Things - 4 December 2013 - Artefacts: Oceania and Museum of AA

Things Between Places: Artefacts from Oceania and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Professor Nicholas Thomas (Director and Curator of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge) andDr Anita Herle (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge) AbstractsDr Anita Herle. Drawing on two outstanding Pacific collections at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology - the museum's founding collection from Fiji assembled in the mid 1870s and material from the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait - this presentation attends to the materiality, creation and circulation of highly valued things. As active agents, objects such as whale's teeth and cardboard masks reveal the complexity and nuances of social relations between Islanders and British collectors. The interactions between local hosts/informants and researchers summoned into existence some of the very things that were collected. These things continue to play a vital ro