APPENDIX F

Collections of Andamanese Objects

by George Weber

Table of Contents   Continental Europe Museum of Cultures, Basle, Switzerland Museum of Ethnology, Berlin, Germany Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum of Ethnology, Cologne, Germany State Ethnological Museum, Dresden, Germany Museum of Ethnology, Hamburg, Germany Museum of Ethnography, Leipzig. Germany Museum of Ethnology, Munich, Germany Museum of Ethnology, Vienna, Austria   Great Britain Museum or Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh British Museum (including the former Museum of Mankind), London Horniman Museum and Library, London Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford   India Museum of India, Calcutta (Kolkata) National Museum of India, New Delhi Central Museum of the ASI, Calcutta (Kolkata) Anthropological Museum, Port Blair, Andaman islands   USA Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Harvard American Museum of Natural History, New York Smithsonian Institution/National Museum of Natural History, Washington, USA

The Andamanese objects reposing in both Indian and non-Indian museums today were collected mostly by officials of the penal colony at Port Blair before World War I. Their interest in the native islanders had an official component inasmuch as the administration tried to learn as much as they could about the troublesome local natives. However, with the major British collectors E.H. Man, M.V. Portman and R.C. Temple the collecting urge for data as well as objects went far beyond what was officially required and became a passion. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown visited the islands 1906-08 and received many items from local British officials and collected some himself. Most museums own their Andamanese collection to a large extent, directly or indirectly, to one or more of these major figures.

Only the Italian L. Cipriani collected among the Onge in the early 1950s, just before the settles arrived.

The time from the 1880s to around 1910 saw a veritable worldwide "Negrito mania" in anthropological circles with much scientific and collecting activity. There was also a booming commercial market in Andamanese artefacts then. World War I definitely put an end to it all. The Negrito were largely forgotten until modern DNA research and a growing interest in their role in the early human migrations has revived scientific interest in them.

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Last changed 10 September 2005