Archaeology and Ethnographic Collections: Disentangling Provenance, Provenience, and Context in Vanuatu Assemblages

The archaeological value of museum collections is not limited to collections labelled "archaeology." "Ethnology" or "ethnography" collections can provide useful information for evaluating broadly relevant theoretical and methodological discussions in the discipline. The...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Museum worlds 2016-01, Vol.4 (1), p.167-180
Main Author: Flexner, James L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Archaeology
Case studies
Collections
Ethnography
Information sources
Museum studies
Provenance
Theory
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Description
Summary:The archaeological value of museum collections is not limited to collections labelled "archaeology." "Ethnology" or "ethnography" collections can provide useful information for evaluating broadly relevant theoretical and methodological discussions in the discipline. The concepts of provenience (where something was found), provenance (where the materials for an object originated), and context (the ways an object is and was interpreted and used within a cultural milieu) are central to much archaeological interpretation. Archaeologists have often looked to living societies as analogues for better understanding these issues. Museum ethnographic collections from Vanuatu provide a case study offering a complementary approach, in which assemblages of ethnographic objects and associated information allow us to reconstruct complex networks of movement, exchange, and entanglement.
ISSN:2049-6729
2049-6729
2049-6737
DOI:10.3167/armw.2016.040113