Abstract
This paper introduces an important group of unpublished ethnographic and archival materials
deriving from two expeditions to Baltistan by the American naturalist collector William Louis
Abbott (1860-1935), the first in 1891-1892 and the second in 1912. This paper presents Abbott
as a particular type of scientific explorer (the American ―naturalist‖), re-assesses the importance
of this region to him and to Smithsonian scientists of the time, and publishes here for the first
time a record of his observations and ethnographic collections from Baltistan. These
ethnographic collections, alongside archival correspondence and field notes, form a little-known
resource at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. This paper also summarizes the role
Abbott and other ―naturalist‖ collectors of this period played within the history of anthropology
and museums, and points to some of the many new 21st-century uses of ―legacy‖ collections and
records of the kind he assembled about this region. Present-day museums often reach out to the
descendants of peoples among whom such historic collections were made, inviting them to help
interpret and display these artifacts. Museum collections can also thereby help preserve
endangered cultural traditions
Paul Michael Taylor, Jared M. Koller. (2018) Baltistan in 1891 and 1912: The Smithsonian’s Baltistan Collections from two Expeditions by American Naturalist William Louis Abbott, South Asian Studies, Volume 33, Issue 1.
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