Archaeologist Helps Community By Keeping African Artifacts In Africa

It is common for professional archaeologists and paleoanthropologists working in Africa to populate western museums with foreign artifacts by excavating and permanently removing them from history rich communities in Africa. University of Calgary researcher Julio Mercader, along with University of Boston PhD student Arianna Fogelman are doing their part to stop this dated trend.

Mercader and his team have established the first museum of its kind in Mozambique and the second museum in the country’s province of Niassa, which will officially open in August. This museum—named Museu Local, meaning “local museum” in Portuguese—will help keep some of Africa’s treasures in Africa, and also make Western and African academic research relevant to the local population, two initiatives that should have started long ago, says Mercader, who collaborated with the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane and Universidade Pedagógica, in Mozambique, for this project.