Amazigh Cultural Artifacts in European Museums: Linguistic Documentation, Recirculation, and Fair Engagement
This project synthesizes linguistic, historical, and anthropological perspectives into a focused investigation of ethnological museum collections. Preliminary surveys reveal that artifacts are frequently catalogued without reference to their names, cultural functions, or contextualized explanations, often relying instead on translations into dominant languages that do not fully convey their cultural complexity. This project proposes a systematic documentation of technical terms, integrated with a critical curation of artifacts and associated materials, archival notes, audiovisual recordings, and photographs, held in German museums on Tunisian, Libyan, and Egyptian material culture artifacts in Amazigh contexts. By analysing these materials, the aim is also to make overlooked collections accessible to a wider audience, including to the communities who produced them, and serve as elicitation input for future fieldwork. Foregrounding the terminology embedded within these materials also contributes to the documentation of under-described languages and cultural practices. Moreover, this work is situated within ongoing discussions in ethnological museums regarding provenance, acquisition histories, and the broader dynamics of cultural heritage in transnational museum contexts. Through digitization, public engagement, and scholarly publication, this project seeks to recontextualize these materials for both academic and source communities.