ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Scientific Collections Pasts towards Collections Futures: Decolonizing Knowledge about Colonial Collections in Archaeological Museums

• In Event: Colonialism, Collecting, and Ethnology

English Abstract

We usually associate colonial collections with ethnographic museums, however, due to epistemological issues related to the affirmation of knowledge about prehistory (19th and early 20th centuries), European archaeology museums created colonial collections along with the national ones. The aim was to establish comparisons with the objects of «contemporary savages». As scientific knowledge about prehistory gradually grew, such collections lost their relevance. Some were donated or transferred to ethnographic museums while others were held in the storage of archaeological museums, in some cases remaining as an invisible and uncomfortable presence until modern times.
What are the challenges for research to reconstruct the biographies of colonial objects deposited in archaeology museums? What are the material and epistemological legacies of colonialism in the archival contexts of European archaeology museums? How to manage these colonial collections in the context of archaeology museums?
In this talk we will present the results of the TRANSMAT research project (transmat.uevora.pt), funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, which analyses the colonial collections (from Africa, America and Oceania) of two Portuguese archaeology museums: Museu Nacional de Arqueologia (Lisbon), and Museu Municipal Santos Rocha (Figueira da Foz).

Author

• Elisabete Pereira, Institute of Contemporary History