ABSTRACT
Fin de siècle ethnographic collections in museums were the loci of anthropological knowledge as practiced and produced in metropolitan centers. These were the spaces of and media for the transfer of practical skills, methods, and theoretical approaches that were coming to define the new field of anthropology. Merging considerations and methods from the history of science, social history, and museum anthropology, this comparative study of anthropology in Vienna and Berlin reconciles and analyzes an internationally scattered body of correspondence and ethnographic specimens. The result is a multi-layered perspective that interweaves the scholars, collections, institutions, and ideas that populated and shaped the landscapes of anthropology in each of these two metropoles, as well as the transnational currents that mediated interaction and research between anthropologists in these and other urban centers.
