Anthropology – MAA Digital Laboratory

The Tea Horse Road

Michael Freeman, photographer and author of ‘Tea Horse Road: China’s Ancient Trade Road to Tibet’, explores the pressed tea bricks in MAA’s collections and the longest trade route in the ancient world.

MAA Cambridge

7th Feb 2023

Anthropology, Substances of Wellbeing and Intoxication

Anthropology, China, Substances of Wellbeing and Intoxication, Tea, Tibet, Trade & Commerce

‘Square Face’: Gin, Currency, and Colonialism in Africa

By Mark Elliott A bottle of European gin made its way from Germany to Nigeria, where it was collected by an English missionary. Discover it’s stories of trade in West Africa, currencies, colonial exploitation, Christianity, traditional African religious practices, sociality, alcohol consumption and prohibition.

MAA Cambridge

13th Dec 2022

Anthropology, Substances of Wellbeing and Intoxication

Anthropology, Gin, Nigeria, Substances of Wellbeing and Intoxication, Trade & Commerce

The Buddha, the War God and the Pirate King

By Ashleigh Griffin While recataloguing the Asian collections at MAA, I came across a number of historic inaccuracies as well as stories of warfare and plunder hinted at in the documentation around the objects. This is the tale of an artefact that brought both of these together, which highlights important issues facing collections of ethnography,…

MAA Cambridge

6th Dec 2022

Anthropology, Asian Object Diasporas

Anthropology, Asian Collections, Buddha, Chinese Diaspora Community