Knowing me, knowing you

20 October 2015

What can museum collections tell us about people and their stories? On Sunday 25 October 2015, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology will host an event that asks profound questions about objects and identities with the focus on West Papua.

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Derge iron water bottle.

Where to find a dragon in Cambridge

24 June 2015

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, D is for Dragon. Watch out for fire-breathers among the treasures of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, in Anglo-Saxon proverbs, and in fantasy literature from medieval Scandinavia to the present day.

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Spatula to poison darts, Malaysia

Poisons, plants and Palaeolithic hunters

21 March 2015

Dozens of common plants are toxic. Archaeologists have long suspected that our Palaeolithic ancestors used plant poisons to make their hunting weapons more lethal.  Now Dr Valentina Borgia has teamed up with a forensic chemist to develop a technique for detecting residues of deadly substances on archaeological objects.

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Joyfully I Saw Ten Caribou

Modern art’s missing chapter

25 February 2015

The artworks of black and indigenous peoples – a missing chapter in the history of modern art – is brought into sharp focus in a ‘revelatory’ exhibition at Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

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Animal, vegetable, mineral: the making of Buddhist texts

12 July 2014

The wide-ranging objects on display at Buddha’s Word, an exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, show how Tibetan book makers used the resources around them to produce manuscripts conveying the messages of a faith in which texts themselves are sacred objects. 

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Polar snow goggles from Discoveries at London’s 2 Temple Place, the first joint exhibition from the University of Cambridge Museums, and the first to be held outside the city.

Major Partner Museum status for UCM

01 July 2014

The vision of securing Cambridge’s reputation as an international centre of museums excellence received a major boost today when Arts Council England awarded University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) nearly £4.5m for 2015-18 and continuing Major Partner Museum status.

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Drawer of ammonoids from the Woodwardian collection, the founding collection of the Sedgwick Museum, dating to the late 17th and early 18th century

We ask the experts: why do we put things into museums?

26 November 2013

Our lives are bound up with objects. Museums are evidence of our deep preoccupation with the things that surround us, whether natural or the product of human endeavour. Why do we keep stuff, what do we learn from it – and what does our fascination for objects from our past tell us about being human today?

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Delegation from Tagai State College in front of the Torres Strait display at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Museum embarks on cultural exchange

25 November 2013

From 11 – 14 November 2013 the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, welcomed five students from the Torres Strait Islands. The secondary school pupils, from Waybeni Koey Ngurpay Mudh Tagai State College (Thursday Island Secondary campus) visited the museum as part of a cultural and educational exchange and to embark on their own historical research

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