Arqueología de archivos y archivos para la arqueología: la colección Schwenn del Museum am Rothenbaum (MARKK) de Alemania

Abstract

The relationship between archive and archeology is explored through the case of the Schwenn collection at the Museum am Rothenbaum in Hamburg, Germany. It is a collection of pre-Columbian objects from the La Serena area in north-central Chile, accompanied by a document folder composed of letters and telegrams related to the process of buying the collection. The writings are analyzed to reconstruct the biographies of archaeological objects in order to recontextualize them with respect to their cemeteries and localities of origin, but also to understand the relations of an era and the world of antique collectors through the circulation of these goods at the beginning of the 20th century. The article is an attempt to create an archive that registers and traces forgotten stories on paper, an aspect strange to the very materiality of the objects deposited and exhibited in the museum.