Hunting the gatherers: ethnographic collectors, agents and agency in Melanesia, 1870s-1930s 9781571818119, 9781571815064, 9780857456915

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
List of Illustrations (page ix)
Notes on contributors (page xiii)
Preface (page xvii)
1. Introduction (Michael O'Hanlon, page 1)
2. Gathering for God: George Brown and the Christian Economy in the Collection of Artefacts (Helen Gardner, page 35)
3. Exploring Tensions in Material Culture: Commercialising Ethnography in German New Guinea, 1870-1904 (Rainer Buschmann, page 55)
4. 'Before it has Become too Late': The Making and Repatriation of Sir William MacGregor's Official Collection from British New Guinea (Michael Quinnell, page 81)
5. Surveying Culture: Photography, Collecting and Material Culture in British New Guinea, 1898 (Elizabeth Edwards, page 103)
6. Collecting Pygmies: the 'Tapiro' and the British Ornithologists' Union Expedition to Dutch New Guinea, 1910-1911 (Chris Ballard, page 127)
7. One Time, One Place, Three Collections: Colonial Processes and the Shaping of Some Museum Collections from German New Guinea (Robert L. Welsch, page 155)
8. The Careless Collector: Malinowski and the Antiquarians (Michael W. Young, page 181)
9. Felix Speiser's Fletched Arrow: A Paradigm Shift from Physical Anthropology to Art Styles (Christian Kaufmann, page 203)
10. On His Todd: Material Culture and Colonialism (Chris Gosden, page 227)
11. Reverse Trajectories: Beatrice Blackwood as Collector and Anthropologist (Chantal Knowles, page 251)
12. Epilogue (Nicholas Thomas, page 273)
Index (page 279)

Citation preview

HUNTING THE GATHERERS

Methodology and History in Anthropology General Editor: David Parkin, Director of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford Volume |] Marcel Mauss: A Centenary Tribute.

Edited by Wendy James and N.J. Allen Volume 2 Franz Baerman Steiner: Selected Writings. Volume I: Taboo, Truth and Religion. Franz B. Steiner. Edited by Jeremy Adler and Richard Fardon Volume 3 Franz Baerman Steiner. Selected Writings. Volume IT: Orientalism, Value, and Civilisation. Franz B. Steiner.

Edited by Jeremy Adler and Richard Fardon Volume 4 The Problem of Context: Perspectives from Social Anthropology and Elsewhere. Edited by Roy Dilley Volume 5 Religion in English Everyday Life.

By Timothy Jenkins Volume 6 Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 18 70s—19 30s. Edited by Michael O'Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch

Volume 7 Anthropologists in a Wider World: Essays on Field Research.

Edited by Paul Dresch, Wendy James and David Parkin Volume 8 Categories and Classifications: Maussian Reflections on the Social. By N.J. Allen

HUNTING THE GATHERERS

ETHNOGRAPHIC COLLECTORS, AGENTS AND AGENCY IN MELANESIA, 18 70s—1930s

Edited by Michael O’Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch

Berghahn Books New York ¢ Oxford

First published in 2000 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2000 Michael O'Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berghahn Books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hunting the gatherers : ethnographic collectors, agents and agency in Melanesia, 1870s—1930Qs / edited by Michael O'Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch p. cm. -- (Methodology and history in anthropology ; v. 6) Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-57181-811-1 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Ethnological museums and collections--History. 2. Museums--Acquisitions--Melanesia--History. 3. Ethnology-Melanesia--Field work. 4. Material culture--Melanesia. 5. Collectors and collecting--Melanesia--History. 6. Melanesia-Antiquities--Collection and preservation. [. O'Hanlon, Michael. II. Welsch, Robert Louis, 1950- _ III. Series.

GN35.H86 2000 069'.5'0995--de2 1 O00-045484

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States on acid-free paper.

ISBN-1-57181-811-1 hardback

For Linda, Miriam and Sarah

}:|::\:4 a teas: . J mew d, { é : E Ss 22 pes S* ae > “ ie toeOR Taeee atsae ff oe 5‘: = »boc , =SSE ee ais a ee .' —— — =: S== -—: >==. = ; ses == ) a: = :*= ts 2 +Ree : ’ feIt- : —- == —

[ESN Eases SS aus § ee

\\ .>if-«Se ::aae SS = ; o > ‘nal ea =- .>, = Canoes, Kaiserin Augusta River, German New Guinea, 1908.

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ix

Notes on contributors xiii

Preface xvii 1. Introduction ] Michael O'Hanlon

2. Gathering tor God: George Brown and the Christian Economy

in the Collection of Artefacts 35

Helen Gardner

3. Exploring Tensions in Material Culture: Commercialising

Ethnography in German New Guinea, 1870-1904 55 Rainer Buschmann

4. ‘Belore it has Become too Late’: The Making and Repatriation

New Guinea 81

of Sir William MacGregor’s Official Collection from British Michael Quinnell

5. Surveying Culture: Photography, Collecting and Material

Culture in British New Guinea, 1898 103 Elizabeth Edwards

Vill Contents 6. Collecting Pygmies: the “Tapiro’ and the British Ornithologists’

Union Expedition to Dutch New Guinea, 1910-1911] 127 Chris Ballard

7. One Time, One Place, Three Collections: Colonial Processes and the Shaping of Some Museum Collections from German

New Guinea ile te.

Robert L. Welsch

8. The Careless Collector: Malinowski and the Antiquarians 18] Michael W. Young

9. Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow: A Paradigm Shift from

Physical Anthropology to Art Styles 203 Christian Kaufmann

10. On His Todd: Material Culture and Colonialism 227 Chris Gosden

Anthropologist 251

11. Reverse Trajectories: Beatrice Blackwood as Collector and Chantal Knowles

12. Epilogue pM i

Index 279 Nicholas Thomas

= YT on

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

Frontispiece Canoes, Kaiserin Augusta River, German New Guinea, Dorsey Collection, 1908. Negative no.

CSA27828c. © The Field Museum, Chicago. V 1.1 Artefacts (eel trap, storage containers, shields) lined up for sale outside gateway to fieldworker’s house, Wahgi Valley, Papua New Guinea, 1990.

© M. O'Hanlon. iy

24 The sample of shell money (Divara/Diwarra) sent by Brown to Tylor (1977.4.1). (It was not entered into the collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum until 1977 when it was found among Tylor’s correspondence. )

© Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. 36 22, Waruwarum, three wives and a son, photographed by George Brown. ©George Brown/Nature Focus. 40

opal Artefacts from ‘Matty’. In von Luschan (1895a). 68 4.] ‘Fishing Kite used by Natives of Dobu’. I[lustration from MacGregor’s final annual report for British New

Guinea (1897-98) Plates II. 92

4.2 Senator the Hon. Bob McMullan, Australian Minister for the Arts, and the Hon. Bernard Narakobi MP, Chairman of the Papua New Guinea Museum Board of Trustees, at the official handover of the MacGregor collection, 29 October 1993. Jeff Wright/Queensland

Museum. © Queensland Museum. 98

Xx List of Illustrations 5.1 Making the shell armlet, Port Moresby. From a dry gelatin plate negative by Wilkin and/or Haddon, 1898. CUMAAPC Pap.C.D.8 1. © Cambridge

University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. 107

oye Houses at Zaria, Yule Island. From a dry gelatin plate negative by Wilkin and/or Haddon, 1898. CUMAAPC Pap.C.D. 33. © Cambridge University

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. 108 5.3-5.4 Demonstrating pottery making, Ballantine's compound, Port Moresby. From a dry gelatin plate negative by Wilkin and/or Haddon, 1898. CUMAAPC Pap.C.D. 101 and 102. © Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. 109

5 The dance at Babaka. From a dry gelatin plate negative by Wilkin and/or Haddon, 1898. CUMAAPC Pap.C.D. 205. © Cambridge University

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. 11] 520 Demonstrating raising a pile, Hula. From a dry gelatin plate negative by Wilkin and/or Haddon, 1898. CUMAAPC Pap.C.D, 216. © Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. 114

6.1] A group of Tapiro pygmies standing in front of the

facing p.250. 144 tallest of their houses’. Source: Rawling 1913:

6.2 ‘Plainsmen and Pygmies’.

Source: Rawling 1913: facing p.268. 144

7.1 Landing trom a boat, German New Guinea, Dorsey Collection, 1908. Negative no. CSA27810c.

© The Field Museum, Chicago. 166 Tye: Magem men with skull and steel axe, Dorsey Collection, 1908. Negative no. CSA27210c.

© The Field Museum, Chicago. 174 ie Magem men, Kaiserin Augusta River, German

Chicago. 174

New Guinea, Dorsey Collection, 1908.

Negative no. CSA27795c. © The Field Museum,

8.1 Trobriand dancers with kaidebu (dance shields), photographed by B. Malinowski 1915.

Ref. No. 233/13. © H. Wayne. 189

List of Illustrations xi 8.2 Hancock, Malinowski (centre) and Toguguwa with betel-chewing utensils. Malinowski holds kula valuable with Pandanus streamers over his left arm. Possibly

photographed at Gusaweta, 2 January 1918.

Ref. No. B XVIII 1. © H. Wayne. 193

10.1 Advertisement for imported tinned and other foods from Australia, from the Official Handbook of the

Territory of New Guinea, 1937 (p. xxiii). 242 11.1] Examiners and students for the Oxford Diploma in Anthropology, 1910. Left to right (back row): Wilson D. Wallis, Diamond Jenness, and Maurice Barbeau: (front row) Henry Balfour (Curator, Pitt Rivers Museum), Arthur Thomson (Professor of Anatomy), and R. R. Marett (Reader in Social Anthropology).

© Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. 254 LE ‘Things to get if possible’: part of Blackwood’s ‘shopping list’ from Balfour, which was entered at the back of her diary. © Pitt Rivers Museum,

University of Oxford. iow §

Tables

Tol Number of catalogue numbers from each locality in the Dorsey, Voogdt, and Umlautf collections

(The Field Museum, Chicago). 168

1 fee Catalogue numbers with uncertain provenances. 170

provenances. iba

i ie. Catalogue numbers with vague or general

9.) Speiser’s selecting and grouping of object types. 216 9.2 Speiser’s matrix of cultural elements from the New Hebrides, the Banks and Torres Islands.

From Speiser 1991/1923]: 403-4. 218

10.1] What Todd took from New Guinea, in comparison

to other collectors. phe Ws

xii List of Illustrations Maps

1 Melanesia 1870s -1930s i

2 British New Guinea (Papua) 14 3 German New Guinea (Mandated Territory of New Guinea) 62

4 BOU expedition to Dutch New Guinea, 1910-1911 138

century) 209

5 New Hebrides, Banks and Torres Islands (early twentieth

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

CHRIS BALLARD is Research Fellow in the interdisciplinary project on Resource Management in Asia-Pacific, part of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, at the Australian National University,

Canberra. His current research addresses issues of land rights and human rights in eastern Indonesia, and he has previously published articles and edited collections on archaeology, history, mining and anthropology in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. RAINER BUSCHMANN is Assistant Professor of History at Hawai'i Pacific University where he has recently completed a thesis on ‘The

German Ethnographic Frontier in New Guinea, 1885-1914’. He is also the editor of a special issue of the Journal of the Pacific Arts Associ-

ation on early German ethnography in the Pacific. ELIZABETH EDWARDS is Curator of Photographs at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, where she teaches the history and theory of still photography in anthropology. Her primary research interests are in the relation between anthropology and photography, including the history of photographic collections and the historiographical theory of photography. She was editor of Anthropology and Photography, 1860-1960 (1992) and has written extensively on photography in the Pacific.

HELEN GARDNER'’s research interests include the relationship between Pacific colonisation and Christian missions, and the links between nineteenth-century anthropologists and Christian missions. Her Ph.D thesis, ‘Cultures, Christians and Colonial Subjects: George Brown's Representations of [slanders from Samoa and the Bismarck Archipelago’, has recently been accepted.

XIV Notes on Contributors CHRIS GOSDEN is Lecturer-Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. He has held teaching positions in both the UK and

Australia, and has research interests in Papua New Guinea, Oxfordshire and Turkmenistan. His recent works include Anthropology and Archaeology: A Changing Relationship (1999), and The Prehistory of Food, co-edited with J. Hather (1999),

CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN is Curator of Oceanic Collections at the Museum der Kulturen, Basel. He did his Ph.D (1969) under Alfred Buh-

ler, combining museum anthropology with field ethnography (fieldwork in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu). His exhibitions include the major Arts of Vanuatu, which was shown in Port Vila and in Basel, and

his publications include the catalogue of that exhibition, and also Oceanic Art (co-authored with A.L. Kaeppler and D. Newton, 1997).

CHANTAL KNOWLES is a Research Assistant at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, where — with Chris Gosden — she is cur-

rently working on a major project on material culture and colonialism

in German New Guinea, and has recently embarked upon doctoral research on Melanesian cultural centres. MICHAEL O’HANLON is Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Uni-

versity of Oxford. He has carried out extensive fieldwork with the Wahgi people in Highland New Guinea. His books include Paradise: Portraying the New Guinea Highlands (1993) and The Anthropology of Landscape, co-edited with Eric Hirsch (1995).

MICHAEL QUINNELL is a Senior Curator at the Queensland Museum, Brisbane. His collection and research focus is now on the kastom and material culture of Queensland's Torres Strait [slander and

Australian South Sea Islander communities. Other interests include repatriation and the social history of Queensland's colonial and postcolonial interaction with its Melanesian neighbours.

NICHOLAS THOMAS has written extensively on art, history and anthropology in the Pacific. His recent publications include Possessions: Indigenous Art/Colonial Culture (1999) and a collaboration with the New Zealand photographer, Mark Adams, entitled Cook’s Sites: Revisiting History (1999). Nicholas Thomas is Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

ROBERT L. WELSCH is Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Dart-

mouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire and Adjunct Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum, Chicago. A specialist on the art

Notes on Contributors XV and material culture of Melanesia and Indonesia, he has conducted fieldwork among the Ningerum of Papua New Guinea, the Mandar of South Sulawesi, and along the Sepik coast of Papua New Guinea. He is the author of An American Anthropologist in Melanesia: A.B. Lewis and the Joseph N. Field South Pacific Expedition, 1909-1913 (1998).

MICHAEL W. YOUNG is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, in the Australian National University, Canberra. His latest book is Malinowski's Kiriwina: Fieldwork and Photography, 1915-18 (1998), and he is currently working on a delinitive biography of Malinowski.

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PREFACE

For an edited collection, this book has been produced with reasonable despatch. We hope that this has been done without showing too many signs of speed, but the process has undoubtedly accrued at least the usual number of debts.

The volume was originally conceived in mid-1998, at a supper party given by Jane and Chris Gosden and attended by a number of the contributors, where sufficient alcohol was on offer to make one of the editors forget his vow never again to edit a collection. That autumn,

the editors circulated to the contributors an orienting document which raised the range of issues that their papers might address, and in April 1999 a Colloquium was held in Oxford at which initial drafts of the papers were presented. That Colloquium was a joint initiative of the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research in Canberra, to whose then Director, Nicholas Thomas, both the editors are grateful for support and encouragement. Like all such events, the Colloquium lent heavily for both intellectual and practical assistance on many whose help is reflected only indirectly in the resulting volume. lan Coates, Clare Harris, John Mack,

Laura Peers, and Helena Wayne generously gave their time and insights as formal discussants, and the invited audience more generally constituted an unusually coherent and knowledgeable body. Bodies need marshalling and provisioning, and the editors would like to thank Vicky Barnecutt, Ina Barnes, Sue Brooks and Fran Knight for their help making the event work as well as it did. The editors also wish especially to acknowledge the support of first the British Academy in funding two of the overseas participants to the

Colloquium: and second Oxford's Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, whose head — David Parkin — did the considerable fur-

xviii Preface ther service of putting the editors in touch with Berghahn Books and suggesting that the papers would be an appropriate addition to the series he edits. Much of the subsequent work in the preparation of the papers was done via email attachment, and the editors are grateful here to Haas Ezzet of the Pitt Rivers Museum, who provided swift and effective aid whenever technical problems were encountered. The entire effort of ensuring that the papers were standardised in a common format fell to Linda Frankland, from whose anthropological expertise and rigour the volume has also greatly benefited, and to Alison Hodge, to whose light but meticulous copy-editing we are all grateful. Finally, we would like to thank David Sansom for drawing the maps, and Mark Daniels for seeing the whole thing through in record time. Michael O'Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch

Oxtord, April 2000

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Michael O'Hanlon

The Ethnography of Collecting: from Obscurity to Obloquy In a brave estimate, subsequently much cited, Sturtevant (1969: 640)

hazarded that there might be four and a half million ethnographic artefacts in the world’s museums. This figure, which now seems to beg the definition of ‘ethnographic’ (though Sturtevant actually used the

term ‘ethnological’) was probably an underestimate in 1969, and is certainly so more than thirty years later.’ But Sturtevant’s estimate does have the merit of highlighting the disparity between its order of

magnitude and what remains our very uneven knowledge of the detailed processes and transactions through which so many artefacts came to be in museums, and of the subsequent museum careers of those collections.* The reflexive attention which has recently been devoted to fieldwork on the one hand, and to the making of ethno-

graphic exhibitions on the other, has only fitfully illuminated the process of making ethnographic collections themselves. To suggest that the ethnography of field collecting remains rela-

tively unscrutinised is not to minimise the exhaustive attention recently devoted to collecting more generally as a practice characteristic of Western modernity, if not pathology. As such, collecting has been viewed variously as the outcome of processes of metropolitan identity formation, of a compulsion to classify, or as an aspect of material consumption (see, e.g., Clifford 1988: 220; Penny 1998; Elsner and Cardinal 1994; Belk 1995). Nor, of course, is it to deny the signilicance of material culture in anthropology’s own history. For reasons

2 Michael O'Hanlon which Stocking (1985: 114) has cogently summarised, artefacts originally occupied a key place there. Indeed, as Gardner observes in this book, the lack of attention which has been paid to the process of field collecting is partly a consequence of an earlier anthropology’s view of artefacts as self-sufficient scientific specimens, which required no commentary as to the political and economic circumstances in which they

had been gathered. With the ascendancy of functionalism in anthropology, artefacts lost the privileged place which they had once occupied in the discipline’s theorising (though as Young shows in his chapter, Malinowski — functionalism’s most noted exponent — himself made extensive col-

lections of material culture, even if he also tended subsequently to mislay them). The intellectual eclipse of artefacts,’ and hence of any great curiosity about how they were collected, lasted half a century. By

the 1980s, however, a sea change within the discipline once more turned artefacts into objects of anthropological interest. One reason for this was the discipline’s renewed concern with its own history, and thus with the period in which artefacts had occupied a position of preeminence; a second lay in the extension of anthropological interest to Western institutions, and hence to ethnographic museums and their contents. Intersecting with both of these, even if it drew initially on

intellectual movements beyond anthropology, was the discipline’s growing interest in representation, especially in issues of power and equity. A series of analyses, of which Price’s (1989) is perhaps the best

known and most trenchant, did now focus upon the processes of ethnographic collecting, but if collecting had emerged from obscurity, its primary identity became one of obloquy (see, e.g., Torgovnick 1990: 125; Lawson 1994: x; Jones 1996). At its starkest, museum collections came to be viewed as the last colonial captives, and field collecting purely as their abduction. And in some cases, this is brutally apt. In this book, Buschmann provides the bleakest account, analysing as he does the years at the close of the nineteenth century when commercial companies turned to collecting as a source of income, and the devastating consequences for the islanders of Wuvulu and Aua in German New Guinea. But even as the image of collecting as obloquy was consolidated, there were also indications — sometimes from the same writers (see, e.g., Price 1992) —that field collecting at other times and in other places was more diverse

an activity and more fertile a topic than was allowed by equating it with dispossession alone. While acknowledging the encompassing power of colonial processes more generally, Thomas (1991: Chapter 3), for example, demonstrated that the terms on which ethnographic artefacts were acquired did not always and everywhere reflect colonial agendas alone. In certain ‘sacrificial’ Melanesian economies, the sale

Introduction 3 of artefacts appears to have been an intentional feat of ‘riddance’, an alternative to rendering them absent through casting them into the bush to rot as the culmination to the ritual process (Kuchler 1997:

39). Consequently, collections held in museums may incorporate aspects of local agency which are overlooked if the sole identity allowed to such collections is that of artefactual abductees (O'Hanlon 1993: 60). The making of collections can also precipitate illuminating reenactments of local culture, as Myers observed a century ago (Herle

1998: 95); indeed, far more of the ethnographic material in the world’s museums than was previously suspected may have been made specifically for sale to them (Torrence 1993: 468). The ethnography of collecting is also a fruitful topic in ways which extend beyond merely counterposing it to a unidimensional popular stereotype of dispossession and cultural obliteration. Ethnographic collecting was diversely implicated in colonial processes more generally, and consequently has the capacity to illuminate both overt and unconsidered features of colonialism. Quinnell’s account (this book) of the ‘official’ collecting personally undertaken by Sir William MacGregor, the Lieutenant-Governor of British New Guinea, is one instance, but there were less direct examples. Schildkrout and Keim (1998: 5), for instance, have observed how in the Congolese case: ‘The exchange

of objects between Africans and Europeans... created an arena in which material objects could be used to define African ethnicity and culture... [t is in the search for labels for artefacts that much of the contemporary map of Central Africa was created’. Ethnographic collecting was also implicated in colonial processes to the extent that colonial society provided the framework through which collectors (whether officials, missionaries, traders or museum curators) necessarily operated. As Lawson (1994: x) has noted, the colonial context in which ethnographic collecting was conducted is a source of potential richness, not weakness, insofar as it ‘reveals the historically contingent, intercultural relations that made collecting possible’ (a point developed most originally in this book in Gosden’s examination of the artefacts which the anthropologist-collector Todd took to the field). Scrutiny of the ethnography of collecting also allows the intellectual agendas of collectors to be related to the content of the collections they made. Jones (1995), for example, has shown how the zeal with which Whites came to collect tjurunga reflected their growing belief that these objects were the key necessary to unlock the inner secrets of Aboriginal religion. As Jones (1995: 67) points out, there were two corollaries to this: the definition of Aboriginal culture as timeless and unchanging by reference to these artefacts and, later, the supposition that Aboriginal attachment to tjurunga was necessarily so strong that any European acquisition of these objects can only have been a form of

- Michael O'Hanlon theft. Mack (1990: 66, 75) furnishes an example of a different kind of selectivity in his account of the Kuba collection which Torday made in the Congo for the British Museum. Mack shows how Torday’s enchantment with Kuba kingship, and his belief that the Kuba were the highest and most ancient civilisation in this part of Africa, inflected the Hungarian’s collecting, leading him to downplay traditions such as mask-making which he considered to be recent innovations.

If the ethnography of collecting has the potential to throw light upon unconsidered aspects of local agency, without losing sight of either broader colonial processes or the effect of collectors’ own agendas, it can also illuminate the ethnography of the metropolitan muse-

ums where the collections are so often held. In his account of the development of natural history museums during the nineteenth century, and their influence on American anthropology, Jenkins (1994: 253-5) has noted how little attention has been devoted to what he calls the ‘impulse for archival control’ over collections. The corollary to the massive ethnographic collections made in the decades that brack-

eted the turn of that century was the creation of elaborate museum procedures to classify, draw and otherwise produce paper counterparts to each object (see also Bouquet and Branco 1988). An ethnography of

collecting that traces artefacts from field to museum provokes the question of the extent to which indigenous categories on the one hand, and collectors’ classifications on the other hand, are expunged by such archival systems, dedicated as they are to producing the uniform ‘paper objects’ (today, virtual objects} whose manipulation makes

up much museum work. The counterpart to uncovering indigenous agency frozen in museum collections is the delineation of how such agency has also been overwritten by museum documentary culture, the subject of Welsch’s chapter. Equally, the terms on which ethnographic collecting was originally done have emerged as a focal issue in debates surrounding the ques-

tion of returning artefacts to the peoples (or, more often, the countries) from which they originally derived. As earlier suggested, alter

half a century during which they were shunned as an academic resource — and were not always of greater interest to the modernising

agendas of newly independent nations — ethnographic collections have since come to be seen as incarcerated sources of indigenous identity. Here a focus on the ethnography of collecting has the potential for

historicising present debates, both through depicting the three-cornered contest between the claims of indigenous communities, ‘salvage’ anthropology and commerce, and in raising the issue of where such collections belong. The chapters by Gardner and by Quinnell set two high-profile recent debates over restitution in the context of the longue durée of earlier collecting by Brown and MacGregor respectively.

Introduction 5 But suggestive though they are individually, the published examples

of the potential of collecting as a topic are in the main culled from diverse sources. They are also difficult to cross-relate, because they are not developed systematically in relation to a specific region. The inten-

tion of the papers in this book is to retrieve ethnographic collecting from what has become a selective identification with dispossession, and to reinvest it with its potential to illuminate a variety of processes over a particular time frame, within a delimited ethnographic area and through the lens of specific collectors.

Period, Place and People Why select the period from the 1870s to the 1930s as the focus for a study of ethnographic collecting? These years represented, of course, the apogee of imperial expansion, with the concomitant opportunity to collect directly from new colonial territories. But more than that, the period was one for much of which ‘knowledge itself was thought of as embodied in objects’ (Stocking 1985: 114). Both evolutionism and diffusionism, the two main anthropological theories which preceded the functionalist revolution of the 1920s, allocated a central role to artefacts as data — all the more so since anthropology then took as its subject matter peoples who lacked other material evidence of their past such as written histories. Whether a particular culture possessed a given category of artefact was thought to be of considerable significance in determining the evolutionary stage which that society had reached; or, conversely, in tracing the linkages through which a given technology had historically diffused to it. The pivotal role of artefacts in anthropological theory of the time did not go entirely unchallenged. It was in part Boas’s growing dissatisfaction with the capacity of artefacts to represent culture as a whole which led him to quit his post in the American Museum of Natural History in 1905 (Jacknis 1985); again, in 1911, Rivers had contrasted what he argued to be the unreliability of artefacts as indices of the past with what he held to be the enduring nature of social structure (Stocking 1995: 203ff.). In this book, Ballard —who examines the ‘collection’ of Tapiro ‘pygmies’ — shows how material culture played a subordinate role to height in the constitution by Whites of ‘pygmyhood’:

more generally, Ballard also cautions that ‘if artefact collections provided a useful tool in the production of knowledge about colonial sub-

jects, they did so within a broader context supplied by loosely formulated but nevertheless powerful narratives of racial difference’. Artefacts nevertheless still retained a position, albeit a swiftly waning one, in diffusionist work of the 1920s (Stocking 1985: 8).

6 Michael O'Hanlon If the salience of artefacts to anthropological theory over this period lends an especial interest to ethnographic collecting, it is also important to emphasise that collecting itself did not, of course, cease thereafter: it merely changed its significance. Anthropologists engaged on the single-culture studies ordained by the new functionalism continued to make artefact collections, but these were now circumscribed

in theoretical terms. Where formerly artefacts had spoken to the broader (if misconceived) comparative schemes of evolutionists and diffusionists, they now tended to be regarded as relevant largely to the anthropologist’s specifically local findings. Ethnographic collections became, in a sense, privatised. There is a close parallel to be drawn here with field photography. In her rich chapter, Edwards observes how, around the same time, photographs too ‘entered what one might describe as the private domain and became specilic to individual fieldwork’. More general parallels between the making of collections of ethnographic artefacts and the practice of photography struck others, including some of the collectors. Young records Malinowski’s bracketing of the two as ‘secondary occupations’. Both photography and collecting came to be regarded as subordinate modes of documentation, discussion of which was generally limited to the essentially technical problems they were seen to pose (the kind of camera to use, or appropriate modes of labelling and packing artefacts). If acombination of imperial circumstance and intellectual currents

lends to the period 1870s to 1930s a natural unity for a study of ethnographic collecting, can an equivalent case be made for restricting such a study to Melanesia? In one respect, it might seem perverse to limit discussion to any single region, when massive ethnographic col-

lecting was so obviously concurrently taking place throughout the world, and the intellectual issues raised in one part of the globe were immediately applied elsewhere. For example, Ballard shows how the existence of ‘pygmies’ in New Guinea was essentially pre-scripted by an enduring fascination with short-statured peoples in the literature on African exploration. A focus upon Melanesia might seem doubly odd when the legitimacy of distinguishing such a region in the first place has been sharply called into question (Thomas 1989). Indeed, the chapters in this book shows how material culture, and the making of collections, were themselves implicated in attempts to define the region. It was precisely the fact that the first artefacts brought back from the islands of Wuvulu and Aua yet seemed atypical for Melanesia that sparked interest in the islands by traders and collectors, with the terrible consequences for the inhabitants described by Buschmann. But while acknowledging that ethnographic collecting was a worldwide phenomenon, and that ‘Melanesia’ itself is a problematic con-

struct, there are also strengths in taking a regional focus. Knautft

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8 Michael O'Hanlon (1999: 6-7) has recently made this point at a general level, in observ-

ing that regional studies can supply a combination of breadth and depth offered by neither of the polar opposites of ‘global’ or ‘local’ perspectives. We might also suggest that there is likely to be an added res-

onance to studying ethnographic collecting in an area such as Melanesia, in that social life there is renowned for being constituted through material transactions. This last point emerges in its richest form in Gardner’s chapter, dealing as it does with the collection made by George Brown in a part of Melanesia in which competition for local

prestige revolves around the acquisition and deployment of shell money. The artefacts that Brown collected were partly accumulated in

transactions designed to demonstrate the missionary’s goodwill to local people. But Brown found himself drawn into other kinds of mate-

rial transaction, making compensation payments in a distinctly Melanesian style. Brown’s Christian faith was a further complexity. On the one hand, local people treated it as an item of trade like any other cult practice, selling on hymns and prayers in return for shell money. On the other hand, Brown himself viewed transactions through Christian spectacles which laid great stress on the ideal of the freely given

gift. It was in these terms that he chose to interpret the artefacts and food offered him by local people on his departure, as a testament to the success of his mission. Period, place: what of the people, the collectors themselves? In one respect, of course, it misrepresents the facts to speak of them as ‘collectors’, for few of the individuals involved regarded themselves primarily as such, despite Dorsey’s observation in 1908 that ‘Every man’s house here is a Museum’ (Welsch’s chapter). But a biographical focus does have the advantage of bringing into the same frame of reference both the peoples among whom the collecting was originally done, and

the metropolitan institutions in which the collections were subsequently lodged. The individuals focused upon have also been selected

so as to represent both a range of types of collector and as wide a regional coverage as possible. Missionaries and museum officials, anthropologists and administrators, naturalist-explorers and ships’ captains are all included, and the areas in which they were active range from the then Dutch New Guinea to the New Hebrides, and from the Papuan Gulf to the Bismarck Archipelago. A further coherence arises from the way in which the lives of the collectors under consideration also intersected with each other. So, for

example, Gardner records how George Brown travels to southeast Papua with the subject of Quinnell’s chapter, Sir William MacGregor, whom Brown observed was ‘an indefatigable collector... and all who sail with him are expected to do their best to pick up something’. Later, as Quinnell relates, the Director of the Queensland Museum, where

Introduction 9 MacGregor’s own collection has been stored, hopes to secure the services in cataloguing it of Malinowski, on whom Young focuses. As Young chronicles, Malinowski had earlier expressed his private fury at being visited in the field by Haddon, the subject of Edwards’ chapter. Equally, Haddon’'s view that ‘pygmies’ constituted New Guinea’s primordial population both draws upon and shapes the work of Wollaston, upon whom Ballard concentrates. Again, Blackwood (the subject of Knowles’s chapter) meets Speiser (on whom Kaufmann concentrates) on Buka, and arranges an artefact exchange with him: later, on her second fieldtrip to Melanesia, she feels it necessary to apologise to Todd (whose collecting Gosden details) for ‘poaching’ on ‘his’ preserve.

In thinking about the sets of questions posed by an attempt to recover collecting as a topic, it is useful organisationally to distinguish broadly between what might be called its ‘before’ (the theoretical baggage which collectors took with them, and their institutional arrangements), the ‘scene of collecting’ (the processes of making collections, their content, and issues of local agency and impact) and the ‘after’ of collecting (the fate of collections once made, and their museum lives). I make loose use of this framework in what follows, in which I consider

the questions raised and look at the extent to which they are interrelated, modified and answered by the contributors’ chapters.

The ‘Before’ of Collecting While the intellectual currents — evolutionism, diffusionism, later on functionalism — sketched above were variously espoused, repudiated and ignored by the collectors represented in this volume, what united many of the earlier among them was a scientific education. MacGregor and Wollaston were both trained as medical doctors, and Speiser had

completed a doctorate in chemistry: indeed, as Kaufmann shows, Speiser drew on molecular chemistry for his notion of ‘cultural complexes’ which he saw as compounds of specific cultural — and material cultural — elements. Speiser was also influenced by his maternal uncle, a zoologist, and others too had a background in natural history. This is,

of course, most evident in the case of Haddon who was trained as a zoologist, and who explicitly applied the notion of ‘life histories’ to the designs on artefacts, but George Brown, too, devoted considerable time during his earlier missionary years in Samoa to the study of ornithology. Consequently, such individuals saw natural history and ethnogra-

phy as part of a continuum, and it is important to recall that their collections of the former were often as large, if not larger, than those of the latter. [t was alleged of Brown (albeit by a rival collector keen to discredit him) that he ‘cared more about his name being given to a new

10 Michael O'Hanlon snake, bird, or insect than he did for all the souls of the New Britain people put together’ (Gardner's chapter); equally, MacGregor’s ire when he found that Joe Fiji (his private collector) had eaten the first example of a new species of lark discovered on Mt. Victoria became a much-told story among residents of British New Guinea (Quinnell’s chapter).

The notion that natural and sociocultural data should be considered within a common frame of reference is one of the underpinning ideas of evolutionism. But while many of the earlier collectors featured in this book broadly accepted evolutionary ideas (which were themselves evolving), they seldom did so in any very simple sense. Gardner's chapter nicely encapsulates some of the complexities. While Brown was a missionary, the Unitarianism in which he was raised saw

science as complementary to faith rather than as a threat, and the same was true to a lesser extent of the Methodism to which Brown later converted. Evolutionism was debated in the evangelical journals to which Brown subscribed, but he found that the distribution of such artefacts as pottery, bows and arrows and shell money did not conform

to the orthodoxy that Polynesia was at a higher evolutionary level than Melanesia. At one point, Brown was prompted to send the Oxtord anthropologist E.B. Tylor an example of divara, shell money from New Britain, something which in evolutionary terms ought not to be found there, since the Samoans of Polynesia — with whom Brown had earlier resided — had no medium of exchange which could easily be glossed as ‘money. As Gardner records, Tylor thanks Brown for his gift which

contrasted ‘remarkably with the general rude condition of these islanders’ and asks ‘whether there was any evidence of their having learned currency and interest from Malay traders’. Equally, it would be wrong to think of the later collectors represented in this volume as unambiguously repudiating evolutionary beliefs. Long after his Trobriand fieldwork was over, Malinowski wrote that while he was ‘indifferent to the problems of origins’, ‘I still believe in evolution’ (cited in Kuper 1983: 9). He did not see his functionalism

as the antithesis of evolutionism, so much as providing a sound basis for reconstructing evolutionary processes for anyone interested in doing so. And even if material culture no longer occupied the same central evidential role as it had earlier done, a ‘salvage’ paradigm — the notion that artefacts had to be collected ‘before it has become too late’ —underlay much of the later as well as the earlier collecting described

in the chapters that follow. This is most tragically ironic in the case documented by Buschmann, in which it is precisely the desire to save for posterity the material culture of Wuvulu and Aua that leads ultimately to its disappearance. By the 1920s, EE. Williams, the Government Anthropologist in Papua, was offering a more complex perspective on the issue of ‘sal-

Introduction 1] vage’, in an official report on ethnographic collecting. On the one hand, Williams (1923: 7) warns collectors against removing the template artefacts from which future copies can be made; on the other hand, he observes that “To provide a market for his work... is assuredly one of the best turns we could do |the native]. The thing is to keep his

art going; not to collect his art-treasures on the assumption that the art will soon be lost’. This issue of ‘salvage’ is one to which Edwards gives an extra twist in her chapter, which focuses on the relationship between collecting material culture and the photography which proceeded in parallel with it. ‘Underlying all the photographic inscription related to collecting was a strong idea of authenticity, of the past, and the urgent need for salvage’, she notes, reminding us that photography itself is intrinsically the ‘salvage tool par excellence’.

As part of thinking about the ‘before’ of collecting, it is useful to consider the issue of how collectors were funded, or funded themselves, even if their variety makes generalisation difficult. As suggested, one of the reasons why the topic of ethnographic collecting has not received

more detailed anthropological attention is that collectors seldom reflected on the process in their notebooks or in print, treating it rather as a self-evident activity. Consequently, the way in which collecting was funded is interesting partly because it is one aspect of the making of collections about which at least something tends to be recorded. We may have lost Todd’s fieldnotes, but we have his receipts, and we know that his project budget for the Australian National Research Council included ‘£30 for specimens’. Gosden, who draws on these receipts in his novel analysis of what Todd took to New Guinea, considers that such a sum would not unduly have restricted Todd’s collecting in New Britain. Malinowski, in contrast, declared that the £30 allowed him by the Museum of Victoria to make a collection in the Trobriands did not permit him to acquire ‘rare and expensive things as, e.g. specimens of large stone axes or “shell money’ (Young's chapter). Others had more substantial sums at their disposal. In making his ‘official’ collection, MacGregor was able to draw on government funds —as well as on government power, as when he sequestered a major collection of artefacts from a ‘Tugeri’ raiding party, whom he pursued back towards the Dutch New Guinea border. Time rather than money appears to have been the limiting factor in the lightning seven-week raid which Field Museum curator George Dorsey made on Melanesia, during which he collected some 3,500 artefacts (Welsch’s chapter).

Not all curators were well funded: as Knowles notes, Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum expected Blackwood to bear most of the costs of her Anga fieldwork from her museum salary. In other cases, of course, the collecting was itself intended to be profitable — not only the kind of substantial commercial enterprises detailed in Buschmann’s chapter,

12 Michael O'Hanlon but also the smaller-scale activities of ships’ captains such as Voogdt, described by Welsch. Finally, it is worth noting in passing how, in the 1930s, the drying up of Rockefeller funding for anthropology more generally reverberated in the lives of some of the collectors. At the London School of Economics (LSE), the now celebrated Professor Malinowski — obliged to seek alternative sources of funds for his staff and for a trip to Africa — appropriates the money hitherto used by the LSE to buy-in lectures on ‘technology’ from the British Museum curator Joyce, who is sacked. Ten thousand miles away in Sydney, it is the with-

drawal of Rockefeller funding which deprives Todd of a realistic chance to write up his fieldnotes and helps condemn him to anthropological obscurity (Gosden’s chapter).

The Scene of Collecting Varieties of Collecting

Some of those who collected in Melanesia made limited attempts to distinguish different types of ethnographic collecting. Writing to his museum superior Dorsey, A.B. Lewis contrasted ‘systematic’ collections, which would include examples of the full range of variation in each artefact, with narrower ‘type’ collections (Welsch 1998 vol. 1: 33). KE. Williams (1923: 6) separated ‘casual collecting’ (which could be done by government officers and would include ‘antiquities’, ‘““vanishing” culture’ specimens and ‘art-objects’) from ‘systematic collecting in cultural areas’, whose essence was ‘continual duplication’, and

might be done by anthropologists. In this book, both Quinnell and Buschmann bring out the tensions between ‘private collecting’ and ‘official’ or ‘company’ collecting.

Taken as a whole, however, the chapters that follow suggest two broader axes of differentiation. The first is a distinction between ‘primary’, ‘secondary and ‘concomitant’ collecting. ‘Primary’ collecting refers to those collections made by explicit, intellectual design. Of those described here, the collection made by the curator Beatrice Blackwood

among the Anga in 1936 is perhaps the most overtly ‘primary’. As Knowles recounts, Blackwood’s brief was to ‘study the technique of a modern Stone-age people before it follows that of our own Neolithic forefathers into the realm of archaeology’. Had she been permitted to do so, she would have located herself among the Central Highlanders, contact with whom was even more recent than with the Anga and whose technology might therefore be expected to be even more pristine. Blackwood also moved between three Anga villages in order to record the stone tool assemblages exemplified by each. This was a delimited project, oriented to making a collection illustrating a specific point.

Introduction 13 As the term suggests, ‘secondary’ collections, in partial contrast, are those made when collecting was a goal, but one subordinate to some other, primary, purpose. Instances of ‘secondary’ collections are those made by German commercial companies when their main goal of recruiting plantation labourers was frustrated. Following an unsuccessful recruiting trip up the Sepik River, a ship’s captain might decide to collect artefacts on the voyage downstream, something he had calculatedly resisted doing on the upriver leg to avoid prematurely satisfying the demand for trade goods (Welsch’s chapter; see also chapter by Buschmann). A further example of ‘secondary’ collections is those

made by anthropologists, after the discipline had shifted away from allocating a central role to artefacts. The term is explicitly used: as earlier noted, Malinowski described his collecting as a ‘secondary occu-

pation’, while Gosden concludes that, for Todd, collecting was a ‘secondary consideration . ‘Concomitant’ collections are those that arise in a sense incidentally, as a by-product from other activities. Quinnell provides one example. As he makes clear, for Sir William MacGregor, trading for artefacts (and for food) was a pragmatic technique adopted by the formidable Governor for

managing first encounters with newly contacted Papuans: it was his ‘methodology for the spread of Pax Britannica’. If the collection made by MacGregor was ‘concomitant’ in being in part the by-product of a larger

political process, much of the collection made by George Brown was ‘concomitant’ to religious purposes. As Gardner relates, the missionary acquired many artefacts to demonstrate impartiality and friendship, intentionally purchasing them unselectively, ‘as I wished both natives and traders to understand that we were not there for trading purposes’.

At the same time, the distinctions suggested between ‘primary’, ‘secondary’ and ‘concomitant’ collections should not be forced: they are best regarded as ideal types, of which real-world collections are likely to be compounds. There are ‘primary’ aspects to both MacGregor and Brown's collecting, and the same collector may also make succes-

sive collections which differ in type. Thus while Blackwood’s 1936 Anga collection was substantially a ‘primary’ one, that made on her earlier trip to Melanesia was far more heterogeneous, and reflected a variety of personal, career-tactical and intellectual agendas. Indeed, one of the major points of interest of Knowles’ chapter is in detailing Blackwood's unusual reverse trajectory, in which her earlier flirting with a developing social anthropology was abandoned in favour of a focused concern with artefacts and technology at a time when most professionals were moving in the opposite direction. Again, even where the initial making of collections has a “concomitant’ aspect to them, they may retrospectively be endowed with a kind of primacy by the collector. MacGregor, for example, fought so obstinately

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Introduction 15 to retain the integrity of his ‘official’ collection, as to make one wonder whether for him it had not come to stand for the diversely administered entity of British New Guinea itself. Again, Brown specified in his will that the artefacts he had accumulated should be known as the ‘George Brown collection’, and stored and displayed as a single entity. As Gardner shows, this issue was reprised when — a century after the collection had been made — the possibility arose of returning the artefacts to the different groups from whom they had originally been gathered. The second axis (which cross-cuts the distinction between ‘primary’, ‘secondary’ and ‘concomitant’ collections) is the distinction between ‘stationary’ and ‘mobile’ collecting. As the term suggests, ‘stationary collecting’ refers simply to collecting which is done within a relatively limited area, and from a settled base (cf. Fabian 1998: 97). ‘Mobile collecting’, on the other hand, refers to collecting done in transit, whether from a ship or while on an expedition or on a patrol of reconnaissance or pacification. Once again, the two are ideal types: collectors mainly based in one spot, such as George Brown and Malinowski, nevertheless also made excursions on which artefacts were collected; ships’ captains

who returned regularly to the same ports where they picked up artefacts each time were arguably engaged in ‘stationary’ collecting. Such indeterminate cases aside, ‘stationary’ collecting and ‘mobile’ collecting each has its own practical implications which potentially influence the kinds of artefacts that may be acquired, their level of documenta-

tion, the degree to which the collector relies on intermediaries, the kinds of anthropological understandings engendered and the nature of the relationships with local communities. Examples of these will be picked up in subsequent sections. Issues of Agency

In his chapter, Quinnell refers in passing to the collecting practices of D’ Albertis and Loria, both of whom removed artefacts from villages after

they had frightened off the inhabitants with gun or rocket fire, while

Buschmann describes how Wahlen’s traders turned to ransacking graves for shell ornaments, once artefact production declined. There is little sign of indigenous agency in either of these cases. But, as suggested at the outset, we nevertheless need to accept that collections and their contents are not everywhere the product of the unalloyed will and buying power of White collectors (Schindlbeck 1993: 59). To suppose that they are threatens a fresh subjugation in over-writing local capacities to influence the terms of interaction and the content of collections. ‘Local’ is, of course, a relative term. One of the points that emerges from the chapters that follow is the dependence of many of the collectors upon a miscellany of intermediaries, including White residents, who were situationally ‘local’ in relation to the more transient among the col-

16 Michael O'Hanlon lectors. Young records the use Malinowski made of the trader and pearler Billy Hancock in collecting artefacts on his behalf; Welsch suggests that ship’s captain Voogdt subtly shaped the collection made by his passenger Dorsey; Knowles describes how EE. Williams paternally oversaw Beatrice Blackwood's collecting foray up the Purari. Predictably, the record left of the activities of non-white intermediaries is generally more shadowy. We know from Quinnell’s chapter that MacGregor employed dedicated local

assistants (such as lark-eating Joe Fiji) to assist him in making natural history collections, but not whether MacGregor also hired equivalents to help with making ethnographic collections. Gardner records a telling lament from Kleinschmidt to his employers back in Hamburg’s Godeflroy

Museum as to the superior resources for making collections allegedly enjoyed by his rival George Brown who ‘has plenty of people, teachers and black boys... to have the area thoroughly searched (which no white man is able to do like Blacks) [while] I now don't have any more foreign labourers’. One can read in this aside an unwritten history of how intermediaries such as interpreters, porters, local policemen and other indigenous colonial employees both enabled and shaped what we know as the ‘MacGregor collection’, the ‘Brown collection’, etc.*

One way of thinking about the agency of indigenous communities themselves is to return to the distinction made earlier between ‘stationary and ‘mobile’ collecting, and to suggest that each carries its own potential both for affecting the collection made and for the expression of indigenous agency. Thus it would seem likely that when a collector is ‘stationary’, he or she will have a higher chance of collecting a full range

of local material culture than when merely stopping off from a river boat for a few hours. But the same longer residence also potentially increases the influence of the local community upon the collector, and the collection. For example, Gardner records the reliance of George Brown on the Duke of York big-man To Pulu, in particular. To Pulu sold Brown land for the mission site, used Brown and his vessel to make visits to his own trading partners, and endeavoured to prevent Brown from developing contacts outside To Pulu’s own trading network. While the

sparseness of the records kept by Brown of his collecting means that much has to be deduced, Gardner thinks it possible that To Pulu was himself trading for artefacts at a distance, in order to sell them on to Brown. In this case, in fact, it seems that the very control exercised by To

Pulu meant that opportunistic trade was the best available means for establishing contact with the missionary for those Islanders excluded from To Pulu’s network. It was through such exchanges that Brown collected many of the artefacts gathered during his first year. Here, then, to the extent that Brown’s collecting was ‘stationary’ it doubly affected the collection he made, in both cases leading to Brown apparently acquiring rather few artefacts from the Duke of York Islands themselves.

Introduction Ly One general point is that collectors possessed trade goods, and trade

goods constituted a resource to which locally dominant factions are always likely to wish to control access. Their attempts to do so (which have more chance of being successful when the collector is ‘stationary ) will exert an influence on the collection that is made. Sometimes that influence may affect something as unobvious as the order in which artefacts are purchased. Perhaps I might cite a recent Melanesian case study of my own to illustrate the potential of collections made in ‘stationary circumstances to incorporate such frozen local agency. I have described this more fully elsewhere (O’Hanlon 1993); briefly, however, I returned in 1990 to the community in the Wahgi Valley with whom [ had earlier worked as an anthropologist, but now to make a museum collection. It was quite clear to me — and made clear tome -—that the community with whom I worked would demand

priority in offering artefacts for sale: they did not wish the money offered in exchange for artefacts to go elsewhere. The big-man in the community who sponsored me declared that people in the immediate local settlement should have first rights to offer artefacts for sale, followed by the remainder of the subclans making up the local clan; next, members of the paired clan must have priority, and after that members of the other two clans comprising the larger tribal group, followed in

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Exploring Tensions in Material Culture 63 Most company employees regarded this stipulation as just another useless directive emerging from the company’s ‘green table’ in Berlin. As Bernard Hagen, former NGC employee and later Director at the Frankfurt Ethnological Museum, wrote (1899: 79-80): ‘Rest assured that we could have secured dedicated people interested enough in the pursuit of natural science. Unfortunately their efforts were hindered by many ill-devised green-table decisions according to which each employee had to surrender his collection to the company. Taking this into account, who would spend his free time establishing collections?...

Eventually the decree was dropped, but by then the young men’s enthusiasm and efforts were all but gone.’ Some took to hoaxing company officials in Berlin. Amateur entomologist Stephan von Kotze found relief from the boredom of company administration in collecting insects. Fearing official confiscation

of his collection, he used his free time and ingenuity to fabricate a unique insect collection to satisfy the company’s demands. Among his

remarkable collections were thirteen-legged specimens, multicoloured insects and beetles sporting shiny shells made up of tiny glass fragments. The company officials were deeply impressed, and rushed the collection off to the Museum of Natural History in Berlin. There, Kotze’s hoax was soon discovered but he claimed that it contributed to the ultimate abolition of the NGC’s policy governing collecting.'* Disagreements with company officials also reduced the impact of

the few large-scale expeditions to Kaiser Wilhelmsland. In 1895 a number of scientific ventures to Kaiser Wilhelmsland were organised by the German Foreign Office, jointly funded by the German Foreign Office, the NGC and several other colonial organisations. The expeditions brought together naturalist Carl Lauterbach and part-time traveller and ethnographer Ernst Tappenbeck. Tappenbeck, the official chronicler of these ventures, soon clashed with NGC officials over the

detailed scrutiny they wished to exercise. Von Hansemann, on the other hand, objected to Tappenbeck’s personal attacks on the NGC in official reports. Von Hansemann therefore withheld the reports, contrary to the agreement with the German Foreign Office, and relieved Tappenbeck of his duties. Such episodes naturally had an impact on the effectiveness of the expeditions.'? Although the expeditions did contribute to a survey of the Ramu River in New Guinea, Governor

Hahl commented later that they were of little importance for the exploration of German New Guinea.°° The NGC venture into ethnography was also questioned in the German capital where von Luschan at the Berlin Museum was deeply dissatisfied with both the quality and the price of ethnographic objects coming from the NGC. While the original Finsch collection was certainly valuable, those arriving over the next decade did not contain any

64 Rainer Buschmann fresh categories of artefacts.*! Moreover, NGC officials had no qualms about over-charging the Berlin Museum for their ethnographic objects. Each artefact sent to Berlin carried an average price tag of about 25 to 30 marks, which von Luschan thought excessive. “The NGC remains above all a commercial enterprise, von Luschan complained, ‘so we can hardly reproach |their officials] for exploiting their monopoly in the most brutal manner [towards the Berlin Museum].’?

As negotiations between the Berlin Museum and the NGC were nearing a standstill, von Hansemann found another use for the artefacts collected by his firm. During the German Commercial Exposition of 1896, also known as the German Colonial Exhibition, von Hansemann and other NGC officials returned to their project of using arte-

facts to promote the colonisation of German New Guinea. From the very beginning the exhibition straddled a fine line between scientific inquiry and the commercial exploitation of the German colonies. The way in which ethnographic objects were displayed precisely illustrated

this ambiguity. The scientific section of the colonial exhibition attempted to align the artefacts according to the latest insights of eth-

nological comparison, while the ‘colonial hall’ used ethnographic objects merely as decorative backdrop to more pressing issues associated with settlement and commerce. Many ethnographic collections were on display in the scientific part of the exhibition, including those of important traders in ‘ethnographica’ (such as J.F.G. Umlauff) who sought to give their commercial collections an air of scientific legitimacy. The colonial exhibition also included major ethnographic collections from Kaiser Wilhelmsland where, as colonial curiosities, they served as a ‘decorative’ backdrop (von Luschan 1897: 65) to the artificial landscape of the German colonies being promoted. The popular success of the exhibition led NGC officials to consider

establishing a permanent museum exhibiting the commercial and ethnographic resources of the German colonies. A group of German colonial enthusiasts including C. von Beck, the Deputy Director of the New Guinea Company, launched a massive campaign to find a permanent home for the colonial exhibition's contents. Their efforts culminated in the creation of a joint-stock company, which was to ensure the creation and maintenance of such a museum in Berlin in 1896. The self-proclaimed purpose of this ‘colonial’ museum was educational as well as promotional: it was to inform visitors of the agricul-

tural and mineral products of the German colonies, and about the possibilities for emigration and financial investment. The indigenous population, serving as a labour pool for the development of German colonial interests, was represented through a multitude of artefacts and house models. The combination of artefacts, house models, and an artificial landscape communicated a sense of false harmony to the

Exploring Tensions in Material Culture 65 visitors. Colonial conflicts were erased, presenting the visitor with the image of an unspoiled paradise awaiting development by the German settler.2*? The exhibits of the colonial museum, including indigenous artefacts as trophies and colonial curiosities could only trouble ethnologists at the Berlin Museum of Ethnography. Felix von Luschan attacked the misuse of what he regarded as valuable scientific specimens in an institution that was a museum in name only. He deeply regretted the proposed union of colonial vision and

superficial ethnography on display in the colonial museum. The arrangement of the artefacts as colonial curiosities, following no particular order or taxonomy, was vehemently attacked. ‘|B]ehind the pompous name of “German Colonial Museum”, von Luschan wrote to one of his closest supporters, ‘some people attempt to establish a sort of panopticon for black odds-and-ends.** Elsewhere, von Luschan wrote in a review (1897: i) of the German Colonial Exhibition: ‘how could ethnographic collections of high value end up in the colonial gallery rather than in the |more comparative] scientific exhibition? Their sole purpose here seems to be empty wall decoration. They carry no labels, lack appropriate protection against dust and insects, and are rendered scientifically invalid.’ Contacting many important people within colonial circles, von Luschan hoped to put an end to what he regarded as a ludicrous venture.*? Popular opinion, however, supported the establishment of such an institution and von Luschan was fighting an uphill battle. However, conceptual clashes over the nature of indigenous material culture in Germany as well as restrictions on ethnographic collecting in New Guinea prevented the NGC from reproducing Godelfroy’s relative success. By 1899 the investment in ethnography proved to be no longer a viable option and was largely abandoned.

From Selling ‘Curios’ to the Large-Scale Commercialisation of artefacts: Max Thiel and the Hernsheim Company A third company engaged in the ‘ethnographica’ trade was the Hernsheim venture, which emerged as a strong commercial enterprise after the demise of the Godeffroy Company (Sack 1973: 65-6, 74-5). The company’s trade in artefacts developed slowly, and initially there was no money involved in such transactions. Max Buchner wrote to von Luschan: I acquired a complete collection, from a young man on Matupi. He had travelled extensively in the territory, and he was willing to surrender the whole lot

alter he and I had endured a horrible night of heavy drinking. When we

66 Rainer Buschmann finally brought our activity to an end in the early morning hours, the owner of the collection was so loaded that he was unable to provide me with concrete information about the artefacts. There was no time to wait around, because I had to leave on the next steamer. This is how one collects in this area!*°

The young man who ‘sold’ Buchner the collection was probably none other than Max Thiel, nephew of company founder Eduard Hernsheim and later manager of the Pacific operations of the German enterprise. Thiel, realising that such collections would fetch more than a few pints of beer, soon started to peddle ethnographic collections to German travellers in the region. He stockpiled such objects at his station on Matupi, a small island (also known as Matupit) off the coast of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain. His collecting may have lacked ethnographic direction, but the acquired artefacts did find buyers.’ In 1899, one of Thiel’s collections recently assembled in the far-flung stations of the Admiralty Islands, came under inspection by an expert

ethnographer, Georg Thilenius, who later became Director of the Hamburg Museum. He noted that, while the collection contained old pieces, it had been hastily assembled and generally poorly labelled. The reasons for the poor state were obvious: Those places visited by governmental steamers are entirely depleted of artefacts. The only white person in close contact with the natives is the hopelessly isolated trader, who is visited at the most once or twice [a year]

by a company schooner. Hailing from a rather low educational background, this poor soul has understandably very little interest in local ‘curiosities’, unless they are somewhat connected to commerce. Those occasional ethnographic acquisitions are usually sent as commodities to the main station from where they are eventually forwarded to a museum; sometimes they are intercepted by interested visitors before leaving the territory. One can thus hardly expect |these artefacts to bear] proper categorisation, places of origin, natives name, etc.?*

Whether or not Thiel took such criticism to heart cannot be established from the written record. By 1902, however, Thiel hired Franz Hellwig, a former employee of the Deutsche Handels-und Planta-

gengesellschaft to assist him in his collecting. Hellwig was not unknown when it came to the ethnography of the Bismarck Archipelago. A veteran of several years residence in the territory, he had accumulated a large collection which he advertised for sale.2? When he returned to German New Guinea as an ethnographic collector, it was not in the service of one of the many ethnological museums, but for Max Thiel’s Hernsheim company. This large-scale commercial ethnographic undertaking was related to what is commonly referred to in the German ethnographic literature as the ‘Matty-Mystery’.

Exploring Tensions in Material Culture 67 The ‘Matty-Mystery’ and the Fatal Union of Ethnographic and Commercial Concerns Among Franz Hellwig’s main destinations was a set of islands located in

the western corner of the Bismarck Archipelago which had recently come to the attention of the ethnological community. While the islands of Wuvulu and Aua entered into European consciousness through eighteenth-century maps as ‘Matty’ and ‘Durour’,’*® their relative remoteness from major shipping lanes left the islands pretty much undisturbed until ‘Matty’ was visited by an NGC steamer in 1893. Unable to recruit inhabitants from this island, the expedition’s leader decided to take some

thirty-seven artefacts with him. In accordance with the agreement between the Berlin Museum and the NGC, the collection ended up in Berlin’s Royal Museum of Ethnography where it came to von Luschan’s notice. He recognised that the artefacts forwarded by the NGC had little resemblance to those from the mainland of New Guinea (Hambruch 1908: 8). Based on the slender evidence of thirty-seven artefacts and

some written information elicited from Ludwig Kérnbach,*! von Luschan highlighted the importance of ‘Matty’ Island. What initially dazzled von Luschan was that this island, located only about 150 kilometres from the coastal areas, yet displayed a completely unknown pattern of material culture. Similarly, according to Karnbach’s first-hand observations, the inhabitants had a much lighter skin colour than their Melanesian neighbours. Their weapons, some spiked with shark’s teeth, seemed to suggest an affinity with some neighbouring islands, especially the Ninigo group, as well as some superficial connection to Micronesia. Although he was too careful a scholar to jump to conclusions, von

Luschan highlighted the surprisingly non-Melanesian nature of the inhabitants’ physique and material culture. Citing Karnbach’s asser-

tion that the inhabitants knew neither iron nor tobacco, he maintained that ‘Matty’ had been isolated from other areas for perhaps ten gencrations, a total of 300 years. Von Luschan also considered that the island of ‘Matty’ could shed some light on the development of Micronesia which was essentially a geographic construct lacking concrete ethnographic or anthropometric evidence. Although he refused to place it within the geographical category of Micronesia,*? von Luschan hoped a closer study of the ‘Matty’ region would contribute to an understanding of settlement in the area. Above all, his article was a call for a careful analysis of the island's material culture. Ideally this research should be based on a long-term intensive study among the people of the island. The most appropriate candidate for this venture was the NGC, whose officials, as colonial administrators of the territory, had a duty (Ehrenpflicht) to investigate the island's heritage (von Luschan 1895a; 1895b).

68 Rainer Buschmann AD pe OT

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To further his call for a systematic exploration of ‘Matty’, von Luschan sent a number of copies of his articles to German New Guinea. One of these copies quickly found itself, via Parkinson, in the enterprising hands of Max Thiel.’*> Von Luschan’s article prompted Thiel into a venture he had been considering all along: the opening of a trading station in the western islands of the Bismarck Archipelago. In 1896 Thiel sent the schooner Welcome, under captain A.E.V. Andersen, to Wuvulu along with a Mr Schielkopf, who was designated the resident Hernsheim trader for the island. Accompanying Schielkopf

were a number of labourers recruited from Buka. Thiel expected

Exploring Tensions in Material Culture 69 Schielkopf and his indentured labourers to establish a thriving business on ‘Matty’ which was to include, among the usual commodities, a fair share of indigenous artefacts. Andersen approached the island in a small cutter flying both the German and the Hernsheim colours. On the beach he encountered an expectant crowd of 300 indigenes who welcomed him. After elaborate

ereeting ceremonies, Anderson selected about 200 square metres of land in the neighbourhood of his landfall as the future Hernsheim station. While his attempts to purchase the land were initially unsuccessful, he invited a number of what he regarded as chiefs to his schooner where he asked them to sign a piece of paper designated as the legal document for land purchase. To expedite the process, Andersen gave each ‘chief’ an iron hatchet, satisfying himself that in this way he was obtaining legal title.

The encounter between the inhabitants of ‘Matty’ and the Hernsheim party was relatively peaceful until Andersen’s departure.’* He left behind Schielkopf with three young labourers from Buka and a quickly constructed shack with a corrugated tin roof. When the island was Visited by a ship in March 1896, only some weeks after the initial landfall, the station was found to be destroyed and Schielkopf and his Buka employees were missing. The naval survey vessel Mdwe was dispatched immediately to Wuvulu to find out what had happened. The labourers from Buka were the first to be located; they claimed that the

people from Wuvulu had murdered Schielkopf, forcing them to flee into the bush. The crew of the naval vessel, however, could find no hostility among the local inhabitants who continued their trade in ‘curiosities’ with the German sailors. Doubting the Buka version, the crew of the naval vessel took the labourers to Matupi for further interrogation. Ultimately the absence of other witnesses prevented a resolution of the case which ended in the colonial files (Hambruch 1908: 8-9; Firth 1982: 114; von Luschan 1900: 8). While the matter was considered closed by the colonial authorities, Max Thiel sought to profit from the ethnographic material which Andersen had brought back from the island. Arriving in Germany with von Luschan’s article under his arm and a shipload of artefacts

from Wuvulu, Thiel arranged for an exhibition at the Hamburg Museum of Natural History. A number of prominent visitors came to

inspect the 2,000 or so artefacts on display. One of them was von Luschan, the author of the very article which had caused the rush to the island. Thiel was sure he could make at least 20,000 marks for the lot and consequently rejected von Luschan’s attempts to negotiate a lower price.*? Although interested in acquiring the collection, von Luschan had reservations about its quality as, on first inspection, it seemed to comprise only further examples of the thirty-seven artefacts

70 Rainer Buschmann that had been the focus of his original article. Moreover, von Luschan claimed Thiel’s traders ‘had collected in the most abominable fashion. They deprived the poor |Wuvulu] people of thousands of weapons... enough to supply all museums in the world.’*° Von Luschan ultimately failed to secure Thiel’s ‘booty’ which was mainly purchased by Karl Hagen, interim Director of the Hamburg Ethnographic Museum, and a Mr Ohlendorf of Schwerin.’’

Ironically, von Luschan had fallen prey to his own article. His emphasis on the need for careful collecting in New Guinea had the effect of increasing the value in Germany of ethnographic commodities from ‘Matty’. Upset by the turn of events, von Luschan (1897: 71) voiced his concern once more, differentiating clearly between ethnographic research and commercialisation of the same activity: My publication |on ‘Matty’ | has influenced the representative of the |Hernsheim| company in Matupi, Mr. M. Thiel to instruct one of his captains to establish an ethnographic collection. Unfortunately this man did not fully understand his mission and has collected tremendous numbers of spears and clubs, all closely related to those appearing in my publication. Yet he has collected nothing which could in any way get us closer to the scientific questions surrounding the origin of the Matty islanders. In fact we still know very little about them; not a single hair of theirs has been analysed nor a single syllable of their language. The whole exercise amounts to a plundering action unique in the history of ethnography which has failed to yield any significant scientific results.

Von Luschan reiterated something which Caesar Godeffroy had known several decades earlier, that undocumented objects were mere ‘curiosities’. If the commercialisation of ethnographic artefacts was to be successful, then documentation had to be part of the process. Even

Thiel had to agree to this point, but he took great offence at von Luschan’s characterisation of his collection as ‘plunder’. For several years their relationship was anything but cordial, since Thiel thought von Luschan to be out of touch with commercial realities governing the German territory. ‘Do you honestly think,’ Thiel asked one of von Luschan’'s close associates, ‘that I can lecture my ships’ captains about the ethics of international law?’*> Obviously he could not, but he could hire professional collectors to augment the quality of his ethnographic

collections. By doing so Thiel returned, for a short while at least, to Godeffroy’s extensive collection agenda. It was at this point, in 1902, that Thiel hired FE. Hellwig’s services for the Hernsheim company. True connoisseurs in ethnology were rare among the colonial residents in the territory; Richard Parkinson aside,

few individuals took an interest in the indigenous people. Hellwig,

however, proved to be a further exception and the collection he

Exploring Tensions in Material Culture it returned to Germany was generally well received by the ethnological community.*’ For Thiel there was more than just money at stake, as he wished to restore his reputation, tarnished by von Luschan’s comments on the ‘plunder’ of Wuvulu. Thiel had not forgotten the ethnographic interest in the western islands of the Bismarck Archipelago in general and in Wuvulu and Aua in particular. He therefore asked Hellwig to pay particular attention to this area and Hellwig duly spent a great deal of time on both islands, amounting to a year in total.*? This

figured as the first long-term ethnographic study in German New Guinea and was, ironically, a commercial enterprise. In many ways Hellwig’s stay on Wuvulu and Aua, among other places, was much more than Godeffroy could ever offer to his official collectors. Hellwig

was to enjoy the absolute support of the Hernsheim trading empire throughout the Bismarck Archipelago. Where Hernsheim’s commercial reach could not be felt, Thiel negotiated deals with other trading companies. This was particularly true for Wuvulu and Aua which, by 1902, became part of the trading empire of Heinrich Rudolf Wahlen who started to dominate commerce in the western islands of the Bismarck Archipelago.*!

The next step was the marketing of the collection among potentially interested parties in Germany, and Thiel used the travellers reaching the territory to spread the word to the German muscological community. Rumour had it that Hellwig’s collection was to be the last complete assemblage of artefacts originating from the Bismarck Archipelago.t’ The collection could have had no better advertisement, and many museums impatiently awaited its arrival in Germany. But what had happened, meanwhile, to the population on Wuvulu and Aua? Von Luschan’s assertion that the Hernsheim company had cleaned the islands of their ‘ethnographica’ in 1896 proved to be incorrect. When Richard Parkinson visited the islands in 1899 on the naval vessel Méwe he was greeted by the inhabitants of Durour (Aua) some six kilometres off the coast of that island. He counted about 110 canoes containing some six hundred people in total, all of them anxious to trade ethnographic objects (especially the weapons formerly collected by Hernsheim) for glass beads, knives, hatchets and other steel implements. There seems to have been an almost endless supply of these objects. On ‘Matty’ (Wuvulu) the same thing happened, leaving Parkinson wondering where all these artefacts came from. An answer to his query emerged when he was offered almost perfect wooden imitations of earlier traded steel hatchets (von Luschan 1900: 70-71, 73). Realising the bartering potential of their material culture, the inhabitants of Wuvulu and Aua were now almost mass-producing their artefacts. This industry might have continued for some years, but the increasing demand for ‘ethnographica’ also triggered a second wave of trading

f2 Rainer Buschmann settlements in the area. A permanent trading station was established on Wuvulu in 1900 and the same process was repeated on Aua two years later. The biggest single impact on the islands was the arrival of Wahlen with seven European traders and 100 labourers hailing from the malaria-ridden Aitape region of coastal New Guinea (Hambruch 1908: 10-11; Dempwolff 1904: 387). Although the main carrier of this disease, the female Anopheles mosquito, seems to have been endemic to Wuvulu and Aua, the actual parasite provoking the disease

was not. It was probably introduced in the bloodstream of infected labourers, despite Wahlen’s attempts to ensure that both labourers and traders took quinine regularly. Within a year Wuvulu experienced a massive drop in population. The original population — estimated to be between 2,000 and 2,500 people at the time of contact in 1893 — had

declined by late 1902 to about 1,000 inhabitants. Most people on Wuvulu perished not from malaria itself, but from the ravages of the disease which left them unable to withstand other respiratory maladies also introduced into the island. The massive drop in population was still going on when Hellwig reached the island in late 1902. A medical officer arriving with Hellwig, Otto Dempwolff, predicted that the decline

would continue (Hambruch 1908: 23-4; Dempwollf 1904: 411-13). Aua also felt the impact, although the population decline was less drastic than on Wuvulu. The ethnographic industry, which had been

stimulated by the Western desire for both ‘ethnographica’ and a saleable commodity, ceased to exist. Dempwolff (1904: 408), for instance, was unable to purchase any artefacts on Aua and Wuvulu only a few years alter Parkinson was overwhelmed by the extent of material culture there. The search for ethnographic artefacts continued because Wahlen was asked by several museum directors to provide more of them,*’ and because Hellwig’s employer, Thiel, expected great returns on his ‘investment’. With a decline experienced in the actual production of artefacts, another source was targeted: grave-sites. As

Wahlen’s traders busied themselves in finding shell ornaments and other ‘ethnographica’ among the deceased, their abuses triggered retribution.** Shortly after Hellwig’s departure from Aua in December 1903, a group of armed warriors killed the trader Otto Reimers. Fear-

ing swift governmental punishment, a great number of people boarded their canoes in an attempt to flee across the water to the Ninigo group. Poor weather conditions and overcrowded canoes caused several vessels to capsize. An estimated 370 people perished in

the incident, almost two out of every five inhabitants on Aua (Firth 1977: 114-15; Hambruch 1908: 10-12). The Aua incident did to that island what malaria did to Wuvulu. By

1904 ethnographically aware travellers commented on the state of the island. ‘The Hernsheim Company,’ Richard Parkinson complained

Exploring Tensions in Material Culture 73 to von Luschan, ‘has completely depleted Matty and Durour |of artefacts], itis an ethnographic raid with no equal’.*? Augustin Kramer, on a brief visit to Wuvulu in 1906, witnessed what he called the disinteeration of the island’s social fabric. While approving of Hellwig's research efforts, Kramer condemned the excesses on the island. ‘The trader,’ Kramer was told, ‘is now king of the island.’*° Dempwolff (1904: 413) put it more eloquently in 1904: ‘Eight years ago Luschan called upon |his fellow countrymen to explore the Island of Wuvulu]. His call was not answered. Now I[ am afraid that missionaries may arrive just in time to administer last rites to the dying few still remaining on Wuvulu.’ Dempwollf was not entirely right, because it was precisely the answer to von Luschan’s call that triggered the massive fatalities on Wuvulu and Aua. The much hailed ethnographic ‘salvage’ organised by Max Thiel and executed by Franz Hellwig had become somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophesy. But Hellwig’s collection could only benefit from the ‘fatal

impact’ emerging from the combination of ethnography and commercialism. When the much anticipated collection arrived in Germany, a short struggle over its acquisition ensued, involving the major

ethnological institutions located in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg and Stuttgart.?” Eventually it was the city of Hamburg that acquired this collection for the local ethnological museum. Georg Thilenius, who had just been appointed as the museum's director, managed to use his influence with the Hernsheim company to keep the collection in that city. The total cost of the 3,300 artefacts amounted to 20,000 marks, although some of this was defrayed by parting with duplicate artefacts and sending them to Berlin and Cologne.** Compared to the Godeffroy collection, which was similar in size, the amount of money obtained by Thiel was rather low. Moreover, contemporary sources estimated

that the collection had cost 20,000 marks to put together.*? This marked the end of the attempt to treat large-scale field collecting as a commercial proposition and, in some ways, Thiel’s project is better understood as an attempt to reestablish his reputation which had been tarnished by von Luschan.

Commercialism and Ethnography in German New Guinea German commercial company officials operating in the Pacific answered promptly Adolf Bastian’s call for ethnographic ‘salvage’. They did so less out of a need for a deeper understanding of the indige-

nous context surrounding their operations than for the commercial potential they could see in selling such products. Individual traders

74 Rainer Buschmann had often characterised indigenous material culture as ‘firewood’, indicating what they believed to be the proper use for the artefacts. This attitude changed, however, when the expanding musceological landscape in Germany provided new opportunities to sell such indige-

nous products. The most successful model combining both ethnographic and commercial concerns was that of the Godeffroy Company. Its success was based on a large-scale investment in the collection of

ethnographic material, including the hiring of trained personnel and the establishment of a museum. Until 1880 few individuals disputed the fact that the Godeffroy collection was the best ethnographic collection from the Pacilic Islands in Germany. The financial crisis which

befell the company, however, prevented a successful return on the long-term ethnographic investment. New Guinea Company officials also sought to capitalise from the ‘salvage paradigm’, yet their investment in ethnography was limited to

a series of contacts with their employees and the potential buyers of the ‘commodity’. Their own inflexible company rules prevented them from successfully implementing the Godeffroy model and by the turn of the century most prospective ethnographic collectors had left the service of the company. Serious conceptual disagreements with Berlin Museum officials also placed the continuation of the commercial collection agenda in doubt. The initial collection policy of the Hernsheim company paralleled that of the New Guinea Company. Hernsheim manager Max Thiel, however, reconsidered his position after the ethnological community questioned his collecting. Responding to such criticism, Thiel ultimately commissioned a collector to work in the Bismarck Archipelago. This collector undertook long-term residence on two crucial islands along the ethnographic frontier: Wuvulu and Aua. His actions represented true ‘salvage’ collecting, since the union of ethnographic and commercial interests triggered a radical decrease in the islands’ populations.

Ultimately, this incident in the western islands of the Bismarcks brought all large-scale commercial collecting to a halt. While individual colonial residents continued to collect, no major commercial com-

pany decided to invest in the development of ethnographic commodities. German museum officials drew their own lessons from the ‘Matty affair’. After 1904 many of them decided to send their own collectors and researchers to New Guinea. The museums’ earlier failure to establish a satisfactory relationship with German commercial firms is thus partially responsible for the arrival of the ‘expedition age’ in German New Guinea. But that is a different story altogether.

Exploring Tensions in Material Culture 75 Notes Abbreviations for manuscript sources:

BArch Federal Archives, Lichterfelde (R 1001: Imperial Colonial Office)

HAStk Main Archive, City of Cologne LiMSt Linden Museum, Stuttgart {Acquisition Files) MINderHUB Museum of Natural History, Berlin

MfVD Museum of Ethnography, Dresden (Acquisition Files) MIVH Museum of Ethnography, Hamburg (SS 1: Objects from the South Seas) RJMIV Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum of Ethnography, Cologne SB-PK Berlin State Library — Prussian Cultural Heritage (LuP: Luschan Papers) SMB-PK, MV Berlin Museum of Ethnography — State Museums of Berlin, Prussian Cultural Heritage 1. Parkinson to von Luschan 8 March 1898, SMB-PK, MV, IB Australien/E 224/98, Translations throughout are my own. 2. The literature on Adolf Bastian is vast. Some of the most prominent works include Bunzel (1996) and Koepping (1983). 3. There are anumber of works on German colonialism. For a good overview, consult Smith (1978). For an overview of German commercial activity in the Pacilic, consult Firth (1977). 4, Adolf Bastian’s publications often highlight the destructive nature of the commercial frontier. The correspondence files in the Berlin Museum (SMB-PK, MY, IB Australicn), however, illustrate Bastian’s interest in the many commercial companies operating in the Pacific Ocean. 5. Stephan to von Luschan 14 November 1907, SB-PK, LuP. Stephan file. 6, There is a vast literature on the commercial activity of the Godeffroy Company. For its ethnographic activity, consult Filleborn (1985) and Penny (forthcoming). 7. J. Kubary to A. Bastian 3 January 1884, SMB-PK, MV, IB 11/n.n. 8. Obituaries for Godeflroy are very telling indeed. 9, Perhaps the most prominent enterprise specialising in this trade was the Umlauff Company also located in the city of Hamburg. See Thode-Arora (1992). 10. The response was good, as illustrated by the many Godeflroy duplicates acquired by different museums in Germany. 11. Godeffroy envisaged getting about one million marks for the collection. The great majority of his ethnographic collection, however, went to Leipzig for 95,000 marks. The city of Hamburg acquired about 7OO ethnological objects from the Godeffroy Museum along with all the natural history specimens for about 50,000 marks. See Zwernemann (1980: 18). 12. von Gossler (Prussian Cultural Ministry) to Richard Schone (Director General of the Berlin Museums) 16 October 1885, SMB-PK, MY, [B Litt C/E 216/85. 13. von Hansemann to R. Schéne 3 January 1886, SMB-PK, MY, IB Litt C/E 13/86. 14. The negotiations between the Prussian Museum Administration and von Hansemann’s New Guinea Company are housed in the Berlin Museum of Ethnography, SMB-PK, MY, IB Litt C. The final agreement is filed under Agreement New Guinea Company and General Museum Administration 3 August 1886, SMB-PK, MV, IB Litt C/E 179/86.

15. The ethnographic collection’s price tag was almost 10 percent of the roughly 300,000 marks which the NGC had invested in Finsch’s collection. See Finsch (1899: 27-8). Finsch also remarked how the NGC entered the sale of the collection as ‘income’ in their business accounts. 16. Parkinson to von Luschan 25 April 1893, SB-PK, LuP, Parkinson file.

76 Rainer Buschmann 17. General Regulations Concerning Civil Servant Statutes in the Protectorate of the New Guinea Company (Allgemeine Bestimmungen tiber die Satzung der Beamten im Schutzgebiet der Neu Guinea Compagnie), von Hansemann 10 May 1891, BArch, R 1001, file 2410. 18. A search of the New Guinea Company Files at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin (MIN der HUB, SH — Neu Guinea Compagnie) neither confirmed nor disproved the account supplied by von Kotze (1925: 22—6). There is some evidence to support

von Kotze’s version in Hagen (1899: 8Q), as well as in Neuhauss (1911: 467), although the perpetrator is never mentioned by name. On a more personal note, I wonder if similar processes also occurred in the realm of ethnography. Besides numerous complaints against the company’s collection restrictions, my inquiry into German museum files did not reveal a comparable case of obvious forgery. 19. The planning of the Kaiser Wilhelmsland and Ramu expeditions is contained in BArch, R 1LOO1, files 2367-69. 20. Hahl to Wilhelm Solf (Secretary for Colonial Affairs) 4 July 1913, BArch, R 1001, file 2369. 21. See file IB Litt C, vol. 2, in SMB-PK, MY.

22. von Luschan to Karl von Linden (ethnographic collector in Stuttgart) 18 April 1899, LiMSt, Luschan file. 23. See, e.g., Krieger 1899; BArch R 1001/6360.

24. von Luschan to Admiral Strauch 29 November 1897, SMB-PK, MV, IB 46/E 1427/97. 25. von Luschan to the Regent of Mecklenburg Duke Johann Albrecht 10 November 1897, SMB-PK, MY, IB 46/E. 1340/97; J.AG. Umlauff to von Luschan 17 August 1899, SB-PK, LuP. J.A.G. Umlauff file.

26. Buchner to von Luschan 29 November 1894, SB-PK, LuP. Buchner file. Max Buchner was the custodian of the ethnographic collections in Munich and had the repulation of being extremely ‘difficult’.

27. Arthur Baessler (1895: 45-106; 1900: 279-86, 358-62): Parkinson to A.B. Meyer 20 December 1897, MfVD, Accession File Richard Parkinson. 28. Thilenius to Karl von Linden 3 March 1899, LiMSt, Thilenius file. 29. Felix von Luschan wanted to select some artefacts from the collection for the Berlin Museum, However, a rich patron bought the whole collection and donated it to Hellwig’s native city of Halle. See the exchange between Luschan and Hellwig in SMB-PK, MY, IB Australien/E 202/99. 30. The British captain, Carteret, christened the islets Maty (Wuvulu) and Durour (Aua). Hawksworth, while compiling Carteret’s travels for the British Admiralty, misspelled one of them, named alter the secretary of the Royal Society, as Matty. The early literature on these islands thus continued to carry this spelling until more detailed study of the eighteenth-century literature discovered the mistake. See Hambruch (1908: 7). In order to highlight the ethnographic interest, I have chosen to maintain the misspelling throughout this text by highlighting it with quotation marks, 31. Karnbach was the official leader of the Ysabel expedition to Wuvulu. 32. Kramer (1908) argued for the term ‘Para-Micronesia’ to designate what he called Micronesian outliers in Melanesia. Another term seems to be the Western Islands (of the Bismarck Archipelago) which include, besides Wuvulu and Aua, the island of Manu, the Ninigo group, as well as the Kaniet, Sae, and Luf islands. The term

Para-Micronesia is still very much in usage for these islands, although recent research suggests, much as von Luschan had done almost a hundred years earlier, that the Micronesian affinity was overemphasised in the literature. Henning Hohn-

schopp (1973) argues against the term Para-Micronesia, suggesting instead a ‘Wuvulu-Aua cultural complex’. 33. Parkinson to von Luschan 8 March 1898, SMB-PK, IB Australien/E 224/98.

Exploring Tensions in Material Culture 77 34. Andersen's report as recorded by EE. Hellwig can be found in Hambruch 1908: 9-10.

35. E. Hernsheim to von Luschan 26 August 1896, SMB-PK, MY, IB Australien/E 1018/96; von Luschan note to file 3 October 1896, SMB-PK, IB Australien/E 1131/96. 36. von Luschan to Naval Admiral Knorr 7 August 1897, SMB-PK, MV, IB 48/E 1009/97, 37. Umlauff to von Luschan 19 February 1897, SMB-PK, MV, IB Australien/E 181/97. 38. E. Stephan to von Luschan 14 November 1907, SB-PK, LuP. Stephan file. 39. On Hellwig’s collection see SMB-PK, MY, IB Australien/E 1056/98 and E 202/99. 40. Hellwig spent from November to December 1902 on Wuvulu, returning again for an extended stay in 1904. Between August and December 1903 he stayed on Aua. See Hambruch (1908: 10-11). Hellwig’s diaries are often mentioned in Hambruch’s publication but could not be located in the Hamburg Museum. 41. The deal between Thiel and Wahlen which guaranteed Hellwig unlimited access to Wuvulu and Aua, as well as all ethnographic objects collected by Wahlen’s traders, is recorded in an undated excerpt from a letter of Heinrich Richard Wahlen to Captain Jaspers (SMS Mdwe) SMB-PK, MY, IB 48/E 1289/03.

42. Berlin, for instance, was notified by the Imperial Navy, SMB-PK, MV, IB 48/E 1534/02; Cologne received word through an important traveller, Kuppers-Loosen, who collected for the local museum in German New Guinea, RJMI[V, 1905/21; Governor Albert Hahl notified the Colonial Division within the German Foreign Office 2 January 1904, BArch R1001/2990; Hahl also communicated the importance of the collection to Karl von Linden in Stuttgart 23 June 1904, LiMSt, Hahl file. 43. See, for instance, the Wahlen file in the LiMSt, 44, Hahl 1980: 105: see also Wahlen to Karl von Linden 15 April 1904, LiMSt, Wahlen file; a different view is expressed in Hambruch 1908: 11-12. 45. Parkinson to von Luschan 6 February 1904, SB-PK, LuP, Parkinson Lie. 46. Kramer 1908: 254-5; Augustin Kramer Diary 14 September 1906, vol. 16, LiMSt; Wahlen to Karl von Linden 15 April 1904, LiMSt, Wahlen file. 47. See, for instance: RJMFV, 1905/21; HAStk, Bst. 614, Nr. 449; SMB-PK, MV, IB Aus-

tralien/E 1536/04. 48. Thilenius to Parkinson 6 February 1906, MIVH, SS 1, vol. I; Thilenius claimed to have convinced the directors of the Hernsheim Company to sell this collection during an extensive dinner: see Thilenius to von Luschan 26 November 1904, SMB-PK, IB Australien/E 1724/04. On Hamburg’s financing of the purchase of Hellwig’s collection see Zwernemann (1980: 37-8). 49. Georg Ktippers-Loosen to Willi Foy undated letter, RJMIV, 1904/27.

Bibliography Andree, R. “Zur Ethnographie der Stidsee’, Globus vol. 39 (1881): 60-63. Appadurai, A. ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’ in The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective ed. A. Appadurai.

University Press, Cambridge, 1986, 3-63. Baessler, A. Stidsee-Bilder. A. Asher & Co, Berlin, 1895. ———., Neue Stidsee- Bilder. Reimer Verlag, Berlin, 1900. Bastian, A. Inselgruppen in Oceanien. Reiseergebnisse und Studien. Dimmilers Verlag, Berlin, 1883. ——. Der Papua des dunklen Inselreiches im Lichte psychologischer Forschung.

Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin, 1885.

78 Rainer Buschmann Bunzel, M. ‘Franz Boas and the Humboldian tradition. From Volksgeist and Nationalcharakter to an anthropological concept of culture’ in Volksgeist as method and ethic. Essays on Boasian ethnography and the German anthropological tradition ed. G. Stocking. University of Wisconsin Press, Madi-

son, 1996, 17-78. Clifford, J. "Of other peoples: beyond the “salvage” paradigm’ in Discussions in contemporary culture ed. Hal Forster. Bay Press, Seattle, 1987, 121-30. Dempwolff, O. ‘Uber aussterbende Vélker. (Die Eingeborenen der “westlichen Inseln” in Deutsch-Neu-Guinea)’, Zeitschrift fir Ethnologie vol. 36

(1904): 384-415. Finsch, O. Systematische Uebersicht der Ergebnisse seiner Reisen und schriftsteller-

sichen Thatigkeit (1859-1899). R. Friedlander & Sohn, Berlin, 1899. Firth, S. ‘German firms in the Pacific Islands’, in Germany in the Pacific and Far East eds J. Moses and P. Kennedy. University of Queensland Press, St.

Lucia, 1977, 3-25. ———.. New Guinea under the Germans. University Press, Melbourne, 1982. Fulleborn, S. ‘Die ethnographischen Unternehmungen des Hamburger Handelshauses Godellroy’, unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Hamburg,

1985. Hagen, B. Unter den Papua. Uber Land und Leute, Thier und Pflanzenwelt in Kaiser-Wilhelmsland. Kreidel Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1899. Hahl, A. Governor in New Guinea, ed. and trans. P. Sack and D, Clark. Aus-

tralian National University Press, Canberra, 1980. Hambruch, P. ‘Wuvulu und Aua (Maty-und Durour-Inseln) auf Grund der Sammlung E.E. Hellwig aus dem Jahre 1902 bis 1904’, Mitteilungen aus dem Museum fiir Volkerkunde zu Hamburg vol. 2 (1908): 1-154. Hohnschopp, H. ‘Untersuchung zum Para-Mikronesien-Problem unter besonderer Berticksichtigung der Wuvulu- und Aua-Kultur’, Arbeiten aus dem Institut ftir Volkerkunde der Universitat zu Gottingen vol. 7 (1973):

1-170. Jacobi, A. Ftinfzig Jahre Museum ftir Volkerkunde zu Dresden. Julius Bard,

Berlin, 1925. Kopytoff, I. “The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process’ in The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective ed. A. Appadu-

rai. University Press, Cambridge, 1986, 64-91. Koepping, K.-P. Adolf Bastian and the psychic unity of mankind. University of

Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1983. Kotze, S. von, Stidseeerinnerungen. Dom Verlag, Berlin, 1925. Kramer, A. ‘Vuvulu und Aua (Maty und Durour Insel)’, Globus vol. 93

(1908): 254-7. Krieger, M. ‘Das Kolonial-Museum zu Berlin’, Deutsche Kolonialzeitung vol. 12

(1899): 390-91. Luschan, F. von, ‘Zur Ethnographie der Matty Insel’, Internationales Archiv ftir Ethnographie vol. 8 (1895a): 41-56. ——. ‘uber die Matty-Insel’, Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft ftir Erdkunde zu Berlin vol. 22 (1895b): 442-9. ——. Beitrdge zur Ethnographie der deutschen Schutzgebiete. Reimer Verlag, Berlin, 1897.

Exploring Tensions in Material Culture 19 ——.'R. Parkinsons Beobachtungen auf Bébolo und Hun (Matty und Durour)’, Globus vol. 78 (1900), 69-78. Neuhauss, R. Deutsch Neuguinea vol. 1. Reimer Verlag, Berlin, 1911. Penny, G. ‘Science and the marketplace: the creation and contentious sale of the Museum Godeflroy’, The Journal of the Pacific Arts Association (forthcoming). Sack, P. Land between two laws: early European land acquisition in New Guinea. Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1973. Schmeltz, J. “Rudolf Virchow, in Memoriam’, Internationales Archiv ftir Ethnographie vol. 16 (1904): VIT-XIII. Schmeltz, J. and R. Krause Die ethnographisch-anthropologische Abteilung des Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg. Ein Beitrag zur Kunde der Stidsee-Volker.

Priedrichsen & Co, Hamburg, 1880. Smith, W. The German colonial empire. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1978. Thode-Arora, H. ‘Die Familie Umlauff und ihre Firmen — EthnographikaHandler in Hamburg’, Mitteilungen aus dem Museum fiir Volkerkunde Hamburg (N.E.) vol. 22 (1992): 143-58. Thomas, N. Entangled objects: Exchange, material culture, and colonialism in the Pacific. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1991. Zwernemann, J. Hundert Jahre Hamburgisches Museum fiir Volkerkunde.

Museum ftir Volkerkunde, Hamburg, 1980.

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i7a| Chapter 4

BEFORE [IT HAS BECOME TOO LATE: The Making and Repatriation of

Sir William MacGregor’s Official Collection from British New Guinea

Michael Quinnell

‘Sir William amongst other special qualifications for his office is an indefatigable collector and explorer and all who sail with him are expected to do

their best to pick up something’

‘The Collection belonging to this colony’: British New Guinea Sir William MacGregor’'s British New Guinea collection is a nineteenth-century colonial construct, distinctively — if not uniquely — in the Anglophone world an ‘official collection’. Essential to the narrative is the collection’s political nature: not only in its creation and purpose but also in its Australasian peregrination, repatriation and latent reappropriation. The collection was ‘political’ in the sense that it was a crucial instrument through which MacGregor expanded Pax Britannica. It was ‘political’ again in the sense that it was positioned uneasily at the intersection between the colonies of British New Guinea and Queens-

land through which British New Guinea was administered. It was ‘political’ when its integrity and, indeed, its possession were challenged. This chapter explores the formation and voyage of MacGregor’s supremely political collection.

82 Michael Quinnell Proximity to the Australian colonies was undoubtedly one reason why southeastern New Guinea attracted a sprinkling of mostly British missionaries, traders and explorers from the 1870s. British imperial interest in New Guinea was, however, slower to gestate. The Royal Navy visited the coast intermittently, monitoring British interests and occasionally bombarding recalcitrant villages to show them how to keep the peace. A British official visited New Guinea in 1881 and by 1883 he was based in Port Moresby, but proved ineffective, lacking legal authority and reliable transport. Australian colonial interests, suspicious of German expansion in the Pacific, pressed for an extension of British control, prompting the annexation of New Guinea by Queensland in 1883, an action repudiated by Britain. The Colonial Office bowed to Australian indignation in 1884, agreeing with Germany to divide eastern New Guinea between

them. The Protectorate of British New Guinea thus formed proved to be an interim measure. It lasted for four years, to be replaced by the Colony of British New Guinea.

The administration of the new colony was unusual: responsibility

was divided between London and the self-governing Australian colonies of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, each making financial contributions to its operation. All communication between the Administrator and the Colonial Office was sent through the Governor-in-Council in Queensland.

‘Timely warning’: Sir William MacGregor and ‘official collections’ MacGregor was ‘Goverman’ (ARBNG 1892-3: 23), he was ‘a great man; a man of vision’’ and ‘a very thoughtful man’* and, despite his erudition, he was at times a stubborn and opinionated man. The son of a Scottish crofter, MacGregor had a distinguished but somewhat frustrating Colonial Office career as doctor, administrator and Governor, serving for forty-two years in the Seychelles, Mauritius, Fiji, British New Guinea, Lagos, Newfoundland and finally Queensland (Joyce 1971). One facet of his time in New Guinea was characterised by a thirst for exploration and the pursuit of scientific collections. The routine requirements of administration were for him tempered by the necessity for exploration, an essential tool to promote the extension of government control. MacGregor came to British New Guinea determined to make ethnological and natural history collections. He had initially entered the colonial service ‘willing to make himself useful in science’, influenced as he was by his Scottish scientific and medical education (Joyce 1971:

‘Before it has become too late’ 83 6-10) and the Scottish collecting tradition (Wright 1998: 4, 26-7). His experience in Fiji (von Hiigel 1990: 105, 118, 137, 145; Thomas 1991: 162-77) had provided ‘timely warning’ against neglecting to make ethnographic collections before it was ‘too late’ (MacGregor 1897: 88). MacGregor intended to heed that warning. En route to British New Guinea, MacGregor visited Brisbane for briefing by the Queensland Governor, ministers and officials prior to assuming his appointment as Administrator at Port Moresby on 4 September 1888. During that time he consulted Charles de Vis, Curator of

the Queensland Museum, who agreed to send a natural history collecting kit to Port Moresby for MacGregor’s use. MacGregor became aware that British New Guinea Protectorate officials had already made natural history and ethnographic collections of both a private’ and an official nature.° MacGregor’s collecting kit was received in Port Moresby by the Government Secretary, Anthony Musgrave, and ‘forwarded to Dinner Island for the use of his Excellency — who is still cruising (and I believe collecting) in that division of the Possession’.’ MacGregor had lost no time; within a month of his arrival in New Guinea during his first official ‘visit of inspection’ he had begun making collections. But even then, there were signs that it was becoming ‘too late’, for he noted ‘it is not easy even already to get specimens of stone axes’ (Joyce 1971: 129).

The collection made on MacGregor’s first journey was the foundation of the British New Guinea ‘official collection’ for which he had to find a suitable home. The political relationship, proximity and contact

with de Vis made the Queensland Museum the logical choice. In August 1889 MacGregor approached the Governor of Queensland concerning ‘articles of natural history or ethnology collected by officers paid by the Government and therefore public property. ..They are an asset of the Government of British New Guinea, as they have been procured by its paid officers but it does not appear to me desirable that they should be kept in British New Guinea.’ He requested that provision be made ‘in the public museum in Brisbane, for the proper exhibition of New Guinea collections, as a separate and permanent branch of that establishment’. MacGregor wanted to build a collection ‘really representative of New Guinea’. He concluded, ‘should this proposal meet with Your Excellency’s sanction I would cause all official collections to be sent, when secured, to the public museum’.® The Queensland Government

agreed, and indicated that ‘a special portion of the proposed new Museum in Brisbane will be allocated for the exhibition of New Guinea collections, and that such specimens brought by Sir William MacGregor from the Possession as are now on hand will be placed on exhibi-

tion in the present Building’.? MacGregor declined to support an

84 Michael Quinnell initiative on Musgrave’s part to build a museum in Port Moresby on the grounds of expense.!° While promoting official collecting, MacGregor did not actively discourage private collecting by his officials. Indeed, he noted with refer-

ence to natural history collections, ‘To encourage those that carried guns in collecting, I allowed them the same advantages as I gave to my two private collectors. Of each sort of bird I took the first specimen: the

person shooting took the second; I the third and so on’ (ARBNG 1888-9: 48). Whether this procedure was applied to ethnographic collecting is not clear but Basil Thomson, MacGregor’s Private Secre-

tary, did acquire collections on that first ‘visit of inspection’.!! The Revd George Brown, himself a renowned collector, acknowledged MacGregor’s expectation that all who accompanied him should do ‘their best to pick up something’.

‘We exhibited articles of iron & coloured cloth’: the Process of Collecting The British contribution to the colony, the SS Merrie England,'? gave MacGregor mobility in local waters and the ability to communicate with Queensland ports that his predecessors had lacked. Despite its shallow draft, the steamer was of limited use for exploration except as an impressive travelling base from which to launch ‘visits of inspection’. These were carried out by whaleboat and steam-launch or on foot. MacGregor’s field parties always included Papuan members of the Armed Native Constabulary as well as boats’ crews or carriers. Increasingly over the course of his administration it was the Constabulary who mediated the nature of contact between villagers and government (Waiko 1993: 29). MacGregor’s parties not only represented the government; they were, by their very composition, an expression of colonial and indigenous political relationships perfectly understood by the Papuan villager. MacGregor invariably collected ethnographic material at points of government first contact on ‘visits of inspection’. He was in fact ‘trad-

ing’ for food to supplement rations as well as for ‘ethnology’. The acquisition of both became an essential part of his mode of operation. Thus MacGregor landed at Aworra Village near the Bamu River on 31 March 1891: All at first held the bow & great bundles of arrows in their hands... At last some of them laid aside their bows & arrows & came down to meet us. We exhibited articles of iron & coloured cloth which they at once wished to obtain... Dida brought me a man whom he saw was the chief & we put a

‘Before it has become too late’ 85 shirt on him. I gave him also a small looking glass & a few beads... We gave plane irons, hoop iron & beads for girdles & c. I gave a tomahawk for one a man carried containing a piece of brass bolt. We bought some boughs | sic]

& arrows. Their bows are made of palmwood... They carry also the head knife... When they want it to cut off a head they strip a piece off one side to give it an edge: & for every head they make a new edge. I bought one at Aworra which has cut off 7 heads and a new one not yet |use]d... One {man| called me ‘Aba’ & said they had no pigs; this was in reply to my request for a pig in exchange for a tomahawk... we have seen no women or children on this river... We purchased one unfinished net... We remained '/2 hour & finally we steamed away leaving the Aworra on the bank looking alter us & shouting out peace, the chief visible in his shirt, they really did not seem greatly relieved as is so often the case by our departure. !?

The act of collecting (and the reciprocal relationship established) became

a pragmatic procedure, part of his methodology for the spread of Pax Britannica at these first meetings between Goverman and villagers.'* Very little ‘official’ collecting took place in MacGregor’s absence, and

that occurred only on expeditions sent out directly under his orders. Government ‘trade’ was available to Resident Magistrates to pay for collections, but was not often used. There were other actions and processes

more useful to maintaining harmony at the local level. However, officials did collect privately while on duty. John Green’s diary entries for 1894 refer to collecting on nine occasions. He mentions face ornaments he collected at Domara, Cloudy Bay: ‘These curios have not been seen before, only these people make them. The Governor would like to get one I know but I intend to stick to them myself ’.!° We may ask whether the official ethnographic collections are any different from other contemporary collections. While collecting was part of MacGregor’s official policy, it was ultimately secondary to the prime aims of his ‘visits of inspection’ which were the spreading of

government influence and exploration. The important features that distinguish the ‘official collection’ are its mass, breadth and scope, the decade over which it was made, the singularity of its direction, its pur-

chase with Government ‘trade’, and fundamentally its ‘political’ nature and identification with MacGregor as Goverman. It is thus possible to differentiate and distinguish MacGregor — as both collector and Goverman — from the professional collector. But whether this distinction — blurred by the fact that MacGregor (Anon 1912) and some officials also made private collections — is reflected in the actual collections themselves has not been examined. The professionals were natural history collectors, the collection of ‘curios’ being part of a package in which new fauna or flora had pri-

macy. Most ethnographic collecting was therefore subordinated to some other purpose. In the case of the ‘official collection’, ethno-

86 Michael Quinnell graphic collecting had been integrated into the process of political control, but intellectually it was subsidiary to MacGregor’s personal pursuit of bird species new to ‘science’.!® MacGregor was aware that ethical questions were involved in acquiring collections. He condemned the collection methods on the Fly River of D’Albertis in 1884 who ‘wantonly robbed and plundered’, and those of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia in 1885 ‘whose “curiosities” were taken away without the consent of the owners’. He remarked: Of course such acts cannot be committed in the Possession now, as the actors would be dealt with in the police court, but it will take some time of fair dealing and kind treatment to elface from the native mind the impression left by carrying off those so called curiosities, which are to their native

owners neither more nor less than the family jewels and heirlooms, and which they can seldom be induced to part with even for the much-coveted steel axe or new shirt. (ARBNG 1889-90: 45-6)

In 1890 MacGregor impounded a collection acquired under unethical circumstances by Dr Lamberto Loria at Oro Bay. MacGregor noted that

Loria ‘is an enthusiastic collector and attaches great value to these ethnological specimens. But it must be made perfectly plain to collectors that the claims of science are to this Government subsidiary and insignificant when compared with its great aim to gradually render life and property secure’. However, he let Loria off lightly: ‘Dr Loria being so straightforward in regard to it, and the articles having been carried off in excess of scientific zeal, it seemed it might be sufficient to put an end to such practices, if the articles were taken possession of by the Government for restoration to their native owners’.!’ Parenthetically, subsequent comments by the English anthropologist, Haddon, on this incident reflect the tensions between collectors and national stereotyping of them. Following reference to the ‘collecting methods’ of the D’Albertis Expedition, he noted that: Dr Loria also an Italian... fired into the village to frighten the inhabitants away, then made a great collection... in the interests of science. Now, I am a man of science, and I have collected skulls and other objects in New Guinea; but I paid for everything I obtained... It is quite possible to collect without robbing, and I think we ought to repudiate this looting of natives. (Haddon in MacGregor 1897: 97)

MacGregor remained on good terms with Loria (MacGregor 1897: 24), publishing a contribution by him (ARBNG 1894-5: 39-43) and citing his opinion on the significance of the ‘official collection’.!®

MacGregor normally acquired his collections by purchase with ‘trade’. On the Morehead River ‘A considerable quantity of beads, tape,

‘Before it has become too late’ 87 cloth, plane irons, knives and tomahawks were exchanged for fish and native arms and ornaments’ (ARBNG 1889-90: 74) and in the Purari

Delta ‘For a plane iron they offered a dagger of cassowary bone’ (ARBNG 1892-3: 32). On occasion he received artefacts as reciprocal gifts: ‘A small present was left at a suitable spot on a ridge near Port Hennessy for the natives seen there. It was soon removed, and a return sift of native ornaments left in its place’ (ARBNG 1890-91: 15). MacGregor seized a collection only once: from the Tugeri (Marindanim) whose large extra-territorial raiding party he routed during a skirmish on the Wassi Kussa River in 1896. The survivors fled back towards Dutch territory some 250 kilometres distant. MacGregor’s

party collected ‘bows and arrows, water bottles, bundles of sago, cocoanuts, bundles of clay, hundreds of sheets of ti-tree bark, large numbers of handbags, and numerous other things.’ MacGregor noted that ‘Many of the articles captured from this people will be of much ethnological interest, well worthy of the attention they will no doubt receive when they reach the British New Guinea collection in the Queensland Museum’ (ARBNG 1895-6: 54—5). Thus, in one fell swoop, he added 1,563 items to the ‘official collection’. This was a conscious political decision on his part, to validate the substance of Pax Britannica and declare the inviolability of the colony's borders. Otherwise, when taking punitive measures, MacGregor’s standard procedure to demonstrate political control was to destroy weapons, not to collect them.!”

‘Representative of New Guinea’: the Nature of the Collection Once he had negotiated a home for the ‘official collection’, MacGregor began to collect in earnest. Five consignments of natural history specimens were sent to Brisbane between 1890 and 1892 before the first shipment of 2,876 ‘ethnological’ items that had been accumulating at Government House since 1888 was forwarded. Thereafter each year except for 1895 there were fourteen more consignments (sometimes in composite lots) of ethnology and natural history. For MacGregor ethnographic collecting was opportunistic; he could

only collect what villagers were prepared to trade, although he does appear to have acquired a representative sample of all that was offered. Sometimes only food was available for exchange and, on occasions,

people refused to trade artefacts (ARBNG 1889-90: 41), or circumstances prevented an exchange taking place (ARBNG 1889-90: 62). One consequence of first contact collecting is collection imbalance and gender bias. Forty-five percent of the collection comprises men’s tools and weapons. MacGregor often notes the absence of women and

88 Michael Quinnell children during such encounters although, when they were present, he did collect women’s material. The transitory nature of collection contact and the timing of visits on the basis of administrative necessity meant whole areas of material culture were often not available to MacGregor. This is undoubtedly the reason why the collection contains none of the Hevehe and Eharo barkcloth masks of the Elema people, masks made only in connection with intermittently performed ceremonial cycles. The collection comes from 178 localities in British New Guinea,

ranging from the western border to the German boundary on the northeast coast and through the islands of the southeast. Regionally,

the largest portion (20 percent) of the collection comes from the northeast coast (today’s Oro Province), 19 percent from the East End (Milne Bay Province), 10 percent from the southwest coast (Western Province), 6 percent from the southeast coast (Central Province) and 3 percent from the Gulf of Papua (Gulf Province). The remainder comprises the “Tugeri’ collection (18 percent) and artefacts to which no locality is attributed (24 percent). Documentation is minimal, at best a locality name and a date of collection though diary entries, published reports and vocabularies can be used to confirm or enhance this. The lower ratio of collecting in Central and Gulf provinces reflects a conscious bias on MacGregor's part. These were the areas where villagers had had longest and closest contact with missionaries, traders

and government, especially around Port Moresby and the nearby Mekeo and Rigo Agencies. There the ‘political’ rationale for collecting was not of prime consequence. They were the districts that had been targeted by private collectors since the 1870s and by the officials who

were collectors from the mid 1880s. MacGregor is likely to have decided that it was already ‘too late’, not so much because of colonially-induced change but because the people of those regions were already well represented in collections. This view is reinforced by the relatively large size of the collection from the northeast coast °° where MacGregor was often the first visitor and collector. Like collectors before him and since, MacGregor was captivated by the virtuosity and aesthetic appeal of Trobriand Islander and Massim artefacts. Unusually, he visited the Trobriands on ten occasions, the size of the collection reflecting his interest. He was able to note that implements and weapons were ‘disappearing fast’ (ARBNG 1892-3: 11) and that ‘Prices have risen some 300 per cent. since my first visit’ (ARBNG 1893-4: 19). The Massim collection is more focussed: he collected a series of painted shields! and a range of betel-chewing equipment. But again the brief nature of his visits possibly militated against a fully representative coverage. There are no kula valuables in the collection. The ‘official collection’, made largely during these fleeting encoun-

ters at first contact, is itself a vehicle for those agencies of change

‘Before it has become too late’ 89 which the Goverman represented. It was a means to an end that, at a personal as well as a national level, was soon transformed into an end in itself. Circumstances had prevented MacGregor from creating a colonial museum, but an ‘official collection’ served the same purpose, as an archive to codify ‘a degree of referred sovereignty’ (MacLeod 1998: 312). In his book, British New Guinea, MacGregor maps out the colony in terms of the artefacts he was collecting (MacGregor 1897: 48-66, plate 69): the country is classified by and thus becomes its objects. The appropriation, the totality and the classification (Stewart 1993: 153) of the collection can be seen as a metaphor for the physical reality of the British New Guinea that MacGregor was himself exploring (MacGregor 1895: 220) and the embodiment in the political sense of the British New Guinea he was governing.

‘Its formation and preservation I have watched with jealous care’: the Integrity of the Collection,

1894-1897

If relationships between museums and their donors can be difficult, there is potential for even greater friction when a museum acts solely as a repository for a third party; MacGregor zealously guarded the integrity of his ‘official collection’. During a visit to Brisbane in 1894 he learnt, in conversation with de Vis, that the Queensland Museum understood it had the right to exchange specimens from the British New Guinea collection.7- To this, MacGregor was strongly opposed and undoubtedly told de Vis so in the bluntest terms, for the Trustees later

note that ‘since Sir W. MacGregor on his last visit made known his views on the subject his wishes have been respected by them’.*? While in London in February 1895 MacGregor publicly stated his thinking in a lecture to the Royal Geographical Society: Timely warning has been taken of the omission by Fiji, Hawaii and some other

places to secure collections of the arms, implements, and arts, etc., of the natives before it is too late... The Possession... already possesses an extensive and very valuable collection of things illustrating the present condition of the natives; its natural history, etc. This will be added to, and, I trust, may never be broken up and dispersed. It is the property of the Possession, and should never be alienated under any circumstances. (Quoted in MacGregor 1897: 88)

On his return MacGregor raised the matter of ‘the public collection

belonging to this colony and now preserved in the Queensland Museum’ with the Queensland Governor, in a despatch in which he restated his standpoint concerning the Brisbane ‘conversation’ of over a year earlier:

90 Michael Quinnell I incidentally found that Mr De Vis, the Curator of the Museum, was under the impression that, with the approval of the Trustees of the Queensland

Museum, he could exchange with other institutions specimens from the British New Guinea collection, for articles of a different kind, which would... form part of the Queensland collection. From this view I entirely dissented.

MacGregor gave his reason for making an ‘official collection’: ‘The col-

lection belonging to this colony has been made with the object of its possessing as full a set of arms, utensils, products of different kinds, &c., as would illustrate its past and present position in the future.’ He went on to flag the future arrangement: The articles in that collection should not in my opinion be given away or removed on any pretence whatever, unless when by arrangement between the Government of Queensland and the Administrator duplicate specimens may be given out to the two other contributing colonies, or to the National collection in the British Museum. I respectfully state that [regard the Curator and Trustees of the Queensland Museum simply as custodians of the British New Guinea collection, and as possessing no power whatever to alienate any article in that collection.**

A copy of this despatch was forwarded to the museum and there ensued much correspondence between the museum curator, trustees and its controlling department, the Queensland Governor and MacGregor. De Vis informed the Secretary for Public Instruction ‘that the Trustees have carefully respected the wishes regarding his Ethnologi-

cal collections expressed by Sir W. MacGregor in that despatch, although they had not heard until his last visit to Brisbane that he wished them to be regarded as the property of New Guinea only’. He went on to indicate that ‘It will be obviously inconvenient to allow the unlimited accumulation of duplicate exhibits over which the Trustees

have no other control than that of caretakers’.-? A copy was forwarded to MacGregor.”°

Further bureaucratic wrangling followed, alternately trenchant and the ‘I write more in sorrow than in anger’ variety. Meanwhile, MacGregor and de Vis continued to correspond in regard to the natural history and ethnographic collections. By October 1896, the prize of a possible new species to bear the clan name was almost too much for MacGregor. While ill, he sent de Vis a new bird of paradise for description, requesting that it be named Maria MacGregoria after his wife. He continued, ‘I shall have many new birds for you soon for description but I shall not send them to Brisbane unless the absolute proprietry |sic| of this colony to every feather of them is recognized by your Government & Trustees’.?’ The final decision that the Queensland Government had ‘no desire to dispute the proprietary rights of

‘Before it has become too late’ 91 British New Guinea to these collections’ was however made at the highest political level.-® MacGregor modified his own stand while restating his position: The first and most important point is to make this official collection as complete as possible. To that | cannot but attach great importance, knowing as we do how seldom efforts are made to form a collection of that kind before

it is too late. Its formation and preservation I have watched with jealous care, but purely as a public question and from the New Guinea point of view. [ am now satisfied that it will be preserved intact and will not be broken up and dispersed... my only anxious care in this matter is to have the Collection of this Colony as complete as possible and its future preservation made sure.?”

In his 1897 statement, MacGregor put forward more detailed suggestions for the disposal of ‘duplicates’. Unique specimens and the best examples of ‘the same article’ should be placed in the British New

Guinea collection. Then duplicates ‘might be disposed of by the Trustees, first to fill up the vacancies in the national collections of the Contributing Colonies and in the British Museum, and the remainder might be used as exchanges for the Queensland Museum proper’. The latter would ‘be at the disposal of the Queensland Government as some acknowledgment for their cooperation in preparing and maintaining the British New Guinea Collection, without whose cooperation it could not exist’.

De Vis wrote directly to MacGregor: ‘the Trustees... are in agreement with you on the main points of your proposal. To the principal of them, the conservation of the collection in chief, I for my part shall loyally adhere, simply because my desire that it should be made and therefore kept as complete as possible has never faltered.’>” Once the debate about ownership was settled, the issue became one of management: MacGregor’s omnivorous collecting habits provided the face-saving solution to the problem. Defining parts of large collections as duplicates was standard practice in the nineteenth century and could be done without impugning the integrity of the collection. In the case of the British New Guinea collection, the consequent transfer of duplicates to other ‘National’ museums within the imperial framework would be understood as a redistribution rather than an alienation. De Vis duly made a selection of the duplicate ethnographic material for distribution. In the latter part of 1897, 949 items were sent to the Australian Museum, Sydney, 833 items to the National Museum of Victoria and 775 to the British Museum. Concurrently 1,635 items were identified as the Queensland Museum selection. MacGregor continued collecting to the end of his administration. His last major ‘visit of inspection’ was to the East End and the north-

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Understandably, Joyce sounded piqued. On the eve of his flight to Africa, Malinowski replied: I had to take over the lecture on Technology myself. I shall naturally concentrate on those aspects of Technology which I know best, that is the technology of construction, of industrial enterprise, of economic activities in the wider sense. **

This could only have rubbed salt into Joyce’s wounded pride. Worse still, Malinowski blithely told him (‘in confidence’) that he planned to enlist Camilla Wedgwood's assistance with the course on her return from Australia; he would pay her from his own pocket as the School was ‘absolutely obstreperous | sic] to producing an extra penny’. In the event, Camilla Wedgwood remained in Australia. Two years were to pass before matters came to a head. Although retired from the School, Seligman retained a passionate paternal interest in the wellbeing of the department he had sired and nurtured. After waiting a respectful interval following the grievous death of Elsie Mali-

nowska in September 1935, Seligman wrote to Malinowski in early March 1936 to protest that technology had not been taught the previous year, although it had appeared in the Calendar under Malinowski’s name. He felt ‘very strongly’ that it was a mistake to let this teaching lapse. He added: “Even now it has not been dropped officially so far as the University is concerned’.°*? It is clear from other correspondence that Malinowski’s expansion of his department had come at the cost of the museum-taught course on technology. In a lengthy, reproachful letter Seligman repeated his objections: the School had a technological syllabus in its Calendar and a definite

agreement with University College to teach it. He proposed to see the director, Sir William Beveridge, about the matter; but his chief quarrel was with Malinowski and his tacit indifference to the fate of technology teaching. ‘If in fact there is such shortage of money you are Technological Enemy No.1 for not having realised that after taking all the money for Cultural Anthropology there would be none available for Technology.’ *°

Seligman wrote to Beveridge, urging him to understand that ‘the future of Anthropology at London must suffer if teaching in Technology is dropped’. He suggested that Braunholtz might be employed in

The Careless Collector fe ke, place of Joyce, who was ailing.’’ Seligman sent a copy of this letter to Malinowski with a friendly invitation to meet for lunch at the Saville Club. The contention between them might well have been amicably resolved over coffee and brandy, for there is no response from Malinowski in the archive. But Seligman’s suspicions concerning his adver-

sary s motives were probably correct, and it does appear as if Malinowski’s tactic of ‘marking time’ by proposing to teach technology himself was designed to get rid of it altogether. The weakening of technology was perhaps inevitable in the broader developments which Malinowski spearheaded. It was a natural casualty of the process of making LSE anthropology more ‘practical’, more of a social science and less of a comparative history. An economic nudge was provided by the depression, which robbed the School of its Rockefeller milch cow. But the teaching of technology did not disappear and it was even revitalised in the years that followed. Evidently Seligman won the bat-

tle over whether it should be taught in 1936-7. Under a slightly revised rubric, ‘Primitive Crafts’ — a course of six lectures — was taught

by Raymond Firth in that year. The syllabus retained some Joycean elements, but the stress was now upon the relation of manufacturing techniques ‘to their cultural setting of economics, scientific know!ledge, ritual and art’. Firth taught the same course the following year (1937-8), which happened to be Malinowski’s last at the School. In October 1938 he departed for the USA on sabbatical leave. The war effectively exiled him and he did not return to England before his death in May 1942. Firth taught ‘Primitive Crafts’ once more in the Lent Term of 1938-9, but it appears to have been dropped from the curriculum the following year; in any case, the war forced the closure of the School in late 1939. Following its re-opening in 1944, Firth succeeded to Malinowski’s chair, and, before being appointed to a position in the School, Edmund

Leach taught a course of lectures on ‘Primitive Technology’. Subsequently, there was a curious reversal of history. By the late 1950s technology was being taught once more by officers of the British Museum. This time it was the Department of Anthropology at University College London, under the stewardship of Daryl Forde, that hosted the course on ‘Primitive Technology’ given by Bryan Cranstone and Adrian Digby.**

Coda The ‘altercation’ that Helena Wayne vaguely remembers between her father and the British Museum can be given a context. What follows is in part conjectural, for the documentary evidence is incomplete; but

the connections made are entirely plausible and warranted by their coincidence in time.

200 Michael W. Young In 1934 Joyce was piqued at being ‘sacked’ by Malinowski. To add insult to injury, Malinowski proposed to teach Joyce’s course himself,

and even to recruit an untrained female co-lecturer. By 1936 it had become clear that Joyce would not be reinstated, that Braunholtz would not be invited to replace him, and that the teaching of technology at LSE would remain in-house. As quid pro quo, Joyce and Braun-

holtz agreed it was time for Malinowski to remove from the British Museum the Trobriand artefacts they had been storing for the past filteen years. The excuse that the museum was short of space was nei-

ther more nor less true than the plea of financial stringency that Malinowski had used to oust Joyce. Piqued in turn, Malinowski had his

cases of artefacts moved to the basement of his house on Primrose Hill. It was about this time, say June 1936, that Malinowski authorised Ian Hogbin to approach the Australian Museum, but he soon changed his mind and informally approached the Pitt Rivers Museum. Henry Balfour inspected the collection and selected a few choice items, with

a verbal agreement to consider the rest in due course. Busy as ever, Malinowski did nothing further about the matter. He sailed off to America and gave the collection only passing thought during the years that followed. The rest, as they say, is history.

Notes For their generous help in my research for this chapter | thank Barry Craig, Elizabeth Edwards, Dean Fergie, David Kaus, Apolline Kohen, Mike O'Hanlon, Angela Raspin, Jim Specht, Ron Vanderwal, and, as always, Helena Wayne. Abbreviations used for archive sources:

AA ~ Australian Archives, Canberra AMS Archive of the Australian Museum, Sydney HPC Haddon Papers, Cambridge University Library MPL Malinowski Papers, London School of Economics MPY Malinowski Papers, Yale University Library NMV_ Archive of the National Museum of Victoria, Melbourne PRM _ Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxlord

1. Seligman to Malinowski 30 August 1921, MPL. 2. Seligman to Malinowski 25 July 1921, MPY, box 7/566. 3. MSS drafts and notes, ‘Culture’ Boxes, MPL. 4. Hanuabada Fieldnotes MPY, 24/197. 5. Stirling to Haddon 28 August 1915, HPC, envelope 8/24. The Natives of Mailu was published in December 1915 in The Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia; see Young 1989.

6. Malinowski to Seligman 20 September 1914, MPL. 7. HPC, envelope 2009. 8. Malinowski to Joyce 8 July 1922. Correspondence archives, British Museum, London.

The Careless Collector 201 9. Malinowski to Hunt 16 August 1915. Malinowski File, AA. CRS Al, item 21/866. 10. Seligman to Malinowski 15 August 1916, MPY, 7/565. 11. Field notebook, pp. 905-12; 921-39, MPL. 12. It was a selection of ‘exemplary specimens’ from this collection that the Lowie Museum exhibited in 1984 to commemorate the centenary of Malinowski’s birth. The exhibition travelled from Berkeley to the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson; thence to the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, New Haven, and finally to the Jagiellonian University Museum in Cracow, Malinowski’s

birthplace. One might wonder whether anyone remarked the irony of several ethnographic museums commemorating the man so widely perceived to have denierated them. 13. The sources for these figures are Norick 1976: 15 and Bolton 1980: 114. 14. Norick states that the Cooke Daniels Register of the British Museum (Ethnological Documents 1010) was in many respects ‘infinitely more valuable’ to his research on Trobriands artefacts than Malinowski’s ‘all too brief and imprecise notes’ (1976:

aL 15. Norick had been unable to study Malinowski's ficldnotes in the LSE archive as they remained uncatalogued in the early 1970s. 16. See Young 1998: 143 for a facsimile sample page. 17. Malinowski to Spencer 6 November 1918, NMV. 18. Malinowski to Spencer 6 November 1918, NMV. 19. Malinowski to Spencer 18 December 1918, NMV. 20. Malinowski to Spencer 17 February 1920, NMV. 21. Seligman to Malinowski 21 December 1918, MPY 7/565, 22. Malinowski to Kershaw 3 June 1920, NMY. 23. Malinowski to Joyce 8 July 1922: Joyce sent a cheque for £150 to Malinowski on 14 July 1922. Archives of the British Museum. 24. Memo to the Director 2 July 1936, AMS, 330/36. 25. Anderson to Malinowski 9 July 1936, AMS 330/36. 26. Harris to Anderson 25 August 1936, AMS 330/36. 27. Personal communication 25 February 1999. 28. Richards to Penniman 20 May 1946, Malinowska File, PRM. 29, Valetta Malinowska to Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum 11 July 1947, PRM. 30. Richards to Blackwood 12 September 1946, PRM. 31. V. Malinowska to Director 11 July 1947, PRM. 32. Blackwood to V. Malinowska 18 July 1947, and memo., PRM. 33. Joyce to Malinowski 9 May 1934, MPY 4/318. 34. Malinowski to Joyce 11 May 1934, MPY 4/318. 35. Seligman to Malinowski 2 March 1936, MPL. 36. Seligman to Malinowski 22 May 1936, MPL. 37. Seligman to Beveridge 23 May 1936, MPL. 38. I well remember, in 1961, Adrian Digby's enthusiastic demonstration of an Australian Aboriginal spear thrower (woomera) which involved embedding the spear in the rear wall of the Anatomy Theatre on Gower Strect.

Bibliography BAAS (British Association for the Advancement of Science) Notes and queries on anthropology, 4th edn. London, 1912. Bolton, L.M. Oceanic cultural property in Australia. Australian National Commission for UNESCO, Sydney, 1980.

202 Michael W. Young Braunholtz, H.T. Address in Professor Bronislaw Malinowski: an account of the memorial meeting held at the Royal Institution in London on July 13th 1942, Oxford University Press, London, 1943. Calendar for 1921-2. London School of Economics and Political Science. Koepping, K.-P. ‘Ethnographic collecting and the “new identity” of native

populations — an eristic argumentation for humanistic anthropology’, Occasional Papers no. 2. University of Queensland Anthropology Museum, 1973. Malinowski, B. ‘Baloma: the spirits of the dead in the Trobriand Islands’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute vol. 46 (1916): 353-430. ———., Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Routledge, London, 1922.

—_—, ‘The problem of meaning in primitive languages’, supplement 1 in The meaning of meaning eds C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards. Routledge,

London 1960 (originally published 1923), 296-336. —_—, ‘Stone implements in Eastern New Guinea’ in Essays presented to C.G. Seligman eds E.E. Evans-Pritchard, R. Firth, B. Malinowski and I.

Schapera. Kegan Paul, London, 1934, 189-96. ——.. Coral gardens and their magic, vol. 1. Allen and Unwin, London, 1935. —— ., A diary in the strict sense of the term. Routledge, London, 1967. Norick, EF ‘An analysis of the material culture of the Trobriand Islands based upon the collection of Bronislaw Malinowski’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California, 1976. Seligman, C.G. The Melanesians of British New Guinea. University Press, Cambridge, 1910. Stocking, G.W. After Tylor: British social anthropology 1ISSS8—1951. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1995. Urry, J. “Notes and queries on anthropology and the development of field methods in British anthropology, 1870-1920", Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute for 1972,45-57. Welsch, R., ed. An American anthropologist in Melanesia, vol. 1. University of

Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1998. Young, M.W. ‘The intensive study of a restricted area, or, why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands?’, Oceania vol. 35, no. 1. (1984): 1-26. ——.. Malinowski's Kiriwina: fieldwork photography 1915-18. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998. Young, M.W., ed. Malinowski among the Magi: ‘The natives of Mailu’. Routledge, London, 1989.

Chapter 9

FELIX SPEISER’S FLETCHED ARROW: A Paradigm Shilt from Physical Anthropology to Art Styles

Christian Kaufmann

Introduction This chapter sets out to show how and why Felix Speiser changed his anthropological focus while analysing collections he made in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) in 1910 to 1912. Faced with an unexpected

degree of local variation in the cultural forms of the islanders, he shilted his research from the study of physical anthropology to the study of art. Speiser saw two different measures of human diversity in these two data sets, evolutionary and historical. Although he set off for the New Hebrides intending to analyse cultural evolution from the

standpoint of biological variation, he came to understand human diversity as the result of long-range historical processes that led to the formation of local or regional ‘cultural complexes’ (Kulturkomplexe).

As Speiser defined them, cultural complexes were sets of structurally linked elements or culture traits. He developed this theoretical

core between 1914 and 1919 against an emerging anthropology of Melanesia. In his theoretical approach Speiser translated a model with which he was already familiar into what he saw as a tool for a scientific analysis of observed cultural facts. His model was that of molecular

chemistry, where a chemical formula expressed an arrangement of elements that formed a compound. Paradoxically, at the time he was still of the opinion that physical anthropology would yield more con-

204 Christian Kaufmann clusive results because of its more immediate link to humankind’s physical make-up. A key issue for Speiser and other anthropologists of the time working in Melanesia was the quest for evidence of the existence — or otherwise — of both a ‘pygmy’ race and a ‘pygmy’ culture. Speiser and other anthropologists saw the fletched arrow as a trait they expected to

find associated with ‘pygmies’ (see Sarasin and Sarasin 1889-1908, vol. 3: 427-8, vol. 4: 52; Basler Nachrichten 23 July 1919). The enigmatic fletched or feathered arrow of this chapter title refers to this preconceived idea that Speiser took with him to the field.! Subsequently this idea that particular groups would have particular material culture

traits helped structure his field collecting throughout the New Hebrides. But in the end, when Speiser analysed all the evidence he had collected in the field, he rejected the basic hypothesis he had orig-

inally set out to prove. Rather than a marker of a ‘pygmy’ race, the fletched arrow would become a pointer for him to seek cultural diversity as a locally-developed configuration of cultural elements.

Felix Speiser Who, then, was Felix Speiser?- Born in Basel, Switzerland, on 20 Octo-

ber 1880, Speiser studied at Neuchatel, Gottingen, Munich and at Basel, where he completed a doctorate in chemistry in 1904. He then received further training in pharmacology in Berlin and studied dyes in Leeds, before taking a position with J.R. Geigy & Co. in New York.

While in America he took the opportunity of visiting a Hopi Indian reservation in the American southwest for four weeks. Speiser published an account of this trip in two series of articles in the Sunday edition of Basel’s leading newspaper (Basler Nachrichten April/May 1908, January/February 1909). This experience in America set a pattern for his later fieldwork in the New Hebrides, where he chose to work on his own, swapping his Hopi horse for the small boats of planters, traders and missionaries, which allowed him to be independent of colleagues and as little dependent on colonial officials as possible. Speiser attributed his interest in ‘primitive cultures’ to his maternal

uncle, Paul Sarasin (1856-1929), a noted zoologist who had earlier conducted anthropological fieldwork in Ceylon. Speiser’s experience in Arizona further whetted his curiosity, and in 1906 he changed from chemistry to anthropology. With the encouragement of Paul Sarasin and Sarasin’s younger cousin Fritz Sarasin (1859-1942), Speiser enrolled at the University of Berlin from May 1908 to April 1909 to study physical anthropology and ethnology with Felix von Luschan, Director of the Berlin Museum of Ethnography. In Berlin, Speiser

Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow 205 learned the field methods of physical anthropology and museum collecting. The Sarasin cousins continued to play a key role in Speiser’s research for many years,°® but it was von Luschan who first encouraged his interest in the New Hebrides (Speiser 1950). From 1910 to 1912 Speiser conducted more than two years’ fieldwork, travelling from island to island in the newly formed Anglo-French

Condominium of the New Hebrides and Banks Islands and the Santa Cruz Islands in the British Solomon Islands. His methods were primarily aimed at documenting local peoples and their culture: he collected more than 2,000 items of material culture, recording their exact geographical origin; made a detailed photographic record of the villages he visited, and took many physical anthropological measurements. Subsequently, as Professor of Ethnology at the University of Basel

and Curator at the Basel Museum of Ethnography, he spent a further twelve months in 1929-30 in the northern Solomons, southern New Britain, northeastern New Ireland and the Sepik region, bringing back another important collection of objects, field notes, still photographs and even cine footage of a boy’s initiation on the Sepik. By this time, however, his trajectory had taken him from a concern with evolution towards a focus on art forms.

The Background to the 1910 Fieldwork: Physical Anthropology and Art In 1910 Paul and Fritz Sarasin had an immediate goal for Speiser. They wanted him to organise scientific field collecting in the island regions where one might hope to identify the remnants of man’s early culture. The Sarasins had an evolutionary world view and sought evidence of an early neolithic stage of culture analogous to the pile dwellers’ sites found on the shores of Lake Zurich, which were much in the public mind at the

time (see, e.g., Sarasin and Sarasin 1897). They even hoped Speiser might find examples of a late paleolithic or mesolithic stage. They were eager to be able to demonstrate a very early evolutionary sequence such as the ‘pygmoid’ Veddah (or Wedda) in Ceylon, whom they had studied

twenty years earlier and as recently as 1907. Finding evidence in Melanesia for the presence or absence of pygmies related to the Veddah would provide clues to the different evolutionary stages of humankind.

To solve this typological problem would require data from physical anthropology, mainly from craniology, and from material culture. Speiser’s first professional paper (1909), a rather slight piece about

decorated Santa Cruz arrows, offers us a glimpse into his thinking. Written before he set off for the New Hebrides, it reflects a nascent interest in art. The first paragraph defines the unity of this collection of

206 Christian Kaufmann arrows as all ‘expressing the same style’, despite the fact that ‘no item is exactly analogous to any other’. It was because the arrows ‘are that

congruent in all essential parts, that their common origin (Heimat) becomes immediately apparent’ (Speiser 1909: 308).* He noted the absence of a flight-balancing mechanism — no fletched arrow thus far — and proceeded to analyse the fine ornamentation on the foreshafts.

He found traces of typological development of an earlier form with barbs, commonly present in the Solomon Islands, and concluded by suggesting that these elaborate decorations were the ‘stylish and beautiful products of an artist who works consciously and in a fully controlled manner.’ In his last sentence, Speiser (1909: 311) said that he would like ‘to take these observations much farther (auszuspinnen), to conclusions of far-reaching potential’, but these were beyond the scope of his text.

These were bold words for a young natural scientist only recently turned anthropologist. His view that such decoration was the work of a Melanesian ‘artist’ tallies with von Luschan’s position,’ but is far removed from what we might expect from someone about to collect material culture and physical anthropology data for an evolutionary project. How should we read this? Von Luschan himself was first and foremost a physical anthropologist. He had recently published for the Berlin Museum the third edition of Anleitungen ftir ethnographische Beobachtungen und Sammlungen in Afrika und Ozeanien (1904), a collector's field guide and the German equivalent of the British Notes and Queries on Anthropology. This guide

suggested that even non-specialists should try to obtain photographs and hair samples and ‘as large a series of skulls as is possible’. Collectors should obtain a coherent series from one locality, if possible ‘without causing irritation and unhappiness’ (von Luschan 1904: 121-2:

see also Schindlbeck 1993, 1997). During the years from 1900 to 1914, von Luschan advocated a physical anthropology interested in all things physical, including all sorts of material things as well as their aesthetic impact, whether objects, people, architecture, or landscape:

an encompassing approach shared by A.C. Haddon, Karl von den Steinen, Ernst Grosse and Franz Boas. In von Luschan’s field guide, ‘art’ was not treated as a subject in its own right but was included under different headings, such as ‘Body

Decorations’, ‘Processes of Production’ and ‘Religion, Ritual, and Mythology’ (1904: 98-110). Von Luschan’s (1904: 98) introductory statement encouraged the collector to learn the local language because ‘we now know |unlike Finsch in 1888] that all these works of art are based on religious or mythological, or otherwise important ideas’. We may assume that Speiser was familiar with von Luschan’s ideas about methods of field research as laid down in the latter’s paper on

Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow 207 ethnological studies in the Sepik (von Luschan 1910). From his training in Berlin, Speiser would have been led to believe that man’s physical characteristics would reveal something about his ultimate origins, while works of art would provide reasons for the variety of cultural forms. Similar forms in a large series would point to a common origin (Heimat) of the sub-set. Artists were their authors. Artistic production was thus seen as an integral part of material culture inasmuch as aesthetically efficient ways of expression pointed even more directly to

the social and ceremonial life of populations studied than did their everyday implements or their patterns of warfare. How material culture would relate to religion was thus a promising question for debate, even in the vision hinted at by young Speiser. For Speiser and his peers, trained by a generation of evolutionists, it was obvious that while questions of cultural meaning required time for learning local languages, ‘physical things’ were immediately accessible for study by methods they felt had been tested scientifically and which now belonged to the core of a natural science approach. There

was a sense of urgency to understand the diversity of ‘utilitarian’ material culture before moving to ‘luxury objects’ linked to art and ritual. In this respect, Fritz Sarasin (who later became Speiser’s superior at the Basel Museum) was strict in demanding that proper field collecting had to provide the basis for all further analysis, including that of art, which Sarasin himself did not recognise as a separate category for field collecting even as late as 1936.°

‘Salvage’ Anthropology for a Disappearing World By 1910 the catastrophic effects of Western impact had already reached the interiors of the largest islands in southern Melanesia. The populations of most coastal areas and of the smaller islands suitable for coconut or coffee plantations had been particularly hard hit. From 1830 the New Hebrides had been affected both by devastating foreign diseases brought by ships seeking water, firewood or sandalwood, and by ‘Blackbirders’ and recruiters seeking labour for plantations in Fiji or

Queensland. The desire to control the labour trade and to establish traders and planters had led Britain — with the support of its Australian colonies — into joint action with the French in the area from 1890, culminating in the establishment of the condominium in 1906. For the British, control was intended to protect the local population, if only as a reservoir of local labour, whereas the French were not free of colonial greed for land. The effects of European incursion had not only led to a steep decline in local populations in the New Hebrides but also had a devastating

208 Christian Kaufmann effect on the morale of survivors in coastal communities. The British Resident, Morton King, established the first comprehensive census in 1910, recording a total of 64,555 indigenous inhabitants that cannot be very far off the mark. By 1910 Aneityum, the southernmost island, had only 11 percent of the size of population known to have been present in 1859. Speiser (1991 [1923]: 37-9), following a careful evaluation of all sources available to him, estimated the overall decline during the nineteenth century at as much as 90 percent. More recent authorities have tended to lower these estimates to something of the order of 50 to 60 percent (Rallu 1990, 1996; Spriggs 1996: 93). Whatever the exact figures, the swilt decline in population established the sense in Speiser and other anthropologists that this older and more ‘primitive’ world was rapidly disappearing. Depopulation continued after 1910 (Deacon 1934: 19-20), but the largest losses had occurred about thirty years before Speiser arrived. Despite, or perhaps because of this, access to human remains, particularly skulls, was relatively easy. The depressing reality of human life in the islands led Speiser to react decisively in support of the indigenous communities. In his popular travel account of 1913 and in other essays, Speiser (1922; see also Frankfurter Zeitung 21 May 1911) publicly blamed the attitudes of the two colonial administrations for not reacting effectively to protect the people from cheap alcohol and guns, which had made local communities completely dependent on a few European traders and planters.

Speiser’s Field Practices Early in 1910 Speiser set off from Marseilles, visiting first Sydney and

then Noumea. Fritz Sarasin was planning to spend nine months the following year in New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands, on his own field project documenting the forms of zoological and anthropological life on these islands. Sarasin would bring with him the zoologist Jean Roux from the Basel Museum of Natural History and he expected Speiser to make arrangements for them in Noumea. Speiser interrupted his own project in the New Hebrides in February and March 1911 to help launch the Sarasin-Roux expedition in New Caledonia (see Sarasin 1916; Sarasin and Roux 1914-29). But otherwise he spent from May 1910 to April 1912 travelling around the condominium with few interruptions. Speiser did not begin fieldwork proper until July 1910, having ‘wasted’ two months at a French plantation at the Canal de Segond in the south of Espiritu Santo at the instigation of the French Resident (Speiser 1913: 37-52). Following this delay, he worked as independently of French administrators as possible and travelled from island to

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210 Christian Kaufmann island by whatever means of transport was made available by traders, planters, missionaries or the British Resident. Speiser visited some communities in the New Hebrides and Banks Islands repeatedly dur-

ing his travels. And in May and June 1912 he managed to visit the Santa Cruz group and even Tikopia on board the Southern Cross, the Anglican mission steamer. Speiser recorded little about his collecting practice, but from the few notes that have survived we can see that he followed von Luschan’s advice to collect skulls.’ We can also assume that he discussed collect-

ing strategies with Fritz Sarasin in some depth when they were together in Noumea in 1911. The most vivid images of his collecting style come in popular reports sent to Basel’s leading newspaper (Basler Nachrichten 29 October 1911, 5 November 1911 and 12 November 1911; see also Frankfurter Zeitung 21 May 1911). People in Basel would read how a mission doctor helped the young anthropologist hire four Ambrym youngsters to assist him with his collecting in neighbouring villages. Speiser gives a general description of his collecting:

the White man arrives and the women and children retreat with a variety of cries. Slowly the men and boys come closer and his crew of four explain the White man’s intentions, which regularly provokes

intense laughter and disbelief. Next they question the White man about his name, where he lives, whether he will be stingy with his money, his likes in food, tobacco and drinks, how many guns or pairs of trousers he owned, and so on. Concluding the interview, they form an opinion as to whether the White man should be treated as a dangerous Magician — in which case everyone would retreat — or as a fool.

The latter response immediately provokes the men to test him, trying to sell worthless old objects at very high prices. This begins long negotiations about what to offer and what to sell. Apparently Speiser did not find these transactions very satisfying. Often, at the moment of leaving, those who had refused to take any interest in selling an object would, with a simple nod, motion him into a corner and sell the same object they had vehemently refused to part with earlier. He apparently purchased objects with money, because in one text Speiser mentioned that the men would need money equivalent to 40 Swiss Francs (about US$300 today) to buy one of the locally valued pigs with prominent tusks. But when asked for skulls, the people seemed to react somewhat numbly. They would simply point to a repository in the bush or, more rarely, fetch a skull on a high pole (Basler Nachrichten, 5 November 1911). Elsewhere in this series of newspaper articles, Speiser writes about

a man from Dip Point on Ambrym, who had volunteered to accompany him as a guide to other parts of the island. ‘Only through him was I able to obtain a number of pieces that I would otherwise not

Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow 211 even have seen. He really understood what I intended to collect. Women came on their knees because they are not allowed to walk in the presence of their men, and brought... mats, baskets, arm rings; the men also brought small items’ (Basler Nachrichten, 12 November

1911). Speiser goes on to describe how most people handed their object to a third person who would negotiate the selling price because both ‘sensibility and pride’ demand that they avoid rejecting the White man’s requests for certain objects and his offers when too low. Speiser’s attempt ‘to buy a few bull roarers’ leads to some embar-

rassment and he is hushed into the men’s ceremonial house. He describes his impression of being in ‘a real museum, where my mouth is watering’ in view of the ‘splendid things’ hanging there, such as mask costumes, ritual objects and musical instruments. However, these things still mean too much to the community to be given away and there is stalemate. Eventually, an old man ‘in a trembling state’ hands him a carefully wrapped bull roarer with instructions not to show the object to anyone outside the house. Speiser also

buys ‘some of the less well-done masks’ (Basler Nachrichten, 12 November 1911). These two brief stories make it clear that Speiser was alter objects in daily use as well as those that were aesthetically and ritually important. We may assume that he was not always so fortunate in locating an intermediary as he was in western Ambrym. Overall, the picture was darkened by Speiser’s strong impression that the local populations were so depressed that they lacked any drive or cultural vision. On visiting the Santa Cruz Islands in the British Solomons at the end of his fieldwork, Speiser was struck by the difference in terms of the more relaxed colonial administration and in indigenous life, for he found people were still actively engaged in making items of material culture that were already a thing of the past in the New Hebrides. When Speiser returned to Melanesia in 1929-30, his interests had

become much more firmly based in what we would now view as anthropological methods. His field notes, typed while still in New Britain, show that he enquired about local languages as well as social

organisation and mythology, even though the main concern of his work was collecting material culture for the Basel Museum of Ethnography. While he conducted some research in physical anthropology, it was no longer a central activity because he brought with him Heinrich (Heini) Hediger, a zoology student at the University of Basel, who was

explicitly instructed to collect zoological specimens and assist with

anthropometry (Hediger 1990: 47-49, 61-94). It is clear from Speiser’s cine footage that masks and masked performances captivated his imagination and that visual representation had now moved clearly to the centre of his interests in the field.

pds Christian Kaufmann Thus Speiser’s collecting was not that of an eighteenth-century collector of curiosities, nor that of a nineteenth-century missionary. Aside from his preconceived idea about the fletched arrow in Melanesia at the start of his fieldwork, Speiser seems to have collected with a relatively open mind, looking for both the familiar as well as the unusual. Considering the short time spent at each island or village, his collections are quite representative, although they also have gaps. His personal interest in art seems to have kept him on the lookout for both the typical and the innovative, and he seems always to have wanted to document variation.

Analysing Speiser’s Collections: the ‘pygmy question’ The collection Speiser brought back from the New Hebrides and Banks

Islands in 1913 consists of 1,826 objects and about 1,620 field photographs. A separate collection of 303 objects from Santa Cruz was also accessioned that year, together with six objects and twenty-four photographs from Tikopia.*® An undetermined number of other objects were considered ‘duplicates’ (Doubletten). Belonging to an identified type and not needed lor demonstrating the typology, they were not cat-

alogued but were exchanged, donated or sold to other museums and public collections in Hamburg, Geneva, St Gall, Cologne and Dresden, and possibly to Bern, Zurich and other places. Because Speiser was also responsible for collecting on behalf of the Natural History Museum in Basel, there was, as might be expected, considerable material in zoology and physical anthropology as well. In the annual report for that museum in 1913, Fritz Sarasin gives high praise to Speiser’s zoological collections, ‘though limited in numbers they are rich in rare items’ (1914: 12). The anthropological material consists of 400 skulls, sets of measurements from approximately 500 individuals and a number of photographs. Thus, while Speiser is now best known for his ethnological collections he clearly also spent considerable time pursuing the interests of von Luschan and Sarasin in obtaining physical anthropology specimens. As might be expected from his association with the Sarasins, Speiser took a closer look at the so called ‘pygmy question’ in Melanesia and

other evolutionary problems, addressing these first in his 1914 man-

uscript (published as his 1991 [1923] monograph) and then in a paper fourteen years later (1928). He also returned to this question in Speiser (1946b). In his monograph, he concluded that ‘The first point to notice is that nowhere in the group are there any indisputable traces of a paleolithic settlement; the present culture is that of Neolithic hoe-farming’ (1991 [1923]: 399). Then, turning to the ‘pygmies’, he stated:

Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow pA Be The population that clearly differs anthropologically from the other in the New Hebrides — the pygmies — may be dealt with first. The question whether

they are to be segregated anthropologically from the other Melanesians, that is, whether the pygmies are not simply a mountain variety of the coastal Melanesians, will be left open. If the latter were the case, it would have to be assumed that the pygmy population split off from the coastal people a very long time ago, for the emergence of small stature is only conceiv-

able as the result of long isolation. This isolation of the pygmies may be regarded as particularly probable because of their very limited cultural possessions, for they lack important items of material culture... Nevertheless in their regions there are many phenomena alien to other areas of the islands: the feathered arrow, pottery, the T-shaped hut. (1991 [1923]: 399)?

Speiser went on to discuss whether the Sakao population of northeast Espiritu Santo, who were considered culturally ‘primitive’ because

of their lack of ‘sculpture, plaiting, masks, and so forth’, could be equated culturally with the ‘pygmies’. His list of material culture absent among the Sakao directly echoes the list of items of material culture that were also absent among the ‘pygmies’ (1991 [1923]: 399). At this point he raised the question of whether the fletched arrows he had collected only in the interior of Santo could be a positive marker of ‘pygmy’ culture. To this, Speiser gave an ambiguous answer; and he did not consider that the data from physical anthropology were adequate to clarify the question. In his 1928 publication on the physical anthropology of the peoples of Santo, Speiser concluded that groups of small average height like the Sakao showed fewer differences from their taller neighbours than from short-statured groups on Malekula. He therefore concluded that

the ‘pygmy’ or ‘pygmoid groups’ were not a race all their own and never had been. Here Speiser felt it plausible that isolation in the interior, combined with a lack of salt and protein, might have produced these ‘modifications’ — aterm Speiser preferred to ‘mutations’. He cited a letter from Revd F.G. Paton to the effect that these modifications are

reversible: as soon as children got better food at the Mission school they grew taller than their parents (1928: 165). In a 1946 statement on recent findings of Pithecanthropus, Speiser (1946b) was even more explicit: none of the ‘pygmy’ or ‘pygmoid’ groups of Oceania, Southeast Asia, or Africa were remnants of an early race, long separated from other human groups. They lacked the common physical traits one would expect, and they had not even the slightest knowledge of a common language. Their differences from larger-statured groups were therefore cultural and mark them out as foraging groups who had retired to forest and mountain zones. They depended as much on their neighbours as they defended their own identity from them.

214 Christian Kaufmann From Speiser’s evidence of cultural variation, we might imagine that the question of whether the ‘pygmies’ and the Sakao were truly ‘primitive’ had become peripheral to him. Whatever the cultural relationships between the ‘pygmy’ groups on Malekula and the Sakao on Santo, if they ever did represent separate strata these would have to have been overlain by ‘nambas culture’ (a culture named after the local term for the men’s attire). In any event, there were no clear indicators

of any historical or evolutionary sequence from the distribution of racial types. And when Speiser considered the facts of material culture, analysed according to material, form and distribution, it was clear that the important variation was the vast difference between the ‘pygmies’ and the real latecomers, the Polynesians. Physical anthropological evidence was either unavailable or too uncertain to be helpful. No wonder, then, that he concluded his monograph by bidding farewell to the physical anthropological problem of what the migration of new races may have contributed: ‘It will be the task of those who study the anthropological material from the New Hebrides to supply the answer to this question’ (1991 [1923]: 402). Ironically, having bid farewell to these biological problems, it was Speiser (1923; 1928) who produced the first detailed physical anthropology studies about the New Hebrides. But, at the same time as he was publishing these studies, he was also publishing further studies about the region's art (e.g., 1929a, 1934, 1936) and was increasingly involved in artistic matters, becoming a member of Basel’s Arts Board in 1927. The overall drift from physical anthropology to art, then, was a sort of zigzag in search of an efficient way to analyse and explain cultural diversity in Melanesia. Speiser looked at historical processes with

the pragmatic attitude of a natural scientist, even though by 1933 this approach had led him to reject the idea that race and culture could be seen as closely interrelated. !°

Developing a Theory of Cultural Complexes Of the two sets of reference material that Speiser had brought back in 1913 -—about physical anthropology and about objects as indicators of culture — Speiser had in fact tackled the second set first. He prepared drawings and photographs of 1,055 items for publication in his mono-

graph (1991 |1923]), which was basically finished in 1914 and turned in as a Habilitation thesis at the University of Basel. His method was both systematic and comprehensive in scope, discussing whatever earlier published information he could locate in the accounts of mis-

sionaries, traders, settlers, sea captains and government officers. He evaluated these accounts, adding his own observations and, in effect,

Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow 215 provided the first ethnographic overview for most of the central and northern New Hebrides including the Banks group. To get an idea of what parts of his collection Speiser valued we can turn to the plates in Ethnographische Materialien (1991 [1923]). Of 109 plates, seventy-two are devoted to objects. To the 1,055 objects

from his own collection Speiser added illustrations of 111 further items from collections in Le Havre, Leipzig, London, Hamburg, Paris,

Melbourne and two private collections. In addition he included 153 sketches of objects seen during fieldwork but not collected, and he added a number of field photographs to document the main variations in wooden and tree-fern sculpture. While privileging to some extent items with a strong aesthetic message that Europeans in 1914 would have considered as either ‘beauti-

ful’ or ‘full of strong expression’,!! Speiser did not neglect small, utilitarian items. His plates were an important step toward typologising variation in forms, but at the same time by presenting a wide selec-

tion of types he kept signaling that the reader should consider the importance of the small differences between one knife, or arrow, or carving and the next, especially if they came from neighbouring localities. It is in keeping with Speiser’s early appreciation of artists that the illustrations convey this message more than his text.

Speiser based his comparative cultural analysis on his detailed knowledge of objects and other cultural features. His grouping of objects in the series of related plates in his 1991 [1923] monograph reveals his selective criteria (see Table 9.1): a type may have several

important variations. In his 1919 contribution to the Sarasin Festschrift, Speiser tried to give a first comprehensive view of where his

analysis had brought him. Unlike more senior branches of science, ethnology, in his view, lacked knowledge of a key ‘factor in any ethno-

logical formula: the working pattern of human consciousness’ (Speiser 1919: 142). The strategy he proposed in order to fulfil the requisite scientific analysis, defined cultural elements that would aggre-

gate into cultural complexes, ranked on a historical-evolutionary ladder, but following multilinear pathways. Human groups would easily recombine elements from different complexes but only by amalgamating elements from a lower, more ‘primitive’ complex into a ‘higher’ and more developed one. Conversely, an element from a higher order complex would not really integrate with older elements and the latter would persist. Here, the fletched arrow of the Sakao made its appearance again, even if only as a local invention (1919: 153). Speiser saw this model as explaining why introduced elements from industrial cul-

tural complexes, such as firearms, alcohol, or Christian marriage, would inevitably destroy the original cultural complexes. A synoptic presentation took the form of a matrix in his 1991 [1923] monograph

216 Christian Kaufmann Table 9.1: Speiser’s selecting and grouping of object types.

The plates in Speiser 1991 (1923) follow more or less the thread of the main text of the work; the numbers below reter to the plates. Those plates showing primarily field photographs of material culture items too big to collect, including houses and ceremonial structures, or of items in use, are not taken into account here. Plate

19 Household utensils, e.g. containers of everyday use and tor kava

20,24 Scrapers and shell knives, fish trap, utensils for food preparation and cooking, pig ropes

2228 Pudding knives in an almost complete series, and wooden nalot pestles as well as bone spatulae

24-26 Baskets and containers made trom wood and stone; traps

27 Pigs’ jaws, tusks and ceremonial gear

Peo Oe A Tools for fishing, and planting bP Ais Stone adzes and axes, with and without handle

34 Combs

35-45 Adornments and then clothing the human body, including tattoo

46, 47 Male and female belts; a small sample of items related to ethno-medicine

49-59 Weapons: spears, bows and arrows, individual clubs

60 Thirty-eight types of clubs in sketch drawings, not meant to represent individual items

6] Slings and toys

The first two sections show a certain basic homogeneity across the whole area while at the same time indicating a relatively high degree of regional diversity in form, e.g., lor pudding knives, pestles, spears, arrows and clubs.

64 Canoe outfit and equipment, and carrying bags 65, 66 Ceramics and two different procedures of pottery manutacture on West Santo

67-77 Textiles in the broad sense of the term, starting with plaited containers and ending with the designs applied by reserve dyeing methods, e.g., stencils

78 Barkcloth (painted and feather-decorated tapa) and valuables, i.e., shell money

In this third section regional and even local specificities become apparent.

81-85 Overmodelled skulls, shell money; ceremonial equipment like dancing sticks, amulets, movable figures

90-95 Masks, pig-killing clubs, sculptures and paintings

98,99 Ceremonial masks

102,103 Ceremonial masks and outfit; musical instrument 106,108,109 = Musical instruments In this section dedicated to objects of ceremonial use, the quota of items represented from the total of items collected or seen is markedly higher than in the other sections.

Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow 217 (reproduced as Table 9.2 in this chapter). Here he identifies significant cultural elements and notes their geographical distribution. Grouping together cultural elements that ‘have coextensive areas of distribution’ allows Speiser to identify ‘the special character of the culture bringing

these items to the New Hebrides. However, scrutiny of |Table 9.2| shows that very few items are coextensive in their distribution... they

are rather found overlapping in a quite irregular pattern’ (1991 O92 51399): Starting with the ‘pygmies’ and the Sakao as the supposed relics of the most ancient culture, where the fletched arrow, perhaps, serves as a marker of isolation, we move through a series of other strata. The next most ancient are elements of nambas culture, where penis covers made from small mats or fibre bundles are interpreted as corresponding to female fibre skirts. For Speiser, the nambas culture was a pre-pig and probably pre-kava culture, spreading from New Caledonia in the south into the New Hebrides. He noted regional differences in the distribution of some important elements belonging to this complex: bam-

boo combs, fear of the dead, stone rings set up around graves. Boundaries were thus overlapping boundaries, such that the next cultural complex — the pig and kava culture — arrived from the north bringing the horizontal drum, the triangular comb, the trochus armlet, the armlet of shell beads, fine plaited mats, and possibly tattooing, the

pestle, the three-part bone arrow and the house base of dry-stone walling. Since these elements never reached the southern islands, a break in inter-island relations is suggested.

The most recent complex, the suque culture, had (according to Speiser) developed in the Banks Islands where the secret suque society practised chiefly ancestor worship (1991 [1923]: 402) and was associated with breeding tusked pigs. The suque complex spread rapidly over all the northern islands, especially on Ambae, Maewo and Santo where the more sophisticated form of ancestor worship had not penetrated. In other areas where masks and statues were used, it became linked with these. Thus the suque culture did not correspond to a uniform cultural complex but took on a somewhat different configuration in each locality. Speiser’s elaborate effort to define a series of structured cultural complexes suggests how he tried to reduce the highly differentiated regional scene — both in cultural and biological patterns — into a model

that systematised relationships, and in so doing recalls his early uni-

versity training in chemistry. However, he did not stop there, but brought us one decisive step further by opening the door to human inventiveness, temperament and needs, as well as including a role for historical change. Basically, he argued that any cultural item might be

reinvented in an appropriate context. Thus, to trace historical

218 Christian Kaufmann $ 8 z & DISTRIBUTION OF y% S € EE 5 c o 2 PRACTICES w% 3EZ _ Z4g 2 >S$ See 2K e SEER EEE SES ERPS RHA Zade

25 FS : g5 ¢& 8 oa 5 5g. EVERYDAY % ARTICLES AND

aha PRererer Saddle-roofed house K xX X X K X X — = (Xe) X BEX KX XX

Nose omament xX =—- x x x -~- ? 7? -~- x x - - x 7? 2? ? Simple curved bow XX - —- = X = ? * KX X X KX X - - *?

Anthropophagy Xx X X X XX XK KX MK XK X - Adze with angled helve RK RE Ke OR KE fo ee RX T-shaped house KX-r-frrerere err rer rer er er ee Leaf garment for men BS Ske * en eee Sa ee ee ae Re a

Leaf garment for women Kee e- = eee eke ee = 2 - He = =

Scarification x (xy) () - x - - x - X - = = = = = = Ear omament (xy) - = = = = = - - —~ =~ xX x x x x '?

Arrows without foreshaft K----2e| fe f= |= fe ee ge es He =

Feathered arrows Ke =- = = = ee ee eee He eK

Javelin in one piece XK - =~ = = - = = XX XX - = = = = = =

Panpipes 28 BRK E27 KOK. KOK. KR EK XR aE

Shell trumpet TR UR RS KS RRR RK ORO ROK KOKORO Strings of shell beads (x) (x) &) (x) (&) (x%) ? 7? - - () xK KX KR x x ?

Honzontal drums (x) x xK xX X xX ? ?} X X X X & X X x ? Burial in house x x (XX) - -—- x 2? - - —- —~-) - xX @®- -

Kava 2 AR I To OR Bo OK Segregation of sexes - KX XxX x x x ? 9? x x =--=---2f+ee--. Pottery (NyN—- - =-=|- e=- |= - ge ge Hee ge ge ge =|

Nambas ae SS ae a a eee: SE ee ee Fringed skin for women - - * XX K x 2?- XX - = = e- ee

Circumcision - - * xX xX x ? ? x x - - - - - = = Bark belt - - * X ®* KX XX — XX =- =| =| = SK Bamboo comb - -—- X* X ¥ x xX ? x xX XX - = = = =

Four-knobbed club - —- X®¥ X X *¥ x? - 2? - = = = = = =

Long flute - - xX x xX X ---- * x x x x x ?

Thrusting spear - =- xX x x x ? x - - - = += = = = = Bone spatulas - - x kx x x ? ? =~ = Kx K —- x xX XxX ? Wooden comb —- xX X X — coe oat spr ts, Aase tah ol

Arrow with binding - - x X* X xX xX ? = =~ X KX X K XX ?

Trochus armlet - - X Xx x x ? ? = = x x x xK x x ? Upright drum - - X KX X X¥X XX - = =~ = = = = = = Stone rings - - X* kK X KX x ? = = x xX xX - X xX ? Dolmen =-=—=- Xx XK =~ * 7? = = = =m =m =e =m —- -

Spear-throwers - —~- ()@®- = - = x x == - - -- -

Skul] deformation -- = X - = - = = Se suits ~eiate ae eee Comb with human face -- - x -- -- Sd, cit, Soke See eee Es

Skullmasks statues TS—aXot(x) et -ea ee Skull — ee ea S-shaped bows > a OR > aoe me ee ee ea Conical masks ga Sika = ray ne Pe epee aioe Teed a kw Been ee ck J cineca

Pyramidal masks a Ai GN se oy iaM Noe ccenih wince “Haat mit NEO waar hse St at te

Dance staffs —-—- £8 e-—- =e ee ee se ew He Dance axes —-=- —~- X =- === ee ee ese ewe ee

Club with face Bi Bon ED ween ese OME. ectiyny ek. ae, Mgils Tp ae laaee Cee Sanur Tet

Jew’s harp Benth fast cen sa A et recast we gE Ve Moe Nhe

Spider’s-web maternal a om sea AMD CRe aks te, ee es Ts as LE oe

Table 9.2: Speiser’s matrix of cultural elements from the New Hebrides, the Banks and Torres Islands.

Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow 219

3 3 g ee y%S EEE = €£ Sara

Bets bG_ g88e 228482 oY a Seka Z EPR SR GE EFS ceBES FFBSESCORBE GR ZASAZASE Wooden terror masks - =- -~-=- X X =- = = = = = = = = = =

Head-rest - =- -=- = - —~ = X = = = = Throwing-stone cc Niche grave —- - --- =- = = = XX = = ee ee Amnilet of coconut shell = - =--|-- - = = = Ke = =- = = = |

Pierced omamental Tapa - - ---=- Kk *® Xstones a Ovula as chief's omament — = = = = = = = (KY KX - - - - = = =

Pubic mats for men —- (x) - - - ~ =— = = X x (x) - - - -

Pubic mats for women - =- --- = = KX & = & X (XP) - - - =

Irrigation - flute - -- ---- =--=- = == XX Transverse - -~ —XXXX X === == =| Spear staff - =- ~ -~-@®- - - - =~ XX X X = KX xX = Rayed club - - --- - - = = = K = KX — (XP - Delicately dyed mats - - +--+ -+- 7 ®*& = = XX XX —- XX =

Paddle club =- =—- (XY}- - X = = = X X = X = K = =

Mat money - = = = = = = =e = = KK KX | H| - = Tattooing - - - -— (&) - xX xX * x x &) Wood-point comb -~ = =— —- — = = = (KX) — X (KX) -— X (CX) -

Wooden eating-knife —- - (&)- - - =~ - -=- - xX KX X xX x x ?

Men, naked -> — ae ? x ae x? Pestle a a Wooden dish with foot - + XK Kark & 2

Stone base for house - (x) | a Ty Coo > Sey GaN Plaited wood-point comb ~ = = = = = ®X XK K (XY) - - - '?

Asymmetrical bow - = = = FF Fe ee eee He = KK

Sculptured house posts - - --- =- xX xX - = Feather money Se,Kkae= Sounding board - - ==:St- -et ------

Skin-headed drum a a Round eating-dish - X =~ - = = = = = = = = = KK XK =

Hat mask —- - -- - = = = = = = = = = & (xX) -

Barrel-vaulted house = = =e ee Fe ee Hee He He = = K XK

Awl-shaped arrows - =- =---- - - = = = = = = = = Xk

Tooth excision - x (x)x - - =- = = = = == X = = = Sickle-shaped club > x =— = - _ o— — — = = XY -— K - =

Nose coil —- X —-- - = = = = = = = = = = = =

Bamboo resonator —- X —--- - = = = = = = se =e ese = Platform bunal Phallic stones - - - -~- =xX = =oe = Xoe = =ee = Mummification - -—- (x)- - - -=- = = = = = = X (XY =- =

Inserted axe head - - -- = = ~ =—- XX =- =- = =- = = = Ancestor houses —- = xX xX @®&- - - - - - = = = x ? ?

Skull cult - x *& xX xX 2 PF = = = = = = & XK X

Statues = = XX XX XX X = = = = = = = x x ? Suque ES MEY RR, AK. A eS VR ROR RE

Tusked boars SR RS I TS ee ee TS The crosses in brackets indicate thal the item occurs only sporadically or has only recently been imported. Question marks are inserted where the occurrence of an item is probable but not supported by concrete evidence.

Table 9.2: Continued

220 Christian Kaufmann processes of exchange, invention and adaptation — which, for Speiser, were cumulative processes — it is necessary to identify elements that are interrelated because of their common origin and to separate them from independent inventions and developments. Objects of a utilitarian nature tend to be developed into their ideal,

functional form. These forms depend on what the mechanical functions really are, and on the materials being used to create the objects. All the objects Speiser labelled as ‘luxury items’ are linked to nonmaterial functions of life, such as ritual, dance or adornment, and show a much broader range of variation. Drawing conclusions from a classification of decoration without considering their underlying significance would be especially prone to error (1919: 157-9). For Speiser, this line of argument allowed him to preserve the fundamental model of a controlled scientific explanation of observed facts, like a natural science experiment, because, besides the diffusion of cultural elements, ‘new items of culture appear, for which the origin is to be

sought in the inner disposition of man himself, rather than in the culture of others’ (1919: 247). Speiser developed this argument further in his analysis of art styles in Melanesia (19 36) and Oceania (1941).

In light of this analysis, we need to consider the role that ‘art’ played earlier in Speiser’s thinking. Originally, his interest was not so much in sculpture or other kinds of plastic art, but in motifs and ornaments found in larger series of objects. In his 1915 paper on decorative art from Santa Cruz, we find, surprisingly, in a very short paragraph, the key to his method. In an obvious reference to his pre-fieldwork analysis of arrows (1909), he wrote that abstract forms are used ‘to create rhythmic series’ at the ‘artist’s urge to activate a surface’, the artist working with ‘almost constant elements of form.’ As a result, ‘complexes of form’ are constantly changing because of ‘the artist’s

action of varying organisation and composition’ (1915: 323-4, emphasis in the original). Here the chemical engineer attempted to come to grips with the world of art and culture: stable (or almost stable) elements, recombined by an artist into complex configurations — or should we say compounds, as in chemistry — which form the very basic structures of local or regional cultures. The chemical formula,

that is to say, the ‘complex’ or ‘compound,’ makes the dynamic arrangement of ‘elements’ evident. Here, the ‘elements’ lay out the metaphor behind the structure, while ‘the artist’ helping to arrange the elements stands for human consciousness and inventiveness, for human feelings as well as for their expression. Reread in this way, Speiser’s whole method, which was earlier mis-

takenly viewed as additive and mechanistic by the present writer, becomes structurally almost as transparent as a display case. It also makes much more sense as an explanation of historical processes. For

Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow PPM | each complex configuration, the list of elements has to be read as representing the pertinent structural order in its historically determined form; it is not merely a ‘shopping list’ for historical reconstruction. The difficult point to understand is that Speiser listed, as elements of the same order, object types as well as different types of social institutions

and cultural behaviours, including religion. While object types are informed by the naturalist’s abstractions of physical things seen and analysed, the ethnological abstractions from real life do not allow easy verification. On this point, Speiser simply believed in his discipline’s ability to categorise coherently. Defining cultural complexes was thus the first step in defining the field of cultural action that was not predetermined by utilitarian function. For Speiser, ritual function lay at the origin of such decorative ele-

ments as the bird, or more specifically, the frigate bird (see Speiser 1915: 328; Haddon 1902 [1895]: 266 who acknowledges Codrington as appreciating the bird’s ritual significance). But art forms can also survive the end of a functioning ritual context. They can even be further developed along with new ideas that somehow become associated with traditional ones. Either new ideas are so powerful as to reintegrate forms into a more developed stage of that style, or the forms themselves become blurred and confused. In this context, Speiser invoked both the Santa Cruz style, where the bird motif is central, and the suque style of the northern New Hebrides, where it appears as a combination of circular and triangular formal elements, referring simultaneously to the tusked pigs needed for sacrifice, and to the ancestral spirits. Thus, geometrical patterns could carry highly abstract meaning. Often we do not know about this meaning. Nevertheless style remains more than the way we do something; for Speiser it needed a basic representational idea (‘realistische Vorstellung’), an idea rooted in the real world.

Speiser’s Contribution While Speiser’s work as a field collector remains to be fully appreciated

and understood, this chapter has attempted to show how his analyti-

cal conclusions largely emerged from study of these collections. Through the historical sequence of his publications, Speiser’s interests gradually shifted away from the physical traits of the peoples he studied (and their material products). Ultimately he focused on studying and displaying how art in these societies revealed a different record of human history. From his earliest publication on Santa Cruz arrows to his first temporary exhibition about decorated mats in 1925, to his exhibition with

Zee Christian Kaufmann Paul Wirz on Art and Ritual in New Guinea (Speiser and Wirz 1931), to

the Art Styles of the Pacific (1941) and the installation (jointly with Alfred Buhler) of a permanent exhibition of malanggan from New Ireland at the heart of the Basel Museum of Ethnography, we can see clearly the different stages in Speiser’s drift away from physical anthropology toward the arts. [ronically, over that period he had felt himself to have become particularly competent as a physical anthropologist. Speiser developed his comparative study of material culture by careful analysis when drawing or sketching an item, exactly as he did with craniology. It allowed him to visualise types as well as their important variations. His theory of cultural complexes established a scientific model for exploring the ways by which different cultural elements aggregated into

functional units. In marked contrast to his travelogue of 1913, these publications only obliquely reflected the realities of Pacific life, even as they depicted the realities of particular objects in great detail.

Speiser’s analysis of art styles almost immediately opened up for him a concern with local creativity (1909; 1915; 1936; 1941). This

creativity, in his view, took the form more of re-creation than of inventing from scratch. It responded to local needs — for example, by creating and advertising local identity through ritual processes such as initiation (1929b, 1945/46) — as well as adapting ideas arriving from abroad. In the end Speiser largely abandoned the evolutionary models that he had started with in the New Hebrides, turning to historical explanations. For example, he mentioned several times the pos-

sibilities of chance arrivals of traits from East or Southeast Asia to explain the limited distribution of certain objects like the blowgun found in Melanesia only in southwestern New Britain.!* History became the key issue for Speiser, both at the continental and the regional level. In both his detailed survey of Melanesian art styles and his more comprehensive study of Pacific material culture his analysis drew simultaneously on far-reaching migrations of Austronesian pop-

ulations as well as on important local developments by indigenous groups (1936; 1938; 1941; 1946a). As he changed his theoretical orientation and recognised that the evidence from material culture pointed in quite a different direction than he had originally anticipated, his reputation grew in stature. He was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1932 and his work was appreciated by many colleagues in a volume intended as his Festschrift for his seventieth birthday, but published as a memorial volume (Bandi et al. 1951). Unfortunately, by the time he had shifted from an evolutionary to an historical approach in the 1930s and 1940s there were too few scholars in German-speaking countries who were still interested in developing projects using Speiser’s new analytical tools. He did keep in touch with A.C. Haddon and Beatrice Black-

Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow 225 wood, but by this time museum studies of material culture had become less important even at Cambridge and Oxford. In 1942 Speiser finally became Director of the Museum of Ethnography in Basel, succeeding Fritz Sarasin, who was still Chairman of the Trustees at the age of 83. Speiser remained director until his death seven years later. [ronically, the English translation of his monograph in 1991, more than forty years after his death, has renewed international interest in Speiser and the collection he assembled between 1910 and 1912. The 1996 exhibition, Arts of Vanuatu (Bonnemaison et al. 1996), which was exhibited in Port Vila and drew largely on Speiser’s collection, has

started to bring an important source of information about their past back to the people of Vanuatu. Not surprisingly, these volumes and the exhibition are simultaneously a source of information and an inspiration to maintain the rich traditions of earlier decades. Speiser’s ‘salvage’ anthropology of earlier days is beginning to bear fruit, in a manner that Speiser and others would not have dreamed of. If there is a lesson for the discipline, it is that we still have to come to grips with questions of form, style, type and structure through fieldwork, if we do

not want to abandon the study of art and material culture again.

Notes 1. The idea that fletched arrows were associated with a very primitive people had weighed so heavily on Speiser’s mind that he had two (and only two) stamps made up before he began cataloguing his New Hebrides collection. One read ‘Gefiederte Pfeile’ ({letched arrows), the other, ‘Ungefiederte Pfeile’ (untletched arrows). He collected only thirty-one of the former, all from Espiritu Santo (but registered on only five catalogue cards), while he obtained over two hundred of the latter. 2. For biographical details of Speiser’s life, see Adam (1950), Dietschy (1949), Kaulmann (1991), Meuli (1950), Speiser (1950). 3. Both Sarasins had studied in Wtirzburg, conducted extensive fieldwork in Ceylon, the Celebes and elsewhere, worked in Berlin and, in 1896, both were appointed simultaneously trustees to the Basel Museum of Natural History and the separate Ethnological Collection. See Speiser (1943: 269). 4. Apart from works in English shown in the bibliography, translations are my own. 5. At that time von Luschan was preparing a major study of Benin art. 6. Speiser (1943: 277-8) tactfully glosses over his difficulties with Fritz Sarasin at the museum in the 1930s, but there was a genuine difference of opinion on many theoretical points.

7. The notes in his personal journal show him often in contradictory moods, torn between feelings of loneliness, boredom and duty, especially with regard to his photographic responsibilities and packing collections for shipment. Collecting skulls appears almost an obsession. 8. The New Hebrides and Banks material is in accession V 90a for 1913, a gilt by Felix Speiser to the ethnographic collection. A parallel accession included his field photographs, among which were those from Santa Cruz. The Santa Cruz and Tikopia objects are in accession VY 68 for 1913. During his five months in New Britain in 1929-30, Speiser collected 337 objects and took an equal number of photographs.

224 Christian Kaufmann 9. In an earlier paper (1919: 201) Speiser had written almost the opposite about the anthropological and cultural situation of the ‘pygmies’. However, in Speiser’s proof copy, preserved in the library of the Museum of Ethnography in Basel, the key sentence is underlined in pencil with the remark ‘falsch’ (wrong) added in Speiser’s own handwriting. Is this the beginning of Speiser’s shift? 10. In stating his views in a review of Egon von Eickstaedt’s new anthropology, Speiser nevertheless admired the study for its accurate description of racial diversity ( Basler Nachrichten or National-Zeitung, clipping from 1933, no specific date). At the time there were evident political implications in holding such views, not least at Basel

University, right on the intellectual and political border between pluri-cultural Switzerland and a Nazi-dominated Germany where the concepts of a pure Aryan race and of a purilied true Germanic culture flourished. Spciser’s growing distance from physical anthropology may, however, owe more to the staunch political republicanism practised at his university than to a critique of physical anthropology. 11. The latter expression sums up the admiration of German expressionists for ‘primitive art’ from Africa, the Americas and especially Oceania (see Macke 1979 |1912|;: 53-9). The first of these, purposefully, if naively, applies the concept of beauty to non-Western works, creating a provocalive tension. For Speiser’s generation, ‘beauliful’ probably implied ‘beautiful according to natural standards’ (such as plumes, beetles, butterflies, etc.) rather than ‘culturally beautiful’. He avoids the subject by grounding art in religion, not in aesthetics. 12. Speiser made this point in a public lecture on ‘Ethnologische Probleme aus der Stidsee, Geographische-ethnologische Gesellschaft Basel (Manuscript H. Spei 5, in the Basel Ethnographic Museum Library, 16 December 1931),

Bibliography Adam, L. ‘In memoriam Felix Speiser’, Oceania vol. 21 (1950): 66-72. Bandi, H.-G., R. Bay and H. Dietschy, eds Gedenkschrift zur Erinnerung an Felix Speiser. Sudseestudien, Museum fur Volkerkunde und Schweizerisches Museum tur Volkskunde, Basel, 1951. Bonnemaison, J., K. Huffman, C. Kaufmann and D. Tryon, eds, Arts of Vanuatu. Crawlord House Publishing, Bathurst, and University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 1996. Deacon, A.B. Malekula. A vanishing people in the New Hebrides, ed. C.H. Wedgwood, with a preface by A.C. Haddon. George Routledge & Sons, London,

1934, Dietschy, H. ‘Felix Speiser, 1880-1949’, Phoebus vol. 2 (1949): 191-2. Haddon, A.C. Evolution in art: as illustrated by the life-histories of designs. The Contemporary Science Series, Walter Scott, London, and Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1902 (originally published 1895). Hediger, H. Ein Leben mit Tieren im Zoo und in aller Welt. Werd, Zurich, 1990. Kaufmann, C. ‘Felix Speiser, anthropologist’ in Ethnology of Vanuatu. An early twentieth century study, by F. Speiser, trans. D.Q. Stephenson. Crawford

House Press, Bathurst, 1991 (originally published Berlin 1923), 411-15. Luschan, F. von, Anleitungen ftir ethnographische Beobachtungen und Sammlungen in Afrika und Ozeanien, 3rd edn. Konigliches Museum fiir Volkerkunde

in Berlin, 1904,

Felix Speiser’s Fletched Arrow 225 ——. ‘Zur Ethnographie des Kaiserin-Augusta-Flusses’, Baessler-Archiv vol. 1 (1910): 103-17. Macke, A. ‘Die Masken’ in Der Blaue Reiter ed. K. Lankheit. Piper, Munich,

1979 (originally published 1912), 53-9. Meuli, K. ‘Felix Speiser (20 Oktober 1880 — 19 September 1949)’, Verhandl. Naturforsch. Gesellschaft Basel vol. 61 (1950): 1-12. Notes and queries on anthropology, (3rd edn) British Association for the Advancement of Science, London, 1899. Rallu, J.-L. Les populations océaniennes aux XIXe et XXe siécles. Series Travaux et Documents, cahier no. 128, Institut National d'Etudes Démoeraphiques, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1990. ——., 'The demographic past’ in Arts of Vanuatu eds J. Bonnemaison, K. Huffman, C. Kaufmann and D., Tryon. Crawford House Publishing,

Bathurst, and University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 1996, 318-19. Sarasin, F. ‘Bericht tiber das Basler Naturhistorische Museum fiir das Jahr 1913’, Verhandl, Naturforsch. Gesellschaft Basel vol. 26 (1914): 12.

7 . Streiflichter aus der Ergologie der Neu-Caledonier und Loyalty-Insulaner aul die Europdische Préahistorie’, Verhandl. Naturforsch. Gesellschaft

Basel vol. 28, part 2, (1916): 1-27. Sarasin, FE and J. Roux, eds Nova Caledonia. Forschungen in Neu-Caledonien und auf den Loyalty-Inseln / Recherches scientifiques en Nouvelle-Calédonie et aux

iles Loyalty. C.W. Kreidel, Berlin/Munich, 1914-1929, series A-D. Sarasin, P. and F. Sarasin Ergebnisse Naturwissenschaftlicher Forschungen auf Ceylon in den Jahren 1884 bis 1886, 4 vols. C.W. Kreidel, Wiesbaden,

1889-1908. —__— . ‘Uber den Zweck der Pfahlbauten’, Globus vol. 72, no. 18, (1897): 277/-8. Schindlbeck, M. ‘The art of collecting. Interactions between collectors and the people they visit’, in ‘Museums in dialogue’ eds C.Muller and M.Schindlbeck, Zeitschrift ftir Ethnologie vol. 118 (1993): 57-67. ——. ‘Die Stidsee-Ausstellungen in Berlin’ in ‘Gestern und Heute — Traditionen in der Stidsee. Festschrift zum 75 Geburtstag von Gerd Koch’ ed. M. Schindlbeck, Baessler-Archiv, (N.E.) vol. 45 (1997): 551-86. Speiser, F. ‘Pfleile von Santa Cruz’, Archiv ftir Anthropologie (N.E.) vol. 8

(1909): 308-11. ——., Two years with the natives in the western Pacific. Mills & Boon, London, L9O13;

——.. ‘Die Ornamentik von St.Cruz’, Archiv ftir Anthropologie (N.F.) vol. 13

(1915): 323-34. ——. ‘Kultur-Komplexe in den Neuen Hebriden, Neu-Caledonien und den Sta-Cruz-Inseln’ in Beitrdge zur Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (Festschrift EF Sarasin). A. Kundig, Geneva, 1919, 140-247.

—.. ‘Decadence and preservation in the New Hebrides’, trans. A.I. Hopkins, in Essays on the depopulation of Melanesia, ed. W.H.R. Rivers. Univer-

sity Press, Cambridge, 1922, 25-61. ——, ‘Anthropologische Messungen aus den St.Cruz-Inseln’, Archiv ftir Anthropologie (N.B.) vol. 19 (1923): 89-146.

226 Christian Kaufmann ——. Anthropologische Messungen aus Espiritu Santo (Neue Hebriden). Kin Beitrag zur Pygmdaentrage’, Verhandl. Naturforsch. Gesellschaft Basel

vol. 39 (1928): 79-166. —_—. ‘L’art plastique des Nouvelles-Hébrides’ in ‘Fascicule consacré a l'art des océaniens’ ed. C. Zervos, Cahiers d’Art vol. 4 no. 2-3 (1929a): 91-4. ——. ‘Uber Initiationen in Australien und Neu-Guinea’, Verhandl. Naturforsch, Gesellschaft Basel vol. 40, part 2 (Gedenkschrift Paul Sarasin)

(1929b): 53-258. ——.. ‘Versuch einer Kultur-Analyse der zentralen Neuen Hebriden’, Zeitschrift ftir Ethnologie vol. 66 (1934): 128-86. ——. ‘Uber Kunststile in Melanesien’, Zeitschrift ftir Ethnologie vol. 68

(1936): 304-69. —, ‘Melanesien und Indonesien’, Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie vol. 70 (1938): 463-81. ——., Kunststile in der Stidsee. Fuhrer durch das Museum ftir Volkerkunde, Basel, Museum tur Volkerkunde, Basel, 1941. ——., ‘Geschichte des Museums ftir V6lkerkunde’, Verhand!, Naturforsch. Gesellschaft Basel vol. 54 (1943): 265-80.

——. ‘Kulturgeschichtliche Betrachtungen tiber die Initiationen in der Sudsee’, Bulletin der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft ftir Anthropologie und Eth-

nologie vol. 22 (1945/46): 28-61. —_— , Versuch einer Siedlungsgeschichte der Stidsee. Denkschriften der Schweizerischen Naturforschenden Gesellschalt vol. 77, Abh. 1, Fretz,

Zurich, 1946a. ——.. ‘Die Pygmdentrage’, Experientia vol. 2 (1946b): 297-302. — ., ‘Personalien, geschrieben 1948' in Zur Erimerung an Prof. Dr, Felix Speiser. 1SSO-1949. Privately printed, 1950. ——, Ethnology of Vanuatu. An early twentieth century study, trans D.Q. Stephenson. Crawlord House Press, Bathurst, 1991 (originally published under the title Ethnographische Materialien aus den Neuen Hebriden und den Banks-Inseln, Berlin, 1923). Speiser, EF and P. Wirz Kunst und Kult auf Neu-Guinea. Die Sammlungen von Prof. Dr. Felix Speiser und Dr, Paul Wirz. Ausstellungsfiihrer Gewerbemu-

seum, Basel, 1931. Spriggs, M. ‘An agricultural art: taro irrigation in Vanuatu’ in Arts of Vanuatu eds J. Bonnemaison, K. Huffman, C. Kaufmann and D. Tryon. Crawtord House Publishing, Bathurst and University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu,

1996, 90-93.

Chapter 10

ON HIS TODD: Material Culture and Colonialism

Chris Gosden

Introduction This chapter explores the sets of negotiations and performances involved in colonial relations in New Guinea between the Wars. While we now know that there was enormous movement of objects between all parties in colonial New Guinea, these movements of material and their consequences are often hard to document. Museum collections,

by their nature, were the outcome of negotiations and performative actions, so that they provide well-documented instances of movements of goods between local people and settlers. This chapter focuses upon the collection of a single individual, John Alexander Todd, who

was a student in anthropology at the University of Sydney and who worked on the south coast of New Britain between 1933 and 1936. However, the focus on an individual is counterbalanced by a stress on the broader set of colonial relations in which Todd was enmeshed. The point explored is the possibility that what Todd took to New Guinea was as important as what he took away. Many studies of colonialism consider the global forces at work in colonial relations and exploitation, paying less attention to how local relations were worked out in particular times and places. A focus on

the local is not an escape from larger issues into parochialism, but can provide insights into the compound of local and broader social relations that make up all colonial situations. This study is not just of

228 Chris Gosden what Todd took from coastal New Britain during his stays there in the 1930s, nor of the intellectual interests that lay behind his collections, but more broadly of how he fitted into colonial society in New Guinea, and how this may have influenced his own states of mind. Todd was a

man who appears to have attempted to merge into colonial New Guinean society as far as he could, and his unhappiness and neuroses, while deriving from his personal history of which we know little, also mirrored broader colonial concerns. Our knowledge of Todd is skewed by the fragments that remain of his work. His field notes,

one thousand photographs and an unknown number of sound recordings are lost, for the present at least. He never wrote up the broader synthesis of society on the south coast of New Britain which was his major aim, and left only five articles, written as preliminary statements (Todd 1934a and b; 1935aand b; 1936). A small number of letters and applications to funding councils have been recovered by the present author and Chantal Knowles, but our major analysis has been of Todd’s collection. This was made as something of an aside, but is now ironically the largest surviving result of his fieldwork, and

is one of four collections made in New Britain between 1910 and 1937 which are now being analysed (Gosden and Knowles, in preparation). His receipts have also been recovered: they were presented to the Australian National Research Council and this unusual economic record of his work provides insights into how he set himself up in the field, modelling his life quite closely on broader colonial society. Before considering Todd himself, however, we need to think a little about the

broader social and cultural situation in which he found himself in New Britain.

Colonialism’s Non-Culture Most recent discussions of colonialism (for example, Bhabha 1994; Thomas 1994) have highlighted the contradictory nature of colonial regimes, and the argument presented here seeks to add a new dimension to these contradictions. As many chapters in this book make clear, there was a vast trade in objects between Whites and indigenous New Guineans. This trade comprised, in turn, only one aspect of the relations between White and Black communities in towns, on plantations,

in villages and in the bush. Black, Asian and White participants in New Guinean colonial culture were linked through a mass of social relationships which created roles, statuses and forms of exchange. These links pulled together initially disparate groups of people into known relations and forms of practice and helped initiate Europeans into the sets of skills, physical and social, needed to survive in tropical

On His Todd 229 New Guinea. At the level of social relations, all members of colonial society were inextricably joined. A brief historical sketch may give some more concrete sense of the

manner in which New Guineans and Whites were linked through social relations. From the German period onward there was considerable labour-recruiting and people were inducted into colonial society forcibly in this way. Recruiting around New Britain, even at its western end, was intense. The disastrous social consequences of recruiting were recognised in the enforcement of a ban between 1912 and the start of

1914 in the Sulka and Mengen areas and the whole coastline from Cape Gloucester to Montagu Harbour. In 1913 recruitment was reaching its limit in coastal areas: it is estimated that nearly every unmarried man in the villages of the northwest coast of New Britain was a recruit

that year or had been one recently (Firth 1973: 173), and much the same may have been true of the south coast. In 1933 there were 8,069 indentured labourers within New Britain as a whole, out of a total censused adult population of 17,000. Todd, reporting on the situation in

1933, said that ‘most of the younger men have served a period as indentured labourers for the European both British and German’ and that it was very common to find these people travelling to and from their places of employment (Todd 1935b: 438). He also noted that, by the 1930s, there were a number of older men who had worked in continuous employment for Europeans for over thirty years. Thus most of the male population of the southwest coast of New Britain had worked on plantations or in town in some capacity, bringing with them views of the broader colonial society, trade goods and money. As well as people leaving their local communities there were outsiders coming in. Where Todd was located at M6wehafen there was a small plantation (125 acres, approximately 50 hectares) owned at that time by Harold Koch, but managed for most of the year by a native foreman and worked by a small group of labourers, both local and from further afield. The plantations had effects other than bringing in outsiders. Much of the fresh food for the plantations was grown in local gardens. Todd reported on an extension of garden activity in the ten years prior to his arrival and attributed this to the cessation of warfare and people’s subsequent willingness to travel further afield to their gardens. Colonial peace, so called, must have been part of the story, but the effect of plantations and subsequent mission stations must have had considerable effects on people's subsistence practices. During Todd's stay there were three plantations on the south coast within the

Gasmata sub-district. The largest by far was Lindenhafen, with a smaller one, Aliwa, directly in his field area and a third at Arawe further down the coast. The missions were about to arrive on that part of the south coast and Todd recounted how a native catechist set up in

230 Chris Gosden Mowehafen during his stay and the Anglican mission was starting up in the Arawe Islands in 1934—5. The south coast of New Britain, despite its relative proximity to Rabaul and the regularity of shipping along the coast, was considered remote and little known. Elkin, then Chairman of the Department of Anthropology in Sydney, wrote to Todd in 1933: ‘Like your Mother, we are all pleased that you will not be quite so isolated as you expected to be’. The Gasmata sub-district, comprising the southern half of western New Britain, was administered from the government station of Gasmata, set up by the Germans in 1912. In theory there should have been an Assistant District Officer, and a Cadet patrol officer, plus a medical assistant. But while Todd was there in 1933— there was only the Assistant District Officer, one EW. Mantle, who was English, wore a monocle and adhered strictly to the official dress code (described below). In addition there were roughly twenty native police, a number of native medical orderlies and labourers and servants. There was a police post at Mowehafen, set up in 1930, where some of the police would have been resident. In 1922 there were 1 16 villages in the District with luluais and tultuls (appointed village officials), and that total would not have increased greatly in the ten years before Todd’s arrival. For the same year, there is a record of 2,500 natives attending the Christmas feast at Gasmata station, though it is not clear if such events continued into Todd's time.

However, at the level of perceived custom and forms of representation, the different groups had no means of conceiving of, or thinking about, the ties that bound them. Each side thought about the other, but mainly in terms of difference and Otherness. The White community in New Guinea was a literate one, with many surviving accounts of people’s time in the colony, and it is possible to pick out recurring themes in people's writings. Most Whites stressed their separateness from Melanesian society. All the patrol officers wrote of being alone in the bush, even when surrounded by dense populations of locals, so that cultural isolation was transmuted into physical isolation. The anthropologists did the opposite, making the White community disappear from view and stressing the immediacy of their links with relatively pristine locals. Todd wrote of the south coast of New Britain that: ‘From the sociological point of view, these people are in excellent condition for investiga-

tion. They have been subjected to that slight contact with European culture which is a prerequisite for successful fieldwork. On the other hand, however, their culture is, as yet, practically unimpaired’.' The plantation in the area that he worked in disappeared from his account, as did the regular visits by schooners on trading and recruiting voyages,

although it must be said that it might well have been unwise to stress the impact of non-Melanesians in a grant application at the time. Anthropologists were not isolated in villages in New Guinea, but

rather were temporary members of a broader colonial society, of

On His Todd 231 which they studied only a part. In fact, in order to operate in New Guinea they had to be inducted into life in Rabaul or the government station and here people like Chinnery, the government anthropologist and administrator, were vital in explaining the customs of the locals, who included the Government Secretary or the manager of the local Burns Philp store, in addition to the indigenous inhabitants. To stress

the temporary nature of anthropologists’ participation in colonial New Guinea society is to ignore the fact that there were a series of values and roles set aside for them. McCarthy (1963: 9), discussing old (White) New Guinea hands’ attitudes to the ‘mollycoddling’ regime in Papua, quoted some as saying that Hubert Murray, Papua’s Governor,

‘was encouraging nothing more than an anthropologists’ zoo on his side of the border’. New anthropologists in New Guinea may have been innocent, but the society which greeted them was not, having a range of defined views as to their likely disruptive or beneficial effects,

and this was as true of their informants as the White element of the

community. Anthropologists also operated through networks of dependency on New Guineans and, just as with the patrol officers or plantation owners, many of their activities were structured through their close personal links with servants, key informants and others, all of whom knew how to deal with White people. Colonial society in New Guinea had a very partial sense of itself and this comes out in the contradictions inherent in the social ties that held people together and the lack of joint representation which kept them apart. Particular sets of relationships were suppressed by the participants in colonial culture: Whites could not accept that there were situations in which New Guineans had power over them (or could only conceive of such situations in terms of extreme danger). New Guineans were unlikely to see that Whites were deeply dependent

on them in many ways. The lack of these two views within overall schemes of representation meant that forms of mutuality were never areal part of the sense that people had of the culture in which they lived. This fractured people’s basic scheme of representation, only allowing each side to think about the Other in those distanced terms and not to see mutualities of power and dependence. To stress the conjoining nature of social relations, but also the confusing absence of a full scheme of representation, is to make a rather different argument from either Bhabha or Thomas about the contradictions of colonialism. Both of these writers argue that colonial cultures represented hybrid, creolised forms and both are insistent that the ability of the colonised to subvert forms of representation within colonial cultures should be recognised, and that such forms of subver-

sion are integral to the nature of colonial culture. Thomas (1994: 55-7) criticises Bhabha for focusing on terms like mimicry, which only

2o2 Chris Gosden allowed the colonised to speak in a language initially created by the colonisers. By contrast, this chapter concentrates on the things about which people, both White and Black, could not speak. The main gap in people's discourse and knowledge of their own situation was the ties that bound people together. The absence of a discourse of mutuality made perlformativity and negotiation crucial. Objects were central to both negotiation and performativity.

The Colonial Gap: Negotiation and Performativity Colonial culture was a profoundly material culture. The main motive for Europeans going to New Guinea was material: to extract copra, rubber, gold or oil and to make a profit in so doing. Such pursuits

necessitated the payment of local people in cash and/or material things and many relationships of planters and business people were constructed through the flows of materials. The movement of materials through New Guinean society was basic to that society and part of what held it together. Collections were one aspect of these flows of material and were made by many Whites in New Guinea, ranging from official collectors, like patrol officers, to plantation owners, missionaries and travellers who wanted curios as reminders of their time in the tropics. The important aspect of museum collections is that they are generally well-documented examples of broader collecting practice, and help to reveal the sorts of relations involved in collecting and the values, monetary or otherwise, attached to it. However, it is argued here that collecting cannot be understood as an isolated activity, but must be seen as one which was deeply embedded in the overall set of colonial relations pertaining at the time. For instance, Marcus Schindlbeck has discussed Lewis’s collecting on the Sepik in 1910, when the captain of the Siar on which he was travelling would not allow him to collect on the way up the river, as this would

make his recruitment of labourers, to be paid in trade goods, much more difficult. On the way down river, the captain, who had been unsuccessful in his attempts to recruit, collected 2,000 artefacts for sale in order to turn the trip to profit (Schindlbeck 1997: 35-6). Important to the present argument is the fact that roles and statuses

were also marked in material terms in a rigidly defined manner. An extract from a 1936 New Guinea government handbook gives some idea of the distinctions which were applied. ‘The standard attire for white men is the white duck coat and trousers, with shirt of white or cream silk’... ‘the white solar topee is the customary headgear’... ‘evening wear for men comprises black dress trousers, white starched dress shirt, cummerbund and short white mess jacket’... ‘fashions may

On His Todd fee be varied in the bush, or where it is not possible to conform to the convention of an entire change of clothes at least daily’ (quoted in Downs 1986: 51-2). New patrol officers arriving in Rabaul were generally told to visit a Chinese tailor to kit themselves out with the requisite clothing. Nor did dress regulations apply only to Whites. Forms of dress were laid down for indigenous government employees, who had to wear short lavalava, which by official order should come to just above the knee. Downs, a patrol officer who arrived in Rabaul in early 1936, noted that

‘There was an irrational belief among Europeans that long lavalava were an expression of insolence and worn by people of insubordinate or even rebellious nature’, whereas local people in fact preferred them due to their comfort and elegance (Downs 1986: 53). Village officials all had caps and canes, which were their emblems of

office, and were expected to wear store-bought dress, and the short lavalava, when greeting patrol officers in their area. Contained in Todd’s accounts for his 1935-6 trip, which will be discussed in more detail below, are receipts for kitting out his two local servants, which include reference to ‘boy’s plate, cup and cutlery, plus boy’s tinned meat’, indicating that there were grades of quality for these items which distinguished European and Melanesian. This obsession with marking status in material form derived from models of representation which provided knowledge of Self and Other,

but not of how these terms were linked, creating a great uncertainty about the mass of social relations linking all parties in New Guinea. The lack of conscious appreciation of the basic social situation gave New Guinean culture a radically performative aspect. The term ‘performative’ is used here in a manner which follows Judith Butler’s (1993; 1997) usage. She, in turn, follows speech act theorists, who have concentrated on the class of acts of speech which can actually make a difference to states of affairs in the world. A vicar saying ‘T pronounce you man and wife’ actually joins single people in marriage and brings about a new state of affairs. Butler looks at a range of acts (not just of speech) which realise things, in the sense of making them real. Dress and bodily comportment realise gender differences and these differences could not exist in the same form without the acts and objects connected to them. For Butler, all cultures are performative: sex, gender and class for instance are names given to differences and mutuali-

ties which exist through both schemes of representation and the acts which bring them to life. Colonial societies have both differences and similarities with other social forms in this respect. Because the social relations that bind colonial societies together are not sufficiently recognised at the level of representation, these relations exist only insofar as they are performed: performances bring them to life and they then sink out of sight, below the level of consciousness. Colonial New Guinea

234 Chris Gosden was only held together through acts, because representations were too partial to encompass all social relations. The radical performativity of these social forms led to a stress on both formalisation of clothing and comportment, but also of constant negotiation of roles and relations. The information on Todd not only provides insights into how collections may inform us on the process of negotiation, but also shows that the things that Todd took to New Guinea were used in particular types of performativity which he hoped would realise a new state of affairs: a job for him. It will be argued that we can only understand Todd within the overall network of colonial relations. Todd made two field trips to New Britain, both of roughly a year’s duration: 1933-4 and 1935-6. On the first he made a collection, which is now in the Australian Museum, Sydney. For the second we have no record of what he brought back, but we know what he took, as we have the receipts for items he took with him into the field and the things he took were quite extraordinary and provide a detailed glimpse into colonial lite. This is a tale of two field trips, with different insights deriving from each. First let us look at Todd himself.

Todd: Man and Mystery J.A. Todd was born on 19 February 1911. His birthplace is unknown, but was either in New South Wales or New Zealand, as his family seem to have been New Zealanders, but were probably resident in Sydney at this time. His father was Capt. David Todd, who was probably employed by the Union Steam Ship Co. of New Zealand Ltd. Between 1923 and 1927 Todd attended North Sydney Boy's School, and in 1927 (at the age of 16) went on to the University of Sydney where he earned a B.Sc. degree in Science, specialising in the chemical and biological sciences. Following his B.Sc., Todd took Anthropology I and IT as a postgraduate diploma, presumably in 1930 and 1931 under lan Hogbin and Raymond Firth, with some success as he was awarded the Frank Albert Prize in Anthropology for Anthropology IT.

During the year of 1932 Todd worked for eleven months as a Research Assistant on Australian National Research Council (ANRC) funding, under the supervision of Firth, who was Acting-Chairman of the Department after the departure of Radcliffe-Brown to Chicago. Firth himself left Sydney on 8 December 1932 to take up a lectureship at the London School of Economics (LSE). During this year’s research Todd wrote two reports: ‘Criteria for the classification of Cultures’ and ‘Affinal

Relationships in Melanesia’. He may not have finished either as he resigned before the end of his twelve-month stint, to go into the field, and Firth had also departed. These reports have never been found. However, it seems very likely that the latter report influenced his choice of topic for

On His Todd AS bs: research and altered his approach to it. During this time he also attended postgraduate lectures in anthropology. Todd left Sydney on the MacDhui on 2 February 1933 for fieldwork on the southwest coast of New Britain for which he received an ANRC

grant of £475 for field expenses and travel and £100 as a year’s allowance. His research proposal is still extant in the ANRC archive in the National Library of Australia and it says that he wanted to under-

take general sociological study, looking at problems of kinship and social groupings with special emphasis on the reported ‘sex totemism’

of the region. This follows reports by Chinnery (1925; 1926), then government anthropologist, on two visits he had made to the area in

1925 and 1926 in which he had reported men belonging to one totemic group, and women to another. Todd hoped that ‘Sex totemism’

would throw light on analogous Aboriginal institutions. This hope turned out to be totally unfounded due to the erroneous nature of Chinnery’s observations, but it did mean that Todd concentrated on issues olf kinship and the possible existence of totemic groups as part of his fieldwork. He also wanted to collect data on ‘the physical constitution of the natives’, especially on head binding.

Arriving in New Guinea, Todd spent a month in Rabaul and was hosted by Chinnery, and Mr and Mrs McLean of Rabaul and then stayed for a time with Mantle at the Sub-District Office, Gasmata. Between 1 April 1933 and 1 April 1934 Todd was in M6wehafen, living in Aviklo village on Geglep Island (except for five weeks at the end of 1933 spent

in Gasmata). All his published work relates to this first visit to New Guinea. Todd made a collection of 185 artefacts on this trip, took over

a thousand photographs and made an unknown number of sound recordings. The artefact collection is now in the Australian Museum, Sydney (having originally gone to the Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney and then to the Institute of Anatomy in Canberra), but the photographs and sound recordings are missing. Between 19 July 1935 and 24 June 1936 Todd spent a further year in New Britain, at Melenglo and Mowehalen. His budget was £400 for field expenses and £150 personal allowance. He planned to go to the Arawe Islands further to the west in New Britain and to the Siassi Islands off the western end of New Britain and walk from Siassi to Gasmata, but never did. He spent two weeks in Rabaul (3 1 December 1935

to 11 January 1936) and was later hospitalised in Rabaul (4 to 8 February 1936), possibly with malaria. The only academic record of his second trip is areport in a letter to Elkin, with at least one page missing. The stipend from this second trip was paid until December 1936.

In February 1937 Todd started studying law and in 1939 he was admitted to the New South Wales Bar. The final academic word we have of him is in a letter to Elkin (22 November 1939) in which he says

256 Chris Gosden he will start writing up his notes over the long vacation and that he is fairly physically fit, but washed out after study. We know from records

of the legal profession that he was a barrister between 1940 and 1951, but that he gave up practising law soon after 1956, when he was about 45 years old, perhaps for reasons of ill health. Todd died on 22 December 1971 at Lower Fort Street, Sydney, aged 60 years. From the little snatches of information available, Todd appears to have been a man ill at ease with himself. In a letter to Elkin from the field in 1935 he said of someone he had met that he liked to talk big and do nothing. ‘I know the type having lived with one of them every minute of my life’. Further on in the same letter he wrote that he could

not see how his work would get written up and that ‘perhaps it isn’t worth it anyway’. At the same time he wrote to Gibson, Secretary of the ANRC, ‘it is apparent that when I return from the field next year I shall be forced to cease being a professional anthropologist and seek some other career. As my qualifications and prospects for any other career are nil I can view the future only with foreboding and dismay.’ He was a man obsessed with his health, of which there are many mentions in his letters, and here he was reflecting broader colonial concerns. He concluded a letter to Chapman, then the Chairman of the ANRC, which was otherwise about the financial details of his fieldwork, saying that ‘My work progresses slowly and I continue to enjoy relatively good health. The diet however is probably to blame for the dental decay which goes on at a rate nothing short of startling’.

Todd’s Collection As an aside, it is worth noting that all the other students at Sydney in

the late 1920s and early 1930s made collections, including Firth, Powdermaker, Hogbin, Bell and Kaberry. Many of these are in the Australian Museum in Sydney, with relevant archival documentation and photographs in the Sydney University archive and the ANRC records

in the National Library of Australia in Canberra. For those interested in the individual researchers or a comparison of the collections as a whole these represent a fascinating set of possibilities. It seems that little analytical use has been made of the collections. However, photographs and objects were used as displays within the Department of Anthropology and were part of publicising the work going on there and making the distant tangible and accessible. Todd's collection is fascinating for its surprises. We do not know how much he spent on each of the 185 items, but in his project budget drawn up for the ANRC he included ‘£30 for specimens’. At a time when the most valuable individual item would have cost about 10

On His Todd 237 shillings this would not have restricted his choice too much. The major structuring influences on his collection would have been his own intellectual interests, any instructions on what to collect from his Sydney

department, and his relations with local people. Todd's collection appears to have been a relatively minor aspect of his work as a whole, a part of what was seen as adequate empirical documentation of the people with whom he worked, together with photographs and sound recordings. The documentation that survives with Todd’s collection seems to indicate that he was thorough. However, Todd denies any real knowledge of material culture in a letter to Beatrice Blackwood, saying that he has no objections to Blackwood’s writing on the material cul-

ture of the area. He obviously saw himself as very much a social anthropologist, for whom objects were a secondary consideration. We are able to gain extra insight into what Todd collected through comparison with the other collections. For the larger project the artefacts have been categorised under a number of headings, first by classes of object (hunting and fishing, ornaments and clothing etc.), then by whether they were made locally or obtained in longer distance exchange, and finally by some crude generalisations about gender (see Table 10.1). Table 10.1: What Todd took from New Guinea, in comparison to other collectors.

Lewis Speiser Todd Blackwood Totals

1910 1929 1933-4 L937

Hunting/fishing 38 15 9 36 98 Warlare 42 12 re) 5 67

Axes/obsidian 7 3) i 89 105

eating 14 3) 19 7 48 Food preparation and

clothing 6238 2610 6038 349182 Containers 95 Cralt production 9 2 ] 24 36 Ornaments and

Valuables 5910 3) 10 23 16 106 Music 24 16 60 Totals Pas 99 169 236 TOF

Local 83 33 62 45 223 Local exchange 12] 30 a2 10] 344

exchange 35236 90 230 Totals 29389 9916 169 197 Long distance

Male (mostly) 161 49 59 res 346 Female (mostly) 44 17 74 21 156 Ungendered 88 5 fs. 36 138 295

Totals 293 99 169 236 797

238 Chris Gosden Todd’s collection is structured partly by its absences: he showed no

interest in stone tools (one item collected). At the time, many were working within a ‘salvage’ paradigm, which stressed that local cultures were being erased by colonial influences, and that the change from stone to steel was one of the best instances of this process. Nor did he take any notice of the production of materials (craft production in Table 10.1). However, he did show a marked interest in the everyday: utensils for food preparation and eating and containers are very well represented. His major interests seem to have been in the areas of ornaments, clothing and valuables. The last is not a puzzle: Englishspeaking commentators from Lewis and Chinnery onwards noted how deeply involved these south coast cultures were with the Siassi people, who moved items in long distance exchange. Not only were material

things moved but a whole range of ceremonial activity involving masks and bullroarers, often used at circumcision ceremonies, was closely linked to the Siassi, with people in New Britain often importing

ritual forms, as well as material items. For us, looking at the region from an historical point of view, one of the strengths of the small corpus of Todd’s published work is its description of ceremonial activity, which can be linked to artefacts which were just about to go out of use with the coming of the missions. Todd was obviously interested in cer-

emony and the structures of belief that lay behind it and his second piece of fieldwork seems to have been aimed partly at looking at the rit-

ual complex to the east in Melenglo, which he considered to be the border of this complex.

The largest category of items is that of ornaments and clothing, most of which belonged to women. Todd collected more female items than any of the other three collectors compared in Table 10.1, including Beatrice Blackwood, confounding any straightforward notion of how gender might bias collecting. Why this should be is hard to say: the number of female items may be partly because of Todd’s initial interest in ‘sex totemism’, taking him close to what we would today call ‘gender’. It may also reflect the structure of Todd's local relations, which may have been very local. Although on both field trips he aimed to travel, illness and the difficulty of moving around appear to have prevented him from doing so. On his first visit we have no evidence that he left Aviklo and the immediate area, except for his Christmas holiday

at Gasmata. The structure of the local community and Todd’s own sedentary habit could have been the major structuring principles influencing his collecting. Given the number of men away at work on

plantations, these communities were probably held together by women. The gender bias in the collection may indicate that he had good relations with local women and either took a real interest in their lives or took the path of least resistance and collected the items which

On His Todd 239 were easiest for him. Todd seems to have taken some care in collecting, for many of the women’s skirts and much of the clothing he collected were new and therefore probably made especially for him. This again

contrasts with all the other collections in Table 10.1 where most of the personal items collected had been worn and used. The contrast with our one woman collector, Beatrice Blackwood, is intriguing: her collections were dominated by stone tools and evidence of production processes, both of which are due to her brief from Bal-

four, Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum where she worked, who wanted evidence of technology and economy. However, there is no especial evidence that Blackwood had better relations with women than men, so that in these two instances it may have been the personalities of the two collectors, plus their intellectual interests, which were the main causes of the structure of their collections, rather than their gender.

What Todd Took to New Guinea Of Todd's second field trip in 1935-6, we know very little. What evidence we do have is from his grant application to the ANRC, which contains little detail (especially in comparison to what we have to write today), and comprises part of a letter to Elkin from the field, and Todd's receipts which were kept much more carefully for his second field trip. This additional care with bookkeeping was probably due to Chapman's misappropriation of the ANRC funds, during his time as ANRC chair-

man. This led both to Chapman's suicide when he was discovered in 1934 and to the Rockefeller Foundation withdrawing their support (Wise 1985). The Rockefeller decision was the root of all Todd’s problems, as once their money vanished the possibility of getting support to write up his results went with it. Before the Rockefeller money was withdrawn Todd had secured ANRC funds for a second piece of fieldwork which he undertook in the knowledge that his time in anthro-

pology would probably come to an end and that once he obtained alternative employment his chances of writing up his material were limited. Todd may have taken his disappointment personally, feeling in some obscure way that his failure to get funding was partly due to the lack of quality of his work. However, it seems likely that Todd was only partially doing fieldwork on his second trip and that he mainly went to New Guinea with the hope of getting employment there. Given the depth of the Depression in Australia at the time he probably felt he had little prospect of work there. He made very scant references to any information he collected on this second trip in later letters, such as those to Blackwood,

240 Chris Gosden and most of his allusions are to material gathered on his first visit. Also, by spying on him through his receipts, it is evident that he spent some time in Rabaul, although this may have been partly because he was sick. He also shifted his field site closer to the government station in Gasmata and the main plantation in Lindenhafen and made regular

trips to both, perhaps to make and reinforce contacts with both planters and government officials. But his strategy to gain admittance to New Guinea society was also a material one and is of interest in itself and for the light it throws on the broader colonial society. Let us look at the way in which Todd kitted himself out in the field on this second trip. First of all, as we have seen he had two servants, Kitegit and Masawa, whose pay was 10 shillings a month each, plus food, lodging and other extras. Their wages would have cost £12 over the course of his trip and this figure would have at least doubled when other costs were added and this is out of a total budget of £400. Judging by today’s standards, two servants seem a little unnecessary, but it must be admitted that against the broader standards of colonial New Guinea this would have been seen as thin provision, for ‘The average bungalow home requires from 3-5 native servants; the essentials at any rate are the cook, laundry boy... and the house boy’ (Official Handbook of the Territory of New Guinea 1937). Todd had perhaps the most extensive medical kit on the south coast

of New Britain outside Gasmata hospital, as detailed in Appendix 10.1. There are a variety of possible motives for this. One is Todd's obsessive interest in his own health — a preoccupation common to Europeans, and with good reason in the days before antibiotics. But it may not have been just selfish concerns that motivated Todd and we cannot know how much he provided a health service for local people. However, the manner in which Todd set up his house can only have been for his own benefit. On his first trip Todd lived in a local materials house in Aviklo village (Todd 1934a, plate B) and there is no indica-

tion that he had unusual amounts of furnishings. He took from the ANRC equipment store: ‘] camp table (used), 1 folding chair (used), 1] canvas bath and basin without stand (used)’;* what else he might have had is not recorded. The second visit was very different. He bought two 1O0—gallon tanks in Rabaul, and he had a boiler that he had brought

from Sydney. This time he had new furniture, not things from the ANRC store, plus a most extensive range of cooking pans and eating utensils (Appendix 10.1) and a very impressive set of hooks and fittings. Todd may have been disturbed by the discomforts of his first trip,

but it can be argued that there was more to his strategy than comfort. Last, but not least, he took with him a mountain of canned food (see Appendix 10.1) and had regular deliveries from Sydney on the MacDhui,

which included either 150 or 168lbs of potatoes every two months.

On His Todd 241 Even at this distance of time it is hard not to feel queasy at the thought of ‘20 dozen tins of dripping, rissoles, sausages, steak and kidney, Irish stew etc.’ — of the kind advertised in Figure 10.1 —in a tropical climate. This amount represents close to a tin a day for the year he spent on his second trip, especially if we take out the time he spent in Rabaul and on plantations. Some of the food may have been destined for exchanges with local people, but there are also receipts for ‘boy’s meat and rice’ for his servants. These were presumably cheaper than tinned foods from Australia and would have been acceptable to local people and part of the distinctions which applied in New Guinea colonial culture. The mass importation of food has a number of implications. First, being so self-sufficient in food would have cut, or at least altered, Todd's links with the local community, who presumably supplied him with a good quantity of food on his first field trip. His receipts for the second

trip reveal a number of occasions when he bought coconuts, but no other indications of food buying. He did buy trade tobacco and things such as lish hooks, which might have been used for local transactions, but there is no indication that he bought food in large amounts and on a regular basis. Eating so much tinned food was in disregard of explicit health warnings. The Official Handbook for the Territory of New Guinea

for 1937 (p. 146) contains a section on Abuse of Tinned Foods (bold in the original): Many Europeans in the island dependencies, Sir Raphael Cilento [1925] states, suffer from an improper diet, largely because they rely on tinned foods. The lassitude, lowered energy and lowered disease resistance, ‘directly

traceable to the vitamin-deficient but handy preserved foods and their attractive labels’, are, in the opinion of Sir Raphael Cilento, wholly unjustified, since the soil is fertile and provides a profusion of edible products.

There is a whole subject of ethnographic study contained in this passage, which suggests that Europeans had some fear of the ‘profusion of edible products’ offered by the tropics as the consumption of these might link them too intimately to local ways and people. Instead they preferred the comfort of tinned stuff, which was only just food in a nutritional sense, but had the right superficial appearance, conveyed partly by their ‘attractive labels’. We can be sure that some of the natives of colonial New Guinea were easily tricked into acquiring objects that appeared attractive, but were in fact almost useless. Todd, unfortunately, may have been among their number, at the cost of his teeth and general level of health. Todd may well have enjoyed his comforts, but the construction of the house, its furnishing and the amount of food he had, went beyond comfort. It is argued that with his servants, door mat, lemon squeezer

242 Chris Gosden xxii 2

Ree NZ S oe\i\ ‘ynlh ; o i ~ Rigpx SOUPS, 120z., 80z., Cans. = LUNCHEON CHEESE, 80z., 40z., Zoz., Cans. ,, REX-ESS CHEESE, 5b Blocks, 80z., 40z., Pkts,

,, PLUM PUDDINGS, 80z., 1602., 3202. » JELLY CRYSTALS, 4oz. Pkts. ,, CUSTARD POWDERS, 1oz., 40z., Pkts.

, LARD, DRIPPING (Tins). S

BRISBANE | Figure 10.1: Advertisement for imported tinned and other foods from Australia, from the Official Handbook of the Territory of New Guinea, 1937.

On His Todd 243 and Australian food, Todd had constructed his life along the lines of many Whites in New Guinea at the time, although presumably in a manner that was not average for anthropologists. In doing so, Todd wanted to fit into White society and perhaps fit in so well that that society would offer him something tangible in the shape of a job. Can we glimpse a shadowy scene with Todd set up in a house which was a smaller version of a plantation owner’s, rather than that normal for an anthropologist, entertaining the local Assistant District Officer to a dinner of tinned European foods, waited on by Kitegit and Masawa? And was this part of a strategy of performativity to appear a member of colonial society, as someone who knew the material codes and

forms of action and was thus a natural candidate for employment within it? On his first field trip Todd was an anthropologist, with all the

ambiguity and sense of threat that living with the natives held for White colonial society, but on the second he gathered little data and was attempting to occupy a different niche within colonial society.

How well his strategy endeared him to the local community at Melenglo we can only speculate, on a coast so given to cargo cults. And we do not know what happened to Todd’s house and contents when he left: whether he turned this to some undeclared profit by selling to Koch or another plantation owner, gave it away to White or local people, or simply abandoned it in disgust.

In a post-colonial world the attempt to transform oneself from anthropologist, who held local people’s interests at heart, to colonial officer, whose job it was to restrain and channel local people’s desires, may seem unusual and unprincipled. However, in the 1930s the study of native peoples was partly for the purposes of governance. The Chair of Anthropology in Sydney, held by Radcliffe-Brown from 1926, was established ‘to “provide anthropological training” for cadets and senior offi-

cers in New Guinea and Papua, to train research workers among Australian Aborigines, and to offer degree courses’ (Stocking 1995: 340). This was also the case with the appointment of Chinnery as Government Anthropologist in New Guinea in April 1924, whose brief was to provide information based on ‘disinterested research’ on vital issues such as population decline, but also to help train patrol officers through the cadet system introduced in 1925 (Campbell 1998). This helped Australia to demonstrate that it was discharging its duties to the Territory of New Guinea mandated to it under the League of Nations at the Treaty of Versailles (Commonwealth Government of Australia 1923). Todd’s own work was partly aimed at purposes of administration and one of his articles (1935b) is specifically to do with the European administration of

justice. The paper starts ‘It is common knowledge that the contact of European and native cultures leads to many serious administrative difficulties’ (1935b: 437). It ends At the same time it should be our aim to

244 Chris Gosden bring the natives to obey the law because they believe it to be just, and to instruct them that a reasonable respect for other people's rights is essential for the well-being of any society’ (1935b: 460). It is obvious that he saw his work, as did many others at the time, not just as the sympathetic

understanding of local culture, but rather as generating a form of understanding which would allow Whites to administer a set of societies undergoing profound, but inevitable, change. One natural outcome of his work would have been a move into some form of colonial administration. However, we do not know whether he ever applied for such work directly, or was feeling his way as to whether this was something that he wanted to do and exploring whether he might be accepted. It may be that among other things his health let him down. In a let-

ter to Elkin from the field in 1935 he wrote that he ‘can’t join New Guinea District Service as the climate would make me a physical wreck’ and worries about his health were obviously part of what separated him from New Guinea. He may not have blamed just his per-

sonal frailness for the lack of success in finding a place in New Guinean society. Todd blamed that society itself, He wrote in a letter to Beatrice Blackwood in 1937, at the point at which all his hopes of an anthropological career had been dashed: ‘I’m no admirer of humanity as a rule and the white savages of the South seas are a class all on their own and if possible are a “lower type” than any others’.

Final Thoughts Todd represents colonial relations in microcosm, as they were refracted through an individual personality. This scale of analysis has benelits and disadvantages. The focus on a single person shows that collections were structured by personality, as well as by broader colonial and intellectual forces, but at the same time the details of an individual’s life and work provide a fine texture to our understanding of colonial forces that would otherwise be lacking. The shadowiness of Todd makes him all the more interesting and it is hard, even at this distance, not to feel sorry for a man led to such desperate and vain measures to attempt success in his chosen career.

The focus on Todd has suggested the way in which his personal relations in the field may have helped structure his collections, indicating that mutualities were important. His second trip may have been a prolonged performance to create himself as a person suitable for colonial service. The two field trips and their material evidences give us — when combined — an outline of the range of colonial relationships. On the first Todd was engaged in a conventional activity of collecting objects for the purposes of study, which fitted within the range of col-

On His Todd 245 lecting activities that most White people engaged in when in New Guinea. His second trip was more unusual in that he brought with him far more objects than he took away. In this case artefacts were supposed to be his most convincing demonstration that he knew the codes of New Guinea colonial society and was happy to work within them, giving us the chance to see in microcosm what some of these codes were. Colonial society was obsessed with bodily health, and with correct forms of dress and housing. But in many ways most prominent was the emphasis on sociability and consumption, where the houses of

planters and government officials were seen as oases of culturally recognisable foods, drink and furniture, even if all of these were parodies of what was found at ‘home’. A tinned steak and kidney pudding had little resemblance to a home baked one, but at least it was not taro. A stress on such symbols served to emphasise that the eaters had not gone native and maintained the fiction of separateness from the local culture in which they were in fact deeply enmeshed. What we take from the field is a direct indication of our interests, finances and capabilities. What we take into the field is important in showing our position within local society and our material attempts to

affect that position. Ethnographic collection, then, is one aspect of broader sets of relationships, both social and personal, and needs to be seen as such.

APPENDIX 10.1: WHAT TODD TOOK TO NEW GUINEA Medical

On 1 June 1935 in Sydney he bought a medical kit including ointments (6 types), bandages, lint, tourniquet, surgical needles, hypoder-

mic, quinine, iron and arsenic compound, zinc creams, cocaine hydrochloride for hypodermic, strychnine for hypodermic, olive oil, iodine, eye droppers (doz.}, thermometers (1 doz.), dental floss, suture silk, small kidney basin, tubing, 3 dozen toilet lanolin — total cost £8.5s.9d. —from Burrough’s Wellcome & Co. Plus syringe — 10s.6d. 26

June 1935 — Hallam, Chemists — throat brush, Eucalyptus blue oint-

ment, castor oil, jars, medicine measure, iodine, Friars Balsam 99 shillings. 6 adhesive plasters, Enos salts, listerine, castor oil, paraffin oil, Eucalyptus oil, Tonic £2.14s.3d. Cologne, soap, Velmot Lig., Dental powder, *4 doz. J&J Baby Powder, Petroleum Jelly. Household

For constructing and kitting out his house he took the following: 14 June 1935, Nock & Kirby: 8 ft. oars, rivets, screws, boot last, ham-

mer, nails, solder, sewing awl, bag handles, screws, tacks, staples,

246 Chris Gosden hooks, handles, brackets, picture wire, chisel, oil can, hand drill + 4 drills, HS blades, pliers, rasp, punch, snips, driver, tongs, 66 inch tape — £3.9s.4d. Also, — 3 tins ‘3 in 1’ oil, 2 boot brushes, spoons, mets, blacks, cards mendits [sic], 2 can openers, 2 forks, 6 bottle stoppers, 2 umbrella covers, 3 mouse traps, | scale, 2 steels, 1 egg slice, 1 wire grid, 1 flour sifter, 1 soap saver, 1 galv. Dipper, 1 colander, 1 funnel, pie dish, scrub brush, 2 enam. Disks, 2 coffee strainers, 1 feather duster, 2 pairs gloves, 1 kero. pump, 2 atomizers, 1 plug and basin, 2 baking dishes, 1 lemon

squeezer, 1 steel dish, 1 coke safe, 1 pudding basin, 1 fry pan, 2 soap dishes, 100ft. wire line, 1 mop, 3 trouser hanger, 1 belt, 1 aluminium bowl, 1 scoop, 1 measuring jug, | tea pot. — £4.6s.8d. 14 June 1935, Also Nock & Kirby: spokeshave, set of spanners, spanner,

driver, rule, crook bar, trowel, file, hasps and staples, 1 doz. tins kiwi polish, tie wire, glass paper, emery paper, 3 hat and coat hooks, 2 gate hooks, 4 iron bars, 1 lb galvanised wire, 14 inch bush shower, brushes,

marine Lacquer, and 5 tins of paint £2.8s.0d., 2 nipples, prickers, washers, tape, rowlocks, 1 reef anchor, 2 thimbles, hanks of rope, 5O0ft. coir 1 inch, swivels, ring bolt, binnacle ring, cleats, shackles, water putty, split links, 8 ft. chain, hocks, 6 needles, twine, 1 knife, 1 thermos, 1 watch, | clock — £2.4s.0d. 14 June 1935 Stationary [sic] etc. W C Penfold: stamp pad, 4 camel hair

brushes. Glass with labels, glue, 1 gross rubber bands, | gross S. G. Fasteners, 1 12 inch ruler, 2 large quill pens, 3 red pencils, 3 penholders |+4 illegible items] 15s.4d. 14 June 1935 Also Penfolds: ¥2 doz. exercise books, 1 doz... blocks, 4 doz

tags, % doz progress filed 12s.5d. 20 June 1935, Hoffnung: Coir Door Mat (2s. 3d.). 6 % inch iron box, 2 % gall. steel boiler, steel pots, chamber pot, kettle, 3 padlocks, 10 ft. hose,

mattock, spade, —£6.15s.1d. 22 June 1935, Smith, Copeland & Co.: canvas and waterproof goods -— 1]

camp bed 6ft. x 2ft.3inches, steel stool, Duck mail bag £1.18s.5d. 25 June 1935 Photos equip (Harringtons): Hypo in bottles £1.10s., also Alum, Fine grain Johnsons DW, Pushpins, Tripod, stirring rod, Grease proof envelopes. 3 % x 3 % plates — £1.9s.2d., Johnsons developer 2s.10d.

6 August 1935: 2 hundred gallon tanks, 2 lengths of gutter, pipe, sheets water container G. Renton, Rabaul £6.3s.0d.

On His Todd 247 2 September 1935, from BP Rabaul: kerosene, benzine [sic], oil, meths,

grease, 1 boy’s cheap cooking pot, 2 cases boy’s meats, 2 doz. tins tobacco, 2 doz. cig papers |both these labelled servants’ rations], 6 bags boy’s rice, matches, 10 lbs trade tobacco, 1 doz. tins ranch pipe tobacco (personal deduction), 1 doz. good laplaps, 2 boy’s baskets — £22.15s.6d. Undated Sargood Gardiner: 2 pillows, 6 towels, 3 glass towels, 3ft. mos-

quito net — £3.3s.ld. 3 pyjama suits, 6 underpants [both personal deduction]. Padlocks — doz., 6 boxes mosquito coils, 12 kitchen knives, 12 pkts razor blades, balls |?], cleaner, can opener, haversack, fishing

line, 1 tobacco pouch [also personal deduction], wash leather, 1 doz. axe handles, 2 doz. fishing lines, 4 doz. fishing hooks — £5.1s.2d. Food

23 July 1935 Foggitt Jones Pty Ltd.: Rex Pie, 2 doz lunch tongues, 6 camp pie, 12 curried sausages. £1.14s.5d. 23 July 1935: 2 cases Green beans, 2 cases French beans, 1 case carrots — £6.10s.0d.

23 July 1935: 3 cases Globe meats containing 20 dozen tins of dripping, rissoles, sausages, steak and kidney, Irish stew etc. 23 July 1935: 2 doz tins cream 6s.4d., case tins ideal milk £3.4s.0d.

23 July 1935: 150 lbs potatoes 15s.0d. 24 July 1935 Mitchell & Co.: vinegar, arrow root, soap, Gruyere cheese,

starch, soda, Reckitts Blue, Safety marches, ammonia, turpentine, vanilla, cleaner, flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, boiled sweets, butterscotch, cocoa, coffee essence, shrimp paste, ham, ham paste, lemon bitter, ginger, Horlicks, White lemon essence, Carb. Soda, C/ Tartar,

barley, texwax, soap, plum puddings, canadian salmon, marmite, bovril, lux, blanco, Ground ginger, prunes, banana creams, wheatmeal, sausage wafers, fairy cakes, arrow root, fruit Luvo cakes, — £20.1:5s:74, 6 August 1935: 2 cases trade tea — Rabaul B.P. 2s.9d. ? December 1935: 1 lb coffee from Koch 3s.

31 December 1935: 20 lbs potatoes, 4 bags rice, 10 [bs trade tobacco, sunlight soap and Tilley lamp vaporizer — BP Rabaul £5.1 2s.

248 Chris Gosden 23 January 1936: Doz cans meat 8s.10d.

24 January 1936: 1 case french beans, 1 case green peas £1.6s.0d. 24 January 1936: Sugar, boiled sweets, salmon paste, soap, white flour,

ammonia, Horlicks, fruit salts, Johnson’s baby powder, coal tar Ei: SLOG: 28 January 1936: 168 Ibs potatoes £1.1s.0d.

28 January 1936: Formalin, oil, lines, rope, pliers, nails, screws 19s: cd. 28 January 1936: 3 cases tinned fruit and soup £2.12s. 29 January 1936: 1 case Globe Beef £1.0s.0d. 30 January 1936: Flask — 2 pt 6s.

Rosells undated: 2 cases pears, 2 cases peaches, 2 cases fruit salad, ] case pears and peaches, | case apricots and fruit salad, 1 case of pea, celery and vegetable soup — £10.2s.6d.

Notes The research carried out for this chapter was supported by granis from the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy which are both gratefully acknowledged. The staff in the Department of Anthropology, Australian Museum were extremely supportive of the research and I thank especially Dr J. Specht, Elizabeth Bonshek and Nan Godsell. The stall of the University of Sydney archive and the archive room of the National Library of Australia were also very supportive. While carrying out the research in Ausiralia I was a Visiting Fellow in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University and I thank Atholl Anderson for making this possible. | thank Jim and Jill Allen for all sorts of hospitality and help. I also gratefully acknowledge the amount of detective work done by Tom Harding into Todd's post-fieldwork career and the destiny of his documentation. Without Tom’s efforts we would know much less about Todd than we do, Discussions with Jim Allen and Glenn Summerhayes helped improve the direction and content of this chapter considerably. Both Mike O’Hanlon and Jim Specht made detailed comments on the chapter, improved the argument and corrected many minor errors. 1. Application to the ANRC 9 September 1932, Sydney University, Elkin papers 40, Box 160, items 27 and 77.

2. Sydney University archives 4/1/69.

On His Todd 249 Bibliography Bhabha, H. The location of culture. Routledge, London, 1994. Butler, J. Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of ‘sex’. Routledge, London,

1993. ———.. I!xcitable speech: a politics of the performative. Routledge, London,

1997. Campbell, L.C. ‘Anthropology and the prolessionalisation of colonial administration in Papua and New Guinea’, The Journal of Pacific History vol. 33

(1998): 69-90. Commonwealth Government of Australia. Report to the League of Nations on the administration of the Territory of New Guinea from 1921 to 1922, Gov-

ernment Printer, Melbourne, 1923. Chinnery, E.W.P. ‘Notes on the natives of certain villages of the Mandated ‘Territory of New Guinea.’ Territory of New Guinea, Anthropological Reports Nos. 1 and 2. Government Printer, Melbourne, 1925. ———.. ‘Certain natives in south New Britain and Dampier Straits.’ Territory of New Guinea, Anthropological Reports No. 3. Government Printer, Mel-

bourne, 1926. Cilento, R. ‘The white man in the tropics’, Department of Health, Publication No. 7. Department of Health, Melbourne, 1925. Downs, |. The last mountain: a life in Papua New Guinea. University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1986. Firth, S.G. ‘German recruitment and employment of labourers in the west Pacific before the First World War’, unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1973. Gosden, C. and C. Knowles. Material culture and colonialism in New Britain, Papua New Guinea (in preparation). McCarthy, J.K. Patrol into yesterday: my New Guinea years. EW. Cheshire Ltd, Melbourne, 1963. Official Handbook of the Territory of New Guinea. Commonwealth Government

Printer, Canberra, 1937. Schindlbeck, M. “The art of the head-hunters: collecting activity and recruitment in New Guinea at the beginning of the twentieth century’ in European impact and Pacific influence eds H. Hiery and M. Mackenzie. Tauris

Academic Studies, London, 1997. Stocking, G. After Tylor, British social anthropology 1SS8—1951. University of

Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1995, Thomas, N. Colonialism’s culture. Polity Press, Oxford, 1994. Todd, J. A. “Report on research work in south west New Britain, Territory of New Guinea’, Oceania vol. 5 no.1] (1934a): 80-101.

—. ‘Report on research work in south west New Britain, Territory of New Guinea’, Oceania vol. 3 no.2 (1934b): 193-213. ——. ‘Glimpses into the daily life of the natives of New Britain’, Mankind

vol. 1,no.11 (1935a): 278-9. —_——., ‘Native offences and European law in south-west New Britain’, Ocea-

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250 Chris Gosden ——., ‘Redress of wrongs in south west New Britain’, Oceania vol. 6

(1936): 401-40. Wise, T. The self-made anthropologist. A life of A.P. Elkin. George Allen and

Unwin, Sydney, 1985.

Chapter 11

REVERSE TRAJECTORIES: Beatrice Blackwood as Collector and Anthropologist

Chantal Knowles

Introduction This chapter examines the movement of objects between different cat-

egories of people, and, in particular, the extent of gift exchange between museum professionals. Anthropologists have often focused on gift exchange and the movement of objects in Pacific societies and more recently research has begun on the movement of objects across the ‘frontier’ or coexisting space of colonial and indigenous cultures (Thomas 1991). But the ‘entangled’ nature of these objects goes far beyond the initial transactions that took place in the field. Anthropologists circulated ‘collectible’ objects both in and after leaving the field, and specific individuals used objects in the museum world as collateral for the acquisition of a more diverse range of objectives. The focus will be on the collecting activities of one Oxford anthropologist, Beatrice Blackwood, during two separate pieces of fieldwork in New Guinea, when she made substantial collections of material culture at five

different sites between 1929 and 1937. Objects represented a central thread in Blackwood’s social relations in the field and in the museum. The majority of objects she acquired in the field were purchased, but in the museum world she exchanged them as gifts, inverting our respective expectations as to artefact movement in the Pacific and the metropolis. These collections, and their constituent artefacts, became entangled in unexpected sets of social relations which —if we study them in their total-

pia y Chantal Knowles ity — provide us with a snapshot of anthropology from the perspective of one individual's experience at a time of ferment in the discipline.

Blackwood’s career charts a methodological and theoretical course almost the inverse of that of her peers. She narrowed her focus from broader anthropological questions down to material culture, choosing to go against the general tide among her contemporaries and in particular her colleagues at Oxford. Her collections form the strongest evidence of her positioning in the discipline, but also highlight broader issues as to how material culture was perceived in the discipline at that time. Blackwood’s social relationships with anthropologists and with local people were often broached, stimulated and maintained through the collection and circulation of objects. Her engagement with the collections and use of certain objects seem to have been a tool through which she gained respect and consolidated her position in several different communities: her field community, the colonial community, the museum community and the wider academic community. It isnow acknowledged that the contents of a collection made by an anthropologist during fieldwork is not the objective raw data that it

was assumed to be at the turn of the century (Herle 1998: 97). The contents of collections are structured by diverse influences on the col-

lector, including the concerns of the host community and the perspective of the anthropologist (O’Hanlon 1993: 55). This chapter looks beyond the content of Blackwood’s collections and examines how the process of collecting and exchange which she carried on both in the field and in the museum, created, cemented or realigned personal and community relations with the collector. In looking at two periods of fieldwork, separated by a five-year period when Blackwood was back in Oxford and her job and position changed dramatically, it is possible to identify an evolving fieldwork style and collecting methodology, which in turn emphasise the multidisciplinary nature of early anthropology at Oxford and its gradual hardening into

certain theoretical groups. These were ‘institutionalised’ with the arrival of Radcliffe-Brown to take up the Chair of Social Anthropology

in 1937, and by the narrowing of spheres in which material culture was used both theoretically and physically. Blackwood, whose career at Oxford University spanned the years from 1908 to 1975, was a participant in, reacted to, and observed these changes.

Blackwood’s Education and First Melanesian Fieldwork Having initially studied English there, Blackwood returned to Oxford

in 1916 to begin voluntary work in the department of Human Anatomy and to sign up for the Diploma in Anthropology which had

Reverse Trajectories 255 been instituted in 1907. During this period anthropology and human anatomy were closely linked at Oxford through the study of archaeology and physical anthropology. The Human Anatomy department was based in Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History which itself serves as the entrance to the Pitt Rivers Museum where the University’s ethnography collection is held. This spatial contiguity reflects the original link between evolutionary and ethnological theory, current at the museum’s foundation and which persisted during Blackwood's early career (Stocking 1995: xv—xvi). Having gained her diploma, Blackwood became a Research Assis-

tant in the department of Human Anatomy and concentrated on the anthropological fields of physical anthropology and archaeology. In 1924 she was awarded a fellowship to carry out an anthropological study on the relative intelligence of the indigenous and immigrant populations in various regions of North America (Blackwood 1927). It was on the strength of this work that she was offered another research grant — this time from the American National Research Council — to ‘study the problems of sex in a primitive society’. It was this that led to her fieldwork in Buka and Bougainville, part of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. Blackwood left Oxford for New Guinea in early July 1929, having been given special leave from her post in the department of Human Anatomy.

She went to the field under the auspices of Dr Clark Wissler, whom she had met at Yale and who had engineered her funding. But from the day of her departure, Blackwood wrote a weekly chronicle to her mentor, Arthur Thomson, Professor of Human Anatomy and teacher of physical anthropology at Oxford, who was her main contact and source of intellectual advice and stimulus in the field. Wissler, in contrast, received only periodic reports, and seemed content for Blackwood’s Oxford colleagues to advise her about choice of field area and methodology.

In addition to those with whom she was in direct contact, Blackwood had also been primed by others of the British school who wanted

information or specimens from the region, or had suggestions as to

what her work should focus on. Notable among these were R.R. Marett, the ‘armchair’ social anthropologist at Oxford, and Henry Bal-

four, curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, who requested a collection and who provided her with a letter of recommendation to E.W.P. Chin-

nery, the Government Anthropologist in New Guinea, soliciting his help in selecting a field site. Along with Thomson, these men formed the three pillars of Blackwood’s anthropological teaching and symbolised the discipline of anthropology at Oxford at this time (see Figure

11.1). In addition to the Oxford influences, Blackwood had contact with two veterans of the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait: Sidney Ray and Charles Seligman. Where Ray, the

254 Chantal Knowles specialist in linguistics, offered advice, Seligman requested information in the form of the narratives of dreams for interpretation. Blackwood travelled to New Guinea via Australia where she visited Radcliffe-Brown’s department in Sydney. Here she met recent returnees

from the field, Camilla Wedgwood and Raymond Firth, who both advised her on the practicalities of fieldwork. She attended departmental coffee breaks in Radcliffe-Brown’s room with his students, including

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