Selection - FHYA curation of selected Bews Herbarium Ethnobotanical materials

[Source - Carolyn Hamilton for the FHYA, 2018: The FHYA selected the Father Franz Mayr botanical collection for inclusion on the FHYA for two reasons: it is a rare early botanical collection pertinent to the region that includes indigenous names and usages; and it was part of the wider collecting activities of Mayr. During his sojourn in Natal between 1890 and 1909 Mayr also recorded songs and collected items of material culture. The recordings went to the Phonogrammarchiv at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OAW), a number of items of material culture went to the Natal Museum (now the KwaZulu-Natal Museum, KZNM), and some items went into private collections.

One of the aims of the FHYA is to enable the digital reunification of items that were collected at a particular moment or by a particular collector and were subsequently separated. Thus the FHYA site includes this botanical collection by Mayr along with the items of material culture held by the KZNM https://fhya.org/fhya-curation-of-a-selection-from-the-anthropological-collection-at-the-kwazulu-natal-museum and the recordings from the OAW https://fhya.org/fhya-selection-from-series-10-the-collection-of-father-franz-mayr-zulu-recordings-1908-sound-recordings-and-associated-material also collected by Mayr.]