The Museo Civico Medievale preserves important artifacts originating from historic Bolognese collections, including those of Ulisse Aldrovandi, Ferdinando Cospi, the Istituto delle Scienze, and the painter Pelagio Palagi. From each of these collecting nuclei derive several Indigenous American artifacts: a small anthropomorphic sculpture in green stone and a feather mosaic that belonged to Ulisse Aldrovandi; some buccheri delle Indie and two cocos chocolateros from the Cospian collection; an important group of artifacts from the Kingdom of Quito and the Amazon region, donated to the Istituto delle Scienze by Pope Benedict XIV; as well as a significant assemblage of pre-Columbian Andean ceramics that belonged to Pelagio Palagi. A small but fine group of Yámana artifacts from Tierra del Fuego was donated by the Bolognese Giovanni Roncagli, who had taken part as hydrographer in an expedition led by Giacomo Bove (1881–1882). From the historic collections of the University of Bologna derive instead a seventeenth-century Mexican feather mosaic and a fine pair of Iroquois moccasins. Recently, the museum has received from the Soprintendenza a small collection of precolonial ceramics from Colombia.