Paper short abstract:

Through an ethnographic study of certain South African "epistemic actors" (researchers, museum ethics committees, and professional associations), I propose to trace the history of the first provenance research projects initiated by the staff of Iziko Museums of South Africa.

Paper long abstract:

"Presidents need to speak less, and to give the floor to specialists for once," said to me a Congolese anthropologist during the conference “From the Shadows to the Light. For a policy with regard to the management of colonial collections of human remains”, which was held in Brussels in 2019. For several decades now, museums have been confronted with requests for the restitution of cultural property, often formulated by politicians or pro-restitution activists. While these highly politicised statements often make the headlines, less is known about how museum professionals deal on a daily basis with the historical and ethical questions related to the history of colonial collections.

Through an ethnographic study of certain South African "epistemic actors" (researchers, museum ethics committees, and professional associations), I propose to trace the history of the first provenance research projects initiated by the staff of Iziko Museums of South Africa. Iziko is a network of 12 national museums located in or near Cape Town that initiated complex provenance research on physical anthropology collections, long before the issue was put on the public and political agenda. As a result of this research, not only have the collections been inventoried and certain elements of the collection have changed their legal and even ontological status, but the whole normative framework on which the management of South African museum collections is based has been modified.

This paper proposal is based on approximately 18 months of anthropological fieldwork conducted in South Africa, starting in 2014.