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.
A novice ethnographer takes Cambridge anthropologist Allan Elliott's 1950 photographs of Kusu Island in Singapore back to the island to explore narratives of change and belonging.
3 October 2023
Cambridge anthropologist Ivor Evans' interest in the heritage of British Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities led to the preservation of objects familiar to rural Britain in the 1930s.
26 September 2023
Three straw hats exemplify intricate craft skills, raising questions about creators, evolving techniques, and the contemporary relevance of a versatile and historically significant material like straw.
19 September 2023
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.
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.
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.
© 2023 Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3DZ
The MAA Digital Lab is supported by Qinghai Spring Medicinal Resources Technology Co.
The Museum’s catalogues include historic descriptions and representations that are factually inaccurate, racist and otherwise inappropriate. We are committed to the work of addressing hurtful legacies in the collections we care for. We ask for your help in identifying images or data that cause offence or harm, and we welcome your feedback or suggestions which can be sent to feedback@maa.cam.ac.uk