An estimated 350,000 African artifacts, from human remains and images to natural history specimens and manuscripts, have been found in the university’s collections.
Dr Eva Namusoke spent 15 months contacting Cambridge University librarians, curators and archivists, as well as rummaging through their stores, to find these items.
“It’s normal” that the big museums don’t show much of their collections, but “it was still surprising to see this scale and diversity from all over the African continent and from there for decades and decades”, he said.
The project is the latest effort by the university to address questions about its museums’ relationship with colonization and slavery and reveals that most of the artefacts were acquired during British colonial rule.
This medieval narcotic cough syrup recipe is one of 200,000 manuscripts or books found in a Cairo synagogue and returned to Cambridge, making it part of the world’s largest collection of medieval Jewish manuscripts. [University Library]
Dr Namusoke, chief curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum, African Collections Future, said that most of the artefacts related to Africa are not displayed and he hopes that they will now be widely shared and researched.
They were found in the shops and archives of eight museums and the Botanic Garden including the University of Cambridge Museums, as well as the University Library and lesser-known collections in university departments and centres.
They are from the Masai [tribe] weapons donated by a colonial administrator, a small mammal collected from a Boer concentration camp (1899-1902), a collection of medieval Jewish manuscripts and early photographs of African people.
Contact with the British colony
A spring hare collected in South Africa in 1901, during the Boer War, a bitter colonial war between the British Empire and Boer-speaking Boer farmers. [University Museum of Zoology]
Most of the artefacts were found during British rule, some were gifted, bought, commissioned or excavated – while others were stolen, confiscated or looted.
The Museum of Archeology and Anthropology has a Ghanaian gold necklace believed to have been looted from the palace of Asantehene Kofi Karikari during the Third Anglo-Asante War of 1873-4, while there are 116 items linked to the British-led punitive expedition to the Benin Kingdom in 1897, in southern Nigeria today.
Dr Namusoke said: “I was determined to find things like this, as it happens in many heritage sites around the world.
Looted during another colonial war, the necklace was later bought in London by Girton College, a graduate of Cambridge and donated to the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. [Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology]
He said the 19th Century scientific approach to collecting and colonizing “went too far”.
“The university owns the dodo skeleton because of personal relationships with Cambridge and the colonial governor of Mauritius,” he said.
“There are advances in anthropology and colonialism, which means that researchers have a framework for researching and researching people and their cultures.”
Unveiling African work and creativity
Africans shared valuable knowledge, acted as translators, tracked and hunted animals, prepared specimens and travel artifacts among many other activities. [Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology]
Dr Namusoke’s report notes that “frustratingly little” has been recorded about the skills, expertise and local knowledge used by African workers in collecting specimens or artefacts.
“There is an example I give in Cameroon in the 1930s where it is clear that there are a lot of African workers involved,” he said.
“They tracked and hunted these animals, including Cameroonian men who lay on their stomachs for hours using test tubes to collect spiders and snails.”
“It was about using local labor and creativity, their mental, physical and artistic work.
“The focus was on the European scientists who made the collection and not the work that made it happen.”
Report the findings at a glance
The tens of thousands of archaeological objects from Egypt held by the Fitzwilliam and the Museums of Archeology and Anthropology have been extensively studied since the late 19th century. [The Fitzwilliam Museum]
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Egypt is the African country best represented in the university’s collections, with tens of thousands of archeological objects and manuscripts.
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The Museum of Archeology and Anthropology has approximately 137,000 objects, but they are less than 1% on display.
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It also maintains over 29,000 photographs, including early portraits of Africans from the 1860s.
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About 100,000 African specimens are housed in the Museum of Zoology, and the Herbarium (which contains preserved plants) has a well-studied collection
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The Duckworth Laboratory maintains about 4,800 ancient human remains from Egypt and 1,200 from Sudan, but there is little documentation of how the other 750 African remains were collected.
This report is an introduction to the African collections of this university but is not complete [Museum of Zoology]
The project is part of Collections-Connections-Communities, which previously resulted in an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam that explores the museum’s financial links to the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
The report concludes with several recommendations to encourage further research, collaboration and communication, especially with African academics and communities.
“But the next big step is to increase visibility and allow people to inspect the collections themselves,” said Dr Namusoke.
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