'Identity Matters: Movement and Place'

NFR project no 148717

This multi-disciplinary project, financed by the Norwegian Research Council from 2002-2007, has three collaborating institutions: Ethnographic Section at The Museum of Cultural Heritage, Oslo University, The Institute of Pacific Archaeology and Cultural History at the Kon-Tiki Museum, and The Department of Linguistics, Oslo University.

The project is co-ordinated by the Head of the Research department at the Kon-Tiki museum, Ingjerd Hoëm, and its formal administration is hosted by the Museum of Cultural Heritage, Oslo University, Director, Professor Egil Mikkelsen.

Theoretical framework

There is is at present a great need within contemporary social theory to re-examine the relationship between what we commonly think of as "culture areas" and local, trans-regional, and global networks. We hypothesise that pre-historical patterns of movement, settlement and social differentiation, as they are represented in and represent local identity practices, are possible to identify at work in the contemporary Pacific. In Austronesian research, archaeological, linguistic and ethnographic documentation represent overlapping, but at the same time separate research traditions with different methods. This project have targeted the following separate areas of research within the common framework of aspects of movement:

1. Spatial organisation, pre-historical period, comparative archaeology.
2. Spatial orientation, contemporary and pre-historical period, comparative, descriptive and historical linguistics.
3. Spatial orientation and social organisation, contemporary period, social anthropology.

Project participants

Social Anthropology
1 Am. Arne A. Perminow
1 Am. Ingjerd Hoëm
Post doctoral Fellow Astrid Anderson
Student assistant Morten Kjelseth Pettersen

Linguistics
Professor Even Hovdhaugen
Post doctoral Fellow Åshild Næss

Archaeology
1 Am. Helene Martinsson-Wallin
Ass. Prof. Paul Wallin
Doctoral fellow Reidar Solsvik.