THE FORMATION PROCESS OF THE AMEGHINO’S ARCHAEOLOGICAL COLLECTION PRESENTED IN PARIS IN1878: COMPOSITION, CATALOGING, AND DESTINATION

In this study, we analyze the formation process of the collection that Florentino Ameghino presented to the occidental world at the Universal Exposition, which took place in Paris in 1878 and from which he materially supported his theory regarding the antiquity of “men” in the Río de La Plata Basin. We develop an analysis based on the same structure of the “Catalogue spécial de la section Anhtropologique et Paléontologique de la République Argentine a L’expositionuniverselle de Paris (1878)” and we contrast it with the information provided in his previous works. In this Special Catalog, Ameghino provided information on human, faunal, and cultural remains, which contributed to the construction of his collection up until before the exhibition. The structuring of the Special Catalog connects us with the evolution of Ameghino’s scientific thought through his classification regarding the natural or anthropic origin of the objects, the temporal order that he assigned to the findings, and the sedimentary deposits carrying the objects. We analyze the classificatory categories, their implications, and the curatorial destinations of the collection that Ameghino presented in Paris. The analysis of this collection, which nowadays constitutes one of the most important regarding the knowledge of the antiquity of the human population in South America and its relationship with the fossil mammals of the Pleistocene–Holocene, is limited by the dissociation of the cultural and biological evidence that was found in the same context and that is currently housed in different national and foreign institutions.