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Article ID: CBB001212624

The Birth of Physical Anthropology in Late Imperial Portugal (2013)

Santos, Gonçalo (Author)

Current Anthropology
Volume: 53, no. S5
Issue: S5
Pages: 33-45
Publication date: 2013
Language: English

Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Part of a special section, “Anthropology and National Identity”

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In this article I analyze the emergence of the field of physical anthropology in the metropolitan academic sphere of the Portuguese Empire during the late nineteenth century. I suggest that Portugal's relatively peripheral position combined with a complex internal conjuncture of political instability and economic impotence gave early Portuguese physical anthropology a less explicitly colonial orientation than in other, more central Western European imperial powers. I describe the various national and international exchanges leading to the birth of this naturalist anthropological tradition at the University of Coimbra, drawing particular attention to the foundational role played by the technological assemblage of large osteological collections aimed at the study of the somatic characteristics of the metropolitan white population. I situate these technical developments in the context of wider sociocultural and politico-economic processes of both nation building and empire building. These processes had a strong effect on the kinds of questions asked and the kinds of answers that seemed compelling and acceptable to early physical anthropologists.

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Article Lindee, M. Susan; Santos, Ricardo Ventura (2013) The Biological Anthropology of Living Human Populations: World Histories, National Styles, and International Networks: An Introduction to Supplement 5. Current Anthropology (pp. 3-16). unapi

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