In the same year, he founded the Carlos Ribeiro Society (1888-1898) with some other students. Its mission was to disseminate knowledge of scientific studies in the areas of Anthropology, Archaeology, Ethnology, Geology and Botany and later gave rise to its own publication: the Revista de Ciências Naturais e Sociais (1889-1898). The review planned an interdisciplinary programme inspired by the idea of constructing the ethnological roots of the Portuguese people, a path already begun by the patrons chosen. It was edited by Rocha Peixoto, Wenceslau de Lima and Ricardo Severo with Leite de Vasconcelos, Alberto Sampaio, Martins Sarmento, Basílio Teles and Júlio de Matos all collaborating with studies, articles and bibliographical news which enabled it to expand scientific horizons. Severo’s articles focused on linking the archaeologist in the critical appreciation of his prehistoric investigations to the ethnologist who sought to disentangle the ethnic and anthropological traits of the Portuguese, thereby following the guidelines of the emergent French school of Prehistoric Archaeology. He also inaugurated a new area, one that studied archaeology in the Portuguese overseas provinces, with his analysis of prehistory in Angola for which he used some artefacts an acquaintance had sent him.

Although ready to begin a professional career in the area of his academic training, the debacle of 31 January 1891 in Porto led to a change of plan since, as he was a political militant in the Republican ranks, fears of reprisals for his association with the attempted revolutionary coup motivated his departure for Brazil. In São Paulo he set himself up as an engineer in the office of the architect Ramos de Azevedo and four years later, protected under the 1893 decree that gave amnesty for political crimes committed by civilians, he decided to return to Portugal. He settled once again in Porto where he devoted himself almost exclusively to archaeology, renewing the former contacts of his youth and planning with Rocha Peixoto and Fonseca Cardoso the embryo of his greatest project within the field of history - the review Portugália (1899-1908). Together they set up, ran and edited the review whose editorial line Severo defined in the introduction as providing “a national archive of materials for the study of the Portuguese people, their life and their character”.

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