Copies as Mediation Devices
Replicas of Mesoamerican Manuscripts and the Production of
Knowledge (1850–1910)
2023–2025
RFE19
Copies of artefacts, including manuscripts, have been re-evaluated in recent research, conferring thecopies their epistemic and material independence from originals, including in the perspective of museums and collections and in the production of knowledge. However, research in colonial pictographic manuscripts in Mesoamerica has not yet addressed the issue systematically, albeit copies of these artefacts have been done extensively.
This project aims to investigate how copying practices in discrepant contexts in Europe, the United States, and Mexico, including local communities, affected the production of knowledge about the codices and even articulated Mesoamerican history in the nineteenth and in the beginning of the twentieth century. Primary questions are: how did the production, collection, and traveling of copies and replicas between scholars, collectors and dealers in Europe/the United States and in Mexico, and the local communities where the manuscripts originated, act on the production of knowledge about the codices, and consequently on the understanding of the Mesoamerican past? How can changing perspectives on these cultures be reconstructed via copies? What sort of worldviews are imbricated?
From the point of view of Provenance Studies, the project targets the trajectories replicas did in these circles, focusing on the copy as a rich mediation device. Moreover, practices such as material choices, style, composition, and form should be addressed. Ultimately, the project aims to identify the copying practices and relationships between different actors that were on the cusp of developing fundamental disciplines such as archaeology and anthropology in the second half of the nineteenth century.
People
Project lead: Vivian Berto de Castro