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Uncovering the demographics of collecting A case-study of the US Exploring Expedition (1838–1842)

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Complete Citation

  • Isaac, Gwyneira and Isaac, Barbara. 2015. "Uncovering the demographics of collecting A case-study of the US Exploring Expedition (1838–1842)." Journal of the History of Collections, 28, (2) 209–223. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhv027.

Overview

Abstract

  • The US Exploring Expedition (1838–42) circumnavigated the globe to map uncharted territories and to collect natural and cultural specimens for future study. Due to the detailed documentation practices of the expedition’s leader, Charles Wilkes, the expedition records provide a rare insight into the collecting practices of the first nineteenth-century American voyage of discovery. Although the origins of anthropological collections are often traced back to cultural artefacts collected by naturalists, the Exploring Expedition records show a broader and more diverse type of collector taking part in this endeavour: where the collectors are identified, it emerges that officers and ordinary seamen collected three times as many cultural objects as the scientific corps. While uncommonly meticulous for their time, the Exploring Expedition records offer a valuable entry point into the demographics of collecting at a time when these practices were embedded in and influenced by a more involved maritime collecting culture than previously has been acknowledged.

Publication Date

  • 2015

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