Giant bones and giants' bodies: Collection ecologies, 1500-1700

Between the early sixteenth century and late seventeenth century, learned European men debated the status of giants, both real and imagined. The discovery of fossilized bones and teeth from supposed human giants and their display in churches, city halls, and public squares as well as in private cabinets seemed to prove that very large people had once existed. Humanist histories supported the idea of giant humans dating from pre-classical antiquity. Their display in public places, surrounded by religious and civic symbols - the specific ecologies, natural and factitious, of their display - lent credence to their assigned identities. As interpretations changed in the seventeenth century, so too, reciprocally, did the ecology of their display, revealing the historical instability of interpretive categories.