Museums, Anthropology and Imperial Exchange

Amiria Henare demonstrates that the collection of artefacts and their formal study, both in museums and in the field, have been central anthropological strategies over the past two centuries. Henare’s pioneering work traces the movement across space and time of objects now held in contemporary collections. Using evidence from across the former British Empire, she demonstrates how and why things were bought, exchanged and stolen, and carried across the oceans to reach their final institutional settings.