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Abstract
Combining both anthropology of the body and museum anthropology, this thesis explores the characteristics of historical clothing as an «object-subject». Following the conspicuous increase in representations of the human form in museums as in various historical manifestations, modern society shows itself to be a société du spectacle, where the bodies of the past, ours as well as others, are resurrected and transformed. That which functions as the presentation of a person in a living community, becomes an object of representation in a museum. In this process, clothing is a particularly effective shifter. Clothes can be distinguished from other museum objects by their intimacy with the body they have covered and its form, which they retain.
The empirical approach taken in this thesis is based on a case study: the discovery of archaeological clothing at Red Bay (worn by the Basque whalers who came to Labrador at the end of the XVI century) and their extended museographical life. The attention brought to this new subject matter—the oldest pieces of European clothing in North America, to the scientific “reconstruction” of the clothing, which has established its authenticity and, in a mirror effect, to their multiple “reproductions,” has served to highlight the technical, aesthetic and symbolic means implemented by humans to “recognize” their ancestors, for want of actually “knowing” them. It also provides a rare opportunity to observe and to analyze the whole process of patrimonialisation as it is occurring and, in doing so, to question the meaning of this activity.
