Antropologia Integrata: approcci innovativi per lo studio delle collezioni al Museo di Antropologia e Etnologia di Firenze

ANTINT (Anthropology Integrated) is a research project which started in 2020 and was funded for two years. Two young postdoctoral researchers are currently working in collaborative projects involving both the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology and the Biology Department of the University of Florence. The goal of this project is to study the anthropological collection from a perspective which integrates and joins cultural and physical anthropology. This integrated perspective arises from the need to overcome the disciplinary barriers that often lead cultural and biological anthropology onto distant and separate trajectories. Interdisciplinary dialogue is fundamental to deepen all aspects of anthropological research. The Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology is the ideal environment for developing new integrated research strategies in which research on collections connect as the “ethnological” collection dialogue with “physical anthropology” collections. This dialogue is particularly fruitful when objects from the supposed two types of collections come from the same geographical and temporal context, a situation often reflected in our Museum. Traditionally, the research on these two types of collections was carried out in museums with separate criteria and methodologies. However, we believe that the comparison of historical information and data collected today, developed and then put into dialogue by young researchers with different backgrounds and complementary skills, can shed new light and provide significant results. The research objectives are aimed at the production of innovative cultural contents with positive effects on research, cataloging, conservation, and communication with the museum’s public. Here, we present the first results achieved in the field of research and dissemination, a work that was carried out intensively even during the lockdown period due to the pandemic, and which describes the ongoing research on the plaster face masks collection and the pre-Columbian populations from Perù. The project is funded by the Region of Tuscany and it is developed by the Natural History Museum and the Department of Biology of the University of Florence, thanks also to the support of the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze Foundation and the “Opera d’Arte” Cooperative Society.