I find tattoos immensely fascinating. From the earliest definitive example of tattoos (Ötzi the 5.000 year old Iceman), to Julius Cesar’s accounts of the painted Gauls, and Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s descriptions of the Scandinavian Rus and their intricately decorated bodies. All right, these last two […]
One might think that it is its look that makes this backpack unusual. And I suppose it is true; the shredded, almost hair-like fibres decorating the backpack makes it look like less of a container for your things, and more like the back of some […]
So, today I figured, to Hell with long-winded and well thought through blog posts! Instead, I decided to do a little ‘artefact lottery’: I would close my eyes, scroll through our database, click on something random, and that was to be the subject of my […]
Last week, there was an election in Greenland. Though Greenland is an autonomous constituent country within Denmark, there was much talk up to the election about the stirring movement for Greenlandic independence, and about whether the political parties Nunatta Qitornai and Partii Naleraq, agitating for […]
Whenever I feel uninspired and unsure as to what to write about, I always turn to collection EA600. This collection is solely (pun intended) made up of shoes. Shoes from Morocco, India, Iceland, Japan, Canada, Kenya, Denmark, Greenland – you name it! In a previous […]
A woven fabric. It could be purchased in IKEA for pocket change. But it was not. It is an ethnographic artefact collected in Egypt in 2002, more specifically in Luxor in Upper Egypt. The question is; does it qualify as a museum artefact? Often, ethnographic […]
Last week two artefacts were returned to Nepal from a museum in the US. The two pieces, which are carved in stone, date back to the 12th century. They were donated to a museum in New York in 2015, and it was recently brought to […]
Driving on a motorbike in an African city is scary. During my own fieldwork in Uganda, I never felt threatened by people, rarely by animals (there was that one rat that bit my toe through a mosquito net), but almost always by the traffic. In […]
What did your kids do for the Easter Holiday? Hunt for Easter eggs in the garden? Watch TV and play with Legos? Stay up later than usual and spend the mornings bumming around in their pyjamas? I can promise you that the children of the […]
After last week’s somewhat depressing post, I promised to find a more cheerful subject for this week. I have mined my memories for the most pure moments of happiness that I can recall, and one of them prompted me to select these swimming goggles for […]
Let’s play a guessing game. What purpose do you think this artefact has? Is it an antique business card holder for the stylish gentleman (or -woman) of business? Is it a snuff container that fits perfectly into a jacket pocket? Has is, perhaps, contained bobby […]
When my co-corker called me this morning to tell me that she was in a bus sliding backwards down a hill due to heavy snow and a very icy road, I felt compelled to continue the Siberian theme of last week’s blog post. As I […]
