From far away: museums, collections and scientific research

CHICHKOYAN KARINA VANESA

Congreso; XVII UISPP, Union Internationale des Sciences Préhistoriques et Protohistoriques; 2014

Nineteen century was of movements and immigration of large contingents of people. But this also included the extrapolation and storage of fossil materials in different museums, like happened with South American paleontological collections that were translocate to Europe.In an era where crossing frontiers was easier, objects moved along with peoples, and control over the exit of national territory and entrance into a new one was generally celebrated. This contrast with nowadays situation, were patrimonies are reclaimed and increasing controlsare done in order to stop the illegal contraband of archaeological and paleontological pieces.Today we found these collections distribute in several museums and institutions, miles away from its original point. A reflection about this situation is useful after one hundred years of this event: shall they return to their home countries or shall they stay away. Although theimportance in housing material in its original places, a different point of view is taken here: material housed outside allows the diffusion of the own patrimony to citizens that perhaps will never travel to those countries, and encourages intercultural knowledge, but also theyprovide useful material to realize new studies in internationals programs which imply an extension of the institutional ties. This material can be focus with the application of methodologies that are not used in the original country, so in an indirect way, this patrimony provides to the research developed there. These conditions also allow integrating and  contrasting different theoretical frameworks and data that improve interregional/intercontinental comparisons.The experience realized in the Natural Science of Valencia, Spain where the Rodrigo Botet collection is housed, is an interesting example case. This is the most important collection of South American fossil megafauna in Europe and was studied by Boscá Casanoves, first curator of the museum. It was part of the first Paleontological Museum in Europe and it is characterized by the diversity and the large amount of material. The same was donated byRodrigo Botet at the end of the XIX Century and it is the result of non-systematic excavations done by Enrique de Carles at the north-eastern sector of the Pampas Regionin Argentina. It also has important human remains, as the Samborombon skeleton, that unleashed in Spain the polemic about the antiquity of the first American peopling, as was postulated by Ameghino at that time.This collection was studied under the Erasmus Mundus Master in Quaternary and Prehistory program and currently is part of a PhD. thesis that will include material from this country housed in different museums in Europe and were translocate to this continent in the Nineteen century.This kind of experiences can only developed because of the political situation the world was passing thought more than one hundred years ago. Thanks to that flow of goods, today, investigation outside the country can be realized and this allows the application of differentmethodologies, provides new data, and, contrary to what it is supposed, it broaden scientific research from far away.