Bringing the past to light: lost treasures on campus

Collections of treasures are hidden on the ANU campus. Uncovering their stories is an opportunity for research and engagement with the Asia Pacific region.

For Rose Faunce, investigating the history of an object requires a mixture of sleuthing and luck.

When she chose to look into the origins of an unusual hand-carved wooden bowl from Fiji, it was because it was shaped like a flying duck.

“I am fond of birds and this duck has an endearing grin,” Faunce says.

Faunce is curator of the legacy collections, of which the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific (CAP) is custodian.

After uploading an image of the bowl into a search engine to scan the millions of digitised photographs on the internet, she spotted a similar bowl in an online catalogue. This pointed her to the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

She discovered that the bowl was one of only a handful of surviving examples in the world. The Sainsbury Centre was aware of the existence of only four others – two in Fiji, one in New Zealand and one in Tasmania.

“Such bowls haven’t been made for over a century, and the curators at the Sainsbury Centre had no idea we had one. They thought they had identified all of them,” Faunce says.

The bowl, collected by Sir William Allardyce, a British colonial administrator and translator in Fiji, was donated to CAP by his daughter Katharine Butler.

Originally a priest would use it to sip an infusion of yaqona (known elsewhere in the Pacific as kava) that would allow them to enter a trance and become possessed by gods and spirits. This mystical rite disappeared with the arrival of Christian missionaries during the late 19th century – and with it a decline in demand for this sort of artistry in carving.

“Researching the cultural context of historical objects basically requires detective work, persistence and good fortune. You find a clue that gives you a snippet of a detail that leads to something else. And then from there, you continue seeking more pieces of the puzzle.”

Without a measure of luck, the stories behind many of the objects stored on campus would be lost to time.

Lost treasures

It’s not just the stories behind objects that risk being lost – sometimes the actual objects can go missing too.

A bark cloth with connections to the royal family of Tonga disappeared during building refurbishment. The cloth is decorated with the traditional design called the hala paini or ‘road of pines’, referring to the path of pine trees lining the road that leads to the Royal Palace of the Kingdom of Tonga.

“The bark cloth was presented to geographers Godfrey J.R. Linge and Peter Rimmer by Tongan cabinet minister James Cecil Cocker in Nuku’alofa in 1971, and hung in the Dean’s boardroom until contractors removed it.”

After the cloth was found again in 2023, conserved and framed, Faunce invited Her Royal Highness Princess Angelika Lātūfuipeka Halaevalu Mata’aho Napua Okalani Tuku’aho of Tonga to view it.

“I think she was pleased to see that we valued the cultural link with Tonga, that the bark cloth was on public display in the Coombs building,” Faunce says.

Lost histories

The core of the CAP collection are works acquired though the first anthropology department’s field research through the 1950s, bequeathed by the families of academics or gifted by dignitaries. It includes around 350 items, the earliest dating to the 1890s.

But being unsure of the origins of an object can open a legal and ethical minefield.

“Collections throughout the world hold cultural and archaeological heritage that were acquired through problematic practices. There are numerous examples of the sacred or ceremonial works of First Nations communities in Australia and in the Pacific being extracted without fair financial compensation or without fully disclosing what would happen to the items.”

Today, international conventions, Commonwealth and State legislation recognises the importance of protecting cultural heritage. ANU acknowledges the right of First Nations people to the use and control of their ceremonial objects and has implemented processes to facilitate the repatriation of this material.

Faunce was able to put some concerns about the absence of records to rest following the discovery of a box containing photos, exhibition catalogues, invoices and receipts documenting a substantial number of Australian Indigenous works purchased in the early 1980s. Stored in a disused cupboard for close to forty years, the contents were in remarkably good condition, if a bit faded and dusty.

The next step is to develop an online catalogue. This is underway and will open up the collection to both the ANU community and a wider audience.

“I think it’s important that people know that the collection is here to be accessed, and it’s here to be part of the University’s engagement with First Nations people,” Faunce says.

“To reconnect with communities not just from Australia, but also our neighbours in the Pacific and Asia.”

Object of attention