Abstract
Much has been written about how progress to nationhood in British colonial settler societies was imagined to depend on safeguarding the biological integrity of an evolutionarily advanced citizenry. There is also a growing body of scholarship on how the collecting and exhibition of indigenous ethnological material and bodily remains by colonial museums underscored the evolutionary distance between indigenes and settlers. This article explores in contextual detail several Australian museums between 1860 and 1914, in particular the Australian Museum in Sydney, the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, and the Victorian Museum in Melbourne, in which the collecting, interpretation and exhibition of the Aboriginal Australian bodily dead by staff and associated scientists served to imagine human evolutionary history.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
