Museums hold thousands of ‘things’ from all around the world. In larger institutions like Te Papa, the histories of these ‘things’, be they objects, specimens, artifacts or taonga, are not always known. As part of a new research project, Curator of Mātauranga Māori and Archaeology Dr Amber Aranui at Te Papa and Research Fellow and Co-director SPAR (Southern Pacific Archaeological Research) Dr Monica Tromp from our partner organisation Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka (University of Otago) are looking at ways to start recovering these lost stories and histories.
Provenance limbo
Sometimes they come to the museum with no information attached, with the wrong information attached, or while in the museum, the information is lost or incorrectly associated. This is the hard reality for many museum collections around the world. For whatever reason, thousands of ‘things’ remain lost in a kind of limbo as objects, specimens and taonga with no story, no history to connect them to their people, communities and whenua.
Museums are meant to teach us about ‘things’ and how they have shaped our world. Their role in society and commodification into the world of museums is not fully realised when their histories are unknown.
Museums in places like Aotearoa New Zealand could be seen as a colonial construct where the coloniser dominates the indigenous ‘Other’ through their telling of the history of the ‘things’ it has collected or acquired into its realm. Not having the stories or history of taonga Māori, museums have talked for them from a form and function perspective.
Recovering lost stories with ZooMS
One technique that we are using to start recovering the lost stories is called ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry or Peptide Mass Fingerprinting). In our project called Developing a minimally invasive species identification protocol, we are focusing on taonga made from or thought to be made from marine mammals, including whales, dolphins, seals, and sea lions.
We aim to use a minimally invasive sampling method, which involves rubbing taonga with very fine grit polishing film to collect bone dust. Extracting collagen from this bone dust allows us to find out what type of bone a taonga is made from.
What is the testing doing for us
The results enable us to better understand what species were used to make different types of taonga held in our collections, better understand their role in Te Ao Māori, and provide valuable information that can be added to the biography of the taonga we care for, further adding to their story.
Our records relating to what taonga are made from are not straightforward, we have descriptions such as bone, whale bone, whale bone?, marine mammal bone? And even baleen. In reality, we don’t always know what taonga are made from. And this is where our journey begins, as it should, by understanding the utilisation of resources used to create ‘things’.
We can look at a taonga like the one below and say ‘this is a fishhook probably used to catch a small fish’ and that’s all we can really say. But to understand where this fishhook comes from, we need ask several questions.
Asking the right pātai
The first of which is what type of animal was used to make this fishhook?
Was it an animal that is easily accessible to certain communities in Aotearoa?
Are there places around New Zealand that this animal is not found?
This information can give us a clue as to where it is probably not from. Which in turn brings us closer to finding out where it is from. By combining this information with other research techniques such as provenance research and archaeology, we can uncover other pieces of the puzzle.
This project is also helping us to ask other questions about the taonga we have. For example, below is a patu parāoa, the name of this taonga suggests it is made from sperm whale, known in Te Ao Māori as parāoa. But are we sure they are all made from parāoa, or is this a generalised name given to taonga like this made from bone?
To try and answer this question, we have selected a representative sample of patu parāoa, of all shapes and sizes, to see if they are all in fact made for the bone of parāoa (sperm whale).
Once the results are known, we can then investigate things like which specific bones from a whale were used to make different taonga. It is generally thought that taonga like patu are made from the lower jaw of a whale. The example below shows a patu parāoa with grooves indicating that this was taken from the lower jaw where the blood vessels are located.
Understanding what type of bone taonga are made from gives us a better understanding of the role certain species of marine mammals, be they whale, dolphin, or seal, played in Te Ao Māori over time.
Te Puāwaitanga and Te Huringa I
Many of the taonga we have in our collections come from a period know in archaeological terms as the Classic Period (from 1500 AD) and the European Colonisation Period (from 1800 AD), however it is more appropriate to look at these time periods through a Te Ao Māori lens as developed through the work of Tā Hirini Moko Mead. Te Puāwaitanga (the flowering) 1500–1800 AD and Te Huringa I (the Turning) 1800 – to present.
These time periods provide us with points in time where our ancestors were utilising certain materials for weapons, food gathering, hunting, tools, adornments, and even for entertainment.
Connecting collections
It is our goal for this project to contribute to the ever-growing mātauranga about our relationships within the realm of Tangaroa. And also, so that we can further develop from a museum which holds a collection of ‘things’ to a place that shares stories and connects to communities more meaningfully.
We hope you continue to follow us on this journey as we begin the task of revealing the stories and connections we have with marine mammals, their role in te ao Māori and their presence in our National Museum.
Further information
- Find out more about the project on Ika Moana, Ika Whenua
Working for the World Museum in the Netherlands, I always say, the value of the object is in the story behind it.