Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents, and Agency in Melanesia 1870s-1930s

Published by Berghahn Books 2001

Hunting the Gatherers

Ethnographic Collectors, Agents, and Agency in Melanesia 1870s-1930s

Edited by: Michael O'Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch

Volume 6 in the series Methodology & History in Anthropology

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780857456915

Overview
Contents

About this book

Between the 1870s and the 1930s competing European powers carved out and consolidated colonies in Melanesia, the most culturally diverse region of the world. As part of this process, great assemblages of ethnographic artefacts were made by a range of collectors whose diversity is captured in this volume. The contributors to this tightly-integrated volume take these collectors, and the collecting institutions, as the departure point for accounts that look back at the artefact-producing societies and their interaction with the collectors, but also forward to the fate of the collections in metropolitan museums, as the artefacts have been variously exhibited, neglected, re-conceived as indigenous heritage, or repatriated. In doing this, the contributors raise issues of current interest in anthropology, Pacific history, art history, museology, and material culture.

Author / Editor information

Michael O'Hanlon is Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

Robert L. Welsch teaches at the Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth, New Hampshire.

Michael O'Hanlon is Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

Reviews

“... a most welcome book ... Reading this book should irrevocably change how one looks at an ethnographic exhibit ... These wide-ranging articles ... augment our understanding of museums and their objects ... Overall, this is a rich collection of essays, brimming with data and, for the most part, cogently analysed.” · JRAI

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Notes on contributors Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
1. Introduction Michael O’Hanlon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Gathering for God: George Brown and the Christian Economy in the Collection of Artefacts Helen Gardner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
3. Exploring Tensions in Material Culture: Commercialising Ethnography in German New Guinea, 1870–1904 Rainer Buschmann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
4. ‘Before it has Become too Late’: The Making and Repatriation of Sir William MacGregor’s Official Collection from British New Guinea Michael Quinnell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
5. Surveying Culture: Photography, Collecting and Material Culture in British New Guinea, 1898 Elizabeth Edwards Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
6. Collecting Pygmies: the ‘Tapiro’ and the British Ornithologists’ Union Expedition to Dutch New Guinea, 1910–1911 Chris Ballard Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
7. One Time, One Place, Three Collections: Colonial Processes and the Shaping of Some Museum Collections from German New Guinea Robert L. Welsch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
8. The Careless Collector: Malinowski and the Antiquarians Michael W. Young Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
9. Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow: A Paradigm Shift from Physical Anthropology to Art Styles Christian Kaufmann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
10. On His Todd: Material Culture and Colonialism Chris Gosden Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
11. Reverse Trajectories: Beatrice Blackwood as Collector and Anthropologist Chantal Knowles Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
12. Epilogue Nicholas Thomas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	273
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 306
Keywords: Museum Studies; Theory and Methodology; Colonial History; Heritage Studies

eBook

Published: January 1, 2001
ISBN: 9780857456915