Von Hügel’s curiosity

Abstract

Hence, collections such as those of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology are not only archaeological and anthropological, nor simply collections of art. They are historical collections also, and European historical collections specifically, artifacts of European exploration, travel, colonization, and knowledge. These spears look like unremarkable Aboriginal fishing and hunting implements, but were obtained by Captain James Cook within an hour of his first Botany Bay landing, mid-afternoon on the 28th of April, 1770 (fig. 4). They are almost certainly the first objects obtained from Australia by any European. They were picked up in the aftermath of a brief but violent encounter that inaugurated a troubled history of intrusion and miscommunication that remains unfinished and unresolved to this day. This foists an acute poignancy upon their very ordinariness.