Museo di Antropologia ed Etnografia del Sistema Museale di Ateneo dell’Università degli Studi di Torino (MAET)

Within its collections the MAET preserves about 550 ethnographic and archaeological artifacts from the Americas, divided into two main sections: the North American collection and the Latin American collection. The North American section consists of two parts: the first documents a long cruise undertaken by Paolo De Vecchi in 1900 along the northwestern coast of the United States; the second is made up of several examples of protohistoric lithic industry collected between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries along the Potomac River (USA) by the anthropologist Elmer Reynolds. The Latin American section is larger and comprises a heterogeneous heritage originating from different contexts and geographical areas of Central and South America. The processes through which these artifacts were acquired, involving Catholic missionaries and researchers active in South America between the nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century, are still only partially clarified. Since the 1980s the museum has also benefited from donations by members of the Associazione Museo di Antropologia ed Etnografia Amici del Museo (1971–2020).

The two most valuable artifacts are two Antillean cemí: one wooden piece dating to the twelfth century and one cotton example dating to the fifteenth century—the only pre-Columbian specimen of its kind known in the world—found in the late nineteenth century in a cave in the Dominican Republic and associated with the ancestral cult of the Taíno people.