This paper investigates the importance of meteorites as a scientific heritage. While the significance of meteorites as natural heritage is relatively easy to establish, the implication of their meaning as scientific heritage may be more difficult to define. With this aim in mind, in this paper, we present the catalogue standards for meteorite specimens, preserved either in natural history museums or in private collections, proposed by the Italian Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione–ICCD (Central Institute for Catalogue and Documentation). This work outlines the structure of the catalogue card that describes the meteorite specimen along with other information related to the sample (e.g., archival documentation on collectors and traders, museum catalogues and inventories, general bibliography). This essay concludes discussing the cataloguing, according to ICCD standards, of two Renazzo meteorite specimens, which fell in the eponymous Italian village in 1824 and are now preserved at the Natural History Museum of the University of Firenze.
The Collectio Mineralium (1765) currently preserved at the Historical Archive of the Natural History Museum of the University of Firenze, is the unpublished catalog of the mineralogical collection that belonged to Emperor Leopold II (1747–1792). The catalog is a 110-page register, with the golden emblem of the House of Habsburg at the center of the binding, containing information about 242 mineralogical samples. Each specimen is carefully described (i.e., habit, metal content, product value) and its locality given. The interpretation of the text has also returned information on most of the mining deposits in the Austro-Hungarian territories in the eighteenth century. Therefore, the interpretation of this catalog—that on the basis of the literature appears to be the first catalog of a collection belonged to a Habsburg emperor—represents an important step toward enhancing our understanding of Habsburg natural history collections and reflected the transition from wonder-rooms to commodity collecting. Leopold's private collection was no longer an ‘instrument of wonder’ but it became representative of scientific collecting characterized by the establishment of systematic mineralogy, and by a careful economic evaluation of the mineralogical samples collected as a symbol of the power of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Julius Obsequens was the pseudonym of a Roman historian presumably living in the 4th century ad, whose life is shrouded in mystery. All that is known about Obsequens’s biography is that he was the author of a book entitled Liber Prodigiorum (Book of Prodigies), a collection of prodigies deduced from Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita Libri (Books from the Founding of the City). The Liber Prodigiorum covered the period from 190 to 11 bc and gathered a chronological list of portents of various kinds (e.g., births of monstrous animals or men, statues that shed blood, voices from beyond the grave, epidemics, earthquakes, unidentified flying objects). Among these extraordinary reports, chronicles of celestial phenomena were also included. The interdisciplinary approach adopted in this research has clarified the nature of the events described in the text and has enabled the identification of new Italian meteorite falls that are not included in the Meteoritical Bulletin Database.
This paper is focused on the meteorite collection that belonged to the Italian naturalist and geologist Teodoro Monticelli (1759–1845). Today he is mainly remembered as both the author of books and essays on the volcanic activity of Mount Vesuvius and as the owner of a mineralogical cabinet of more than 16,000 specimens. Monticelli’s scientific activity as a meteorite collector is, however, largely forgotten. This contribution presents for the first time the meteorite collection that belonged to Teodoro Monticelli and is now preserved at the Royal Mineralogical Museum of Naples. We reconstruct the history of the collection and argue that it represents an exceptional example of historical heritage. We also highlight the potential of the collection as a scientific research tool.
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