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Unpacking the Collection

Networks of Material and Social Agency in the Museum

  • Textbook
  • © 2011

Overview

  • Provides new theoretical framework for examining material culture
  • International and cross-cultural case studies
  • Features indigenous cultures not often the subject of mainstream research
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: One World Archaeology (WORLDARCH)

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

  1. Introduction

  2. Processes and Perspectives

  3. Collectors and Nationhood

  4. Communities and Collections

  5. Individual Collectors, Objects and ‘Types’

Keywords

About this book

Museum collections are often perceived as static entities hidden away in storerooms or trapped behind glass cases. By focusing on the dynamic histories of museum collections, new research reveals their pivotal role in shaping a wide range of social relations.  Over time and across space the interactions between these artefacts and  the people and institutions who made, traded, collected, researched and exhibited them have generated complex networks of material and social agency.

 

In this innovative volume, the contributors draw on a broad range of source materials to explore the cross-cultural interactions which have created museum collections. These case studies contribute significantly to the development of new theoretical frameworks to examine broader questions of materiality, agency, and identity in the past and present.

 

Grounded in case studies from individual objects and museum collections from North America, Europe, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Australia, this truly international volume juxtaposes historical, geographical, and cross-cultural studies.

 

This work will be of great interest to archaeologists and anthropologists studying material culture, as well as researchers in museum studies and cultural heritage management.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, United Kingdom

    Sarah Byrne

  • Department of Archaeology, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Anne Clarke

  • Faculty of Arts, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom

    Rodney Harrison

  • Australian Museum and UniversityofSydney, Sydney, Australia

    Robin Torrence

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Unpacking the Collection

  • Book Subtitle: Networks of Material and Social Agency in the Museum

  • Editors: Sarah Byrne, Anne Clarke, Rodney Harrison, Robin Torrence

  • Series Title: One World Archaeology

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8222-3

  • Publisher: Springer New York, NY

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4419-8221-6Published: 27 June 2011

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4614-2917-3Published: 16 August 2012

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-4419-8222-3Published: 27 June 2011

  • Series ISSN: 2625-8641

  • Series E-ISSN: 2625-865X

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: VIII, 342

  • Number of Illustrations: 36 b/w illustrations, 47 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, Sociology, general

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