The Zavaleta collection and its transfer to the Field Museum, Chicago: A social life of objects approach

Abstract

The archaeological collection of objects and human skeletal remains held at the Field Museum of Natural History of Chicago is part of a complex historical narrative that this article seeks to address. The objects herein studied originate from three provinces of the Argentine Northwest (Salta, Tucumán, and Catamarca). These artifacts were acquired during the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition celebrated at St. Louis (Missouri, United States). They were purchased directly from Manuel Zavaleta, their collector. Here we propose to analyze some of the main social and political conditions that underpinned the collections’ display in St. Louis, culminating in its storage and preservation at the museum in Chicago. We also examine the exchange –in low quantities– of some of these objects with other institutions. Our article is informed by the underlying theme that the scientific field is an area of tension between different social actors, institutions, and activities. This concept will be used to account for the vicissitudes suffered by these pieces since their recovery by Argentina. A social life of things approach will allow us to understand how archaeological objects were the subject of multiple social disputes and of varied perspectives concerning the past, and the future, of not only these objects but also contemporary indigenous groups at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century.