Hunting the gatherers : ethnographic collectors, agents and agency in Melanesia, 1870s-1930s / / edited by Michael O'Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910818291303321
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New York : , : Berghahn Books, , 2000
• ISBN: 1-57181-811-1; 0-85745-691-1
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (304 pages) : illustrations
• Collana: Methodology and history in anthropology ; ; volume 6
• Disciplina: 069/.5/0995
• Soggetti: Ethnological museums and collections - History; Museums - Acquisitions - Melanesia - History; Ethnology - Fieldwork - Melanesia; Material culture - Melanesia; Collectors and collecting - Melanesia - History; Melanesia Antiquities Collection and preservation
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- 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
• Sommario/riassunto: 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.