̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Nicholas Thomas

Australian Aboriginal spears taken by James Cook to be repatriated

sb726 — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 09:42:24 +0000

̽��ֱ��spears were taken by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770 from Kamay (Botany Bay) at the time of the first contact between the crew of the HMB Endeavour and the Aboriginal people of eastern Australia.

Trinity College has agreed to permanently return the four spears to the La Perouse Aboriginal community. ̽��ֱ��College is now approaching the UK’s Charity Commission to obtain approval for this transfer of legal title.

Cook recorded that 40 spears were taken from the camps of Aboriginal people living at Botany Bay in April 1770.

Lord Sandwich of the British Admiralty presented the four spears to Trinity College soon after James Cook returned to England and they have been part of the collection since 1771. Since 1914 the four spears have been cared for by the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. ̽��ֱ��four spears are all that remain of the original 40 spears collected.

Trinity College’s decision follows the establishment of a respectful and robust relationship over the last decade between the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Aboriginal community at La Perouse. Discussions included representatives of the local Gweagal people - the Aboriginal group from whom the spears were taken - the broader Dharawal Nation, and leading community organisations, including the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council and the Gujaga Foundation.

̽��ֱ��relationship between Cambridge and La Perouse will continue through collaborative research projects and community visits, once the spears have been returned.

̽��ֱ��La Perouse community is currently lending contemporary spears made by Senior Gweagal Clan leader Rodney Mason to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to show how traditional knowledge has been passed down, while adapting to new technologies.

̽��ֱ��decision by Trinity College to return the spears followed a formal repatriation request in December 2022, from the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council and the Gujaga Foundation.

In 2015 and again in 2020, some of the spears were returned temporarily to Australia for the first time since they were taken, and displayed by the National Museum of Australia in Canberra as part of two exhibitions exploring frontier encounters.

̽��ֱ��spears will be permanently repatriated with the assistance of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS).

La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council chairperson, Noeleen Timbery said the spears would be preserved for future generations.

“We are proud to have worked with Cambridge’s Trinity College and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to transfer the ownership of these enormously significant artefacts to the La Perouse Aboriginal community. They are an important connection to our past, our traditions and cultural practices, and to our ancestors. With assistance from the National Museum of Australia and AIATSIS we will ensure these objects are preserved for our future generations and for all Australians.

"Our Elders have worked for many years to see their ownership transferred to the traditional owners of Botany Bay. Many of the families within the La Perouse Aboriginal community are descended from those who were present during the eight days the Endeavour was anchored in Kamay in 1770,” said Ms Timbery.

Professor Nicholas Thomas, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, said he was honoured to have worked with the Kamay community to repatriate the spears.

“It has been immensely rewarding to work with the La Perouse community to research these artefacts and we look forward to extending the partnership into the future,” said Professor Thomas.

" ̽��ֱ��spears are exceptionally significant. They are the first artefacts collected by any European from any part of Australia, that remain extant and documented. They reflect the beginnings of a history of misunderstanding and conflict. Their significance will be powerfully enhanced through return to the country."

Dame Sally Davies, Master of Trinity College, welcomed the decision to return the spears.

“Trinity is committed to better understanding the College’s history, and to addressing the complex legacies of the British Empire, not least in our collections,” said Professor Davies.

“ ̽��ֱ��College’s interaction with the La Perouse Aboriginal community, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and National Museum Australia regarding the return of artefacts to the people from whom they were taken has been a respectful and rewarding process.

“We believe that this is the right decision and I would like to acknowledge and thank all those involved."

Dharawal Elder, Dr Shayne Williams said: “These spears are of immeasurable value as powerful, tangible connections between our forebears and ourselves. I want to acknowledge the respectfulness of Trinity College in returning these spears back to our community. In caring for the spears for over 252 years, Trinity College has ensured that these priceless artefacts can now be utilised for cultural education by the Aboriginal community into the future.”

Four Australian Aboriginal spears – cared for by Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – are to be repatriated after Trinity College agreed to permanently return them to the country.

It has been immensely rewarding to work with the La Perouse community to research these artefacts and we look forward to extending the partnership into the future.

Professor Nicholas Thomas, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Britain's first colonial anthropology experiment revealed

ta385 — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 06:00:00 +0000

A new exhibition at MAA examines the pioneering ethnographic archive assembled by Britain’s first colonial anthropologist, Cambridge alumnus Northcote Thomas.

Vice-Chancellor’s awards showcase ̽��ֱ��’s societal impact and public engagement

ta385 — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 14:54:26 +0000

Now in their fourth year, the awards were made in four categories: collaboration, early career, established researcher/academic champion and professional service.

Winners in the collaboration category included PhD student Christoph Franck for an initiative creating a global air pollution sensor network driven by citizen science.

̽��ֱ��early career researchers included Jessica Miller whose project has changed understandings of mental health and trauma in UK policing, informing a new wellbeing service and leading to discussion in Parliament.

Among those commended as established researchers, Vincent Gnanapragasam developed a new tool to predict an individual’s prognosis following a prostate cancer diagnosis to help make decisions about the value of treatment. In a very different field, David Trippett was recognised for bringing an ‘indecipherable’ opera back to life through international performances, broadcasts and recordings.

In the professional services category Naomi Chapman from the Polar Museum Education team developed maps to enable young and partially sighted people to explore the Arctic and Antarctic by touch.

̽��ֱ��announcement was made at a prize ceremony held at the Old Schools on 14 October 2019.

Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, says: “This year’s nominations recognise impressive and inspirational individuals, and strongly reflect our mission to engage the public, tackle real-world problems and improve people’s lives. ̽��ֱ��award scheme focuses attention on the increasingly important role that institutions such as ours have to play in restoring faith in experts.”

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor’s Research Impact and Engagement Awards were established to recognise and reward outstanding achievement, innovation and creativity in devising and implementing ambitious engagement and impact plans that have the potential to create significant economic, social and cultural impact from and engagement with and for research. Each winner receives a £1,000 grant to be used for the development and delivery of engagement/impact activity or relevant training.

This year’s winners are:

Collaboration Award

Emily Mitchell (Department of Earth Sciences)

Researchers and museum specialists collaborated on a museum exhibition and public programme, engaging a range of public audiences with research on the earliest fossils to illuminate the start of complex life.

Helen Strudwick ( ̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum)

This collaborative project engages audiences with our pioneering research on ancient Egyptian coffin construction and decoration, through a major exhibition, ‘Pop-Up’ museum targeting underserved audiences and digital resources.

Open-Seneca

Open-seneca is a student-led initiative creating a global low-cost mobile air pollution sensor network driven by citizen science. ̽��ֱ��aim of the initiative is to empower citizens with air pollution data to raise awareness, initiate behaviour change, and inform policy makers on environmental issues. ̽��ֱ��team are: Christoph Franck, Charles Christensen, Lorena Gordillo Dagallier, Sebastian Horstmann, Raphaël Jacquat and Peter Pihlman Pedersen.

Early Career Award

Saumya Saxena (Faculty of History)

Saumya’s research focuses on family law and gender in India. She advised the twenty-first Law Commission of India on reform of family law and worked with the Verma Commission on amendments to law relating to rape in India.

Jessica Miller (Department of Sociology)

Jessica’s project involved engaging with over 18000 police officers and staff to change the face of trauma resilience in UK policing, and inviting commitment from decision-makers to inform national policy and operational change.

Matthew Agarwala (Bennett Institute for Public Policy)

Matthew’s research on valuing natural resources is helping in the transition to sustainable economic growth. Having been adopted by the United Nations and other bodies, his work is shaping standards for measurement.

Zoë Fritz (School of Clinical Medicine)

Zoë’s research around resuscitation decisions led to the development of the ReSPECT process (“Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment”), which has replaced problematic ‘DNACPR’s with tremendous impact on policy, practice, guidelines and beneficiaries.

Established Researcher and Academic Champion

Nicholas Thomas (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology)

In 2018, Nicholas co-curated the landmark exhibition 'Oceania' at the Royal Academy in London. Based on collaborative research at Cambridge, the exhibition brought a dynamic, contemporary view of the art of an extraordinary region to European audiences.

Vincent Gnanapragasam (School of Clinical Medicine)

Vincent is the Chief Investigator for PREDICT Prostate, the first individualized prognostic tool accessible to both clinicians and patients to help make unbiased informed decisions about the value of treatment for newly diagnosed prostate cancer.

David Trippett (Faculty of Music)

An unheard opera by 19th-century composer Franz Liszt languished silently in a manuscript thought fragmentary and illegible. David’s meticulous reconstruction brought it to life, to global acclaim, through international performances, broadcasts and recordings.

Professional Service

Oliver Francis (Centre for Diet and Activity Research, and the MRC Epidemiology Unit)

Oliver’s leadership in communications has transformed the impact strategies at CEDAR and the MRC Epidemiology Unit. His innovative contributions span all aspects of the communications and impact portfolio.

Naomi Chapman (Scott Polar Research Institute)

With a local artist, Naomi developed innovative maps of the Arctic and Antarctic with which hundreds of young and partially sighted people have enjoyed a touch tour of polar research.

Twelve students, academics and professional members of staff from across the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have received Vice-Chancellor’s Research Impact and Engagement Awards in areas as diverse as prostate cancer, family law, museum public engagement and police mental health.

This year’s nominations recognise impressive and inspirational individuals, and strongly reflect our mission to engage the public, tackle real-world problems and improve people’s lives

Professor Stephen Toope

Candy Welz

Airam Hernández and Joyce El-Khoury perform Sardanapalo at Staatskapelle Weimar

Yes

Artist: Unknown

ta385 — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 06:00:00 +0000

A bold new exhibition at Kettle’s Yard brings together mysterious treasures from thirteen ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge collections to strip away the cult of the artist and challenge how we value art.

Living in a material world: why 'things' matter

lw355 — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 08:00:59 +0000

From the tools we work with to the eyeglasses and dental implants that improve us, our bodies are shaped by the things we use. We express and understand our identities through clothing, cars and hobbies. We create daily routines and relate to each other through houses and workplaces. We imagine place, history and political regimens through sculptures and paintings.

Even when we think we are dealing with abstract information, the form it takes makes a huge difference. When printing liberated the written word from the limited circulation of handwritten manuscripts, the book and the newspaper became fundamental to religious and political changes, and helped create the modern world.

Studies of material culture focus upon things not just as material objects, but also on how they reflect our meanings and uses. Throughout the humanities and social sciences, there is a long tradition of thinking principally about meaning and human intention, but scholars are now realising the immense importance of material things in social life.

At the core of material culture studies is the question of how people and things interact. This is a simple, sweeping question, but one long overlooked, thanks to historically dominant philosophical traditions that focus narrowly on human intention. In fact, it’s only in the past decade that scholars have posed the question of material agency – how things structure human lives and action.

Material culture studies have emerged as central in many disciplines across the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. In archaeology and history, scholars see material objects as fundamental sources for the human past, counterbalancing the discourse-oriented view that written texts give us. Should we use historical sources to see what people think they ate, or count their rubbish to find out what they really consumed? Combining the two gives us answers of unprecedented scope.

Geographers ask why it makes a difference whether workplaces are organised into separate offices or open-plan cubicles. Literary scholars draw attention to how experience and meaning are built around things, like Marcel Proust’s remembering of things long past as a madeleine cake is dipped in tea; even books themselves are artefacts of a singular and powerful kind. Likewise, studying anatomical models and astronomical instruments empowers an understanding of the history of science as a practical activity. And anthropologists explore the capacity of art to cross cultures and express the claims of indigenous peoples.

Material things are also at the heart of new fields such as heritage studies. Memory itself is material, as we’ve seen recently in the USA, where whether to keep or tear down statues of historic figures such as Confederate generals can polarise people.

Unlike most newly emerging fields in the sciences, material culture studies are grounded in a sprawling panoply of related approaches rather than in a tightly focused paradigm. They come from a convergence of archaeology, anthropology, history, geography, literary studies, economics and many other disciplines, each with its own methods for approaching human–thing interactions.

̽��ֱ��reasons for this interest are not hard to find. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� offers a rare combination of three essential foundations for the field. One is world-class strength in the humanities and social sciences, sustained by institutions like the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), an essential venue for interdisciplinary collaboration as shown by its 'Things' seminar series (see panel).

Most human dilemmas are material dilemmas in some way

̽��ֱ��second is the capacity for a huge range of scientific analyses of materials. ̽��ֱ��third is our immensely varied museum collections: the Fitzwilliam Museum’s treasures; the Museum of Classical Archaeology’s 19th-century cast gallery; the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’s worldwide prehistoric, historic and ethnographic collections; and many others. Where else can scholars interested in the material aspect of Victorian collecting study Darwin’s original finches or Sedgwick’s and Scilla’s original fossils, boxes, labels, archives and all?

Whether it’s work on historic costume, craft production, religion or books, the study of material culture offers unparalleled insights into how humans form their identities, use their skills and create a sense of place and history.

But it is not only a descriptive and historical field. Most human dilemmas are material dilemmas in some way. Where did our desire for things come from and how did the economics of consumerism develop? How can we organise our daily lives to reduce our dependence on cars? Should we care where the objects we buy come from before they reach the supermarket shelves? How do repatriation claims grow out of the entangled histories of museum objects?

̽��ֱ��shape of this new field is still emerging, but Cambridge research will be at the heart of it.

Professor John Robb is at the Department of Archaeology, Professor Simon Goldhill is at the Faculty of Classics, Professor Ulinka Rublack is at the Faculty of History and Professor Nicholas Thomas is at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Things structure our lives. They enrich us, embellish us and express our hopes and fears. Here, to introduce a month-long focus on research on material culture, four academics from different disciplines explain why understanding how we interact with our material world can reveal unparalleled insights into what it is to be human.

Studies of material culture focus upon things not just as material objects, but also on how they reflect our meanings and uses.

John Robb, Simon Goldhill, Ulinka Rublack, Nicholas Thomas

Harlow Heslop

All the things

Curious objects and CRASSH courses

You’ve had a difficult time lately. You’re thinking that all this bad luck might be more than coincidence. You trim your nails, snip some hair and bend a couple of pins. You put them in a bottle with a dash of urine, heat it up and put it in a wall. That’ll cure the bewitchment, you say to yourself.

Making a ‘witch bottle’ like this would be an entirely reasonable thing to do 400 years ago. It would also be reasonable to swallow a stone from a goat’s stomach to counteract poisoning and hide an old shoe in a chimney breast to increase the chance of conceiving.

“All of these objects took on layers of meaning for their owners, and the fact these strong connections existed at all gives us glimpses of people’s beliefs, hopes and lives,” says Annie Thwaite, a PhD student in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. She is also one of the convenors of a seminar series on ‘Things’ at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH).

“Material culture was a crucial part of medicine in the 17th century. Objects like witch bottles are often dismissed as ‘folkish’. But by investigating the bottles’ architectural and geographical situation, their material properties and processes, you start to look through the eyes of their owners. Fearful of supernatural intrusion into their homes and bodies, people would go to great efforts to use something they regarded as a legitimate element of early modern medical practice.”

Charms and amulets, votives and potions, myths and magic will be discussed as this year’s ‘Things’ seminars begins a new focus on imaginative objects.

“Like material culture studies, the seminar series is broad and varied,” she explains. “We might just as easily examine the skills required to craft objects as the power of objects to become politicised.

“Things matter greatly to humans. We have short lives and our stuff outlives us. While we can’t tell our own story, maybe they can.”

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

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Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike

Two million years of human stories

sjr81 — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 07:00:57 +0000

One of the overarching mottos and principles of the Museum is “Look. Look again.” Spread over three floors, with ground-breaking exhibitions and one million objects in its stores, the Museum presents endless opportunities for visitors and researchers to look, then look again.

Among its collections are objects that speak to us of love and loss, conflict and war, and life and death. These objects of material culture communicate to us in many different ways – if we learn how to observe and listen to the myriad stories they have to tell.

But what is the place and purpose of ethnographic museums in the UK in the 21st century? As time marches us further and further away from Britain’s own contentious history of exploration and the Empire, can and should we be comfortable with such repositories – born from an imperial legacy that painted a quarter of the globe red?

For Professor Nicholas Thomas, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), the answers are clear. He believes that at a time when questions of cultural and religious differences are highly contentious, the renewal of displays that stimulate cross-cultural curiosity are more important than ever.

“ ̽��ֱ��objects in MAA are not ‘dead’ objects,” he says. “ ̽��ֱ��Museum is a place that brings its collections to life through its interactions with the public as well as the indigenous communities from which these artefacts originate, not to mention the world-class research that scholars and academics from Cambridge and around the globe undertake here every day.

“Museum collections are not just a mass gathering of objects, but a complex set of relationships, things, documents, images and people. Each collection is a tangled formation of material culture and human intention. We’re dealing not with lifeless data, but with people’s interests in making, using, collecting, interpreting, classifying and reclaiming things.

“That’s what makes our collections in particular so rich; it’s the web of information that might lie behind a single object of encounter that ensures such objects resonate to this day.”

MAA’s collections are extraordinary for a museum of its size. Fewer than 1% of its objects can be on display at any given time, but the stores are actively researched by a bewildering range of global scholars.

̽��ֱ��Museum contains significant material from all over the world, with some of its best-documented collections hailing from the Pacific, including the world’s most important collection from the first voyage of Captain James Cook.

Cook’s three voyages of 1768–1780 were formative for the histories of exploration, anthropology, natural history and the Empire, and marked a new epoch in contacts between Europeans and indigenous peoples across the Pacific Islands and around the Pacific Rim.

Bequeathed by Cook’s patron Lord Sandwich to Trinity College in Cambridge and transferred to MAA during the early 20th century, the collection is probably the first extensive, systematically made ethnographic collection from any part of the world.

Recent projects have included research published in the leading archaeological journal Antiquity on the origins and history of a unique and enigmatic sculpture from the Cook collection. ̽��ֱ��carving, which features two double humanoid figures and a quadruped, is one of the Museum’s best-known objects and was long attributed to the Austral Islands in French Polynesia.

However, wood isotope analysis reveals that it is in fact from Tahiti, and carbon dating suggests that the work was 50–80 years old by the time Cook acquired it, changing our understanding of Oceania’s art history. Probably an element of a gateway into a sacred precinct, the carving was most likely preserved as a relic before being presented to the explorer. Its gifting implies the wish to build relationships with visitors who were perceived as powerful partners at that time.

It is often assumed that artefacts in ethnographic collections were appropriated from the communities that created them. Although some objects were indeed looted, many collections were created more collaboratively through trade and deliberate gift-giving.

MAA also holds important material from Uganda, brought to Cambridge primarily by the prominent missionary and ethnographer John Roscoe. Roscoe’s donations were supplemented by artefacts such as the necklet shown here. Worn by a royal bodyguard, it was gifted in 1902 by Apolo Kagwa, Katikiro (Prime Minister) of Uganda and the author of important anthropological studies, who travelled to England for the coronation of Edward VII.

Sixty years later, Abu Mayanja, a Cambridge law graduate and Minister for Education in the newly independent nation, asked the ̽��ֱ�� to return certain sacred objects, which were repatriated, and remain on display in the Uganda Museum today.

“I think we see the repatriation question as an opportunity to open up a dialogue – rather than a threat,” adds Thomas. “MAA has a distinguished record in engaging with indigenous people in a sustained way. We have had many extended engagements and collaborations around research that have been very rewarding for all the parties involved. It’s also been an extremely positive experience to share our collections through lending to major exhibitions in the countries of origin.

“Another more meaningful way of working with indigenous communities has been projects such as ‘Pacific Presences’, funded currently for five years through a European Research Council advanced grant. Work on material culture almost inevitably involves international collaboration, and we have done so with many small, experimental exhibitions, sharing photographs with communities in the Pacific, as well as through work with partner museums across Europe.

“Benin bronzes notoriously exemplify colonial confrontation and conflict in Africa in the 1890s. We try at once to be upfront about difficult histories, and to communicate the complications of the histories. Like most museums, we receive very few outright repatriation requests. Many indigenous peoples prioritise working together. They see these objects as ambassadors for their cultures.”

Inset image: Sculpture of two double humanoid figures and a quadruped, one of a hundred artefacts brought back by Captain James Cook from his first voyage on the Endeavour, and presented by him to his Admiralty patron Lord Sandwich, who donated the collection to Trinity College, which in turn transferred the artefacts to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in the early 20th century. Credit: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Every object in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology tells not just one but many stories. ̽��ֱ��Museum’s collections chronicle two million years of human history, revealing the diversity of human life over millennia and the ongoing dynamism of world cultures in the present. Many individual artefacts reflect histories and cultures that are contested.

Each collection is a tangled formation of material culture and human intention. We’re dealing not with lifeless data, but with people’s interests in making, using, collecting, interpreting, classifying and reclaiming things.

Nicholas Thomas

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Necklet worn by a royal bodyguard, gifted in 1902 by Apolo Kagwa, Katikiro of Uganda

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Modern art’s missing chapter

sjr81 — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 01:01:34 +0000

After being awarded £100,000 by the Art Fund to build a collection of work from Australia, South Africa and Canada, the museum officially opened ̽��ֱ��Power of Paper yesterday. ̽��ֱ��exhibition focuses on artworks made in those countries during an epoch of decolonisation.

It exhibits for the first time in the UK some of the earliest prints made by Aboriginal, Inuit and black South African artists – a rich variety of indigenous art from the 1950s onwards as the end of empire informed works reflecting attachments to land and belief, as well as struggles with violence, dislocation and contemporary city life.

"This show is a revelation," said Nicholas Thomas, Director of MAA and the exhibition's curator. "It presents visions of place and history that are rarely given the attention their eloquence and power deserve, even in today's supposedly global and inclusive art world.

“I'm taken aback by the sheer artistic accomplishment of all the works included, but also love the quirkiness of the artists' take on everything from empire, to township life, to climate change. Why should a military helicopter be hoisting an oversized caribou, walrus and polar bear through the air? You need to come to the show to find out."

Modern art was more than just a project of great Europeans. From the late 1950s onward, as the end of empire gathered momentum, artists in native and local communities began to produce work in modern media in both remote community workshops and city studios; wryly expressing everyday life in townships or settlements, and often illuminating both personal and collective concerns in artworks that could be evocative, oblique or polemical.

Responding to the very limited representation of modern indigenous art movements in British collections, in 2011 the Art Fund awarded the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge £100,000 to build a collection of work on paper from Australia, Canada and South Africa.

For more than two years, working with a network of artists, workshops and specialist curators, Thomas embarked on what he described as a ‘dream shopping trip’, building a unique collection of around 300 works. While some of the artists are internationally famous, only a few of the works have been on display in Europe.

Art on display in Britain for the first time includes the very first prints produced at the famous Rorke’s Drift print workshop, which played a major role in the development of black art during apartheid.

South African artist Frank Ledimo, whose work King Ubu Encounter (2002) is featured in the exhibition, said: “I create work that is based on the urban landscape in which I live. I have been fascinated by the representation of the figure to relay messages of urban squalor, city life, survivors and victims of urbanisation.”

Added Thomas: “ ̽��ֱ��Power of Paper gives voice to great but marginalized artists, whose words caption their own work. ̽��ֱ��exhibition's most vital message is that art has offered a route to freedom.”

̽��ֱ��Power of Paper runs at MAA until December 6, 2015. ̽��ֱ��exhibition will also feature a working press with opportunities to participate in practical workshops as visitors explore the medium of printmaking as a form of expression.

̽��ֱ��artworks of black and indigenous peoples – a missing chapter in the history of modern art – is brought into sharp focus in a ‘revelatory’ exhibition at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

̽��ֱ��exhibition's most vital message is that art has offered a route to freedom

Nicholas Thomas

Joseph Pootoogook

Joyfully I Saw Ten Caribou

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Yes

Captain Cook’s Maori paddles: an artefact of encounter

lw355 — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:22:28 +0000

Living in a multicultural, globalised world, it’s hard to imagine the moment when different cultures first met, or a time when people’s knowledge of each other’s worlds was nonexistent.

Yet, on 12 October 1769, seven Maori canoes paddled out from the east coast of New Zealand south of Poverty Bay to investigate a large ship. ̽��ֱ��vessel was the HMS Endeavour, captained by Captain James Cook, and this was the first time the Maori people had encountered a European.

They were at first reluctant to approach the ship but then, according to the diary of ship’s surgeon William Monkhouse, “very soon enter’d into a traffick with our people for [Tahitian] cloth… giving in exchange their paddles (having little else to dispose of) and hardly left themselves sufficient number to paddle a shore.”

A set of these finely carved and decorated paddles is now housed in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, where an innovative research project ‘Artefacts of Encounter’ has been working with Polynesian communities to understand what the earliest Europeans to visit the Pacific Islands made of the people they met, and what those people made of them.

Rather than turning to the written evidence of Europeans, the researchers have placed at the heart of their investigation the objects the Polynesians gave in exchange for goods. For the Polynesians, the paddles and pots, feathered cloaks and woven helmets, nose whistles and shell horns are often the only surviving evidence of a contact with other cultures that happened centuries ago.

“Artefacts help us to study what parties on either side of the encounters were trying to achieve through these seminal transactions,” explained researcher Dr Julie Adams. “They help us to consider new evidence of the nature of these encounters and of the changes in social practices, ideas and beliefs they engendered, both in the Pacific and in Europe. Artefacts are key to understanding how socio-cultural change unfolds.”

But with more than 650 voyages from Europe and the Americas entering Polynesia between 1765 and 1840, the artefacts the explorers brought back are both plentiful and largely scattered throughout museums of the world. Artefacts were divided up between crew members as ships returned home; today, no single museum houses the bounty of any single expedition.

Focusing initially on 40 ‘priority’ voyages – among them those of Cook (1768-80), Malaspina (1789-94), d’Entrecasteaux (1791-1793) and d’Urville (1822-40) – the team has re-analysed over 1,000 objects from 30 museums and Carl Hogsden has built a digital research environment that brings them back together for the first time.

Named KIWA after the great Polynesian navigator, the digital resource manages a wealth of widely dispersed data through a series of active collaborations with holding institutions, scholars and Polynesian communities, “enabling the discovery of new connections between hard-to-access material,” as Hogsden explained. KIWA is designed to enable the sharing of data and research insights among the geographically dispersed project team (based in the UK, New Zealand and Brazil) as well as between research and curatorial staff worldwide.

For the Maori wooden paddles, for instance, the researchers have traced back almost 250 years from the artefact to the first encounter – through close study of the wooden paddles themselves, which are intricately decorated in red ochre, as well as through sea charts, ship’s log records, diary entries, inventories and, significantly, discussions with a Maori kin-group whose ancestors may have been among those who exchanged paddles for goods with Cook’s crew.

“ ̽��ֱ��paddles would have been part of a set used to paddle a waka taua, a large canoe embodying the spiritual potency (mana) of a kin-group personified by their chief,” explained Adams. “They were probably given as a gift to Tupaia, the Tahitian priest-navigator-interpreter who accompanied Cook and his men to New Zealand, possibly in an effort to bind him and his own mana to the local genealogical networks.”
Tupaia was to die of typhus at Batavia and his possessions were brought back to Britain, where they were sent by Lord Sandwich, then Lord of the Admiralty and Cook’s patron, to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1771. After being exhibited for many decades in Trinity College Library, they were deposited in the Museum in 1914.

Adams, who with Dr Amiria Salmond and others has helped amass the object-centric evidence that underpins the digital resource, explained the resource’s significance: “For the very first time, it is now possible for researchers to reassemble all of the artefacts collected on a certain expedition – such as the Bellingshausen voyage from Russia to the Marquesas Islands in 1803. These are now dispersed across various institutions and have never been studied in their entirety.

“Or researchers could ask the database to show all the carved wooden clubs collected from Tonga, or all objects made from barkcloth, dog skin or feathers, or all the objects collected by an individual, such as the missionary George Bennet who toured Polynesia in the 1820s.”

One aim of the project, which is led by Professor Nicholas Thomas and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, is to expose variations in patterns of exchange among different island groups (including Tonga, the Society Islands and New Zealand) as well as between different voyages over time. Such a comparative approach will enable new conclusions to be drawn not only about the voyages themselves and their immediate aftermath, but about the divergent trajectories of first imperial, then (post-)colonial relationships.

̽��ֱ��project has taken a lead from present-day Polynesians, who assert strong ancestral interests in these encounters and their artefacts. A key aspect of the project has been collaboration with a Māori tribal group, Te Aitanga a Hauiti (represented by the arts management group Toi Hauiti) – whose forefathers encountered early European explorers from the arrival of Cook in 1769. For six months, Hogsden worked with Toi a Hauiti to help create a digital research network that allows the Cambridge-based system to share content with a digital archive under development by the Maori community and local web developers, CodeShack.

“This work forms the basis for a reciprocal relationship between networked research hubs where ownership and control of information lies with the source,” explained Hogsden. “Although the networked content is collaboratively produced, the interpretation of digital objects differs. This is important because the Maori community views objects in a highly relational way – everything is connected to everything else – and so whereas our database is object-centric, theirs is relationship-centric. ̽��ֱ��two databases can nonetheless talk to each other and share content.”

For the paddles, members of the project team visited New Zealand to discuss the objects with the Ngai Tamanuhiri tribe, whose ancestors were probably part of the party who paddled out to the Endeavour in 1769. ̽��ֱ��importance of the paddles as early examples of kowhaiwhai painting has been recognised by those engaged in the revitalisation of Maori arts, and research is in progress to establish their genealogical connections to present-day Maori communities.

̽��ֱ��Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology holds a world-class collection of Oceanic, Asian, African and Native American artefacts and has been shortlisted for the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year 2013.
For more information, please visit the Artefacts of Encounter project website

Maori paddles presented to Captain Cook’s crew on their first voyage of discovery capture the spirit of a first encounter between two cultures.

they enter'd into a traffick with our people... giving in exchange their paddles

William Monkhouse, Ship's Surgeon, HMS Endeavour

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Maori paddles collected on Captain Cook's first voyage

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