Explore a selection of documents related to Latin American and Caribbean collections and research from the British Museum. These digitised ‘Ethnographic Documents’ are housed by the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.
About
While the selected documents are accessible to the public, specific archives are subjected to intellectual property rights and could not be made available online. Additionally, any information that constitutes personal data under the UK GDPR (Data Protection Act 2018) has also been redacted. To request access to the full version of an Ethnographic Document (per Public Records Act 1958), please contact the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum by email.
Note
These documents may contain culturally sensitive content and language that may be considered inappropriate, offensive or discriminatory. As historical documents, this language and content do not reflect SDCELAR’s view or interpretation of related communities and/or cultural practices.
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Ethnographic Document 456
Human Remains (Colombia)
© Trustees of the British Museum
Documents related to Chibcha (Muisca) human remains from Nueva Granada (Colombia), brought to the British Museum in 1842. These range from 1842 to 1990 and include letters about a mummified human body found in the village of Gachans(c)ipá/Gachantivá, alongside a variety of textiles, objects, and other human remains. Additionally, there is a late 20th century inventory of the mummified human body and accompanying objects, which gives more details about this donation. There is also correspondence about another mummified human body from Colombia, and information on the scientific analysis carried out, as well as photographs of the textiles found with the 1842 mummy.
Collection numbers: Am1842,1112.1, Am1838,1111.1
Key: Human remains, Muisca, Gachantivá, Colombia
Notes about a necklace belonging to the Motilones/Barí people in Colombia, donated to the museum by an Anglican missionary who lived with the community since the 1930s. They mention details about language and about another missionary who engaged with a group of ‘Motilons’ through an oil company.
Key: Motilon, Barí, Anglican missionaries, Colombia
Ethnographic Document 1285
Tierra del Fuego collection (Chile, Argentina)
© Trustees of the British Museum
Notes on collections, giving context on Tierra del Fuego and the voyages of Europeans to the island, including Philip Parker King and Robert Fitzroy. The documents include a donors’ list, objects’ illustrations, correspondence and an excerpt of Esteban Lucas Bridges’ autobiography. He was the son of Thomas Bridges, an Anglican missionary and linguist, based in the Malvinas who set up a mission in Tierra del Fuego.
Key: Yamana, Yagán, Selk’nam, Tierra del Fuego, Chile, Argentina
List of objects collected by R.G. Pettiward on his trip to Brazil in 1933 to investigate the disappearance of P. H. Fawcett, a surveyor, cartographer and archaeologist who undertook several expeditions to South America who inspired the figure of Indiana Jones. Fawcett disappeared in the Mato Grosso in 1925, along with his son Jack Fawcett and his friend Raleigh Rimell, while trying to find and prove the existence of a lost city in the Amazon, which he named “The Lost City of Z”. The set also includes newspaper clippings (1932) about the trip that is under intellectual property.
Key: Karajá, Ina-Karajá, P.H. Fawcett, Mato Grosso, Brazil
Letter on carbon testing from excavations in Tower Hill, St Andrew, Jamaica. The document set also includes drawings, plans and photos of the area and a handwritten text describing the site. These documents are associated with Daniel Bruce, who donated over 6,000 objects from Jamaica in 1969 in exchange for a collection of duplicates from Oceania and the Americas. Most are animal remains and ceramics, mostly fragments.
Key: Arawak, excavations, animal remains, Jamaica
Description of an Indigenous dance-ritual at the Darien Gap, by G Williams ca. 1927. It describes the group as ‘Darien Indians’ which is probably referring to the Embera-Wounaan people. The document includes three photographs portraying G Williams and handwritten annotations on the back.
Key: Embera, Wounaan, dance, Darien Gap, Panama
Selected letters belonging to a correspondence exchange between a Museum Keeper and a donor in the 1950s. They contain details on the collection to be acquired which includes objects Arawak, Waiwai and Wapisiana objects, among others. The whole document set also includes illustrations and a purchase agreement.
Key: Arawak, Waiwai, Wapisiana, Wapichana, Guyana
Publications related to women’s and maternal health with Wixárika communities by the author of this exhibition
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2013)
Shame as a barrier to health seeking among indigenous Huichol migrant labourers: An interpretive approach of the “violence continuum” and “authoritative knowledge”
Social Science and Medicine 97 75-81
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2023)
Wixárika Practices of Medical Syncretism: An Ontological Proposal for Health in the Anthropocene
Medical Anthropology Theory 10 (2) 1-26
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2020)
“You see, we women, we can’t talk, we can’t have an opinion…”. The coloniality of gender and childbirth practices in Indigenous Wixárika families
Social Science and Medicine 252, 112912
Jennie Gamlin and David Osrin (2020)
Preventable infant deaths, lone births and lack of registration in Mexican indigenous communities: health care services and the afterlife of colonialism
Ethnicity and Health 25 (7)
Jennie Gamlin and Seth Holmes (2018)
Preventable perinatal deaths in indigenous Wixárika communities: an ethnographic study of pregnancy, childbirth and structural violence BMC
Pregnancy and Childbirth 18 (Article number 243) 2018
Gamlin, Jennie B. and Sarah J Hawkes (2015)
Pregnancy and birth in an Indigenous Huichol community: from structural violence to structural policy responses
Culture, health and sexuality 17 (1)
