Aberdeen, Scotland ? Nine tattooed Maori heads will return to their New Zealand homeland from a Scottish university, officials said Wednesday.

Officials of the Te Papa Museum are looking forward to the heads’ return, and thanked Aberdeen University for supporting “ongoing efforts to return Maori human remains to New Zealand,” said museum official James Te Puni.

The preserved heads were stored at Aberdeen University’s Marischal Museum for more than a century. Now the museum in Wellington, New Zealand, wants them back so it can conduct its own cultural research.

The heads of dead warriors and slaves were often sold as trade between the Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, and European explorers in the 19th century.

They were donated by various people, including a former student who spent time in the South Pacific and wanted to give something back to his school, said Neil Curtis, senior curator at the Marischal Museum.