Category:Private Collections

Private Collections

Private artefact collections are a feature of New Zealand archaeology right up until the present. Many of the artefacts were acquired by presentation or purchase and these are still ways of their accumulation today. In the past, when found Maori artefacts were personal property, fossicking was a way of accumulation. Speaking of collector Willi Fels (See) Jenner writes his: "...archaeological practice enacts, albeit in a rather scholarly form, the colonial idea that whatever you could find in New Zealand was there for the taking.^[1]"

Samson ^[2] gives an insight into the motivations and behaviours of collectors who operated in Otago. Blackley ^[3] shows how earlier collectors were often unscrupulous and indeed many exploited their power in the Maori world to accumulate items and then use them to assert their personal authority.

Where individuals are associated with the collections they are almost all male and Pakeha. This says something about gender roles in colonial New Zealand but may well also have biased the material that was collected.

Many of these collections have found their way to museums, in whole or in part, after dispersal.

Some collections of European artefacts - particularly of bottles - have grown the same way. The advent of the protection of archaeological sites dating from before 1900 AD under the Heritage New Zealand Act has limited some sources, but many found European objects are still finding their way to private collections.

This category is to highlight some of the important collections which are part of our historic heritage.

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References