Jorge von Hauenschild: From amateur collector to professional archaeologist in a remote corner of Argentina

Abstract

The von Hauenschild collection was one of the founding collections of what today is the Museo de Antropología, a university museum at the Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, located in Córdoba Capital in central Argentina. The collection is one of the largest collections at the museum with over 4000 objects from the nearby province of Santiago del Estero, a place almost unaffected by Argentinean archaeologists since the early works initiated by the Wagner Brother in the 1920s. Santiago has for a long time been seen as a marginal place in the national Argentinean history and seen as an impoverished and remote place, but during part of the early 20th century Santiago was a thriving place, especially at the time of the large railroad constructions in Argentina. Santiago was also the home for the German-born engineer, Jorge von Hauenschild for 30 years. He formed von Hauenschild collection, by excavating pre-historical tombs in the province, in his hunt for archaeological treasures. The collection has been almost untouched since the death of von Hauenschild in 1951. The trajectory of von Hauenschild went from a mere armature to a professional archaeologist, which research of the history of the collection shows. He set off as a collector curiosa things and develops in to a modern archaeologist performing systematic archaeological investigations.