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Rebellion Now and Forever: Mayas, Hispanics, and Caste War Violence in Yucatan, 1800-1880, by Terry Rugeley. Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 2009. xv, 464 pp. $65.00 US (cloth). What in [...]

Possessing the Dead: The Artful Science of Anatomy, by Helen MacDonald. Victoria, Melbourne University Press, 2010, vii, 289 pp. $35.50 US (paper) Possessing the Dead analyzes the contested implementation of [...]

A Life in Shadow: Aime Bonpland in Southern South America, 1817-1858, by Stephen Bell. Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 2010. xii, 320 pp. $65.00 US (cloth). The French naturalist Aime-Jacques-Alexandre [...]

Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and the Modern State, by Julia Rodriguez. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xii, 306 pp. $24.95 US (paper). Shaped by Foucauldian subjects (the [...]

The article presents information on the Aztec children, two children with microcephaly who were allegedly kidnapped from a city located in Central America in the 19th century. Topics include elements of racism in science and ethnology in the period, perceptions of dwarfism and human abnormalities, and interest in Mexican civilizations during the 19th century. Other topics include works on Aztec ruins and civilization and antiquarian Adrien de Longpérier's arguments again the Aztec children.

This paper traces the trade routes of South American fossil mammal bones in the 1830s, thus elaborating both local and intercontinental networks that ascribed new meanings to objects with little intrinsic value. It analyses the role of British consuls, natural-history dealers, administrative instructions and naturalists, who took the bones from the garbage pits of ranches outside Buenos Aires and delivered them into the hands of anatomists. For several years, the European debates on the anatomy of Megatherium were shaped by the arrival in London of a small living mammal and the ideas and evidence received from Montevideo on the existence of huge fossil bony armours. These debates culminated late in 1838 in the creation of the extinct genus Glyptodon by Richard Owen as a result of the exchange of letters, objects and depictions, and a series of contingent events. Based on primary sources and South American scholarship, this paper aims to contribute to the current debates among historians of science about the mobility of knowledge, as well as presenting the condition that made Charles Darwin's work possible. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes various intellectual practices tied to the use of public and private documents in the practice of history in Argentina over the second half of the nineteenth century. Starting from the "question of limits," this essay analyzes the work of bibliophiles Manuel Ricardo Trelles and Juan Martín Leguizamón, both of whom tried to historically reconstruct the territorial unity of Argentina. it shows how this work lies at the crossroads of antiquarian studies, History, and Natural History. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]