摘要：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.
