Holdings Information

Bibliographic Record Display

• Title:Tikopia collected : Raymond Firth and the creation of Solomon Islands cultural heritage / Elizabeth Bonshek.
  
•    
• Author/Creator:Bonshek, Elizabeth, author.
  
• Published/Created:Canon Pyon : Sean Kingston Publishing, 2017.
  ©2017
  

• Holdings

  Holdings Record Display

  • Location:KOERNER LIBRARY stacks (Floor 1)Where is this?
    
  • Call Number: GN671.S6 B66 2017
    
  • Number of Items:1
    
  • Status:Available
    

   
• Library of Congress Subjects:Firth, Raymond, 1901-2002.
  Ethnology--Solomon Islands--Tikopia.
  Ethnological expeditions--Solomon Islands--Tikopia.
  Ethnological museums and collections.
  Tikopia (Solomon Islands)--Antiquities.
  
• Description:vi, 222 pages : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 23 cm
  
• Summary:The ethnographic collection made by Sir Raymond Firth in Tikopia, Solomon Islands, in 1928 and 1929 is used as a case study for the examination of the different meanings and interpretations attributed to museum collections. This collection is now housed at the Australian Museum in Sydney. In the 1970s the collection was subject to a repatriation request by the National Museum of the Solomon Islands, but the collection was not returned. In examining the progress of this request the history of the collection is traced, including acquisition in the field and subsequent re-locations between university, state and national bodies in Australia. The author suggests that the reasons for the failure of the National Museum of the Solomon Islands to successfully negotiate the return of this collection lie in the nature of the repatriation request as an expression of political difference at a national level rather than cultural difference at the local level, and in the specific social relationships, past and present, surrounding the collection. However, the contemporary attitudes to the collection identified in this study should not be assumed to remain constant, as future generations of Tikopia may well reassess the cultural value of this collection. The author concludes that museums are sites which mediate specific social relationships, at specific times in history.
  
• Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 194-210) and index.
  
• ISBN:1907774394
  9781907774393
  
• Contents:Collecting Tikopia
  Firth's scientific anthropology
  Interaction between Tikopia and Europeans, 1606 to 1928
  Objects as sacred : Mediating the spirits in Tikopia
  The idea of a 'treasure place'
  Creating cultural heritage
  Appendix 1: Firth's 'Specimen list'
  appendix 2: The Firth Collection at the Australian Museum
  Appendix 3: Names of individuals who gave objects to Firth
  Appendix 4: Tikopia objects held in public collections collected prior to 1928.