Skulls from Tiwanaku: A Forgotten Part of Nestler’s Collection in the Hrdlička Museum of Man in Prague

Abstract

Julius Nestler, high school teacher and amateur archaeologist from Prague, brought home more than 3,500 archaeological and anthropological artifacts from his expedition to Bolivia (1909–1912). At present they are in the possession of the Náprstek Museum in Prague. a smaller corpus of human bones, especially skulls, some deformed (elongated) and/or trepanned, were deposited at the Hrdlička Museum of Man (Charles University in Prague). Nestler’s second collection has not, so far, re­ceived much attention from anthropologists, museologists or historians of science, one of the reasons probably being the fact that there is no preserved documentation as to its provenance. Sources dispersed in several archives and publications made it possible to ascertain Nestler’s motivation for collecting human remains, the location where he collected them, and the circumstances of their sale to Charles University. The article also aspires to insert the collection and its original owner into the broader context of anatomical and anthropological disciplinary practices in the Czech Lands in the first decades of the 20th century.