CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

uring the 19th century new territories were incorporated into the systems of knowledge and exploitation of the Western world. In contrast to other contexts Antarctica represented an inhospitable and uninhabited place. While the history of exploration of the continent has been usually told from a cartographic point of view, this work discusses the diversity of experiences lived by people in their first encounters with the Antarctic landscape. We focus our attention on the 19th-century sealer camps established on South Shetland Islands. Our analysis takes into account the material aspects of sealers' daily life in different scales and contexts.