Latest / El futuro fue ayer con Juan Guillermo Martín / El Museo de la Plata y las colecciones arqueológicas

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El Museo de la Plata y las colecciones arqueológicas · El futuro fue ayer con Juan Guillermo Martín

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The future was yesterday? It' s an archaeology podcast where ghosts, conspiracy
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theories and aliens have no place. I am Juan Guillermo Martín, archaeologist and
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university professor and with different specialists. It would be scientifically addressing our fascinating past,
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a past that offers us answers to face in the future. Welcome to
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the podcast The future was yesterday? I' m Juan Guillermo Martín, archaeologist.
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Today we are going to talk about museums and archaeological collections. To talk
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about it, I have a luxury guest. This is Mariano Oi. Mariano
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welcome. Thank you very much to Juan. A pleasure to bring for those
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who do not know him. Mariano Onomo is an anthropologist and PhD in natural
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sciences from the Universidad Nacional de la Plata, principal researcher of the National Council
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of Scientific and Technical Research with ISET and titular professor in the Chair of Food
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in South America of the University of La Plata. It has numerous publications and
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research now focused on the indigenous societies that inhabited the Atlantic Coast, in Pampeana
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and the Paraná Delta. Currently he is the alternate head of the Archaeology Division
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of the Museum of Silver, Bueno Mariano, Definitely one of the most important
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museums in South America, without any doubt, is the Museum of La Plata
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and I think one of the things also that needs to be specified that this
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is the first building that is built for that purpose. So I think the
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most convenient thing in this conversation is to know a little bit about the history
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of this museum and, of course, who better than you who work there.
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Well, thank you very much, Juan Guillermo, for the invitation.
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And yes, it is a museum founded in one thousand eight hundred and eighty
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- four. There the construction of the museum begins, two years after it
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was founded in the city of La Plata, which was a city founded as
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the capital of the province of Buenos Aires from zero. And there, two
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years later, the construction of the museum begins. And in a thousand eight
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hundred and eighty- eight it is that this museum opens to the public.
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The main antecedent of this museum is the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, which
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Moreno had founded in one thousand eight hundred seventy- seven. Francisco Pascasio Moreno
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is the founder and creator of the Museum of La Plata and he donates his
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archaeological and anthropological collections for the creation of this new museum in the new capital
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of the province of Buenos Aires. Moreno made different expeditions to the country.
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With them he recovered numerous anthropological, archaeological materials. And then, in nineteen
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hundred and five, the National University of La Plata was created in La Plata.
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And it is at that moment that the Museum of La Plata, in
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nineteen hundred and six, becomes part of the National University of La Plata.
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At that time, Moreno left the institution and went on to address it to
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another researcher also dedicated to linguistics and archaeology, who was Samuel Lafone Quevedo.
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The Fone Quevedo was a key figure in this transformation of this institution, which
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was a general museum for all audiences, and its transformation into an institution that,
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in addition to the whole part of exhibitions for the general public, had
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a function of university teaching. So the ditch I see is a key figure.
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It is until the decade of twenty to nine hundred twenty as director and
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then from that moment another archaeologist, Luis María Torres, assumes the direction.
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And Luis María Torres also gives a strong boost to the ilicia question of the
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museum. It builds the top floor where archaeology deposits are today. The archaeology
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deposits in the Museum are three, well, those two deposits are built by
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Luis María Torres making an inventory of the collections, but a little bit.
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What I want to show with this is that the first three directors dedicated much
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of their lives to archaeology and that left a very important imprint to the Museum
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of La Plata in its first fifty years of existence. And that is seen
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not only in the collections, in the exhibition rooms, in the warehouses,
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but also in the architecture itself, the building, which is a Greek Roman
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architecture, but which has a whole series of iconography friezes that are of the
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Amerindian type, which are representations of ceramic vessels, Peruvians, in the textile
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walls, Mapuches, Mayan codex, all represented in the paintings, in its
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walls, in the friezes, and that is to say, it is one
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of the first institutions that incorporates Latin American iconography within the architecture of its exhibitions
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and that is maintained until today in the building, in the architecture so is
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Mariano. It' s a spectacular museum. Without a doubt, I had
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the privilege of being some time ago and well, we finally met in the
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corridors of the Museum of La Plata and regarding that university museum articulation. At
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the University of the North, for example, I have a university museum that
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is the Museum Mapuca, which gives strengths to both institutions. In another way,
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you told me that classes were taking place inside the museum. That tradition
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is still in force. It remains a space for formal education, bearing in
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mind, obviously, that museums are finally recognized as spaces for non- formal
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education. It is exactly non- formal education, but formal education also continues
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to work. I studied anthropology, graduated in anthropology and received my degree from
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the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Museum. Most of the archaeological anthropological materials are
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taught inside the Museum building. Then, in the 1990s a separate building was
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built and most of the teaching, let' s say, went on to
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be dictated in that building, which is close to a few blocks from the
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museum grounds. But he' s still leaving with the classes. To see
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the materials that are deposited in the museum. There are collections of the Andean
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area, of the central Andean area, there are Egyptian collections of all the
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Argentine territory, of European prehistory. They are materials that for classes, are
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fundamental for teaching to have direct contact with those pieces that out there, but
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otherwise, one would have to travel to very distant places. And that is
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why these materials continue to be used in classes without the training of future professionals.
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In archaeology about the collections, just how this collection is formed, because
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we know that it has an impressive paleontological collection and the whole exhibition of natural
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history, because it is incredible at the same level as any European or American
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museum. Those collections that, as you rightly say, are very varied.
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Having things from Egypt, I believe that here, in Colombia there is no
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museum that has anything from Egypt, but you a hundred things from Peru,
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also from other places on the continents. These collections, how they arrived,
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how they were incorporated into the Museum and at what point the Museum develops archaeological
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research to add new collections to its deposits. Yes, archaeology has been present
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since the foundation of the Museum and the collections are products of that imprint that
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the Museum has since the first moment, with scientific editions connected by different researchers
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that sent the Museum to different parts of the territory of Argentina. In this
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sense, the Museum of La Plata played a key role in preventing or halting
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or mitigating what was the migration of pieces outside the limits of Argentina with expeditions
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from other countries, especially central countries of Europe and others. He played a
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key role. Then he also bought some collections. One of the most important
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collections we have in the archaeology division is the Munis Barreto collection. It is
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a collection with about thirteen zero pieces, a little less than thirteen zero pieces
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that come mainly from the territory of Argentino. They are expeditions financed by a
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collector and distancer muniz Barreto, who between 1, 9 and 19, 90
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and 9 financed different expeditions to the northwest of Argentina, in the area linked
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to what is the Andean development of Bolivia, Peru. Well, it'
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s in northeastern Argentina where archaeology is, with more materials, where these high
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cultures have been researched from Moreno onwards. And that collection is incorporated into the
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archaeology division and it is a collection that its value is given not only by
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the quantity of pieces, the diversity of materials, its state of conservation.
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I always say that to investigate in one, in an archaeological zone, it
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is first important to go around a museum and see all the materials that this
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area has provided a hundred years ago. Not then do you have an overview
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of what the pre- Hispanic past of that area was like before you started
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going. But, in addition to those objects and the state of conservation,
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whole pieces, extremely difficult pieces to find today that are integrating the collections.
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This collection has a spectacular documentary record, because it was very thorough the documentation
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work of those who made these expeditions. Then there are photographs maps, maps
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of the sites, the association of the materials inside the tombs and that contextual
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information that gives you let' s say what we use today in archaeology that
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we are not interested in isolated objects, but the information and relations that exist
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between those objects, made that collection key to understanding all the cultural development of
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the Argentine northwest. The master sequence of cultural change in western Argentina was constructed
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from the study of that collection, which had extremely valuable and extremely important documentation
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to understand the associations and links between the objects. Which were older, which
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were more recent, which appeared together, which were never, etcetera. The
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importance of collections must be definitively discussed. We know that the new generations who
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study archaeology, because obviously what they think first is to look for an archaeological
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site and dig that is absolutely understandable. But it must also be given the
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value and importance of these collections. I would like you to tell us about
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that, what archaeological collections are for, what role they play in research and
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what role they play in the knowledge of the past. If the collections we
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have in the Museum are some that more than one hundred and thirty years ago
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are in the institution and still give information, radiocarbon dating can still be done
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to know the chronology of a given field a certain finding. Archaebotanical studies can
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be carried out and, for example, the contents of botanical microfossils such as
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starches can be known, and it can be seen that, for example,
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a certain vessel was used to contain corn or cassava. Genetic studies with human
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remains, to establish different types of affiliations, genealogies, kinship relationships between individuals
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buried in the same places. Collections continue to provide information today, archaeology techniques
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continue to advance and materials continue to provide information. And that' s something
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museums guarantee. Let us say the care of that heritage, which is a
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fragile heritage, which is a non- renewable heritage and that we, as
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part of those museums. We have to try to take care of him,
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protect him and keep him providing information for the future. And just this fact
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that the collections are in a museum that is university, where teaching is done,
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research is done, it makes it a living museum, it makes it
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a moving museum and all these activities feedback those collections and that study, that
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good that basically makes it a living museum. And just the fact that it
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is a university museum is what we say serves for this clear Mariano, an
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important topic with the collections has to do with its storage, its optimal conservation
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conditions. In the case of the archaeological collection of the Museum of La Plata,
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we are talking about how big it is for listeners to have an idea.
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The archaeological collections of the Museum of La Plata consist of more than 200
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zero pieces and numerous lots of fragments of all kinds. It is the main
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repository of archaeological pieces in the country and is composed of materials of all kinds.
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Let' s say they require different conservation processes. It' s not
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the same. The lithic collections that ceramic collections that textile partner collections of different
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materials give cotton, feathers. There are glass materials, wood materials, leaflets,
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well, there are a variety of raw materials used that require different conservation
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techniques. In recent years there have been important advances in the institution in relation
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to the conservation of these archaeological goods. They began to change the packaging,
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to introduce metallic nonsense, replacing old wooden ones that out there were attacked by
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some kind of bugs and so on. Then the metal is much nobler for
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that, replacing them with acid- free materials, with FONG, with specific
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materials that it used and conservation and that guarantee the best care of those collections,
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always trying to preserve what is conservation, the information that these pieces have
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and the origin. Which is a sacred matter for us is where those pieces
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come from. We are interested only in objects because they are beautiful, but
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also in the information behind them. Of course that and that is the great
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challenge, not to ensure that each of those objects has its proper context.
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And, as you mentioned before, because, in addition, many of those
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pieces resulted from excavations where they were made in the past an impressive documentation that
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I think after a hundred years, I also believe that those documents are basically
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also the museum' s documentary heritage, valuable information of how archaeology was done
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at that time, which serves as a historical reference, of course, for
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the new generations of colleagues. There is another thing that is also very important.
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In archaeological collections, well you mentioned it, or they are mainly used
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as a way, as a pedagogical strategy for your students, but they must
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also be accessible to researchers who, for different reasons, dedicate themselves to working
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in a specific place and who, as you mentioned, require the approach and
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access of previous collections to address their field work. How is your handling of
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that access to collections, because most museums restrict physical access to collections to researchers
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and must process permits and so on. Here are some museums that don'
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t even allow it. Then what have you done or how do you handle
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this matter? There are other museums that have been responsible for digitizing, but
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since 200, 000 artifacts is not an easy task, and that digitalization allows
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for a democratic and broad access to that heritage. What state are you in?
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Especially considering what happened at the National Museum of Brazil in the two thousand
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eighteen, which burned a good amount of that collection and much of that collection
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was not digitized. What are you guys up to right now? Well,
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we, two years ago, started a project of digitalization of the collections.
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We start first by standardizing the databases. We had databases in different formats,
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in nex in ax there were different programs, part on paper, part that
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was not inventoryed. We started to generate a unique database with unique criteria.
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We started to follow for that several vocabulary or thesauri that use different institutions at
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national and international level, so that we say those vocabulary are homogeneous, can
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be translated into different languages and when we say pot can be understood in Spanish
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speaking countries, as in English, Japanese, German, Dutch, etc.
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Then we follow as a protocol of how to normalize those collections with the right
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terms. We developed a base that has sixty- three fields that we load
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on a sheet and that was accompanied by a systematic recording of the pieces piece
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by piece. Or we start photographing them according to conventional agreed standards and parameters
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for the pieces. Okay. Well, if they had volume, we would
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make six shots of each piece or if it had two mentions, two shots,
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nothing better. That' s why we worked out with the team,
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a protocol, a procedure manual on how to take those photographs, how to
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use the lights, what types of parameters to use And with that database information
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plus the photographic record, we started uploading the documentation to a digital repository that
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is currently on the Internet, which is available, which is called Culturalis And
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is a repository where the photos of the pieces that can be downloaded the basic
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information And that can be accessed by any of the Internet download the photos.
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Then it serves the general public. Let us think that the Museum of La
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Plata has twenty rooms with exhibition, permanent exhibitions to which are visited between two
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hundred and three hundred zero people per year. It' s a lot of
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people, there' s a lot of public, but what the Museum exhibits
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is very little. Most are a minimum percentage. Most of them are the
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warehouses. So the way we have as you said, to democratize, to
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make public those materials and the scientific knowledge that is generally generated with public funds,
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is to just upload them and that are available on the Internet. And
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this has been accompanied not only by the photography of objects, but we are
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also accompanying the digitization, scanning and other documents that are associated with those pieces,
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field journals, more photographs in different forms, in different media. From
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glass negatives to paper or paper, letters, correspondences, all elements that make
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the institutional history and history of those collections and that serve to continue to interpret
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and continue to seek information today, and we believe that this is the right
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path in order to circulate and grow public knowledge generated by scientific research. Another
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thing you mentioned that I think is very important in the principles and objectives of
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a museum is to do research and generate new knowledge. I mean, you
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don' t understand a museum as a space where they keep chechers in a
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warehouse and the nicest things are in some cabinets for people to see. The
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past has interpretations. There are data that are missing and that are required to
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be collected with field work, that is to say for a hundred, a
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little over a hundred years. You told us, then, that research is
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being done right now on what is the Museum of La Plata in archaeological research.
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Well, the part. Let' s say, the Museum has fifteen
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scientific divisions. The archaeology division is one of them. It' s one
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of the biggest. It has about sixty people among researchers, fellows, interns
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and technical staff, and is one of the centers with the highest amount of
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research in different parts of the country. Let' s say there are researchers
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who work practically throughout the Argentine territory and research is done both on the collections
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that follow, as we said before, giving new information as well as on
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new sites, archaeological sites, new excavations, new explorations that generate data and
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that also the idea, returning to the topic of the repository, is that
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those new data, those primary data, that are generated also with funds from
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the University, public funds and so on, are also being invested in these
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repositories. So that data is not also lost on computers, on external disks
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that are lost later or in the passage of time, when researchers retire and
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so on, but are also available for future generations. So, a little
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bit, what we' re trying to ensure is that the data that has
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been generated with the research is also preserved. There is a controversial issue associated
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with many museums, especially the great museums. He gave the Britti. I
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think it' s the best example, because maybe ninety- five percent of
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his collection, because he' s not British, of course, and he
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got there in some cases, in most cases, not because of the more
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legal channels that put as in doubt and in discussion the staging even of many
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of those collections. You had mentioned and well, I saw that you had
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collections from Egypt and other places in America. They have had some problem with
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the possession of these objects and as they have solved even in the American case,
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with the indigenous societies that in many cases claim, for example, as
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they do in the United States very strongly, the recovery of human partner remains.
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In the case of you, how has this situation been handled if you
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have been vile? Yes. Let' s say, for example, Peru
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' s collections are largely exhibited in a room that, for example, the
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Peruvian authorities have participated in its inauguration. There is, say, an accompaniment
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of the Consul of Peru in a possibility of reforming that room. There is
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a very strong community of Peruvian citizens in silver and it is interesting how they
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take their children, their grandchildren to the room to show the heritage of where
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they come from. After the case of the Egyptian hall it is the product
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of an archaeological rescue in the 1960s when the Assoam dam was to be held
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in Sudan and the Sudanese Government donates. This was part of a mission of
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UNESCO Dona the Argentine Government part of the materials recovered during this archaeological rescue,
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and that is what constitutes the main input of the Egyptian Hall that tells the
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Museum later on in materials from Europe that were brought by Flentino Megino, who
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was a researcher who was also very important in the Museum. He was initially
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deputy director or deputy director during Moreno' s administration, and he spent a
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time in France between 1, 807 and 8. In one thousand eight hundred
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and eighty- one he did fieldwork and brought materials from those fieldwork from France
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and others that I have exchanged with other researchers, so, in general,
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the materials have entered. We haven' t had any such inconveniences, as
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there are claims of human remains. There are several human remains in the Museum
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that have identity, which is known even who the person was, and several
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family descendants have claimed right consumption of those remains and the institution has been open
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to restitution and numerous refunds have been given in recent years. Let' s
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say it' s a process that the Museum, at first out there didn
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' t have the best reaction. There was some opposition, but later,
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over time, I believe that it has assumed an important role within what is
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Argentina and has motorized and driven several restitutions of these human remains that are accompanied
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not only by the authorities of the institution, but by the researchers that we
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are part of this. Thank you, Mariano. Yeah, to close,
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I' d like to know what they are. Finally, although I believe
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that we have talked about them now, but as to make concrete the main
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contributions of the Museum of La Plata in the study and conservation of the Argentine
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archaeological heritage, in what you could, in what main aspects you could summarize
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it. Yes, I think we should say how strong the Museum is to
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preserve these pieces for so long that one can resort to seeing the same pieces
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that he saw Megino, with which he proposed man' s coexistence with mega
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fauna one hundred and thirty years ago, and go see those same pieces and
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analyze them and extract information from us. The refunds themselves can be made thanks
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to what we say. The Museum preserves those remains and I think that we
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should say the importance of the Museum is that of the preservation of that legacy
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of cultural heritage that tells us of a profound indigenous history, which does not
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begin when the first written documents appear, when Europeans arrive in the sixteenth century,
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but that those indigenous societies have hundreds and thousands of years living there,
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in the territory that today is Argentina or in South America in general, and
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the pieces that are in the world are talking about a much deeper past,
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with a greater temporal depth and precisely because there are no written documents, is
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the only thing we have to know those societies so different from ours with a
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way of life so different from the Western one. It' s just the
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archaeological remains. So, these materials help us to know a past that has
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to reach twelve thousand years old, and that is archaeology that gives us that
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valuable information. So I think that' s where he gets a little bit
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of the value of the conservation of that heritage, that it' s still
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being studied and that it' s still generating information from those societies of the
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past that no written sources remain and that on archaeology, from the material remains,
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can provide us with some kind of information. Totally in agreement and,
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of course, the staging so that the new generations know their past, appropriate
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it there, preserve it, protect it and project towards the future. Well,
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then, Mariano, thank you so much for your time, for sharing
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your experience, your knowledge as always a taste, a pleasure to talk to
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you. Thanks to an inorte femesterio for lending us the recording studio, we
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will continue to produce scientific content in this podcast. The future was yesterday.
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Thank you very much It' s a pleasure to be here.