From accession to access
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 04/02/2021

Since October 2018, Untold Histories Museum Tours have been delivering decolonial tours of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. Founded by three South Asian women, the tours discuss the histories of museum collecting and how these are firmly situated within histories of colonialism and conflict. By highlighting the biographies of individual objects, we illustrate the impact of these histories and emphasise their pervasiveness. We dismantle the idea of collecting as a genteel activity by discussing individual collectors who donated objects looted during conflict. We show how museums were complicit in these systems of oppression, even fuelling the destruction of archaeological sites.


The tours are routinely attended by audiences unfamiliar with decolonial discourse and practice, and the uncomfortable histories that are our focus. This has led to emotional and fraught interactions. Conversely, BME audiences have confided that hearing these histories spoken out loud in a memory institution felt revolutionary. Balancing these twin goals of educating and empowering was our key aim. In this paper, I will discuss the practical lessons learned over the first year of this project, and reflect critically on the extent to which we achieved our goals. I will explore the impact of our choices in terms of publicity, content, and delivery. Finally, I will examine the benefits as well as the limitations of the direct audience engagement approach to decolonisation.


 Danika Parikh, University of Cambridge