Cambridge University collections hold 350,000 African artefacts


Eva Namusoke Four women are gathered around a table all looking down at glass headband resting on the table on a white cloth. They at Uganda Museum in June 2024. Three of the women, all wearing green plastic gloves, are pointing at or moving the headband. The fourth stands slightly behind them, scrutinising their movementsEva Namusoke

The college hopes a clearer working out of its Africa-related collections will advertise additional analysis and collaboration, specifically with African students

An estimated 350,000 African artefacts, from human remainder and images to herbal historical past specimens and manuscripts, were present in a school’s collections.

Dr Eva Namusoke spent 15 months liaising with College of Cambridge librarians, curators and archivists, in addition to delving into their retail outlets, to discover the pieces.

It “is fairly common” for immense museums to not show maximum in their collections, nevertheless it used to be “still surprising to see this scale and diversity from the entire African continent and some there for decades and decades”, she stated.

The undertaking is the untouched in fresh paintings on the college to take on questions on its museums’ courting with colonisation and enslavement and divulges nearly all of artefacts have been got right through British colonisation.

University Library A close-up of a fragment of a medieval manuscript. It has dark writing on a light brown background and is laid on a bright blue background which can be seen through a hole in the manuscript in its middle College Library

This recipe for a medieval narcotic cough syrup is certainly one of 200,000 manuscripts or books discovered at a Cairo synagogue and taken again to Cambridge, making it a part of the sector’s greatest selection of medieval Jewish manuscripts

Dr Namusoke, the Fitzwilliam Museum’s senior curator African Collections Pace, stated nearly all of the Africa-related artefacts aren’t on show and she or he hopes they are going to now be extra broadly shared and researched.

They have been discovered available to buy and archives of the 8 museums and the Botanic Ground which in combination put together up the College of Cambridge Museums, in addition to the College Library and less-well identified collections in college segments and establishments.

They territory from Maasai [tribe] armlets donated by means of a colonial administrator, a tiny mammal accumulated in a Boer Warfare (1899-1902) focus camp, a selection of medieval Jewish manuscripts and early images of African population.

The relationship with British colonisation

University Museum of Zoology A spring hare which is a rabbit-sized bipedal rodent. It is standing on its powerful back legs and its small front legs are held under its chest. It has a long tail, like a thinner squirrel's tail, and its ears are alertCollege Museum of Zoology

A spring hare accumulated in South Africa in 1901, right through the Boer Warfare, a sour colonial struggle between the British Empire and Afrikaans-speaking Boer farmers

Nearly all of the artefacts have been got right through British colonisation, some talented, purchased, commissioned or excavated – age others have been stolen, confiscated or looted.

The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has a gold necklace from Ghana which is assumed to were looted from Asantehene Kofi Karikari’s palace right through the 3rd Anglo-Asante Warfare of 1873-4, age there are 116 gadgets related to the British-led punitive marketing campaign and looting of the Benin Kingdom in 1897, in present-day southern Nigeria.

Dr Namusoke stated: “I was prepared to find material like this, as it is the case in a lot of museums around the world.”

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology A 19th Century necklace from Asante, Ghana. It is intricately worked in rich yellow gold with flat and round gold beads strung along in a circle, and 13 long gold spikes shaped like spiral shells spacing out the beads every seventh beadMuseum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Looted right through some other colonial struggle, the necklace used to be then bought in London by means of a Girton School, Cambridge graduate and donated to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

She stated the nineteenth Century clinical mode of amassing and colonisation “went very much hand in hand”.

“The university holds dodo skeleton bones because of a personal relationship between someone in Cambridge and the colonial administrator in Mauritius,” she stated.

“There is a development with anthropology and the administration of colonies, meaning researchers have the framework to study and research the people and their culture.”

Uncovering African labour and experience

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Tlemcen, Algeria. A black and white 19th Century photo showing white-clad women walking back from a cemetery with some crossing a bridge and others walking along a tree-lined road. Behind the first set of women are three men in dark clothing with (possible) Fez hatsMuseum of Archaeology and Anthropology

African population shared reliable wisdom, labored as translators, tracked and hunted animals, ready specimens and artefacts for journey amongst many alternative actions

Dr Namusoke’s file notes how “frustratingly little” there’s recorded in regards to the abilities, experience and native wisdom deployed by means of African employees in accumulating the specimens or artefacts.

“There’s an example I give from Cameroon from the 1930s where it is clear there is a huge amount of African labour involved,” she stated.

“They tracked and hunted the animals, including Cameroonian men lying on their stomachs for hours on end with test tubes to gather spiders and snails.”

“It was absolutely about using local labour and expertise, their intellectual, physical and creative labour.

“The focal point has been at the Eu scientists who did the amassing no longer the labour that made it conceivable.”

Report findings at a glance

The Fitzwilliam Museum A highly-decorated Egyptian mummy case standing upright in a glass case with decorated sarcophagus to its right and a plain wooden box to its left. A man is looking through the glass at it and other ancient Egyptian artefacts can be seen behind itThe Fitzwilliam Museum

Tens of thousands archaeological objects from Egypt held by the Fitzwilliam and Archaeology and Anthropology museums have been intensely studied since the late 19th Century

  • Egypt is the best represented African country in the university’s collections, with tens of thousands of archaeological items and manuscripts
  • The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has an estimated 137,000 items, but fewer than 1% is on display
  • It also cares for more than 29,000 photographs, including early images of African people from the 1860s
  • About 100,000 African specimens are held at the Museum of Zoology, while the Herbarium (containing preserved plants) has the least well-researched collection
  • The Duckworth Laboratory cares for about 4,800 ancient human remains from Egypt and 1,200 from Sudan, but there is there is little documentation on how some 750 other African remains were collected
Museum of Zoology African elephant skeleton sideways on. Behind it can be seen a rhino skeleton. It is in a glass case and many other animal specimens can be seenMuseum of Zoology

The file is an advent to the college’s African collections however isn’t complete