Dataset of wood identifications of Congolese heritage objects – constituting 7% of the RMCA's collection (Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium)

<p>The Belgian Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) hosts a large body of wooden objects from the Democratic Republic of the Congo: more than 55.000 sculptures, musical instruments, equipment, furniture, and alike are made of wood or contain wooden elements. For 3814 objects &ndash; roughly 7% of the museum&rsquo;s wooden heritage objects- the wood species has been identified.</p> <p>The majority of these identifications, which were never published before, were performed by Roger Dechamps, &nbsp;principal curator of the Tervuren xylarium from 1965 to 1995. Identification was needed in the context of upcoming exhibitions or loans, and while the selection of objects was varied, it is representative of the museum's broader collection of heritage objects.</p> <p>Dechamps studied the Congolese objects by means of invasive techniques. To observe the transverse plane of the wood he cleared a small area on the object with a scalpel, most often, on the bottom of the object. He studied the anatomical features with a loupe. In addition to the visual inspection of the transverse plane, he sampled the objects along the tangential plane. Cutting a slice from the objects with a scalpel, the sample was then imbedded and viewed with optical microscopy. A large part of these tangential thin sections are still preserved within the Tervuren xylarium.</p> <p>The dataset is in pdf form (78 pages), and contains 3961 entries. 58 objects were sampled and analysed multiple times (because the object contains multiple types of wood species). These entries are indicated in grey. 184 objects were sampled and analysed, but could not be identified.&nbsp;</p> <p>The information in the excel file is ordered as follows: <br>Column 1: The object's identifier following the RMCA's registration system (https://www.africamuseum.be/en/research/collections_libraries/human_sciences/collections/database)<br>Column 2: The taxonomic identification by Roger Dechamps<br>Column 3: Object typology&nbsp;<br>Column 4 Culture or region of origin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo&nbsp;<br>Column 5: Date of wood species identification</p> <p>Maes, F. and Beeckman, H. 1999. Wood to Survive. Liber Amoricum for Roger Dechamps. Annalen Economische Wetenschappen KMMA (25).</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>