Nineteenth-Century French Collections of Skulls and the Cult of Bones
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This paper attempts to examine nineteenth-century French skull collections and to shed light on how, why, and when they came to play such a significant intellectual role in physical anthropology. It also seeks to analyze the notion of series of skulls and the sequential arrangement of skulls. It argues that this sort of collection gained particular relevance in Republican France, where the cult of dead bodies was replaced by the secular cult of bones.
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2
Paul Broca, Instructions générales pour les recherches et les observations anthropologiques (anatomie et physiologie) (Paris: Masson, 1865), p. 2.
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3
Paul Broca, “L’anthropologie, son but, son programme, ses divisions et ses méthodes,” Mémoires d’Anthropologie, 1871, 1: 1-41. On Broca’s conception of anthropology, see Martin S. Staum, “Nature and Nurture in French Ethnography and Anthropology, 1859-1914,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 2004, 65, 3: 475-495; Claude Blanckaert, De la race à l’évolution: Paul Broca et l’anthropologie française 1850-1900 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009). For a general overview of Broca’s work, see Francis Schiller’s Paul Broca: Founder of French Anthropology, Explorer of the Brain (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979).
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5
Paul Broca, “Ecole pratique des hautes études. Laboratoire d’anthropologie,” Revue d’Anthropologie, 1873, 2: 559-566.
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8
Paul Broca, “Sur le volume et la forme du cerveau suivant les individus et suivant les races,” Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1861, 2: 139-204, p. 139.
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10
Paul Broca, “Discours. Congrès International des Sciences Anthropologiques,” Matériaux pour l’Histoire primitive et naturelle de l’Homme, 1878: 325-335, p. 328.
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11
Paul Broca, “Leçon d’ouverture du cours d’anthropologie,” Revue d’Anthropologie, 1878, 7: 172-182, p. 174.
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12
Paul Broca, “Crânes parisiens du Moyen Age. Brachycéphalie et dolicocéphalie,” Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1861, 2: 645-651, p. 651.
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16
Paul Broca, “Sur les crânes basques de Saint-Jean-de-Luz,” Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1868, 3: 43-101. For a detailed account, see Broca’s letter to his wife dated 5 September 1862, reproduced in Dias, 1989, p. 230.
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17
Paul Broca, “Sur les caractères du crâne des Basques,” Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1862, 3: 579-591, p. 586; see also Paul Broca, “Sur la classification et la nomenclature craniologique d’après les indices céphaliques,” Revue d’Anthropologie, 1872, 2: 385-423, p. 393. For further information on the debate between Broca and Retzius on the cephalic index, see Claude Blanckaert, “L’indice céphalique et l’ethnogénie européenne: A. Retzius, P. Broca and F. Pruner-Bey,” Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1989, 3-4: 13-44.
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18
Paul Broca, “Histoire des travaux de la Société d’Anthropologie (1859-1863),” Mémoires d’Anthropologie, vol. II (Paris: Reinwald, 1874), pp. 414-458, p. 438.
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19
Simon Harrison, “Skulls and Scientific Collecting in the Victorian Military,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2008, 50: 285-303, p. 289. See also Harrison, “Skull trophies of the Pacific War: transgressive objects of remembrance,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2006, 12: 817-836.
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20
Ann Fabian, The Skull Collectors. Race, Science, and American’s Unburied Dead (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), pp. 12-14. Physical anthropological collections were not the only setting in which racial and class hierarchies were expressed; see Simon Harrison, “Bones in the Rebel Lady’s Boudoir: Ethnology, Race and Trophy Hunting in the American Civil War,” Journal of Material Culture, 2010, 15: 385-401. For further information on the treatment of dead bodies, see Michael Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
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21
Michael Hagner, “Skulls, Brains, and Memorial Culture: On Cerebral Biographies of Scientists in the Nineteenth Century,” Science in Context, 2003, 16: 195-218, p. 196.
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22
Ricardo Roque, Headhunting and Colonialism. Anthropology and the Circulation of Human Skulls in the Portuguese Empire, 1870-1930 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 120-121.
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24
Paul Broca, “Méthode des moyennes. Étude des variations craniométriques et de leur influence sur les moyennes; détermination de la série suffisante,” Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1879, 2: 756-820, pp. 764-765.
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26
Claude Blanckaert, “Méthode des moyennes et notion de ‘série suffisante’ en anthropologie physique,” in Moyenne, Milieu, Centre. Histoires et usages, edited by J. Feldman, G. Lagneau, and B. Matalon (Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1991), pp. 213-243.
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30
Paul Broca, “Ecole pratique des hautes études. Laboratoire d’anthropologie. Rapport annuel,” Revue d’Anthropologie, 1875, 4: 368-372, p. 369.
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32
Paul Broca, “Mémoire sur le craniographe et sur quelques-unes de ses applications,” Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1860-1863, 1: 349-378, pp. 349-350.
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33
Paul Topinard, L’Homme dans la Nature (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1891), p. 134.
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34
Elizabeth Hallam, “Articulating Bones: An Epilogue,” Journal of Material Culture, 2010, 15: 465-492, p. 465.
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36
Paul Broca, “Sur la capacité des crânes parisiens des diverses époques,” Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1862, 3: 102-116, pp. 103-104.
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41
Yves Le Fur, “Ossuaires d’Europe,” in La Mort n’en saura rien: Reliques d’Europe et d’Océanie, edited by Yves Le Fur (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées nationaux, 1999), pp. 68-82, p. 70.
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Nineteenth-Century French Collections of Skulls and the Cult of Bones
In: NunciusSearch for other papers by Nélia Dias in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This paper attempts to examine nineteenth-century French skull collections and to shed light on how, why, and when they came to play such a significant intellectual role in physical anthropology. It also seeks to analyze the notion of series of skulls and the sequential arrangement of skulls. It argues that this sort of collection gained particular relevance in Republican France, where the cult of dead bodies was replaced by the secular cult of bones.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 410 | 87 | 3 |
| Full Text Views | 150 | 12 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 94 | 23 | 1 |