Dal territorio eritreo al Museo. Gli scopi e le tecniche di collezione degli oggetti etnografici

• Main Author: Elena Pacini
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ethnorêma Association 2009-12-01
• Series: Ethnorêma
• Online Access: http://www.ethnorema.it/pdf/numero%205/05%20Pacini.pdf

This paper sets the 1905-06 Eritrean Mission in the context of the newly born Italian anthropology and of the first Italian colonialism, putting into their historical setting the methodology that was used for collecting, “patrimonializing” and exhibiting the collected “documents”. In addition to this, it studies the links between colonial policies and scientific theories. The connection between these two aspects gave rise to rigid and crystallized representations of alterity, that were strongly marked by evolutionist and sometimes even racist biases towards the studied Saho population. This paper describes how the members of the mission collected the ethnographic objects, which were their scientific goals and how they became documents of cultural heritage, that are still displayed in the Museum of Natural History of Florence (Section of Anthropology and Ethnology, MNAE). At the end the author briefly invites to renew the rooms of the MNAE, by adopting a less ethnocentric and more dialogical and negotiated way of exhibiting the different items, so as to overcome the imperialist ideological heritage without altogether destroying the former way of displaying them.