On the tracks of Maria Czaplicka. An ethnography of a collection
Friday 18 November 2022, 12pm
Teams
Jaanika Vider (Vienna)
In this paper I present research on and around the Siberian collection Maria Czaplicka made for the Pitt Rivers Museum during the 1914-1915 Yenisei expedition. Drawing on museum and archival research as well as long-term participant observation in the museum and shorter-term fieldwork in Siberia, I look at how the collection unfolds when subject to different kinds of inquiries by different actors. I argue against Tim Ingold’s proclamation that museum ethnography is simply oxymoronic and propose that a collection can offer a basis for a rich ethnography because the objects within it extend temporally, geographically and culturally through complex associations in a myriad of ways.
Pitt Rivers Museum Research Seminar in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology, Michaelmas 2022
