First published in 2005 by UCL Press
Published in the United States by Cavendish Publishing
Published in Australia by Cavendish Publishing (Australia) Pty Ltd
This edition published 2014 by Routledge
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UCL Press 2005
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Were, Graeme
The art of clothing
1 Clothing and dress Social aspects Islands of the Pacific
2 Clothing and dress Islands of the Pacific History
3 Islands of the Pacific Social life and customs
I Title II Kchler, Susanne
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN 1-84472-015-2
ISBN 978-1-844-72015-6
Typeset by Phoenix Photosetting, Chatham, Kent
Cover illustration: Wahgi dancers, 1980. Photograph Michael OHanlon
We would like to thank all those people who have made the publication of this book possible; not least the other members of the Clothing the Pacific project team. We are particularly indebted to the help and support of the staff in the Department of Ethnography at the British Museum who have accommodated us and provided us with excellent facilities, as well as the Anthropology Library staff who deserve our gratitude for their assistance in helping us access books, papers and so forth. We would also like to thank the ESRC for funding the research project and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research for financing the conference from which this book derives. Our appreciation also extends to University College London for hosting the conference, and particularly Chris Hagisawa from the Department of Anthropology for providing expert technical support throughout. We are particularly grateful for the comments given by Sean Kingston and Colin Dibben.
Lissant Bolton is Curator of the Pacific and Australian collections at the British Museum. She has undertaken research in Vanuatu since 1989, working collaboratively with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre. Her book, Unfolding the Moon: Enacting Womens Kastom in Vanuatu, was published by the University of Hawaii Press in 2003.
Chloe Colchester was Research Fellow in Anthropology at University College London and was a Research Associate on Clothing the Pacific: A Study of the Nature of Innovation. She is currently a freelance writer.
Elizabeth Cory-Pearce is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is writing up her research on the ways in which things mediate social relationships and negotiate boundaries in Rotorua, New Zealand.
Anne DAlleva is Associate Professor of Art History and Womens Studies at the University of Connecticut. She writes on art and gender in 18th century Tahiti. Her works include Art of the Pacific (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998).
Vilsoni Hereniko is a Professor at the Centre for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawaii. He is also a playwright, filmmaker and editor of the journal, The Contemporary Pacific.
Webb Keane is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of Signs of Recognition: Powers and Hazards of Representation in an Indonesian Society (University of California Press, 1997) and numerous articles on language and signification, material culture, religion, modernity and social theory.
Susanne Kchler is Reader in Anthropology at University College London. She has worked extensively on issues of remembering and forgetting in relation to Pacific art. Her works include Malanggan: Art, Memory and Sacrifice (Berg, 2002).
Michael OHanlon is Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford. His fieldwork is with the Wahgi people in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. His books on them include Reading the Skin (1989) and an ethnography of a museum exhibition, Paradise: Portraying the New Guinea Highlands (1993), both published by British Museum Press. His most recent book is Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia (Berghahn Books, 2000), co-edited with Robert Welsch.
Ruth B Phillips holds a Canada Research Chair and is Professor of Art History at Carleton University, Ottawa. Her research focuses on the art and material of north eastern North America. Her publications include: Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 17001900 (University of Washington Press, 1998); Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, co-edited with Christopher B Steiner (University of California Press, 1999); and, with Janet Catherine Berlo, Native North American Art (Oxford University Press, 1998).
Paul Sharrad is Associate Professor of English Studies at the University of Wollongong, Australia where he teaches postcolonial literatures. He has edited New Literatures Review, published a wide range of articles, and has books on Raja Rao and Albert Wendt.
Marilyn Strathern is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Her ethnographic interests are divided between Melanesia and Britain, and latterly between new medical technologies, intellectual property issues and the audit culture. Living in Port Moresby in the early 1970s, she worked with migrants from Mount Hagen who stimulated her contribution here.
Lisa Taouma currently works as a television director for the Pacific Islands programme Tagata Pasifika on TVONE in New Zealand. She has made a number of documentaries looking at social issues affecting Pacific people, including Otara Markets, Body Image Pasifika and Tatau-Padfic tattooing. She has an MA (1st Hons) in Art History from Auckland University.
Nicholas Thomas is Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has conducted wide-ranging research on art, culture and history in the Pacific. His books include Entangled Objects (Harvard University Press, 1991), Oceanic Art (Thames and Hudson, 1995) and Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook (Allen Lane, 2003).
Graeme Were is Research Fellow in Anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London and was a Research Associate on Clothing the Pacific: A Study of the Nature of Innovation at the British Museum. His ethnographic interests are museum collections, ethnomathematics and material culture.
