Digital heritage in a Melanesian context: authenticity, integrity and ancestrality from the other side of the digital divide

Abstract

This article examines how digital heritage, in the form of 3D digital objects, fits into particular discourses around identity, ancestrality and cultural transmission in Melanesia. Through an ethnographic analysis of digital heritage use amongst the Nalik community in New Ireland (Papua New Guinea), it demonstrates how digital heritage is understood not in terms of deceit and a loss of authenticity, but instead, towards an understanding of authenticity in terms of completeness and integrity. A notion of completeness and integrity, I argue, has the effect of creating an authentic experience of the past for Nalik communities by bringing back museum objects (‘old’ objects) that have been dispersed amongst museums and heritage institutions worldwide. In tracing out the operations and effects of how a Melanesian community engages with 3D digital objects, this article offers unique ethnographic insights into digital heritage in ways that challenge widely-held assumptions about the heightened value placed on the original object over its digital counterpart.

Keywords:

• digital heritage
• authenticity
• restitution
• cultural revival
• Melanesia

Notes

1. See http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/home.

2. See http://3dvm.virtualgallery.birzeit.edu/.

3. The Mobile Museum pilot project was funded by the University of Queensland’s Collaboration and Industry Engagement Fund (2012–2013). It involved a collaboration between the Nalik community, the Queensland Museum, Ortelia digital design and the university. As an anthropologist working in the Nalik community for over a decade, I was involved in establishing the project and coordinating its development alongside my Nalik counterparts.

4. See Verran et al. (2007) for information of digital technologies and participatory methodologies.

5. In the Nalik village of Madina where the project was based, a preliminary census taken in 2013 indicated that there were 24 laptops in the village plus at least 20 working desktop computers in the local high schools of Madina and Mongop.

6. Kastom refers to traditional practices that are understood to derive from the pre-colonial past, whether invented, idealised, imagined or revised. Kastom activities are often politically orchestrated, a response to processes of mission Christianity, colonialism and modernity. People may live their lives according to kastom but they may also reflect upon, evaluate, discuss, modify and dispute it (see Harrison 2000).

7. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ_gdA0dNcE for a full interview.