Possessing Culture: Museums, Anthropology and German New Guinea

by Chris Gosden, Chantal Knowles

Recent research has paid little tribute to the rich German collections proudly exhibited at the turn of the twentieth century. With the annexation of German New Guinea in 1884, museums turned to this colony as a unique opportunity to augment their collections and their exhibits. Possessing Culture explores the links between collecting expeditions and colonialism using German New Guinea between 1884 and 1914 as a case study. This book examines a number of resultant major collections in Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and Stuttgart. The authors demonstrate how these played a pivotal role in the German colonial project. Throughout Gosden and Knowles shed new light on the complex histories of colonialism and the often contradictory power relations that they instilled.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2006

About the author

Chris Gosden is a Professorial Fellow in European Archaeology at the University of Oxford. He teaches students in the Archaeology and Anthropology degree. He is also an author of several books on human links with the material world, the long term history of creativity, intelligence, the emotions, and aesthetics; the archaeology of colonisation in the recent past, as well as in older periods such as the setting up of the Roman empire;late Prehistoric periods in Europe from the late Bronze Age to AD 400. Celtic art and other aspects of material culture;issues of identity, especially what it means to be English;the history of museums, their collections, archaeology and anthropology as disciplines.