De l’objet à caractère végétal à l’objet ethnobotanique. Penser les collectes de plantes et objets en plante

Abstract

The Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum in Paris houses 189 samples of medicinal plants collected during the twentieth century by various anthropologists and correspondents of the Musée de l’Homme. Whether they were bought from herbalists or on local markets, these samples have been integrated into the collections of their collectors just like any other ethnographic artefact. After being crushed or ground to a powder, sometimes even mixed together with other plants, these samples were packed as pharmaceuticals, and therefore cannot be considered as botanical specimens. Nevertheless, research into their conditions of collection and the inquiries led by their collectors tells us that it is possible to apply differentiated treatment to the plant, now that it has become a ‘plant-object’. Through a study of the samples brought back from Cameroon by Marcel Griaule, from Bolivia by Louis Girault and from Iran by Teresa Battesti, this article shows how anthropologists work from ethnographic items of a vegetable nature.

Keywords

• ethnography
• musée de l’Homme
• medicinal plants
• ethnobotany
• herbarium
• musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac