
management of human remains initiated in 2007.

Acknowledgements

I want to warmly thank Dr. Myriam Tarragó, current Director of the MEA, for letting
me carry out my research at the museum. I would also like to thank Monica Ferraro
and Claudia Aranda for their time and help, Adriana Muñoz, my supervisor, for
stimulating conservations and Ariel Frank for his unconditional support.

58
References

Published sources:

 Ambrosetti, Juan B. 1912 Memoria del Museo Etnográfico, 1906-1912. Buenos Aires:
Compañia Sud-Americana de Billetes de Banco. 1912.

 Anonymous, 2006 “Controversia mapuche por restos humanos indígenas del Museo”,
Diario El día, 25/09/06

59
 Arenas, P. 1991. Antropología en Argentina: el aporte de los científicos de habla
alemana, Institución Cultural Argentino-Germana, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras,
UBA

 Badenes, D. 2006 “Trofeos de Guerra: Restos Humanos en el Museo de Ciencias

Naturales de La Plata”, La Pulseada, año 5, numero 43, sept. 2006

 Barkan, E and Bush, R. 2002. Claiming the Stones Naming the Bones: Cultural
Property and the Negotiation of national and Ethnic Identity. Getty Research Institute,
Los Angeles.

 Berberián, E. 1992. La protección juridica del patrimonio arqueologico en la

republica Argentina, Comechingonia: Argentina

 Calvo, S. and Arenas, P. 1988. Museo Etnográfico: aportes para su historia,

Cuadernos de Trabajo, no.2, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Museo Etnográfico Juan
B. Ambrosetti

 Carnese, F., Cocilovo J. and Goicochea, A. 1991-1992. Análisis hístorico y estado

actual de la antropología biológica en la Argentina, Runa, XX, Pp 35-67

 Curtoni, R. and Politis, G. 2006. Race and racism in South American archaeology
World Archaeology 38, no.1, Pp. 93-109

 Dahlgren, E. 2002 Farfar var rasbiolog, en berättelse om människovärde igår och

idag. Bokförlaget DN, Stockholm

 Declaración de Río Cuarto. 2005. Primer Foro Pueblos Originarios – arqueólogos. Río
Cuarto, Argentina. Comentarios. Revista de Arqueólogia Suramericana 1 (2). Pp. 287-
293

 Endere, M.L. 2000a. Arqueología y Legislación en Argentina, cómo proteger el

patrimonio arqueológico. INCUAPA: Olavarría

 Endere, M. L. 2000b Patrimonios en disputa: acervos nacionales, investigación

arqueológica y reclamos étnicos sobre restos humanos. Trabajos de Prehistoria 57(1)
CSIC. Mardid. Pp 1-13.

 Endere, M.L. 2001 Patrimonio arqueológico en Argentina. Panorama actual y

perspectivas futuras, Revista de arquelología americana, 20: 143-158, Instituto
Panamericano de Geografía e historia

 Endere, M.L. 2002. The Reburial Issue In Argentina: A growing conflict in Fforde,
Cressida; Hubert, Jane and Turnbull, Paul (Editors): The Dead and Their Possessions.
Repatriation in Principle, Policy and Practice. One World Archaeology; 43.
Routledge. London. Pp. 266-83.

60
 Endere, M.L. and Curtoni, R. 2006. Entre Lonkos y ólogos, la participación de la
comunidad indígena rankulche de Argentina en la investigación arqueológica, Revista
de arquelología suramericana, 2: 1.

 Endere, M.L. 2007. Management of Archaeological Sites and the Public in Argentina,
BAR International Series. Archaeopress: Oxford

 Fernandez, J. 1982 Historia de la arqueología Argentina. Tomo 34-35 de los Anales

de Arqeología y Etnología. Asociación Cuyana de Antropología. Mendoza

 Gala, A. 1997. Indigenous Peoples, Museums and Ethics In Edson, G. Museum Ethics.
Routledge. London

 Hubert, J. 1988. Disposition of the Dead, World Archaeological Bulletin no. 2

 Kawharu, M. 2002 Indigenous governance in museums: a case study of the Aukland

War Memorial Museum in Fforde, C., Hubert, J. and Turnbull, P. (eds) The Dead and
Their Possessions: Repatriation in Principle, Policy & Practice. Routledge. London

 Lagerkvist, C. 2006. Empowerment and anger. Learning how to share ownership of

the museum Museum and Society 4 (2), Pp. 52-68

 Lehmann-Nitsche, R. 1910 Catálogo de la sección antropológica del Museo de La

Plata, Universidad de La Plata

 Ljungström, O. 2002. Oscariansk antropologi: Exotism, förhistoria och rasforskning

som vetenskaplig människosyn. University of Uppsala, Department for the History of
Science and Ideas, Skrifter Nr 28.

 McCarthy, C. 2007. Exhibiting Maori, A history of Colonial cultures of display, Te

Papa Press, Wellington

 Muñoz, A. (2008) When”the other” became the neighbour. The Bolivian Collections
at the Museum of World Culture. (manuscript)

 Outes, F. 1931 La reorganización del Museo Antropológico y Etnográfico de la

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Solar . Pp. 13-42.

 Pearce, S. (1992) Museum objects and collections, a cultural study, Leicester

University Press. Leicester and London

 Peers, L. (1993) Strands Which Refuse to be Braided: Hair Samples from Beatrice
Blackwood's Ojibwe Collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Journal of Material
Culture, Vol. 8, No. 1, 75-96

 Pegoraro, A. 2005. Instrucciones y colecciones en viaje. Redes de recolección entre el

Museo Etnográfico y los Territorios Nacionales”, Anuario de Estudios en
Antropología Social. CAS-IDES, Pp.49-64

61
 Pepe, F. M., Anon Suarez M. and Harrison P. 2008 Grupo Universitario de
Investigación en Antropología Social, Identificación y Restitución: “Colecciones” de
restos humanos en el Museo de La Plata, Autor. La Plata

 Peralta, A. 1997. Indianer på Museet. Om vetenskapens härjningar I 1880-talest

Argentina”, Ord&Bild, no.6

 Pérez Gollán, J. A. and Dujovne M. 1988. El museo etnográfico: funciones,

diagnóstico y propuestas, mimeo, Buenos Aires,

 Pérez Gollán, J. 1995 “Mr. Ward en Buenos Aires. Los museos y el proyecto de
nación a fines del siglo XIX”, Ciencia Hoy 5 (28): 52-58.

 Pérez Gollán, J.A.and Dujovne M. 1996. El museo etnográfico: funciones y balance de

una gestión, Runa, Archivo para las Ciencias del Hombre; volumen XXII, Facultad de
Filosofía y Letras, UBA. Buenos Aires, Pp. 119-131

 Pérez Gollán, J. A. and Pegoraro A. 2004. La repatriación de un Toi Moko. Relaciones

de la Sociedad Argentina de Antropología, XXIX, Buenos Aires

 Podgorny, I y G. Politis 1990-92 ¿Qué sucedió en la historia? Los esqueletos

araucanos del Museo de La Plata. Arqueología Contemporánea no.3 Pp. 73-79.

 Podgorny, I. and Miotti L. 1994 El pasado como campo de batalla Ciencia Hoy 5(25).
Pp. 16-19

 Podgorny, I. 1998. El argentino despertar de las faunas y de las gentes prehistóricas.

Coleccionistas, estudiosos, museos y universidad en la creación del patrimonio
paleontológico y arqueológico nacional (1875-1913). Eudeba: Buenos Aires

 Podgorny, I. 1999. De la antigüedad del hombre en el Plata a la distribución de las

antigüedades en el mapa: Los criterios de organización de las colecciones
antropológicas del museo de La Plata entre 1890 y 1930. História, Ciências, Saúde-
Manguinhos, 6 (1):81-100.

 Politis, G. 1994. El Regreso de Inakayal. Museo, 1 (3) Fundación del Museo de la

Plata “Francisco Pascasio Moreno”: La Plata

 Politis, G. 2006. Theoretical and ethical issues of archaeology in South America. In

Layton, R., Shennan S. and Stone P.(eds.) A Future for Archaeology; the past in the
present. University College London Press. London

 Politis, G. 2001. On archaeological praxis, gender bias, and indigenous peoples in

South America. Journal of Social Archaeology, no.1, Pp. 90-107.

 Pyenson, L. & Sheets-Pyenson S. 1999 Servants of Nature : a history of scientific

institutions, enterprises, and sensibilities. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

62
  Ramundo, P. S. 2006 Cual ha sido el rol del estado argentino en la protección del
patrimonio arqueológico? Patrimonio cultural y Derecho, no.10

 Thyselius, Eva. 2007. Mänskliga kvarlevor nya kunskaper. DIK Forum No 2

 Trigger B. G. 1980 Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian. American
Antiquity, Vol. 45, No. 4. Pp. 662-676.

 Zeballos, E. (1878) 1986. La Conquista de las Quince Mil Leguas. Buenos Aires:
Hyspanoamérica

Internet sources:

 Dolo, R, Campos, F, Borda, P, De Francesco, G. (Equipo de rescate y conservación de

restos momificados del Museo Etnográfico ) Colección de restos y cuerpos
momificados del Museo Etnográfico Juan B Ambrosetti, Facultad de Filosofía y
Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires.1990
(http://momias.com.ar/articulos/ramomias2.htm) accessed 19/03/08

 ICOM´s Code of Ethics. 2004. http://icom.museum accessed 21/04/08

 The Museums Association (UK)

Code of Ethics for Museums: Ethical principles for all who work or govern museums
in the UK (2002)
http://www.museumsassociation.org/asset_arena/text/cs/code_of_ethics.pdf
Accessed 21/04/08

 Castilla, Américo, Dirección Nacional de Patrimonio y Museos, Una política para los
museos en la Argentina (2005)
http://www.cultura.gov.ar/archivos/programas_docs/politica_museos.pdf
Accessed 01/04/08
 Dirección de Patrimonio y Museos, Secretaría de Culrura de La Nación, (2002)
Registro de inventario de Bienes Culturales Patrimoniales, Res. SC Nº:1329/02
http://www.cultura.gov.ar/archivos/programas_docs/RESOLUCION_13291.pdf
accessed 21/04/08

 LEY Nº 25.743 PROTECCIÓN del PATRIMONIO ARQUEOLÓGICO y

PALEONTOLÓGICO (2003) http://www.inapl.gov.ar/docs/registro_ley_25743.doc
accessed 21/04/08

 Declaración de la Asociación de Antropología Biológica Argentina (AABA) en

relación con la ética del estudio de restos humanos (2007)
http://www.fcnym.unlp.edu.ar/aabra/Declaraci%F3n%20AABA%20Restos
%20Humanos.pdf accessed 01/04/08

63
Unpublished sources:

 Aranda, C. 2006. Proyecto de inventario y reubicación de los restos humanos ubicados

en el depósito de Antropología Biológica del Museo Etnográfico J. B. Ambrosetti,
presentado en Feb. 2006

 Aranda, C. 2007. Informe, Tareas realizadas durante el período Noviembre 2006-

Noviembre 2007, Depósito de Antropología Biológica del Museo Etnográfico J.B.
Ambrosetti

 Letter from Juan B. Ambrosetti to the Dean of the Facultad de Filosfía y Letras at the
Universidad de Buenos Aires accepting the position of Director of the MEA, 1905,
Archivo Fotografico y Documental del Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti

 Memoria (1913-1914) que el Director del Museo Etnográfico, Dr Juan B Ambrosetti

presenta al Señor Decano de la FFyL, en el año 1914, Archivo Fotografico y
Documental del Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti

 Annual Report of the Museo Etnográfico presented by Dr. Juan B Ambrosetti to the
Dean of the FFyL, Dr. Rodolfo Rivarola, in the form of a letter, 19th April 1915,
Archivo Fotografico y Documental del Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti

 Annual Report of the Museo Etnográfico presented by Dr. Juan B Ambrosetti to the
Dean of the FFyL, Dr. Rodolfo Rivarola, in the form of a letter, 26th April 1916,
Archivo Fotografico y Documental del Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti

 Annual Report of the Museo Etnográfico presented by the Director of the MEA to the
Dean of the FFyL, Dr. Rodolfo Rivarola, in the form of a letter, 20th April 1917,
Archivo Fotografico y Documental del Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti

 Inventario de Museo Etnográfico, Colecciones, 7 de Noviembre 1916, Archivo

Fotográfico y Documental del Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti

 Museum catalogue: “Extracto del llamado ´Primer libro de inventarios del Museo
Publico, despues Museo Nacional de Buenos Aires´ del 1850 y de la Epoca del Dr.
German Burmeister”

 Museum catalogue: “Antiguas colecciones del Museo de Ciencias Naturales Bs As”

 Museum catalogue: “Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales, Sección de

Arqueología, Catalogo, 1924-1929”

 Museum catalogue without an official title: 1930-1933 Ciencias Naturales

 Museum catalogue without an official title: 1934-1937 Ciencias Naturales

64
 Museum catalogue without an official title: 1938-1940 Ciencias Naturales

 Museum catalogue without an official title: 1941-1942 Ciencias Naturales

 Museum catalogue without an official title: 1942-1943 Ciencias Naturales

 Museum catalogues: Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires Facultad de Filosofía y

Letras Catalogo N. 1-7

 Museum catalogue: “Catálogo de Material Osteológico, el presente catálogo es copia

fiel de las partes de los catálogos Generales del Museo Etnográfico, que corresponden
al material osteologico.”

 Museum catalogue: “Catálogo de Antropología Física 1988 Tomo 1, Proyecto de

investigación annual secretaría de Ciencia y Tecnica, CONICET-PID n. 256 Genetica
y Microevolución de poblaciones del area andina, modelo de catalogación operativa
PIA-UBA FI018, Director del proyecto Lic. Carlos J. Reynoso, Etapa: catalogación e
Inventario, responsables: Pablo R. Bonaparte, A. Sebastian Muñoz, Ricardo A
Guichon

 Museum catalogue: “Catálogo de Antropología Física 1988 Tomo 2, Proyecto de

investigación annual secretaría de Ciencia y Tecnica, CONICET-PID n. 256 Genetica
y Microevolución de poblaciones del area andina, modelo de catalogación operativa
PIA-UBA FI018, Director del proyecto Lic. Carlos J. Reynoso, Etapa: catalogación e
Inventario, responsables: Pablo R. Bonaparte, A. Sebastian Muñoz, Ricardo A
Guichon

 Museum catalogue: “Catálogo de Colecciones, Inventario de Cráneos y Mandíbulas,

Relevamiento Correspondiente al Periodo 1989-1996” by Andres Sebastián Muñoz

Appendix 1.
Photo of the inventory sheet : “Inventario de Museo Etnográfico, Colecciones”, 7 de Noviembre
1916, Archivo Fotográfico y Documental del Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti

65
Appendix 2.
Photos of pages 2-3 from “Memoria (1913-1914) que el Director del Museo Etnográfico, Dr
Juan B Ambrosetti presenta al Señor Decano de la FFyL, en el año 1914”, Archivo Fotografico y
Documental del Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti

66
67
Appendix 3
Photo of page 6 from the “Annual Report of the Museo Etnográfico presented by Dr. Juan B
Ambrosetti to the Dean of the FFyL, Dr. Rodolfo Rivarola, in the form of a letter”, 19 th April
1915, Archivo Fotografico y Documental del Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti

68
Appendix 4
Photo of page 6 from the “Annual Report of the Museo Etnográfico presented by Dr. Juan B
Ambrosetti to the Dean of the FFyL, Dr. Rodolfo Rivarola, in the form of a letter”, 26 th April
1916, Archivo Fotografico y Documental del Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti

69
Appendix 5
Photo of pages 2 and 3 from the “Annual Report of the Museo Etnográfico presented by the
Director of the MEA to the Dean of the FFyL, Dr. Rodolfo Rivarola, in the form of a letter”, 20 th
April 1917, Archivo Fotografico y Documental del Museo Etnográfico J B Ambrosetti

70
71
72