As vidas dos artefatos Ameríndios amazônicos numa coleção etnográfica italiana

Abstract

This paper describes the Amazonian Amerindians’ artefacts included in the Ethnographic Collection of the Centro Studi Americanistici ‘Circolo Amerindiano’, in Italy. One of the most relevant ethnographic collections devoted to the Amerindian peoples, it possesses a rich ensemble of Amerindian artefacts from all the American continent. Here the artefacts part of the Amazonian section of the Collection will be detailed. The aim of the paper is to show how these artefacts can be observed not as simple inert and passive object, but rather as active subjects of a continuous production of differences redefining other subjects involved in the museum encounters. In this way, these artefacts let an Amerindian agency to emerge, also if the Amerindians are not directly engaged in the expositive trajectory.