Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents, and Agency in Melanesia 1870s-1930s (Methodology & History in Anthropology, 6)

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. Gathering For God : George Brown And The Christian Economy In The Collection Of Artefacts / Helen Gardner -- Exploring Tensions In Material Culture : Commercialising Ethnography In German New Guinea, 1870-1904 / 'before Is Has Become Too Late' : The Making And Repatriation Of Sir William Macgregor's Official Collection From British New Guinea / Michael Quinnell -- Surveying Culture : Photography, Collecting And Material Culture In British New Guinea, 1898 / Elizabeth Edwards -- Collecting Pygmies : The 'tapiro' And The British Ornithologists' Union Expedition To Dutch New Guinea, 1910-1911 / Chris Ballard. One Time, One Place, Three Collections : Colonial Processes And The Shaping Of Some Museum Collections From German New Guinea / Robert L. Welsch -- The Careless Collector : Malinowski And The Antiquarians / Michael W. Young -- Felix Speiser's Fletched Arrow : A Paradigm Shift From Physical Anthropology To Art Styles / Christian Kaurmann -- On His Todd : Material Culture And Colonialism / Chris Gosden -- Reverse Trajectories : Beatrice Blackwood As Collector And Anthropologist / Chantal Knowles. Edited By Michael O'hanlon And Robert L. Welsch. Outgrowth Of A Colloquium Held At Oxford In April 1999 Which Was The Joint Initiative Of The Pitt Rivers Museum And The Centre For Cross-cultural Research In Canberra. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. CONTENTS List of Illustrations Notes on contributors Preface 1. Introduction 2. Gathering for God: George Brown and the Christian Economy in the Collection of Artefacts 3. Exploring Tensions in Material Culture: Commercialising Ethnography in German New Guinea, 1870–1904 4. ‘Before it has Become too Late’: The Making and Repatriation of Sir William MacGregor’s Official Collection from British New Guinea 5. Surveying Culture: Photography, Collecting and Material Culture in British New Guinea, 1898 6. Collecting Pygmies: the ‘Tapiro’ and the British Ornithologists’ Union Expedition to Dutch New Guinea, 1910–1911 7. One Time, One Place, Three Collections: Colonial Processes and the Shaping of Some Museum Collections from German New Guinea 8. The Careless Collector: Malinowski and the Antiquarians 9. Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow: A Paradigm Shift from Physical Anthropology to Art Styles 10. On His Todd: Material Culture and Colonialism 11. Reverse Trajectories: Beatrice Blackwood as Collector and Anthropologist 12. Epilogue Index