Unlike the items in Neil MacGregor’s bestselling A History of the World in 100 Objects, our small cabinet’s curious objects cannot be found in a single museum.1 The reasons for this are several. First, from the late 15th century down to our own day, the New World, and in particular that part of it now called Latin America, has been plundered and pilfered for its ‘treasures’ and ‘wonders’ not by one conqueror, empire, explorer, collector or museum but by many. Consequently, many of its natural and cultural productions are scattered around the world, and in too many cases the provenance of the object has been lost. Second, the global nature of knowledge production has, since the 16th century, meant that everywhere objects have been removed not once but several times to new sites of study, storage and display. As a result, many key objects of modern wonder and knowledge have had several owners and keepers, indeed several ‘afterlives’. Their histories and identities have often been lost, or remade, in the shuffle.