This article examines the anthropometric study of the body in north-east Scotland at the turn of the twentieth century, revealing significant aspects of the history of anthropology especially the cultivation of particular visual practices. The article has as its theoretical context studies in historical anthropology alongside anthropologies of material culture and museums that have developed in Britain since the 1980s. It focuses on one anthropometric laboratory tracing its connections with sites of anatomical exploration, such as the dissecting room and anatomy museum, and situates this knowledge making within social relationships between anatomists, anthropologists, medical students and colonial administrators.