PREPARATION TECHNIQUES: FROM SINGLE BONE FRAGMENTS TO MOUNTED SKELETONS—MODELS, HYBRID EPISTEMIC OBJECTS, AND THE QUESTION OF EVIDENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF 19TH-CENTURY MOA FINDS

Abstract

ABSTRACT After the first Moa bones were found in New Zealand in 1839, a Moa ‘frenzy’ unfolded in London under Richard Owen’s dominant expertise. Further finds of Moa skeletons in New Zealand gave Julius Haast, the founder of the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand, the opportunity to sell or exchange the bones to other museums, making him an international expert, independent from London as one of the world’s scientific centres. By 1870, the museum had seven complete mounted skeletons on display. In 1860, Vienna joined New Zealand and London in having a unique Moa skeleton find. Ferdinand Hochstetter visited New Zealand in 1858–1859 as a member of the Austrian circumnavigation expedition of the Novara and travelled across the islands as a geologist with Julius Haast. Hochstetter placed great attention on obtaining these bones, and on his return to Vienna they were prepared and articulated by Gustav Jäger. As an early Darwinian scholar in Vienna, he described the procedure of bone preparation and articulation in great detail and developed a plaster cast model made from a complete skeleton of the Palapteryx ingens Owen, of which only rudiments had been known until 1858. This paper discusses the technique of mounting skeletons, working with plaster casts and their role in the making of science. How did the mounting of skeletons guide research and how did the relationship between authenticity and evidence work? The use and meaning of 3-D constructions as opposed to images are the focus of the article. Jäger’s casts from 1863 will serve to illustrate how a producer reflected the relationship between ‘Naturwahrheit’ and preparation, between an original skeleton and a replica. What is the significance of taxidermy and artificial reconstruction, especially as it mediated between research and the public? I argue in different directions: the moa skeletons were hybrid objects that captivated scientists and the general public alike. As models, they mediated between the founders and describers of the bones, the producers of the skeletons and the public. Not only did the skeletons raise unresolved palaeontological, anatomical, taxonomical and evolutionary questions, they also fascinated because of their monumentality and uniqueness. They broadened the public’s view of the general phenomenon of extinction in the animal world, they allowed Māori legends to be incorporated as information into natural history research, and they linked human history with natural history. They were also objects that publicly promoted the importance of palaeontological collections and palaeontology as a young science.