Fragmentary ancestors and making monuments: international working at Manchester Museum
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-06-02

This presentation explores some of the issues raised by displaying material culture in museums that straddle the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology. In recent years Manchester Museum has organised two temporary exhibitions dealing with ‘World Archaeology’: subjects dealing with West African ceramic figurines and the statues of Easter Island or Rapa Nui respectively. Whilst it is common to find ancient Greek artefacts and Egyptology on display in museums, ‘World Archaeology’ collections are often treated differently and displayed in relation to their perceived aesthetic qualities. Whilst this may provide a means of sidestepping uncomfortable questions about the circumstances of acquisition, and repatriation, it does separate the exhibit from its original cultural context, a context that the methodology of archaeology aims to preserve. It also raises the question of whose story the objects are supposed to tell, that of the colonisers or the colonised? At a time when museums as cultural institutions are expected to play a role in addressing current social concerns such as immigration, this distinction risks alienating the very immigrant communities curators wish to engage. Interdisciplinary working that explores the richness of non-European cultures with the contribution of archaeological fieldwork seems to offer new ways forward, which this presentation will explore through the Fragmentary Ancestors and Making Monuments exhibitions at Manchester Museum.

Bryan Sitch, Manchester Museum