ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Pandanus-leaf textiles and their material ontologies in late nineteenth-century Vanuatu

• In Event: Collection Stories and Indo-Pacific worlds 4

English Abstract

Late nineteenth-century Pandanus-leaf textiles from Vanuatu embody (hi)stories of co-creation, memory and power that are unrecorded elsewhere. The textiles themselves reveal the processes of making situated in islands where plant species, wind, humidity, sun, sea, and human agency negotiate creative flows of energy. The science of making these textiles embodied ecological co-creation and Indigenous craft practice. Pandanus-leaf textiles continue their journey of making through their material uses. These uses shaped the textiles through physical and cultural memory making. Plait and dye patterns conveyed messages - particularly at important social occasions – thus communicating and preserving Indigenous literature. As well as these messages, the textile also preserves the forces it endured during use in a physical memory that can be decoded through close analysis of the materials. Finally, the close analysis of the textile today (in the stores of the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) emphasizes, above all, the relationship of power and fragility between the researcher, the space, and the textile. While the vulnerability of the textile is evident from damage, fading and physical losses, the conservation history of chemical pesticides and other introduced materials makes the textile a potentially dangerous object with which to interact. In the museum collection pandanus-leaf textiles are not dormant. The capacity for the textile to exert power, contain memory and experience a co-creative journey continues as conservation and research permeates the borders and surfaces of this fascinating material culture.

Author

• Adèle Miranda Wright, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, Hamilton Kerr Institute