Población

While the information gained from the study of non-Western cultures may have been valued primarily for its comparative potential – the twentieth century saw an

increased emphasis on ‘salvage anthropology’, which was concerned with recording

cultures considered to be in danger of disappearance, either due to rapid cultural change and/or population loss. In the context of the British Museum, in the same period, there were increasingly explicit references to the British Empire, and to the institution and its collection as a physical manifestation of the success of British colonialism. There was a concurrent disinterest in examining how cultures were adapting to change, and a general distaste for contemporary material which evidenced this. The first Handbook to the Ethnographical Collections was produced in 1910, with a revised version in 1925. The preface by Keeper of the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography, Charles H. Read, remains in the later version, and delineates the areas of interest to contemporary anthropology:

At no one period in the world’s history has any one nation exercised

control over so many primitive races as our own at the present time, and yet there is no institution in Great Britain where this fact is adequately brought before the public in a concrete form. Meanwhile civilization is spreading over the earth, and the beliefs, customs, and products of practically all aboriginal peoples are becoming obsolete under new

conditions which, though interesting from an economic point of view, have only a secondary importance for the ethnologist. In proportion as the value of Anthropology is appreciated at its true worth, the material for

anthropological study diminishes; in many cases native beliefs and

institutions described in the book have already become obsolete, though it has been found convenient, in mentioning them, to use the present tense. Such facts alone enforce the necessity for energetic action before it is too late.

77 (emphasis mine; British Museum, 1925, pp.vi)

Read’s comments on the use of the present tense for the sake of convenience (the

creation of ‘the ethnographic present’ through this literary device became a

recognised problem in anthropology) reinforce his stated view on contemporary cultures, and serves to render them invisible altogether – writing their own past over their present, having found the former preferable to the latter.

By this stage, references to specific cases had been abandoned, as displays were added to and altered regularly. The guides remained the main source of interpretation available to the public, and now provided contextual information on the societies which the objects belonged to. Twenty-seven pages were dedicated to introducing Polynesia and its inhabitants, with details of certain processes including tapa making and tattooing. A small section was included on the Marquesas. After detailing the European discoveries of the islands, brief comments are made about the islanders:

The inhabitants at the time of the discovery were physically a fine race, but are now dying out. They were cannibals, and constantly engaged in

warfare for the possession of the narrow fertile valleys leading down from the mountains. They were tatued in a remarkably elaborate manner, the designs being reproduced in their carvings in wood, bone and shell. In their religious practices they resembled the Tahitians and other Polynesians, and had a marae or temple in every district.

(British Museum, 1925, p.172)

This brief paragraph implies that all that is worth knowing about Marquesans existed in their past – they are a people without a present or future. That cannibalism was practised is foregrounded in preference to a more nuanced summary of social organisation and religious practice, but fortunately artistic endeavour does feature. This coverage is the most the Marquesas received before or since in a British Museum guidebook.

The fact that Marquesan material was clearly on display in dedicated cases from the

78 an emphasis on the past, there was no room to highlight innovative elements of

particular objects in the collection (such as the ‘u’uhe discussed in the previous chapter), or post-contact object types such as the tobacco pipes. The scientific framework which guided the arrangement of ethnographic displays was underpinned by ideas about social evolution, which embodied an assumption that once external replaced internal forces in guiding the development of a particular culture, it had lost its scientific worth. As stated above, the ‘new conditions’ under which indigenous

people were living and changing were not the primary interest of ethnologists at the time. In the absence of any imperative to represent the Marquesan present (or to articulate post-contact developments which were in fact evident in a number of objects within the collection by this time), there was no stimulus whatsoever for active collecting of recently produced material. Although by the 1920s, the basic principles of evolutionary anthropology were being called into question, anthropology was still to

an extent ‘object-oriented’. With its focus on groups which did not leave written

records, Stocking argues that anthropology continued to perpetuate a view of objects as permanent embodiments of ‘moments of past cultural or racial development’ (1985, p.114). He also cites the ‘political economy of anthropological research’ as a

factor, wherein anthropologists could garner support for their work by collecting objects for institutions while in the field. The collecting efforts of James Hornell and the stated goals of the Scientific Expeditionary Research Association which sponsored

the St George expedition are a clear example of this. Hornell’s persistent search for ‘ancient’ objects was consistent with anthropology as practised by those of his generation – a shift towards studies of present-day groups was to be led by younger scholars (Stocking, 1985).