Scholars have treated images from the golden age of Transylvanian photography, recently elevated to prominence through the digitization of archives, as “authentic” portrayals of peasant culture. However, Hungarian, Romanian, and Saxon nationalists in Transylvania utilized photographs to brand place and nation in the global market, as well as to make claims to territory and assert competing national hierarchies. I examine here Saxon historian, folklorist and travel writer Emil Sigerus’ Durch Siebenbürgen: eine Touristenfahrt in 58 Bildern (Through Transylvania: a Tourist Trip in 58 Pictures), published repeatedly between 1905 and 1929. Sigerus’ photographic survey of Transylvania’s natural landscape, built environment and diverse populations branded Transylvania in general and Transylvanian Saxons in particular as a tourist destination unspoiled by the passage of time. Sigerus also projected an ethnically stratified social hierarchy on Transylvania’s heterogeneous population, with Saxons at the apex; asserted Saxon ownership of urban centers, thereby reinforcing Saxon claims to a “civilizing mission” in Transylvania; and laid claim to territory, simultaneously redirecting tourism from other parts of Transylvania to Saxon nationalists’ benefit. By careful curation, then, Sigerus projected a strong nationalist message often overlooked in the analysis of individual images as “objective” sources of evidence.

We conducted the first taphonomic and paleoenvironmental study based on late Pleistocene–Holocene small mammal remains recovered from the famous Mylodon Cave (Cerro Benítez area, Última Esperanza, Chile). Most of the analyzed material came from the extensive excavations made by Earl Saxon in 1976. We also studied late Holocene small mammal samples of the neighboring rock shelter Dos Herraduras 1. Analyzed remains were mostly produced by owls, probably living inside the caves. In Mylodon Cave, the higher values of girdle bones are consistent with a windblown litter. We recorded nine species of rodents, seven cricetids, and two caviomorphs; almost all the identified taxa integrate recent local communities. Late Pleistocene–Holocene assemblages are characterized by the chinchilla rat Euneomys, indicating unforested areas around the caves under cold and moist climatic conditions. Middle Holocene amelioration is reflected by incremental rodent species richness, including the first record of taxa clearly associated with forest (e.g., Abrothrix lanosa). Late Holocene assemblages are markedly stable, indicating local conditions similar to the current (historical) environment. Quaternary rodents from Cerro Benítez area do not indicate abrupt environmental changes during middle–late Holocene, but a progressive trend towards forest increase.

Hungarian, Saxon, and Romanian nationalist activists in Transylvania disseminated competing claims to “Westernness” by swaying visiting British travel writers' descriptions through hospitality networks that guided what writers saw and heard, assuring that travelers favored the nationalists' classifications of the region's ethnicities. Although the qualities British travelers valued varied depending on individual differences and intellectual currents such as enlightened reform, scientific racism, and the romantic revival, travelers consistently ascribed the qualities they best favored to the nationality on whose hospitality they relied. Wealth and time of travel determined which hospitality networks travelers favored. The Hungarian noble elites hosted most travelers until 1918, when the newly dominant Romanian nobility replaced them. Throughout, peasant voices especially remained marginalized.