Maori artefacts will be returned

Items from one of Scotland's biggest collections of Maori artefacts are to be repatriated to New Zealand.

BBC Scotland can reveal that Aberdeen University is giving up some of its 80,000 Maori exhibits.

The collection includes the preserved heads of nine tattooed tribesman, which were taken out of the country by 19th Century explorers.

They have now been reclassified as human remains and are being sent home to New Zealand.

Neil Curtis, the curator of the university's Marischal Museum, said it had returned items to North America in the past.

"They (the heads) will be repatriated as ancestors back to New Zealand," he said.

"They are no longer objects, they are people."