Nature and Antiquities
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Nature and Antiquities Nature and Antiquities The Making of Archaeology in the Americas Edited by Philip L. Kohl, Irina Podgorny, and Stefanie Gänger tucson The University of Arizona Press www.uapress.arizona.edu © 2014 by The Arizona Board of Regents Chapter 9, “Manifest Destiny as the Order of Nature” © 2014 by Alice Beck Kehoe Open-access edition published 2019 ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3112-7 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3925-3 (open-access e-book) The text of this book is licensed under the Creative Commons Atrribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivsatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Jacket design by Leigh McDonald Jacket illustrations from the Revista de Exposição Anthropologica Brazileira, 1882. Publication of this book was made possible in part by funding from the Wofford College History Department. The support of Wellesley College for the preparation of the index is also gratefully acknowledged. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nature and antiquities : the making of archaeology in the Americas / edited by Philip L. Kohl, Irina Podgorny, and Stefanie Gänger. pages cm Summary: “Nature and Antiquities analyzes how the study of indigenous peoples was linked to the study of nature and natural sciences. Leading scholars break new ground and entreat archaeologists to acknowledge the importance of ways of knowing in the study of nature in the history of archaeology”— Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 8165- 3112- 7 (cloth : alkaline paper) 1. Archaeology— America—History—19th century. 2. Archaeology—America— History—20th century. 3. Archaeologists— America—History. 4. Natural history— America—History. 5. Interdisciplinary approach to knowledge—History. 6. Anthropology— America—History. 7. Indians— Antiquities. 8. America— Antiquities. I. Kohl, Philip L., 1946– II. Podgorny, Irina, 1963– III. Gänger, Stefanie. CC101.U6N38 2014 930.1—dc23 2014007786 An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 978-0-8165-3925-3. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. To Maribel Martínez Navarrete, friend and colleague There is a sense in which Eu rope was the prisoner of its shepherds and barbaric origin. The savage state cannot be discovered in its history, and has had to be invented, under the name of the state of nature, by poets, lawgivers and phi los o phers. In America the thing really exists, and the two continents form a vast laboratory in which Eu ro pe an speculative experiments can test their hypotheses regard- ing the human mind by observing it in a state as close as is possible for humans to the condition of frugivorous or carnivorous animals. This is the point at which “America” becomes the prisoner of “Eu- rope’s” limited understanding of itself. The concept of “nature” preceding “history” in the or ga ni za tion of social life, evolved in Eu rope, is about to be imposed upon America, as a means whereby “Europe” understands both “America” and itself, and given the radical inequalities of power between the two, the understanding and government of the self is very different from the understanding and government of the others. —J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 4: Barbarians, Savages and Empires Contents A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s i x Introduction: Nature in the Making of Archaeology in the Americas 3 Stefanie Gänger, Philip Kohl, and Irina Podgorny Part I. Interplays 1. Skulls and Idols: Anthropometrics, Antiquity Collections, and the Origin of American Man, 1810– 1850 23 Miruna Achim 2. Finding the Ancient in the Andes: Archaeology and Geology, 1850– 1890 47 Joanne Pillsbury 3. Place-Names and Indigenous Languages: Samuel Alexander Lafone Quevedo and British Antiquarian Methods in Nineteenth- Century Argentina 69 Máximo Farro Part II. Settings 4. Fraternal Curiosity: The Camacho Museum, Campeche, Mexico 91 Adam T. Sellen 5. The Many Natures of Antiquities: Ana María Centeno and Her Cabinet of Curiosities, Peru, ca. 1832– 1874 110 Stefanie Gänger viii · Contents 6. From Lake Titicaca to Guatemala: The Travels of Joseph Charles Manó and His Wife of Unknown Name 125 Irina Podgorny 7. Visualizing Culture and Nature: William Taylor’s Murals in the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians, American Museum of Natural History 145 Susan Roy Part III. Narratives 8. Arrows and Sciences: Odd Displays for Another Brazil, 1840– 1882 169 Maria Margaret Lopes, Mariza Corrêa, and Irina Podgorny 9. Manifest Destiny as the Order of Nature 186 Alice Beck Kehoe 10. Saving the Natives: The Long Emergence and Transformation of Indigeneity 202 John S. Gilkeson Selected Bibliography 221 Editors and Contributors 234 Index 239 Ac know ledg ments The editors would like to thank the Amerind Foundation and its gracious and supportive director, John Ware, for hosting the Wenner- Gren spon- sored seminar “The Naturalization of the Past: Nation- Building and the Development of Anthropology and Natural History in the Americas” in Dragoon, Arizona, in 2002. That meeting ultimately gave rise to this book, and we would like to acknowledge all those who participated in the 2002 conference, initiating a dialogue among scholars from different national backgrounds who were interested in the early development of archaeology in the Americas. These include J. Marks, G. Penny, O. Re- strepo, H. Benavides, M. Rutsch, N. Dias, C. Loza, M. M. Lopes, and J. Briceño. In par tic u lar we extend our thanks to Curtis “Kit” Hinsley, who fi rst suggested that the Amerind Foundation could provide the perfect venue for our seminar. Kit joined I. Podgorny and P. Kohl as co- organizers of the initial conference, and his collaboration proved essential to its success. We would also like to thank Allyson Carter and her indefatigable staff at the University of Arizona Press. They have supported our efforts from the project’s inception and have helped us immeasurably with their edits and suggestions. We also acknowledge the supportive comments of the three anonymous reviewers chosen by the University of Arizona Press; their criticisms and suggestions were most helpful, greatly improving and sharpening our fi nal text. We are extremely grateful to the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, where Irina Podgorny fi rst met Stefanie Gänger during ix x · Ac know ledg ments a visiting fellowship and brought her on board this project. We thank A. Alonso, S. Faiad, A. Martínez, and A. Miranda for their contributions to this endeavor. PIP 0116 (CONICET, Argentina), Wellesley College, and the Department of History, Wofford College, helped cover some of the essential publication expenses, and we thank IKKM- Bauhaus Universität Weimar, and in par tic u lar Julia Tarsten, for her help with editing the bib- liography. We, of course, also thank our colleagues and the contributors to this volume for their good will, forbearance, and patience to bring closure to this long- planned project. Needless to say, the project never would have reached press without the unstinting support of our families: spouses, chil- dren, and signifi cant partners alike. We know their help was essential. Finally, we would like to dedicate this volume to Dr. M. Isabel Mar- tínez Navarrete, Grupo de Investigación Prehistoria social y económica, Instituto de Historia— Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (Consejo Superior Investigaciones Científi cas). Maribel fi rst introduced I. Podgorny and P. Kohl to each other, believing correctly that their archaeological and anthropological interests suffi ciently overlapped and could lead to fruitful collaborative work, an evaluation that we believe has been clearly con- fi rmed by this current work. Maribel has played an essential role in the formation of numerous international collaborative projects, perhaps most notably her successful development of Spanish- Russian investigations with Dr. E. N. Chernykh and his colleagues in their metallurgical studies in the southern Ural Mountains at the important Late Bronze mining cen- ter of Kargaly. We believe everyone involved in this project, and other such projects that Maribel has helped establish, would acknowledge her central, indeed indispensable role in these international collaborative works. Everyone tacitly recognizes her help, but not many have publicly acknowledged it. Our short dedication here is meant to correct this unfor- tunate oversight. Muchas gracias, Maribel. Your help was essential to our project, and we strongly believe it should be recognized and recorded. Nature and Antiquities Introduction Nature in the Making of Archaeology in the Americas Stefanie Gänger, Philip Kohl, and Irina Podgorny The assimilation of the inhabitants of the Americas to what men and women in the Old World knew and believed in the sixteenth century threatened to subvert not only theology or philosophy but also history.1 Long into the eigh teenth century, the narratives designed to account for Eurasian phenomena failed to provide a history of ancient America, “with the result that it became marginalized or alienated,” as John G. A. Pocock phrased it.2 The “savage condition”— the “state of nature”— imposed on