History and Provenance

Several of the most important skulls trace back to the French antiquities dealer Eugene Boban, active in Mexico and Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century, who is the documented source of the British Museum and Trocadero (now quai Branly) skulls. None can be tied to a controlled archaeological excavation. The Mitchell-Hedges skull carries the most dramatic origin story: adventurer F. A. Mitchell-Hedges and his adoptive daughter Anna claimed she unearthed it at the Maya site of Lubaantun in British Honduras in the 1920s.

Auction and correspondence records, however, show F. A. Mitchell-Hedges purchasing the skull at Sotheby's in London in 1943, from the collector Sydney Burney. This pattern, vivid discovery narratives unsupported by excavation records, attached to objects passing through the art market, recurs across the group and is itself part of the historical evidence that the skulls are modern commercial products rather than recovered antiquities.