Howes Hilary, Jones Tristen, Spriggs Matthew (eds.) Uncovering Pacific Pasts: Histories of Archaeology in Oceania

ANU Press, 2022. — 614 p.Objects have many stories to tell. The stories of their makers and their uses. Stories of exchange, acquisition, display and interpretation. This book is a collection of essays highlighting some of the collections, and their object biographies, that were displayed in the Uncovering Pacific Pasts: Histories of Archaeology in Oceania (UPP) exhibition. The exhibition, which opened on 1 March 2020, sought to bring together both notable and relatively unknown Pacific material culture and archival collections from around the globe, displaying them simultaneously in their home institutions and linked online at www.uncoveringpacificpasts.org. Thirty‑eight collecting institutions participated in UPP, including major collecting institutions in the United Kingdom, continental Europe and the Americas, as well as collecting institutions from across the Pacific.Hilary Howes is a historian of science based in the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at The Australian National University. Her research addresses the German-speaking tradition within anthropology and archaeology in Australia and the Pacific region. Her current project, ‘Skulls for the Tsar: Indigenous Human Remains in Russian Collections’, offers the first detailed investigation of the acquisition of Indigenous human remains from Australia and the Pacific by the Russian Empire during the long 19th century.
Tristen Jones is an archaeologist and curator based in the Department of Archaeology, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney. Her research on Australian Indigenous and Pacific material culture collections focuses on the materiality and agency of objects, their relevance to contemporary Indigenous communities, and how collections can transform disciplinary histories. She was previously a research associate on Matthew Spriggs’ ARC Laureate Fellowship project ‘The Collective Biography of Archaeology in the Pacific: A Hidden History’ at The Australian National University.
Matthew Spriggs is an Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at The Australian National University and an Honorary Curator of Archaeology at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, Port Vila, Vanuatu, where he now lives. His interests include Pacific and Island Southeast Asian archaeology, archaeological theory and the history of archaeology. His current ARC Project (with Lynette Russell of Monash University) is ‘Aboriginal Involvement in the Early History of Archaeology’ (2021–23).