Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T11:47:51.015Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sherds of Paradise: Domestic Archaeology and Ceramic Artefacts from a Protestant Mission in the South Pacific

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

James L. Flexner  and
Andrew C. Ball
James L. Flexner*
Affiliation:
School of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Andrew C. Ball*
Affiliation:
School of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
*
[email: [email protected]]
[email: [email protected]]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Postmedieval protestant missionaries working in exotic locations used objects both as a marker of their own ‘civilisation’ in contrast to that of the local populations and as a means of engaging these communities with Christianity. European things were displayed and conspicuously used to encourage a consumer mindset and interest in capitalism, thought to be crucial steps on the path to full conversion. Excavations at a Presbyterian mission house on Tanna Island, Vanuatu, recovered a remarkable assemblage of nineteenth-century British-made transfer-printed ceramics for such a remote location. These objects reflect multiple, complex meanings including performance of a ‘civilised’ British identity, romanticized ideals of pastoral landscapes, and conceptions of death and rebirth in the afterlife. These meanings were complicated by the context of cross-cultural interactions that were necessary to the missionary project.

Les missionnaires protestants en mission au bout du monde faisaient usage d'objets pour manifester leur appartenance à un monde ‘civilisé’ par rapport aux populations indigènes mais aussi pour attirer ces communautés vers le Christianisme. Les objets d'origine européenne étaient exhibés pour encourager des valeurs de consommateurs et un intérêt pour le capitalisme, considérés comme essentiels pour une véritable conversion. Les fouilles d'une maison appartenant à une mission presbytérienne sur l'île de Tanna au Vanuatu ont révélé un ensemble remarquable de faïence imprimée d'origine britannique. Les multiples et complexes significations de cette vaisselle mettaient en valeur, entre autres, une identité britannique « civilisée », des notions idéalisées de paysages bucoliques, et une certaine conception de la mort et de la résurrection. De plus les relations interculturelles nécessaires au succès du projet missionnaire rendaient ces divers sens encore plus compliqués. Translation by Madeleine Hummler

Die protestantischen Missionare der frühen Neuzeit, die in den weit entfernten Winkeln der Erde arbeiteten, nutzten ihr Hab und Gut, um ihren ‘zivilisierten’ Status gegenüber den einheimischen Bevölkerungen auszudrücken aber auch um diese Gemeinschaften zum Christentum zu bekehren. Gegenstände aus Europa wurden zur Schau gestellt und wurden für die Förderung einer Verbrauchermentalität und eines Interessen in Kapitalismus eingesetzt, da man sie als einen entscheidenden Schritt auf dem Wege zur Bekehrung betrachtete. In einer Ausgrabung einer presbyterianischen Missionsstelle auf der Insel Tanna in Vanuatu ist eine bemerkenswerte Sammlung von mit Abziehbild verzierter Keramik aus Großbritannien zutage gekommen. Der Sinngehalt dieser Gegenstände ist vielfältig und komplex und wurde, u. a. durch eine ‘zivilisierte’ britische Identität, ein Bild einer romantischen, idyllischen Landschaft und eine Vorstellung von Tod und Wiedergeburt im Jenseits vermittelt. In diesem Zusammenhang haben die interkulturellen Wechselwirkungen, die für den Erfolg der Missionsinitiative wesentlich waren, diese verschiedenen Auffassungen auch verkompliziert. Translation by Madeleine Hummler

Keywords

Oceaniapostmedieval archaeologynineteenth centurycolonialismBritish identitytransfer-printed ceramicsmissionsOcéaniearchéologie postmédiévaledix-neuvième sièclecolonialismeidentité britanniquefaïence impriméemissionsOzeanienArchäologie der frühen Neuzeitneunzehntes JahrhundertKolonialismusbritische Identitätmit Abziehbild verzierte KeramikMissionen
Type
Article
Information
European Journal of Archaeology , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , 2016 , pp. 728 - 754
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 the European Association of Archaeologists 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, R. 1984. In the Land of Strangers: A Century of European Contact with Tanna, 1774–1874. Canberra: The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Arendt, B. 2010. Caribou to Cod: Moravian Missionary Influence on Inuit Subsistence Strategies. Historical Archaeology, 44:81–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ash, J., Brooks, A., David, B. & McNiven, I. I. 2008. European-Manufactured Objects from the ‘Early Mission’ Site of Totalai, Mua (Western Torres Strait). Memoirs of the Queensland Museum: Cultural Heritage Series, 4 (2): 349–67.Google Scholar
Ash, J., Manas, L. & Bosun, D. 2010. Lining the Path: A Seascape Perspective of Two Torres Strait Missions, Northeast Australia. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 14:56–85.Google Scholar
Atzback, R. 2015. Between Representation and Eternity: The Archaeology of Praying in Late Medieval and Post-Medieval Times. European Journal of Archaeology, 19 (1). doi:10.1179/1461957115Y.0000000006.Google Scholar
Barker, D. & Majewski, T. 2006. Ceramic Studies in Historical Archaeology. In: Hicks, D. and Beaudry, M.C., eds. The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 191–204.Google Scholar
Beaudry, M.C., Long, J., Miller, H.M., Neiman, F.D. & Stone, G.W. 1983. A Vessel Typology for Early Chesapeake Ceramics: The Potomac Typological System. Historical Archaeology, 17:18–39.Google Scholar
Bernstock, J.E. 1986. Death in Poussin's Second ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’. Konsthistorisk Tidskrift/Journal of Art History, 55 (2): 54–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birmingham, J. & Wilson, A. 2010. Archaeologies of Cultural Interaction: Wybalenna Settlement and Killalpaninna Mission. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 14:15–38.Google Scholar
Bonnemaison, J. 1994. The Tree and the Canoe: History and Ethnogeography of Tanna. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, A.M. 1999. Building Jerusalem: Transfer-Printed Finewares and the Creation of British Identity. In: Tarlow, S. and West, S., eds. The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain. London: Routledge, pp. 51–65.Google Scholar
Brooks, A.M. 2003. Crossing Offa's Dyke: British Ideologies, Welsh Society and Late 18th- and 19th-Century Ceramics in Wales. In: Lawrence, S., ed. Archaeologies of the British. London: Routledge, pp. 113–37.Google Scholar
Brooks, A.M. 2005. An Archaeological Guide to British Ceramics in Australia, 1788–190. Sydney: Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology.Google Scholar
Brooks, A.M., Lawrence, S. & Lennon, J. 2011. The Parsonage of the Reverend Willoughby Bean: Church, State, and Frontier Settlement in Nineteenth-Century Australia. Historical Archaeology, 45:1–19.Google Scholar
Chenoweth, J.M. 2012. Quakerism and the Lack of Things in the Early Modern. In: Fortenberry, B. and McAtackney, L., eds. Modern Materials: The Proceedings of CHAT Oxford, 2009. 2009: Oxford, pp. 73–84.Google Scholar
Coysh, A.W. & Henrywood, R.K. 1982. Dictionary of Blue and White Printed Pottery 1780–1880, Vol. I. Woodbridge: Antique Collector's Club.Google Scholar
Crook, P. 2005. Quality, Cost and Value: Key Concepts for an Interpretive Assemblage Analysis. Australasian Historical Archaeology, 23:15–24.Google Scholar
Crook, P. 2011. Rethinking Assemblage Analysis: New Approaches to the Archaeology of Working-Class Neighborhoods. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 15 (4): 582–93.Google Scholar
Crossland, Z. 2006. Landscape and Mission in Madagascar and Wales in the Early 19th Century: ‘Sowing the Seeds of Knowledge’. Landscapes, 7 (1): 93–121.Google Scholar
Crossland, Z. 2013. Signs of Mission: Material Semeiosis and 19th Century Tswana Architecture. Signs and Society, 1:79–113.Google Scholar
Croucher, S. 2013. The Archaeology of Colonial Encounters in Eastern Africa. In: Mitchell, P. and Lane, P., eds. The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1013–22.Google Scholar
Flexner, J.L. 2013. Mission Archaeology in Vanuatu: Preliminary Findings, Problems, and Prospects. Australasian Historical Archaeology, 31:14–24.Google Scholar
Flexner, J.L. 2014a. Historical Archaeology, Contact, and Colonialism in Oceania. Journal of Archaeological Research, 22 (1): 43–87.Google Scholar
Flexner, J.L. 2014b. Mapping Local Perspectives in the Historical Archaeology of Vanuatu mission Landscapes. Asian Perspectives, 53:2–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flexner, J.L. & Spriggs, M. 2015. Mission Sites as Indigenous Heritage in Vanuatu. Journal of Social Archaeology, 15:184–209.Google Scholar
Flexner, J.L., Willie, E., Lorey, A.Z., Alderson, H., Williams, R. & Ieru, S. 2015. Iarisi's Domain: Historical Archaeology of a Melanesian Village, Tanna Island, Vanuatu. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology. doi:10.1080/15564894.2015.1052865.Google Scholar
Frankl, P.J.L. 2008. Mombasa Cathedral and the CMS Compound: The Years of the East Africa Protectorate. History in Africa, 35:209–29.Google Scholar
Gaimster, D. 2014. The Hanseatic Cultural Signature: Exploring Globalization on the Micro-Scale in Late Medieval Northern Europe. European Journal of Archaeology, 17:60–81.Google Scholar
Garrow, P.H. 1987. The Use of Converging Lines of Evidence for Determining Socio-Economic Status. In: Spencer-Wood, S.M., ed. Consumer Choice in Historical Archaeology. New York: Springer, pp. 217–31.Google Scholar
Gaston, M.F. 1983. The Collector's Encyclopedia of Flow Blue China, Paducah, KY: Collector Books.Google Scholar
Graves, C.P. 2009. Building a New Jerusalem: The Meaning of a Group of Merchant Houses in Seventeenth-Century Newcastle upon Tyne, England. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 13:385–408.Google Scholar
Guiart, J. 1956. Un siècle et demi de contacts culturels à Tanna. Paris: Musée de l'Homme.Google Scholar
Hall, M. 2000. Archaeology and the Modern World: Colonial Transcripts in South Africa and the Chesapeake. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harrison, R. 2004. Contact Archaeology and the Landscapes of Pastoralism in the North-West of Australia. In: Murray, T., ed. The Archaeology of Contact in Settler Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 109–43.Google Scholar
Hornsby, S.J. 1992. Patterns of Scottish Emigration to Canada, 1750–1870. Journal of Historical Geography, 18 (4): 397–416.Google Scholar
Humphreys, C.B. 1926. The Southern New Hebrides: An Ethnological Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ireland, T. 2010. From Mission to Maynggu Ganai: The Wellington Valley Convict Station and Mission Site. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 14:136–55.Google Scholar
Jacobs, K., Knowles, C. & Wingfield, C. eds. 2015. Trophies, Relics and Curios? Missionary Heritage from Africa and the Pacific. Leiden: Sidestone Press.Google Scholar
Jonuks, T. & Kurisoo, T. 2009. To Be or Not to Be. a Christian: Some New Perspectives on Understanding the Christianisation of Estonia. Electronic Journal of Folklore, 55:70–98.Google Scholar
Kay, J. ed. 1872. The Slave Trade in the New Hebrides: Being Papers Read at the Annual Meeting of the New Hebrides Mission, Held at Aniwa, July 1871. Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas.Google Scholar
Keane, W. 2007. Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lawrence, S., Brooks, A.M. & Lennon, J. 2009. Ceramics and Status in Regional Australia. Australasian Historical Archaeology, 24:67–78.Google Scholar
Lawson, B. 2001. ‘Clothed and in their right mind’: Women's dress on Erromango, Vanuatu. Pacific Arts, 23/24: 69–86.Google Scholar
Lightfoot, K.G. 2005. Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Liua'ana, F.I. 1996. Errand of Mercy: Samoan Missionaries to Southern Vanuatu, 1839–1860. In: Munro, D. and Thornley, A., eds. The Covenant Makers: Islander Missionaries in the Pacific. Suva, Fiji: Pacific Theological Seminary and the Institute of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific, pp. 41–79.Google Scholar
Lockhart, B. 2010. Bottles on the Border: The History and Bottles of the Soft Drink Industry in El Paso, Texas, 1881–2000. [accessed 23 October 2015]. Available at: http://www.sha.org/bottle/links.htm: Society for Historical Archaeology Glass Bottle Identification and Information Website.Google Scholar
Loring, S. & Arendt, B. 2009. ‘… They Gave Hebron, the City of Refuge …’ (Joshua 21:13): An Archaeological Reconnaissance at Hebron, Labrador. Journal of the North Atlantic, 2(Special):33–56.Google Scholar
Lubcke, A. 2009. The Photograph Albums of the New Zealand Presbyterian Mission to the New Hebrides, MA dissertation in History, University of Otago, Dunedin.Google Scholar
Lydon, J. 2009. Fantastic Dreaming: The Archaeology of an Aboriginal Mission. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, A. 2005. House and Home: Scottish Domestic Architecture in Nova Scotia and the Rev. Norman McLeod Homestead. Unpublished MA dissertation, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland.Google Scholar
Majewski, T. & O'Brien, M.J. 1987. The Use and Misuse of Nineteenth-Century English and American Ceramics in Archaeological Analysis. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, 11:97–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malan, A. & Klose, J. 2003. Nineteenth-Century British Ceramics in Cape Town, South Africa. In: Lawrence, S., ed. Archaeologies of the British. London: Routledge, pp. 191–210.Google Scholar
Marshall, Y. & Maas, A. 1997. Dashing dishes. World Archaeology, 28 (3): 275–90.Google Scholar
Middleton, A. 2007. Silent Voices, Hidden Lives: Archaeology, Class and Gender in the CMS Missions, Bay of Islands, New Zealand, 1814–1845. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 11:1–31.Google Scholar
Middleton, A. 2008. Te Puna – A New Zealand Mission Station: Historical Archaeology in New Zealand. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Miller, G.L. 1980. Classification and Economic Scaling of 19th-Century Ceramics. Historical Archaeology, 14:1–40.Google Scholar
Miller, G.L. 1991. A Revised Set of CC Index Values for Classification and Economic Scaling of English Ceramics from 1787 to 1880. Historical Archaeology, 25:1–25.Google Scholar
Morrison, M., McNaughton, D. & Keating, C. 2015. ‘Their God is Their Belly’: Moravian Missionaries at the Weipa Mission (1898–1932), Cape York Peninsula. Archaeology in Oceania, 50:85–104.Google Scholar
Morrison, M., McNaughton, D. & Shiner, J. 2010. Mission-Based Indigenous Production at the Weipa Presbyterian Mission, Western Cape York Peninsula (1932–66). International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 14:86–111.Google Scholar
Orser, C.E. 1996. A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
Orser, C.E. 2010. Three 19th-Century House Sites in Rural Ireland. Journal of Post-Medieval Archaeology, 44:81–104.Google Scholar
Orton, C. 1993. How Many Pots Make Five? An Historical Review of Pottery Quantification. Archaeometry, 35: 169–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orton, C. & Hughes, M. 2013. Pottery in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Palmer, R. 2014. Maltese Ceramics and Imperial Foodways: An Exploration of Nineteenth-Century Red Wares. European Journal of Archaeology, 17: 678–701.Google Scholar
Panich, L. & Schneider, T. ed. 2014. Indigenous Landscapes and Spanish Missions: New Perspectives from Archaeology and Ethnohistory. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press. PAP (Science and Scholarship in Poland).Google Scholar
2014. 200-Year-Old Bottle Recovered from the Bottom of the Gulf of Gdańsk Contained Alcohol, News of Polish Science. [accessed 12 August 2015]. Available at: http://scienceinpoland.pap.pl/en/news/news,401439,200-year-old-bottle-recovered-from-the-bottom-of-the-gulf-of-gdansk-contained-alcohol.html.Google Scholar
Paton, J.G. 1907. John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company.Google Scholar
Patterson, G. 1864. Memoirs of the Rev. S.F. Johnston, the Rev. J.W. Matheson, and Mrs. Mary Johnston Matheson, Missionaries on Tanna, with Selections from their Diaries and Correspondence, and Notices of the New Hebrides, their Inhabitants, and Mission Work among them. Philadelphia: W.S. & A. Martien.Google Scholar
Patterson, G. 1882. Missionary Life among the Cannibals: The Life of John Geddie, D.D., First Missionary to the New Hebrides; With a History of the Nova Scotia Presbyterian Mission on that Group. Toronto: James Campbell & Son.Google Scholar
Pearl, F.B. & Loiseau-Vonruff, S. 2007. Father Julien Vidal and the Social Transformation of a Small Polynesian Village (1787–1930): Historical Archaeology at Massacre Bay, American Samoa. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 11:32–59.Google Scholar
Petts, D. 2011. Landscapes of Belief: Non-Conformist Mission in the North Pennines. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 15:461–80.Google Scholar
Riley, N. 1991. Gifts for Good Children: The History of Children's China, Part I, 1790–1890. Ilminster: Richard Dennis.Google Scholar
Samford, P. 1997. Response to a Market: Dating English Under-Glaze Transfer Printed Wares. Historical Archaeology, 31:1–30.Google Scholar
Sawicki, Z., Pluskowski, A., Brown, A., Badura, M., Makowiecki, D., Shillito, L-M., Zabilska-Kunek, M. & Seetah, K. 2015. Survival at the Frontier of Holy War: Political Expansion, Crusading, Environmental Exploitation and the Medieval Colonizing Settlement at Biała Góra, North Poland. European Journal of Archaeology, 18:282–311.Google Scholar
Smith, I.W.G. 2014. Schooling on the Missionary Frontier: The Hohi Mission Station, New Zealand. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 18 (4): 612–28.Google Scholar
Smith, I.W.G., Middleton, A., Garland, J. & Russell, T. 2014. Excavations at the Hohi Mission Station Volume II: The 2013 Excavations. Dunedin: University of Otago Studies in Archaeology.Google Scholar
Smith, I.W.G., Middleton, A., Garland, J. & Woods, N. 2012. Archaeology of the Hohi Mission Station, Volume I: The 2012 Excavations. Dunedin: University of Otago Studies in Archaeology.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. 1985. ‘A School in Every District’: The Cultural Geography of Conversion on Aneityum, Southern Vanuatu. Journal of Pacific History, 20:23–41.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. 2007. Population in a Vegetable Kingdom: Aneityum Island (Vanuatu) at European Contact in 1830. In: Kirch, P.V. and Rallu, J.-L., eds. The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies: Archaeological and Demographic Perspectives. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 278–305.Google Scholar
Symonds, J. 2003. An Imperial People? Highland Scots, Emigration, and the British Colonial World. In: Lawrence, S., ed. Archaeologies of the British: Explorations of Identity in Great Britain and its Colonies 1600–1945, pp. 138–55. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tomlinson, M. & McDougall, D. eds. 2012. Christian Politics in Oceania. New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Vance, M. 2005. A Brief History of Organized Scottishness in Canada. In: Ray, C., ed. Transatlantic Scots. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, pp. 96–119.Google Scholar
Vance, M. 2011. From Cape Breton to Vancouver Island: Studying the Scots in Canada. Immigrants & Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora, 29:175–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watt, A.C.P. 1896. Twenty-Five Years’ Mission Life on Tanna, New Hebrides. Paisley: J. & R. Parlane.Google Scholar
Weber, M. 2002 [1905]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
Webster, J. 1999. Resisting Traditions: Ceramics, Identity, and Consumer Choice in the Outer Hebrides from 1800 to the Present. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 3:53–73.Google Scholar
Wilkie, L. & Farnsworth, P. 2005. Sampling Many Pots: An Archaeology of Memory and Tradition at a Bahamian Plantation. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
Williams, P. & Weber, M. 1978. Staffordshire: Romantic Transfer Patterns. Jeffersontown, KY: Fountain House East.Google Scholar