Acknowledgement of Country

A landmark publication from British Museum Press. Using extraordinary Indigenous Australian art and artefacts preserved in museums across Great Britain and Ireland, the authors present a global history that entwines ancestral pasts with epochs of empire and colony leading to the contemporary moment.

Overview

A new book, Ancestors, artefacts, empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums, brings together an important collection of extraordinary Indigenous Australian art and artefacts preserved in museums across Great Britain and Ireland. This landmark publication presents a global history that entwines ancestral pasts with epochs of empire and colony leading to the contemporary moment.

About the artist

Gaye Sculthorpe is Curator and Section Head, Oceania, The British Museum and a leading scholar of Indigenous Australian material culture. In 2015, she curated the BP exhibition, Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation. Prior to this position, Gaye worked as a Member of the National Native Tribunal in Australia.

Maria Nugent is a historian and co-director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at the Australian National University. She publishes widely on Indigenous Australian history and memory, and material culture. Maria is co-editor (with Sarah Carter) of Mistress of Everything: Queen Victoria in Indigenous Worlds (Manchester University Press, 2016).

Howard Morphy is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the Australian National University. He was founding Director of its Research School of Humanities and the Arts. Howard is an anthropologist of art and a visual anthropologist and publishes widely in those fields, including Becoming Art: Exploring Cross-Cultural Categories (Berg, 2007).