This essay reflects upon the milieu and the character of Brazilian and Argentinean natural history museums during the second half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the museums were influenced not only by European and North American museums but by each other. Museum directors in the two countries knew each other and interacted. Some of the relationships between these museums were friendly and cooperative, but because they were in young, emerging nations, they also became deeply involved in the invention of nationality in their respective countries and interacted as rivals and competitors. Even through rivalry, however, they contributed to each other's development, as did rivalry among museums within each of the two countries. Later in the century they went well beyond the nationalist perspective, finding, through their research into paleontology and anthropology in their regions, a continental and uniquely South American scientific perspective, defined in reaction to North American and European views.

En este artículo se presentan algunos problemas ligados a la historia de los museos. El énfasis en las capacidades y misiones a cumplir por los museos no necesariamente habla del poder de los museos para crear hábitos o imponer significados, pueden remitir a la debilidad de los mismos y a la necesidad de apelar a dicha retórica para atraer la atención de los favores y los presupuestos gubernamentales. Por ello, quedarse en el aspecto monumental, representativo o metafórico de los museos oscurece la historia de estas instituciones y de las prácticas allí consolidadas, naturalizando la separación entre espacio de investigación y espacios para el público y dejando para el historiador el papel de profano observador de las 'catedrales de la ciencia'.

Whereas historiography of the debates on “early man in America” isolates Florentino Ameghino's ideas on human evolution from his paleontological and geological work, this paper presents Ameghino's ideas on human ancestors in regard to the controversies over the origin and dispersion of mammals. Therefore, this paper analyzes the constitution of paleontology in Argentina at the end of nineteenth century by describing, firstly, the Ameghino brothers' organization of research. By tackling this aspect I want also to discuss the place of science in late nineteenth-century Argentina. Secondly, I will sketch “Ameghino's ideas” about Patagonia as a center of distribution of mammals, the age of Patagonian strata, and the South American origin of humankind. The Ameghino brothers' logistics of fieldwork created not only the means for finding a remarkable fossil fauna but also a trap that undermined their scientific credibility. Therefore, I will focus on the problem of fieldwork in “distant” places and of scientific wandering in Patagonia. In the polemics presented here, language, transportation systems, visual representations, and technical devices were crucial elements for the creation of paleontological objects.

En este trabajo se analizan los criterios de organización de las colecciones antropológicas del Museo de La Plata vigentes entre 1897 y 1930. Bajo el nombre de ‘antropológicas’ se incluyen las colecciones correspondientes a las exhibiciones de las salas de antropología, etnografía y arqueología. Aunque el criterio que finalmente imperó fue el ordenamiento por regiones geográficas, según el sistema de Enrique Delachaux, se discutirán además las otras posibilidades de ordenamiento (etnológico, lingüístico y cronológico) que aunque conocidas por las autoridades y científicos del Museo de La Plata fueron descartadas.

Archaeology — as a branch of anthropology in Argentina — mainly deals with the past of its indigenous peoples. This way of understanding archaeology has its roots in the organization of national scientific institutions and in the development of natural history museums of the last century (Lopes & Podgorny in press). As in Brazil (Lopes 1997), the museums were the loci for the establishment of archaeology and natural sciences as academic fields in Argentina. The collections and their classification and exhibition were tied to geographical categorization of aboriginal cultures within the national territory (Podgorny 1999a). In both Buenos Aires and La Plata museums — the first two centres to develop archaeological studies — archaeology grew from the travels of exploration that surveyed the resources of the country.