Ethnographic Collections Research Articles

Analogical Problems with Digital Data

Current initiatives of digitally archiving ethnographic and linguistic data promise considerable advantages with regard to longevity and accessibility. This article discusses these ‘digital promises’ in the context of projects funded by recent research programs on endangered languages and cultures. It is argued that far from being merely a new technological tool for preserving data, digital archiving has considerable impact on the ways in which knowledge and research is organised and on the relationship between the participants in the research process. The new technological means change the structure of ethnographic data collections while highlighting a number of questions of data access and property rights that are analogous to earlier, and largely still unresolved, debates about the ethics of research and about data access and ownership.

Assessing Methodologies in Archaeological Ethnography: A Case for Incorporating Ethnographic Training in Graduate Archaeology Curricula

Archaeologists have increasingly turned to ethnography as a tool for understanding the contemporary social context of material culture, archaeological practice, and ‘de-colonizing’ archaeology. Furthermore, ethnographers have turned their analysis to the practice of archaeology, providing insights into key ethical dilemmas. This work has produced significant dialogue, demonstrating the potential for research and collaboration at the interface of two sub-disciplines. However, much of the research to date has relied on a limited range of ethnographic methods. We suggest that archaeologists working in this area would benefit from using a wider repertoire of ethnographic data collection tools and ethics training opportunities. We advocate for greater collaboration between archaeologists and ethnographers and provide suggestions on methods that are well-suited for use in archaeological practice. In the long term, the most effective and far-reaching solution may be to incorporate ethnographic methods training as fundamental to graduate programmes in archaeology.

Collaborating to Enliven Heritage Collections

Museums are heritage sites holding invaluable wealth that should not be locked away in storage or archives. A dynamic approach to sharing knowledge of heritage constructively in museums worldwide would ensure that the memory of this heritage is kept. Through partnerships, museums could create a platform for discovery and ensure the pooling of knowledge, enquiry, reflection and meaningful debates. This would bring to bear the much needed collaborative initiatives that would in turn ensure value addition to the heritage. In this way, heritage that may otherwise remain invisible could be enlivened and celebrated. In order to create bonds between visitors, generations and cultures around the world, museums need to ensure that their collections remain dynamic. A common classical understanding of museums as static permanent repositories (see ICOM definition of ‘museum’ as laid out in the ICOM Statutes 1946–2007) is in dire need of re‐evaluation and re‐activation in order to ensure meaningful museum visits. On an international level, the approach of museums – especially those with ethnographic and natural history collections and programmes – will then shift from didactic presentations and interpretation to being active custodians of rich living heritage. Sharing collections and experience among museums is a good way to improve visitors’ comprehension and emphasise intercultural exchanges. A comme Afrique / A for Africa and Africa's Wealth are two such separate collaborative initiatives that were staged by various heritage and non‐heritage stakeholders through the National Museums of Kenya. Material culture from geographically diverse sources, expertise in exhibition development and resources were brought together and involved in actualising the purposes of the two initiatives. Audiences who visited the two exhibitions were immersed in interactive dialogues and deeper discoveries concerning what would normally be mere reference material or usual day‐to‐day news items about Africa and the world. Partnerships with other structures, cultural or otherwise, can also contribute to the museum's mission. Engaging with other like‐minded actors enhances the existence of the heritage institutions and how they relate to various heritage stakeholders. A more meaningful symbiotic relationship is thus forged and may drive the institutions to re‐organise their future existence in order to remain dynamic and relevant to the visitors.

Cette relation imaginaire qui fait le style: Essai sur l'art islamique et le style ethnique

The topic of this article concerns the notion of ethnic style. Several points are discussed - in particular, the concept of style itself - by referring to individual and/or collective expression as well as the status of the creators and their representation in Arab-Muslim societies. If traditional societies are heirs to Islamic art, encompassing a range of practices and cultural models, what are the terms of the local transmission of this art ? Can we consider it an ethnic style, knowing that it could also be a signifier of individuality ? Some examples are given, based on ethnographic collections of jewellery studied by the author in selected museums and on fieldwork in Gulf Arab countries.

Distinguishing Between Darts and Arrows in the Archaeological Record: Implications for Technological Change in the American West

AbstractWe propose a new method for differentiating archaeological atlatl darts from arrow points. Our dart-arrow index accurately distinguishes known (hafted) archaeological examples of darts and arrows. We find that ethnographic collections of hafted arrows used by previous researchers are problematic, and should not be used as control samples for differentiating darts from arrows. We use the dart-arrow index to reassess the projectile points described by Ames et al. (2010). The analysis shows that Hatwai Eared (4400–2800 B.P.) and Cascade (8500–4500 B.P.) points were darts, not arrows as Ames et al. argue, and that a major revision of the history of bow-and-arrow technology in western North America is unnecessary.

Climbing towards recovery: investigating physically injured combat veterans’ psychosocial response to scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro

Purpose: To explore physically injured combat veterans’ psychosocial response to scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro. Method: Participants (n = 4) were male and ranged in age from 22 to 44 years. They had all been wounded as a result of active duty in Afghanistan between 15 and 42 months (M = 27.25) before the study. Data were collected throughout a 9-day climb on Mt. Kilimanjaro using multiple sources of ethnographic data collection techniques including semi-structured interviews and detailed observations. Data were analyzed using cross case analysis. Results: The findings are divided into themes that were drawn out of the data to illustrate the participants’ psychosocial response to their experience of climbing on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Key themes of self-determination, active coping and social support were identified from the data. Conclusion: Support for those in recovery from trauma should foster psychosocial resources needed for healthy functioning. Future research should explore the role of meaningful and challenging activities as a way of improving the experience of recovery following serious injury.Implications for RehabilitationInjured combat veteransAcquiring an injury may result in physical disability, pain, physical limitations, stress and vulnerability, and loss of family and friends thereby hindering veterans’ capacity to recover.In a relatively small sample, this study shows that pursuing meaningful and challenging activities such as scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro may complement rehabilitation strategies.Services and support for those in recovery from trauma should foster psychosocial resources needed for healthy functioning.

O objeto etnográfico é irredutível? Pistas sobre novos sentidos e análises

Determinados artefatos depositados em museus são conhecidos como objetos etnográficos. Representam importantes fontes de consulta para um amplo leque de estudos interpretativos na área das ciências humanas: cultura material, tecnologias tradicionais, antropologia da arte, etno-história e história da arte, processos migratórios, trocas e apropriações culturais como resultado das situações de contato. Cabe, então, perguntar por que as reservas técnicas dos museus etnográficos não estão abarrotadas de pesquisadores debruçados sobre tais fontes de informação? A irredutibilidade mesma do objeto etnográfico pode constituir um empecilho, mas o que mais pode ser dito? O artigo pretende enfocar o objeto etnográfico e o estudo de coleções etnográficas, nem tanto formulando novos conceitos, mas transladando sentidos e interpretações que contribuem para a redefinição dessa classe de objetos. A partir dessa discussão e com objetivos exploratórios, são abordadas as potencialidades do estudo de coleções etnográficas no contexto das redes de troca ameríndias.

Salvaging the records of salvage ethnography: The story of the Digital Himalaya Project

The Digital Himalaya Project is a collection, storage and dissemination portal for scholarly content and research findings about the Himalayan region. The project website connects a worldwide user community to a vast corpus of digital resources from or about India, Nepal, Bhutan and the Tibetan plateau for free and easy download - without payment, subscription or password. While Digital Himalaya began as a strategy for collecting and protecting the products of colonial-era ethnographic collections on the Himalayas - for posterity and for access by source communities - the project has now become a collaborative digital publishing environment, bringing a new collection online every month, with close to half a million web visitors since its establishment in 2000. Almost all of our digitization and scanning is now conducted in Nepal, dramatically reducing operating costs and increasing productivity. Our funding no longer comes from research councils in the United Kingdom and the United States, but through web referrals and from individual or institutional donations around the world. The project is now supported by people and organizations that recognize the work and want to contribute to it. In short, what began as an academic research project a decade ago is now a vast online portal for hosting and disseminating knowledge about the Himalayas to a demanding, fast-growing and truly global user base.

Von Hügel’s curiosity

In April 1875, Anatole von Hugel, natural historian and committed Catholic, arrived in Fiji on the John Wesley, a Methodist missionary ship. The south Pacific archipelago had, only a year earlier, become a British Crown Colony; the first governor was yet to arrive; the nature of the administration and hence the future of Fijian societies were uncertain. Von Hugel, who was just twenty years old, was missing his fiancee, and unsettled by an acrimonious row with the veteran missionary Lorimer Fison. What had brought him to the islands in the first place was the long sea voyage often recommended to the affluent by physicians of the period, an improbable remedy one might have thought for afflictions such as the rheumatic fever that the patient in this case suffered from. But the young man also travelled out of filial piety: he was of mixed aristocratic Austrian and Scottish descent; his father, Karl—who, the son acknowledged, had inspired all his own tastes and interests—himself travelled widely in Asia and the Pacific, made extensive botanical, zoological, and ethnographic collections, and written a book on the geography of the great ocean. He had died in 1870; Baron Anatole, as he became, had indeed been ill, but his voyage was something of an act of homage, indeed a re-enactment. 1

“Priest's Staff” from Fort Nadym of the 16th–17th Centuries

The study presents a series of artifacts discovered in the layers of the late 12th to the fi rst third of the 18th centuries during the archaeological examination of Fort Nadym, which is attributed to the indigenous population of Northwestern Siberia. An analysis of ethnographic collections and the ritual practices of the indigenous peoples of Siberia, as well as the morphological features of the artifacts themselves, has lead to their identifi cation as shaman's staffs, or priest's staffs. For the fi rst time these ritual objects, wooden staffs and bone spoons with zoomorphic fi nials, are introduced for the purposes of research. An analysis is given of the semantics of the zoomorphic compositions recorded from the early layers of Fort Nadym. Shaman's staffs represent the most ancient magical attribute although their function was very similar to that described in ethnographic record. Functionally different objects of ritual use carry the same zoomorphic decoration, the archetype of which appeared in Northwestern Siberia in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Unlike other similar sites such as the Voikar or Polui (Obdor) fortifi ed settlements, at Fort Nadym many ritual objects have been discovered, which would appear to testify to the great religious and ritual importance of the site.

From New Guinea 1872-78 to Genova 2004: recovering Luigi Maria D’Albertis’ private collection

This paper illustrates a process of recovering the past concerning one of the earliest ethnographic collections from New Guinea. Made in the 1870s and donated to the municipality of Genova in the 1930s this collection of artefacts from Luigi Maria D’Albertis’ expeditions in New Guinea has finally become available to the public in 2004, with the opening of the Museo Castello D’Albertis. The first process of recovery is that of bringing it to public attention. The question – raised more than one hundred years after the collection was made- was how to stage this exhibition, with what representational aims. Its location within the reconstructed museum/home of Luigi Maria’s cousin Enrico (also a navigator and explorer) suggested contextualising it within a discourse on 19th Century collectors, rather than displaying the artefacts as material instantiations of New Guinea cultures. The solution was to juxtapose the objects with passages from D’Albertis’ memoirs, and with oral history accounts of those ‘first encounters’ recorded among descendants of some of the ‘natives’ from whom the objects were taken. In this way we hoped to emphasise to the public that there are more sides to the activity of collection and of the historical, not absolute, meaning of the objects.

Chapter 9: Wooden Platters and Bowls in the Ethnographic Collections

Abstract Judging by the ethnographic collections at the Field Museum of Natural History, ceramic and wooden platters and shallow open bowls on the Sepik coast are not just analogous types of objects, but are alike derived historically from Lapita prototypes. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence from the Sepik coast documents the evident survival in the western Pacific of a stylized symbol or motif—the so-called Lapita face—on pottery and possibly other kinds of material items (such as wooden bowls and serving platters) for at least 3,300 years.

Chapter 2: Language, Ethnicity, and Historic Material Culture on the Sepik Coast

Abstract The partitioning of people by language is perhaps more extreme on the Sepik coast than anywhere else on earth. Shortly before World War I, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago acquired ethnographic material culture collections from a number of village communities there. Computer-aided social network analysis of these collections suggests that isolation by distance, rather than by language, has patterned their cultural relationships. Furthermore, it would be difficult for archaeologists to successfully “reverse engineer” existing language boundaries along this coastline given only observed differences in historic material culture.

RE-ORG: A methodology for reorganizing museum storage developed by ICCROM and UNESCO

All over the world, 60% of museum storage areas are in such appalling conditions that collections can no longer be used for public benefit through learning, research or exhibitions. A methodology for reorganizing storage (RE-ORG), developed by ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), which is freely available online (www.re-org.info), is presented. A case study is offered to show a practical application of the methodology on the Janapada Sampada ethnographic collection of IGNCA (Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts), New Delhi, India.

OBJECT DIASPORAS, RESOURCING COMMUNITIES: Sierra Leonean Collections in the Global Museumscape

This article is concerned with pursuing the issue of transnational museological relationality and responsibility in the context of Sierra Leonean cultural heritage. In particular it draws upon vocabularies more commonly associated with the study of human migration to consider both historical and contemporary transnational flows of Sierra Leonean material culture and associated knowledges. It does so in order to help rethink the status, value, and potential of ethnographic collections in the world's museums for different stakeholders. Focusing on Sierra Leonean collections in three European museums, the article explores the historical formation and distribution of this “object diaspora,” and acknowledges its entanglement in the networks, flows, and power disparities of colonialism. Rather than arguing for repatriation, however, a case is made for recognizing the value of these collections in their diasporic locations as a resource for contemporary Sierra Leonean communities, not least through the “remittance corridors” they are able to open.

Collecting cultures: Institutional motivations for nineteenth-century ethnographical collections formed by Moravian missionaries

As proto-ethnologists, missionaries represented an important source of ethnographical material, collecting for many museums and displays. It is contended here that European missions affected the collecting habits of their missionaries through actively encouraging or discouraging collecting on behalf of certain institutions. The motivation behind the endorsement of certain collecting habits and not others was linked to the missionary societies’ perceptions of themselves. This paper examines both religious and secular ethnographical collections, in Herrnhut, Paris, and Berlin, to which missionaries of the Moravian Church were asked to contribute from the mid-nineteenth century; it evinces the tensions between the Church's collecting habits and the religious goals established for missions. Moreover, the examination of this one group leads to broader conclusions about the motivation behind the ethnographical collections of missionaries and of museums in the nineteenth century.

<em>Long Live the President! Portrait-Cloths from Africa</em>, Paul Faber

Reviewed by: Long Live the President! Portrait-Cloths from Africa Heather Marie Akou Faber, Paul. 2010. Long Live the President! Portrait-Cloths from Africa. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers. 96 pp. € 80;19.50 (paper). Long Live The President! Portrait-Cloths from Africa was created as a catalogue for the exhibit, Long Live the President!, which was on display from 1 April to 22 August, 2010, at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The author, Paul Faber, is the senior curator of the museum’s ethnographic collection from Africa. The purposes of this exhibit were threefold: to build on a similar exhibit by Anne Spencer (In Praise of Heroes), which appeared at the Newark Museum in 1982; to highlight a topic important to many African cultures that is not widely known outside of Africa; and to celebrate one of the world’s best collections of printed cotton fabrics from Africa, augmented by loans from M. Bernard Collet (a private collector), and the Vlisco factory museum (a Dutch company with a long and distinguished history of producing “wax” prints for the African market). Most of the book is taken up by archival photographs and sixty highly detailed, full-color plates. This is just a sampling from the exhibit, which included more than one hundred fabrics and garments made of printed cotton cloth from all over Africa. These fabrics—which should be inspiring to anyone interested in the dress and/or politics of Africa—includes images of well-known and not-so-well- known figures, such as Kwame Nkrumah, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Julius Nyerere, Mobuto Sese Seko, Nelson Mandela, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and even Western figures, such as Pope John Paul II, Jacques Chirac, and Barack Obama. There are images of presidents’ wives and a tribute to the “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson. Almost all the fabrics were produced in Europe or Africa within the last fifty years. The dates and places of production— which sometimes differ from the place of usage—have been carefully documented; this adds a great deal of value for scholars and collectors. A comparison of images to the catalogue for In Praise of Heroes shows very little overlap; the breadth and quality of this collection is clearly outstanding. Archival photographs—such as an image of Mobutu wearing his own portrait cloth—are fascinating to see and have not been widely accessible until now. A full page of photographs showing the interior of the Utex factory in Kinshasa is valuable, not just because the factory is now Chinese-owned, but because obtaining photographs of textile factories while production is ongoing is so difficult. Unfortunately, the text of this catalogue is disappointing in comparison, especially since it contributes little to existing knowledge. In just seventeen pages, it covers the history of printed cloth, portraiture, and politics on the whole African continent. This is a vast subject, one that deserves much greater or in-depth attention. In fact, most of the text focuses on the production and distribution of commemorative cloth, while the wearers’ perspective is left to speculation. An example from In Praise of Heroes demonstrates what has been left out. Based on her own experience in Tanzania and on the research of her colleagues in other countries, Anne Spencer noted [End Page 107] how African consumers tend to treat commemorative cloth in different ways, depending on their level of respect for the person depicted. Fabrics showing a popular figure, such as Patrice Lumumba, might be carefully saved for decades, and even reproduced in other countries. Fabrics with unpopular figures, such as Mobutu or Bokassa, might be worn in a subversive way by sitting on the person’s face or cutting it in half on a garment. Although the Tropenmuseum’s exhibit included several garments, this aspect of garment design was barely considered. Long Live the President! does make an important observation about the shift from “big-man politics” to multiparty, democratic elections (and the role of cloth as a tool of education and propaganda), but there is not enough space to give these topics any kind of serious study. For the purposes of scholarship, it would have been better if this catalogue, and perhaps the exhibit, had focused...

The Model that Never Moved: The Case of a Virtual Memory Theater and Its Christian Philosophical Argument, 1700–1732

ArgumentBy the year 1720, one could visit at least three large-scale wooden models of Solomon's Temple in the cities of Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Halle. For short periods of time, the Amsterdam and Hamburg Temple models were exhibited in London, where they attracted a great deal of attention. The Halle model, on the other hand, never moved from its original location: a complex of schools known today as the Francke Foundations (die Franckesche Stiftungen). This article explores the reasons for the Halle model's striking immobility by considering its position at the center of a long-distance network, also referred to as the Danish-Halle mission. In this article I argue that the Halle Temple model functioned as an effigy and memory theater that helped proponents of this mission make a case for the Temple's status as the world's first information technology. Young people moved around the wooden model; they took virtual pilgrimages with it and internalized its infrastructure by memorizing its various components. The model's position at the center of the complex's striking ethnographical collection and curricula exposes relations between the Danish-Halle mission, Christian philosophy, and an irenical turn as public policy in early eighteenth-century Brandenburg-Prussia.

Viewing the Past through Ethnographic Collections

<p>Recent directions in museum policy and curatorial practice have emphasized a collaborative and inclusive approach towards the communities with which museums interact. Within this broader context, this paper considers the experience of working with an Australian Indigenous community, the Lamalama people of far north Queensland, on research into the Donald Thomson Collection. This collection, held by Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, contains many images produced by Thomson and objects collected him in the late 1920s, when forebears of the Lamalama still lived relatively autonomously in the bush. The curatorial importance of recognizing the close and continuing connection between objects, their meanings, and their social locations is reflected in the project. The paper argues for the importance of recognizing the value of personal relationships between curators and source communities, but also for understanding of the complexity in relationships between communities and their heritage in museums, here expressed as relationships of materiality.</p>

Language and Material Culture on the Sepik Coast of Papua New Guinea: Using Social Network Analysis to Simulate, Graph, Identify, and Analyze Social and Cultural Boundaries Between Communities

ABSTRACT A basic premise underlying much of archaeology is the working assumption that similarities in material culture may be used as proxies for mapping social interactions between communities across time and space. What about the reverse? Do clear differences in material culture mark major social and cultural boundaries? The partitioning of people by language is perhaps more extreme on the Sepik Coast of Papua New Guinea than anywhere else on earth. Shortly before the First World War, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago acquired ethnographic material culture collections from a number of village communities there. Computer-aided social network analysis of these collections suggests that isolation by distance, rather than by language, has patterned their cultural relationships. Furthermore, it would be difficult for archaeologists to successfully “reverse engineer” existing language boundaries along this coastline given only observed differences in material culture.