FROM MUSEUM COLLECTIONS TO FIELD RESEARCH*

Abstract

A thorough understanding of an ethnographic museum collection often requires long-term field research amongst the communities from which the artefacts have originated. Recently, one such research project has been carried out with the primary objective of assessing and interpreting a collection of baskets found at the Museum of Paleobotany and Ethnobotany of Naples (Italy). Initially, the collection placed emphasis on the botanical aspects of knowledge of basket weaving among the Batak of Palawan island, as well as its aesthetic features (shape, design and motifs). During subsequent field visits in the Philippines, more in-depth field research revealed that basketry knowledge amongst the Batak of Palawan has significant socio-ecological ramifications and cannot be dealt with by appealing to simplistic notions of technological determinism nor be confined to the identification of plant-based material and botanical species. The underpinnings of Batak knowledge of basket weaving are discussed here in the context of socio-environmental change, placing emphasis on both knowledge decline and continuity. Batak exegeses on the circumstances underlying both acquisition and transmission of such knowledge are reported. Evidence shows that selected features of basketry knowledge are well transmitted while others are not. Nevertheless, ‘incomplete’ transmission can give rise to new forms of interaction between idiosyncratic ‘know-how’ and customary knowledge, leading to innovation and improvisation. The data acquired in the course of this research suggests that the complexity of Batak knowledge of basket weaving cannot be easily communicated in the context of a museum exhibition. In turn this poses a challenge to the criteria adopted by the Paleo-Ethnobotanical Museum for setting up its ethnographic collection. More importantly, it suggests that Batak perspectives of their own practices and concerns on how they are being portrayed to the outside should be fully taken into account. * This article is based on fieldwork when I was a Visiting Research Associate of the Institute of Philippine Culture (IPC), Ateneo de Manila University. A special debt is owed to my Batak friends for their warm hospitality. I acknowledge invaluable funding (grant no. 7136) from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Urgent Anthropology grant 2007/08 of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) and the Christensen Fund (grant 2007-03068).