Alina Berg

Tracing and activating the entanglements of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ through the lens of Pounamu from Aotearoa New Zealand

This PhD project explores and activates the entanglements of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ by studying the ways in which a specific ‘natural’ material – Pounamu, jade/greenstone from Aotearoa New Zealand – assumes center stage in ‘cultural’ practices. According to Māori conceptions, Pounamu is engrained with multifaceted significance and value that extends beyond the stone itself or the ‘object’ or ‘thing’ it is shaped into; and, therefore, beyond what is commonly framed as ‘material culture/heritage’ or ‘natural history’. This PhD aims to ethnographically capture this comprehensive notion – the complex and encompassing meanings Pounamu affords, including ostensible discrepancies as the tangible embodying intangibility and materiality-turned-metaphysical.

The project sets out by tracing the historical Pounamu items at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), Cambridge, and the Museum Fünf Kontinente, Munich, as a form of provenance research that explicitly incorporates ‘natural’ elements. Throughout subsequent fieldwork in Aotearoa New Zealand with Pounamu artists, carvers, traders and healing practitioners (as well as other actors involved in shaping its formations and trajectories, such as museum and gallery curators), present-day practices and processes of signification and valuation will be studied. The historical and contemporary insights gained throughout this period will feed back into collecting institutions, such as those in Cambridge and Munich, informing the development of curatorial practices bridging the realms of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. At the same time, they will offer the basis for potential curatorial intervention(s) by making collections digitally accessible and thus (re)activating dispersed old Pounamu material for new engagements among Pounamu actors.

For more information on the research initiative, visit the project page of Beyond the nature/culture divide.