The University of Cambridge’s collections include an estimated 350,000 artefacts, alongside natural history specimens and human/ancestral remains, from Africa, according to a new report aiming to promote further research, collaboration and engagement, especially with African scholars and communities.
The report emphasises that the labour and expertise of countless unnamed African people is hidden in the histories of these collections.
Maasai armlets donated by a colonial administrator; a small mammal collected in a Boer War concentration camp; the world’s most important collection of mediaeval Jewish manuscripts; fossils donated by a petroleum company; and early photographs of African people.
These are just some of the astonishingly diverse African objects in the University’s collections, highlighted in the ‘African Collections Futures’ research project report, made public on 3rd December 2024.
The project aims to develop a better sense of where Africa-related objects and materials are across the University; how researchers, African institutions and communities …