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1 results

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

  • James L. Flexner, Andrew C. Ball
  • Journal:
    European Journal of Archaeology / Volume 19 / Issue 4 / 2016
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    20 January 2017, pp. 728-754
    Print publication:
    2016

  • 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.