History of the Collection of Physical Anthropology in the Natural ...

Wiedenmayer/Hotz, History of the Collection...
by the palaeopathologists Dr. Thomas Böni, Orthopädische Universitätsklinik Balgrist, Zurich
and Prof. Kurt W. Alt, Institut für Anthropologie, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz,
Germany. Damages done to various objects are in need of repair by a qualified preparator.
Efforts are under way to obtain financial support to this aim from a sponsor.
3. The anthropological material from the estate of Roland Bay. It comprises a collection of
various primate skulls; casts of important skulls and postcranial parts of extinct hominids
known in his lifetime; books, series of journals, and reprints; manuscript notes and slides for
lectures, notes for published and unpublished articles (including many standard sheets of
measurements and drawings of skulls); and copious professional correspondence.
Unfortunately, the continuity of curation and research at the former Department of Anthropology
of this museum has been disrupted by reorganisation and frequent changes in personnel.
The first curator of physical anthropology, from 1908 to 1942, was Fritz Sarasin, assisted
by Felix Speiser (both mentioned above). He was succeeded by Roland Bay (1909-1989, in
office from 1943 to 1980). Next came Bruno Kaufmann (mentioned above), a student of R.
Bay, who was active in running the IAG until recently. Both R. Bay and B. Kaufmann served
as volunteers (not as civil servants like the curators in other departments), R. Bay having been
professor of dentistry at the University of Basel, and B. Kaufmann supporting himself from
consulting, grants, and work with the IAG. Due to the savings program developed by the city
government at that time, the Department of Anthropology of this museum was closed on
31/12/1991, B. Kaufmann thus losing his position. He has since been working as the head of
the Anthropological Research Institute in Aesch (BL) near Basel.
According to Bay and Kaufmann (1980), remains of over 10’000 individuals were kept in the
museum’s collection. The card catalogue of accessions, complementing the accessions register
(book), kept until 1970 by R. Bay, lists only 2346 items. The first writer has added descriptions
of further 2292 individual skeletal remains to the accessions register between 1994
and 2001. In 1998, he began transferring the earlier entries in the manuscript register and card
file (beginning with No 1, entered in 1904) into a special computer file (ANTHROPO.DBF,
program dBASE 5.0 for windows). This now comprises data on 1856 individuals, covering
about 18% of our total of holdings. The structure of this computer file comprises 34 fields
(parameters), including localities, race, collectors/excavation data, literature and unpublished
notes, archaeology, biography, preservation, anatomy, size, anomalies, pathology (separately
for cranial, dentition, and postcranial), diagnosis, trauma, remarks, and location in storage.
Today, the registration of the skeletal materials is continued using structure from the Archäologische
Bodenforschung. Much of he historical material from Basel City grounds, still
stored here, awaits sorting and cataloguing, while other such skeletons are temporarily kept in
one of the facilities of the Archäologische Bodenforschung for eventual washing.
An agreement to employ an Assistant Curator on a 20%-40% basis, to maintain an emergency
level of curation, was made between this museum, the Archäologische Bodenforschung, and
the city government (Department of Education) at the time the Department of Anthropology
was closed. In 1992-3 this position was held by the anthropologist Andreas Cueni, who was
followed by the palaeontologist Felix Wiedenmayer, who was in office from 1/12/1993 to
30/11/2001. His successor is the anthropologist Gerhard Hotz.
From 1992 to 2000, the anthropologist Hansueli F. Etter was appointed as curator/adviser
(volunteer) of our Anthropological Collection, in conjunction with his appointment as Lec-
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