Santos Rocha Municipal Museum | November 17, 2023

Maria Figueira is a research fellow of the TRANSMAT project at the Santos Rocha Municipal Museum in Figueira da Foz. Her work has been instrumental for a more complete understanding of the contexts and meanings of the ethnographic collections at this municipal museum.

With the guidance and support of Ana Margarida Ferreira and Ana Paula Cardoso, Maria Figueira has been documenting the transnational objects that entered the Museum between 1893 and 1910 for the so-called Comparison Room, which, based on the principles of museology at the time, presented the possibility of studying relationships between prehistoric artifacts and those made by contemporary indigenous groups..

The TRANSMAT research process, which involved several professionals from the Santos Rocha Municipal Museum, and has also mobilized primary sources from other local and national archives, has contributed to the identification and research into many of the actors associated with the entry of objects into the Museum, and to delve deeper into the biographies of several of these objects. This work has resulted in a deepening and enhancement of the knowledge about the processes involved in the constitution of this collection, as well as the practices of museology and the circulation of objects and scientific knowledge in the 19th century.