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Introduction
NECKLACE MAKING IN TASMANIA: Cultural Tensions, Commodities, Cultural Treasures and Souvenirs
In Tasmania there is necklace making that comes loaded with cultural cargo. In November 2009 the National Trust in Tasmania identified the shell necklaces made by Tasmanian Aboriginal women as “Cultural Heritage Icons”. They are evidence of a cultural continuum that represents the oldest and the southern most cultural reality on the planet.
Given Truganini’s iconic status – albeit something that comes with troubled narratives – and her necklace making, it is unsurprising that the National Trust might now nominate Tasmanian Aboriginal Shell Necklaces for iconic status.
Delving through Tasmania’s colonial newspapers it becomes obvious that shell necklace making was not restricted to Tasmania’s Aboriginal people. Indeed it can now be argued that these commercially produced necklaces:
• Firstly, were made in much greater numbers than there were Aboriginal people with the means to make them in the numbers in which they were made; and
• Secondly, they enjoyed a special currency – a kind of iconic status – as souvenir cum cultural trophy for over a century - 1860 until circa 1960.
Clearly there has been a kind of oblivious appropriation of these necklaces as Tasmanian ‘placemarkers’. Indeed, these necklaces are quintessential exemplars of Tasmaniana – yet it seems they were imagined otherwise elsewhere.
Nonetheless their Tasmanian ‘subtext’ seems to have lent them a certain exoticness. More recently ‘Tasmanian Shell Necklaces’ all seem to have been presumed to be “Aboriginal” as contemporary examples produced by Aboriginal Tasmanian makers began to attract high prices in the Aboriginal art market.
This paper discusses the tensions between necklaces being a cultural treasure and a commodity ripe for reassignment and appropriation in a global context. These tensions seem to stand out more clearly in Tasmania than almost anywhere else via an investigation of necklace making.
The histories linked to, and constructed around, these necklaces as they hitchhike to unlikely places come with loaded narratives.
In Tasmania there is necklace making that comes loaded with cultural cargo. In November 2009 the National Trust in Tasmania identified the shell necklaces made by Tasmanian Aboriginal women as “Cultural Heritage Icons”. They are evidence of a cultural continuum that represents the oldest and the southern most cultural reality on the planet.
Given Truganini’s iconic status – albeit something that comes with troubled narratives – and her necklace making, it is unsurprising that the National Trust might now nominate Tasmanian Aboriginal Shell Necklaces for iconic status.
Delving through Tasmania’s colonial newspapers it becomes obvious that shell necklace making was not restricted to Tasmania’s Aboriginal people. Indeed it can now be argued that these commercially produced necklaces:
• Firstly, were made in much greater numbers than there were Aboriginal people with the means to make them in the numbers in which they were made; and
• Secondly, they enjoyed a special currency – a kind of iconic status – as souvenir cum cultural trophy for over a century - 1860 until circa 1960.
Clearly there has been a kind of oblivious appropriation of these necklaces as Tasmanian ‘placemarkers’. Indeed, these necklaces are quintessential exemplars of Tasmaniana – yet it seems they were imagined otherwise elsewhere.
Nonetheless their Tasmanian ‘subtext’ seems to have lent them a certain exoticness. More recently ‘Tasmanian Shell Necklaces’ all seem to have been presumed to be “Aboriginal” as contemporary examples produced by Aboriginal Tasmanian makers began to attract high prices in the Aboriginal art market.
This paper discusses the tensions between necklaces being a cultural treasure and a commodity ripe for reassignment and appropriation in a global context. These tensions seem to stand out more clearly in Tasmania than almost anywhere else via an investigation of necklace making.
The histories linked to, and constructed around, these necklaces as they hitchhike to unlikely places come with loaded narratives.
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