Abstract
The preceding chapter described colonial headhunting in Timor as a circulatory system that interconnected European and indigenous societies. The ritual circuits of severed heads could empower the Portuguese and their allied Timorese communities. This close contact was also organized by boundaries of purity and dangers of pollution, and the Portuguese pragmatic principle of preservation of customs. Accordingly, severed heads as physical things were expected to circulate strictly within Timorese territories and to remain in the possession of Timorese communities. Thus, if the pace of colonial warfare in the nineteenth century increased and intensified the ritual circuits of decapitated heads, these tended to remain local, confined to the island. These ritual circuits, however, could be evaded, and severed heads re-networked in European circuits, outside of Timor. The following chapters of Part II will examine why and how that could succeed. This chapter initiates this inquiry with the analysis of two large consignments of Macanese and Timorese collections sent from Macao in 1880-82. The intention is to explain the travels of these collections as ‘trajectories’ of things attached to, or detached from, words.
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Notes
The notion of script is borrowed from Akrich and Latour, who use it to designate the type of work done by the designers of ‘technical objects’. Cf. Madeleine Akrich, ‘The De-Scription of Technical Objects’, in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (eds), Shaping Technology/Building Society. Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 205–24; Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour, ’A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies’, in Bijker and Law (eds), Shaping Technology/Building Society, pp. 259–65.
This museum’s purpose was ‘to collect, preserve, and display for public examination the various products and objects that can help the knowledge, economic study, and profitable use of the varied wealth of our overseas possessions.’ Cit. in José Silvestre Ribeiro, Historia dos Estabelecimentos Scientificos Litterarios e Artisticos de Portugal nos Successivos Reinados da Monarchia (Lisbon: Typ. da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1889), XVI, p. 304. See also Luís de Andrade Corvo to Governors of Angola, Cap Vert, St. Thomé, and Guinea, 10 April 1891, Lisbon, AHU, Museu Colonial de Lisboa, Diversos Documentos, Deposit 1, Case 4, Shelf 6, Folders 744–766.
Côrte-Real, ‘RelatOrio’ (1880), 171. See also: Jdlio Augusto Henriques, ‘O Museu Botanico da Universidade e as Collecções de Productos de Macau e Timor’, O Instituto, XXX (1883), 60–2.
The decadence of collections was especially visible at the Museum of Natural History. Ibid., pp. 447–8, 468–9. See also Notícia sobre os estabelecimentos anexos à Faculdade de Philosophia no ano de 1862 (ano lectivo 1861–62), ed. Ribeiro, Historia dos Estabelecimentos Scientificos, p. 103; M. Rosário Martins, ‘As Colecções Etnogrâficas’, in AAVV, Cern Anos de Antropologia em Coimbra 1885–1985 (Coimbra: Museu e Laboratório Antropolôgico, 1985), pp. 117–8.
In 1872, Carvalho had already pleaded with the government to ‘command diplomats, consuls, and colonial governors to send some products for national museums every year’; and in 1878, the Faculty Council tried to persuade the authorities to put ‘the navy surgeons on overseas duty in charge of collecting everything worthy of being displayed in the museum galleries’ and send them to Coimbra. Notícia sobre os estabelecimentos anexos à Faculdade de Philosophia no ano de 1862, 103; J. A. Simões de Carvalho, Memôria Histôrica da Faculdade de Philosophia (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1872), p. 227.
A naturalist observed in 1884–5 that the zoological collections had shown improvement because of ‘the favour of persons from outside who generously supported the growth of the collections’. Albino Geraldes, Relatório do Professor de Zoologia, 1885–1886 (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1887), p. 5. Already in 1870 did the director of the Zoological Cabinet observe: ‘Some acquisitions of specimens, which occur every year,’ ‘result principally from private donations’. J. A. Simões de Carvalho, Relatório do Director do Gabinete de Zoologia. Coimbra, 24 Apr. 1870, ed. Carvalho, Memória Histôrica da Faculdade de Philosophia, p. 226.
For the role of trust in science, see Steven Shapin, A Social History ofTruth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
Cf. Anne Secord, ‘Corresponding Interests: Artisans and Gentlemen in Nineteenth-Century Natural History’, British Journal for the History of Science, 27 (1994), 383–408.
Côrte-Real’s letter to the district governor, Hugo de Lacerda, on behalf of the provincial government cannot be found. Only Lacerda’s response is available. Hugo de Lacerda, ‘Portaria 21. Governo de Timor. 30 April 1879’, BPMT, XXV, 28 (1879), 149.
Lacerda, ‘Portaria 21. Governo de Timor. 30 April 1879’, p. 149. Duarte’s report was published in the Bulletin. See Albino da Costa Duarte, ‘Relatório âcerca da digressâo feita a alguns pontos de leste da ilha de Timor. 12 Dezembro 1879’, BPMT, XXV, 28 (1879), 149.
It was possibly in this context that in 1879 Rev. Gomes Ferreira was appointed to go on a collecting trip to the interior. A list of the missionaries dated 1879, refers to him having been appointed ‘to go for some time to the interior countries, with a view to organizing a system for studying the languages of the different places, and work on the collection of colonial articles for the museum of Lisbon and for the one to be formed in Dili.’ José Maria, Bishop of Bragança, ‘Mappa dos Missionários que desde 1866 até 1879 sairam do Collegio das Missões Ultramarinas de Sernache do Born Jardim, para as Missões que lhes foram designadas nas Differentes Possessões Portuguezas, 14 Agosto 1879’, Annaes das Missões Ultramarinas, 1 (1889), 159.
See Anonymous, ‘Exposição’, O Macaense. Jornal polftico, literkrio e noticioso, 1, 28 Feb. 1882, p. 3.
Similar instructions were used in Portugal since the 1860s for organizing collections to World Exhibitions. They were made in the image of French museum instructions. Luís de Andrade Corvo, Instrucçôes para Serem Colligidos nas Províncias Ultramarinas os Diversos Productos que Devem Figurar no Museu Colonial de Lisboa (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1876). See Cantinho, O Museu Etnografico, pp. 84–5.
Lorraine Daston, ‘Scientific Objectivity With and Without Words’, in Peter Becker and William Clark (eds.), Little Tools of Knowledge (Ann Harbour: University of Michigan Press, 2001), pp. 259–84.
Dores himself presented his private collection of Timorese birds to the naturalist F. Mattoso Santos, as a gift to the Zoological Museum of the Lisbon Polytechnic School. See Dores, Como se Adquire a Fama, pp. 84–5; F. Mattoso Santos, ‘Uma Collecção de Ayes de Timor’, BSGL, 8 (1883), 453–60.
The decade of the 1860s inaugurates a period of exponential growth in public collections of skulls, skeletons, brains, and soft tissue of Europeans and, especially, non-Europeans. This tendency continues to the early twentieth century. For surveys of skull collections, see: Nélia Dias, ‘Série de Crânes et Armées de Squelettes: les Collections Anthropologiques en France dans la Seconde Moitié du XIXe Siècle’, Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1, 3–4 (1989), 205–25
Christine Quigley, Skulls and Skeletons. Human Bone Collections and Accumulations (London: McFarland, 2001).
For an overview of the main catalogues and collections by the 1860s, see Joseph Barnard Davis, Thesaurus Craniorum. Catalogue of the Skulls of the Various Races of Man, in the Collection of Joseph Barnard Davis (London: Taylor and Francis, 1867).
By 1880 the Royal College of Surgeons of England held the largest anatomical collections of the races of men in Britain. It had become heir to Hunter’s collection, and in 1880 purchased Barnard Davis’s collections. William Henry Flower, Catalogue of the specimens illustrating the Osteology and Dentition of Vertebrated animals, recent and extinct, contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Part I. Man: Homo Sapiens (London: Taylor and Francis, 1879), p. vii.
Flower was setting his ‘historical’ catalogue against the ‘old [descriptive] catalogue’ of Richard Owen (his predecessor at the Museum). Flower, Catalogue of the specimens, p. v. [my emphasis] Cf. Richard Owen, Descriptive Catalogue of the Osteological Series contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (2 vols, London: Taylor and Francis, 1853).
Thomas Bendyshe, ‘Editor’s preface’, in J. F. Blumenbach, The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, trans. and ed. T. Bendyshe (London: Longman, 1865), p. xii.
The most famous forgery, the Piltdown skull, occurred in the early twentieth century and was only discovered decades later. J. S. Weiner, The Piltdown Forgery (Oxford, 1955, reprint Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Cf. Charles Guignon, On Being Authentic (London: Routledge, 2004), ch. 4
Regina Bendix, In Search of Authenticity: the Formation of Folklore Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997); Clifford, The Predicament of Culture, pp. 214–51.
J. L. Dusseau, Musée Vrolik. Catalogue de la Collection dAnatomie Humaine, Cornparée etPathologique de M. M. Ger. et W. Vrolik (Amsterdam: W. J. de Roever Krõber, 1865), p. vii.
See also Samuel G. Morton, ‘Catalogue of Skulls of Man and the Inferior Animals, in the Collection of Samuel George Morton’, ed. J. Aitken Meigs, Catalogue of human crania in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Based upon the Third Edition of Dr. Morton’s ‘Catalogue of Skulls’ &c. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1857), p. 13.
For recent state of the arts and reviews, see Fred R. Myers, ‘Introduction: The Empire of Things’, in Fred R. Myers (ed.), The Empire of Things: Regimes of Value and Material Culture (Oxford: James Currey, 2001), pp. 3–61
Chris Gosden and Yvonne Marshall, ‘The Cultural Biography of Objects’, World Archaeology, 31, 2 (1999), 169–78.
an example of a cultural biography of one museum skull is Edgar V. Winans, ‘The Head of the King: Museums and the Path to Resistance’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 36, 2 (1994), 221–41. For a critique of these approaches from this perspective see Ricardo Roque, ‘Human skulls and museum work: sketch of a perspective on miniature histories’, in Diogo Ramada Curto and Alexis Rappas (eds), Colonialism and Imperialism: Between Ideologies and Practices, European University Institute, Dept. History and Civilization, EUI Working papers HEC 2006/01, 2006, pp. 85–98, http://cadmus.iue.it.
Cf. Bruno Latour, ‘Faktura: de la Notion de Réseau à celle d’Attachment’, in André Micoud and Michel Peroni (ed.), Ce Qui Nous Relie (Paris: Éditions de L’Aube, 2000), pp. 189–208.
In Strauss’s words, illness trajectory refers to (i) the ‘physiological unfolding of a patient’s disease’ in the material body over time; and (ii) ‘the total organization of work done over that course, plus the impact on those involved with that work and its organization’. A. Strauss, S. Fagerhaugh, B. Suczek, C. Wiener, Social Organization of Medical Work (revised edn, New Brunswick: Transaction, 1997), p. 8.
[italics in the original] For developments of the trajectory concept in the sociology of medicine, see, for example: Stefan Timmermans, ‘Mutual Tuning of Mutual Trajectories’, Symbolic Interaction, 21, 4 (1998), 225–40
Tiago Moreira, ‘Incisions: A Study of Surgical Trajectories’ (D. Phil. dissertation, University of Lancaster), 2000
Susan Leigh Star and Geoffrey Bowker, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), ch. 4.
Gift exchange is a theme exhaustively covered by anthropological literature, although museum gift economies in Europe have received little attention. A broader discussion of these museum economies, however, would take us beyond the scope of this chapter. The classic reference is Marcel Mauss, ‘Essai Sur le Don. Forme et Raison de l’Échange dans les Sociétés Archaiques’, Sociologie et Anthropologie (Paris, 1923–4, reprint Paris: Quadrige, 2001), pp. 145–279. But for a recent study that suggests the importance of gift relationships in Western museum networks, see Henare, Museums, Anthropology and Imperial Exchange. See also: Zimmerman, Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany, pp. 168–9.
Cf. Susan Pearce, On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 33.
Krzystof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), p. 8.
Cf. for an insightful article on the problematic of decay and conservation, Catherine DeSilvey, ‘Observed Decay: Telling Stories with Mutable Things’, Journal of Material Culture, 11, 3 (2006), 318–38.
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© 2010 Ricardo Nuno Afonso Roque
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Roque, R. (2010). Trajectories of Human Skulls in Museum Collections. In: Headhunting and Colonialism. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230251335_5
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