South American mummy trafficking

Abstract

Nineteenth-century fascination for the exhibition of mummies from around the world promoted the trafficking of cultural objects from remote places including, as reviewed here, the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. While well-funded and organized expeditions travelled the world seeking this material, independent sailors and traders also returned to Europe and beyond with items of exotica for sale. The Macleay Museum, at the University of Sydney, has the well-preserved remains of a human female in its collection, with no record of its provenance. The remains may correspond to two Peruvian mummies brought to Australia by Captain George Duniam in 1851. Besides mummies, his worldwide enterprises included the trafficking of slaves from Polynesia to the coast of South America, and camelids out of Peru – practices still current in the twenty-first century.