Fighting Fibres

Dr. Julie Adams is Curator of the Oceania collections at The British Museum. For the last decade she has curated, researched and written on the histories of Pacific collections in European museums. From 2011-2015, she was Senior Research Fellow at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge and was editor of Artefacts of Encounter: Cook’s Voyages, Colonial Collecting and Museum Histories published by Otago University Press in 2016. Polly Bence has worked in the curatorial team in the Oceanic section of the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, at the British Museum since 2011. Over the last five years as the Project Curator, Oceanic collections, she has been preparing the Oceanic collection for a move into the World Conservation and Exhibition Centre – a new onsite collections store facility in Bloomsbury. Previous roles include Project Curator for the British Museum exhibitions The Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures from West Africa (2010) and Baskets and Belonging: Indigenous Australian Histories (2011) and she has also worked at National Museums Scotland (2010-2011) on the Royal Museum Project permanent re-display.2018, ‘The ties that bind: The production, collection and interconnections of coconut fibre armour from Kiribati’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, No.31. Dr. Alison Clark is a Research Associate at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. She currently works on the ERC funded Pacific Presences project. Both her masters (2007) and PhD (2013) theses on the Indigenous Australian collections of the British Museum drew on the work of Anthony Forge. Her current research is focused on Kiribati, where she is interested in the contemporary resonance of historic museum collections, and the revival of certain cultural practices. She has previously worked on projects at the British Museum, and the October Gallery in London.Key publications:2014, ‘What Happens Next? Sustaining Relationships Beyond the Life of a Research Project’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, No.27.2013, ‘Eliciting a History, Reflections on a Photograph Album’, in Adams, Burt, Bonshek, Bolton and Thomas (eds.) Melanesia Art and Encounter 2013 pp.64-66.

• List of figuresBiographiesPrefaceIntroduction 1. Introduction: Fighting FibresJulie Adams 2. Adventures in Collecting: A Survey of Coconut Fibre Armour in UK MuseumsPolly Bence 3. Te Tanga: Contextualising the Kiribati CuirassAlison Clark 4. Protection, Status or Intimidation? A Typology of Kiribati Helmets in UK CollectionsPolly Bence 5. ‘Bob, a native of Tarawa, Kingsmill Group, Aged 18’Alison Clark 6. Conserving Kiribati ArmourRachel Howie 7. Weapons from KiribatiAlison Clark and Rhian Ward 8. The Fibres That Connect Us: An Interview 9. Collector BiographiesKate Adams, Polly Bence, Alison Clark and Geoff Rubenstein 10. Catalogue EndnotesBibliographyAcknowledgements