BECACO investigates the collecting histories of Indigenous Latin American material culture in European museums — bridging archival provenance research with computational knowledge graph technology to uncover hidden connections across collections.
BECACO (Between Canon and Coincidence) examines how Indigenous Latin American objects came to reside in European museum collections through centuries of acquisition, exchange, and colonial encounter.
Our interdisciplinary team combines expertise in archaeology, museum studies, and computer science to build new digital infrastructures for collaborative provenance research — making hidden collection histories legible across institutional boundaries.
By transforming fragmented archival data into interconnected knowledge graphs, BECACO enables researchers to trace provenance chains, identify shared actors, and discover patterns invisible to traditional methods.
Funded under the ERC Starting Grant programme · Horizon Europe
Faculty of Archaeology · Museums, Collections & Society Group
Follow the journey of objects from their origins in Latin America through the networks of dealers, collectors, and scholars that brought them into European museum collections between 1850 and 2000 — a 6-phase animated journey across 26 countries and 10 partner institutions.
Reconstructing the biographical trajectories of objects from origin communities in Latin America to European museum storerooms — mapping the human networks that enabled these transfers.
Building CIDOC CRM-compliant graph databases that connect objects, actors, events, and places across institutional silos, enabling federated provenance queries at unprecedented scale.
Centering indigenous perspectives and community voices in how provenance is understood, documented, and restituted — moving beyond purely institutional narratives of collection histories.
BECACO is actively seeking partner institutions and researchers working on provenance, restitution, and the digital transformation of museum collections.