Registos Escritos, Memórias, Objectos e Saberes... A Importância do Conhecimento e da Recuperação da Informação Histórica Sobre Timor Para a História de Timor-Leste

As a former colonial power, Portugal keeps in its archives and museum collections various objects and documents related to the Portuguese colonial presence in the world, particularly in Timor-Leste. Some collections, like the one from the Timor Anthropological Mission, are part of the collections of the Scientific and Tropical Research Institute (IICT) where, since the end of the last century, they were inventoried, analysed and made available in accordance with IICT strategic objectives, aimed at making them available and accessible to the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries. Collected in the mid-twentieth century, this collection is particularly important for the information it can provide – information about people, customs, traditional knowledge, landscape, economic activities and their historical and anthropological context. Together with other documentation on Timor, it is being studied in the framework of the Project presented here and aims at retrieving historical information relating to natural resources, biodiversity, and traditional knowledge and practices in order to demonstrate its importance and its contribution in terms of its potential input to minimize or resolve current problems.