ABSTRACT
The focus of our attention is a small brown strip of material, presently housed in the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. In addition to our main focus, the historical processes of colonialism, there are also the histories of the individuals involved with collecting these objects, their position within the history of anthropology and of museology. Understanding colonialism is no easy task, especially once one focuses on historical change. There are basic models of historical change employed to understand the meeting of initially different cultures through colonial relations. Melanesian society and culture in New Britain has changed over the last 150 years, but this has not made New Guineans more like Europeans than they were, they are merely different in novel ways. Colonial society in New Guinea had very partial sense of itself, and this comes out in the contradictions inherent in the social ties which held people together and the lack of joint representation which kept them apart.
