Containing Histories Past and Present: Making Samples in the “Huntington Collection” (1893–1921)

ABSTRACT The Huntington Anatomical Collection (1893–1921) includes the skeletal remains of immigrants, migrants, and lifelong New York City residents. The collection's formation was coeval with the formalization of physical anthropology, and the collection was made to serve research aims centered on race and origin. This early focus on race has materially shaped the collection, and, in turn, researchers’ ongoing engagements with it. When delineating research questions and forming samples, researchers (even those critical of race science and the collection's history) tend to do so along race‐ and place‐based categories prioritized by early curators and physical anthropologists. Treating these categories as the primary axis of difference flattens the complex life histories, movements, and social relations of the people in the collection, thus occluding a view of life courses as lived. Drawing upon archival evidence, I argue that such separation practices have profound implications for how we view belonging, social relations, and kinship in the past. These concerns extend into present questions regarding descendant engagement, as practitioners and institutions define communities of care and navigate future consultation and return.