The three-year project (2003-06) focused on Polynesian materials dating from the
1760s (the decade during which expeditions by Wallis, Bougainville and Cook
visited Polynesia) to the mid nineteenth century. By that time many parts of the
region had experienced Christian evangelism, and various kinds of Euro-American
administration had been, or were soon to be, established. The focus was therefore on this contact period of
interaction, from which objects, pictorial representations and written accounts
survive.
Voyagers, missionaries, settlers and administrators collected and preserved
Polynesian objects for a variety of reasons − scientific, evangelical,
commercial, personal. Significant collections of these finely made and visually
stunning objects are held in UK and other museums. One of the main aims of the
project was to undertake a comprehensive survey of these collections so they
could be studied alongside the pictorial and written accounts, and also in
relation to current scholarship. Perspectives drawn from the disciplines of
anthropology, art history, history, archaeology and museum studies were used to generate new interpretations and understandings.
Two main, yet linked, aspects were investigated: (a) indigenous contexts of
use and indigenous meanings in the contact situation, and (b) the contexts of
the acquisition of these objects and their subsequent histories in European
and/or Polynesian locations.
The principal activities of the project included:
Back to Top