Project Hosts
Sainsbury Research Unit
The Sainsbury Research Unit (SRU) is based in the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia. The Sainsbury Centre houses the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, which includes high-quality Oceanic material, including from Fiji.
The Robert Sainsbury Library at the SRU has extensive holdings of publications and archives about Fiji, including material donated by Philip Snow, author of A Bibliography of Fiji, Tonga and Rotuma (1969). Snow is a Cambridge graduate who worked in Fiji for the Colonial Administrative Service from 1938 to 1952.
The SRU has hosted a series of research projects, including one on Polynesian Visual Arts (2003-2006).
Visit the Sainsbury Research Unit's website
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) at the University of Cambridge houses the most important Fijian collections in the world, outside the Fiji Museum. With over 2500 objects, 2500 photographs, diaries, field notes and drawings, they include items from all periods of Fijian history since the late 18th century as well as extensive material from the early colonial period (1870s-1890s).
The collections include over a thousand objects acquired in the 1870s by Sir Arthur Gordon, the first Governor of Fiji, his private secretary Alfred Maudslay and Baron Anatole von Hügel, founding curator of the museum. Another significant contributor in the 20th century was George Kingsley Roth, a colonial officer in Fiji between 1928 and 1957.
The photographic collection comprises over 2500 negatives, prints, cartes-de-visite, slides and postcards relating to Fiji, as well as Constance Frederika Gordon Cumming's album of watercolours and photographs.
Visit the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's website
Search the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's online collections database
Priest's yaqona dish in duck form; wood, shell. Mid 19th century, probably collected around 1849 by Captain John Erskine. Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, UEA 912 (photo: James Austin).
Civavonovono (breastplate); whale ivory, pearl shell. Acquired by Sir Arthur Gordon, first Governor of Fiji, 1875-80. This type began to be made in the early decades of the nineteeth century by Tongan and Samoan workers resident in Fiji. Fergus Clunie (1983) has identified this breastplate as the one worn by Tanoa Visawaqa, Vunivalu of Bau, when he was sketched by Alfred Agate during the Wilkes Expedition's visit to Fiji in 1840. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Z 2730 (photo: MAA, University of Cambridge).