World’s Fairs and Latin American Archaeology: Costa Rica at the 1892 Madrid Exposition

The growth of anthropology in Europe and the Americas in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coincided with the heyday of world’s fairs, international exhibitions, exposiciones internacionales, and expositions universelles (Allwood 1977:7–12, Findling and Pelle 1990:xv–xix, and Rydell 1992:1–10 discuss terminology). Indeed, certain world’s fairs served to popularize “anthropology,” acquainting the public with this unfamiliar term and apprising scholarly audiences of the concepts and principles of this emerging discipline. Mason’s (1890) article notifying his colleagues in North America about the wide range of anthropological topics embraced by the Exposition universelle internationale de 1889 à Paris is an early example of this link.