MAA Digital Lab

Launched in 2022, the Digital Lab is a digital engagement project which seeks to increase the visibility and accessibility of the world cultures collections at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

The project highlights collections in the Museum’s care through a range of themes such as Substances of Wellbeing and Intoxication, Object Diasporas, Making and Mending, and Digitisation.

Blog Posts

Lady Clementine Spencer Churchill and Asmat Shields

In 1935, Lady Churchill donated three Asmat shields from Papua New Guinea to MAA. Nick Stanley explores their journey to the museum, their efficacy, and their relevance today.

Nick Stanley

28 November 2023

Thinking Beyond Repatriation through Digital Curation

Can museum audiences continue to engage with repatriated objects? If so, then how? Alyssa Walton offers one solution for this using the Benin Bronzes at MAA as a case study.

Alyssa Walton

21 November 2023

Water and Starlight: Finding the Zodiac Beaker

A dark bronze beaker in one of MAA's galleries has remained hidden in plain sight. Recently, however, Mark Elliott revisited this object, revealing new connections and questions in the process.

Mark Elliott

14 November 2023

Online Exhibitions

Chinese Spirit-Medium Possession in Singapore

A new digitisation project at MAA, which digitally repatriated 2,000 ethnographic photographs of Chinese temples and ritual practices in Singapore to its national library, gives insight into the supernatural world of spirit-mediumship in the region.

Te Koroneihana | Celebrating Te Atairangikaahu, Māori Queen

Each year, people gather in Ngāruawāhia, Aotearoa New Zealand to celebrate the leader of the Kīngitanga (Māori King Movement). May 1969 was the third anniversary of the first woman to lead the Kīngitanga, Te Atairangikaahu.

Hide and Seek: Looking for Children in the Past (January 2016–2017)

Children outnumbered adults for most of human history, yet they rarely appear in the stories that museums tell. A past without children is incomplete. This is a digital version of a previous exhibition that aimed at redressing the balance.

Connect with us

If you'd like to get involved, then please get in touch with us at digitallab@maa.cam.ac.uk.

About the Museum

Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology
Downing Street
Cambridge
CB2 3DZ

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