 Matthew Spriggs is an Australian Research Council laureate fellow working on the project The Collective Biography of Archaeology in the Pacific, CBAP. He's also the professor of archaeology in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University. He's undertaken extensive archaeological research in the Pacific Islands and island Southeast Asia for over 40 years, particularly in Vanuatu. His laureate project is concerned with the history of Pacific Archaeology and it's been a pleasure. I'm Adam Nelson, I'm the head of education at the Hearst Museum and it's been a pleasure working with Matthew on selecting and doing the interpretation of a handful of sherds that are now on display in our gallery, so we're going to have a look. We just unveiled that case the other day, so if you haven't had a look, check it out. It's exciting to have these objects and these stories in the gallery in our lounge of wondrous anthropological discoveries, so I think without further ado, I'll turn it over to Matthew. Okay, thank you, thank you. Right, I gave a seminar here in 2015 actually and that was just as the project was starting and I talked about what the aims of it were, so if you were at that one, you'll have seen some of these, although perhaps in a longer form. Just to really reiterate what the aims were, really there isn't much on the history of Pacific Archaeology and the most accessible thing is Pat Kirch's chapter in his textbook on the Road of the Winds and that's basically it. There's a few national histories, particularly from New Zealand and Australia, there's been quite a lot on the history of archaeology, but on the Pacific Islands, amazingly little, so we thought this was time to change this and part of it came from a desire to kind of critique really our current understandings of Pacific Archaeology, not least because I remember picking up some article, I think it was written in 1914 and it had pretty much everything that we kind of, you read in standard textbooks today, it was already there, including Austronesians, it kind of mentioned the whole thing, so that's rather alarming I find, have we wasted 100 years or we didn't have to do anything at all? So that's part of the idea and also histories of, I notice histories of socio-cultural anthropology which rely a lot on Pacific materials, they've kind of created that history by excising the fact that a lot of these early people who are now called anthropologists, of course they were ethnologists at the time, they're as much the ancestors of archaeology as they are of socio-cultural anthropology. People like Alfred Court Haddon, for instance, much of his work was on material culture, but his 1898 Torres Strait expedition is always seen as the kind of one of the birth places of modern socio-cultural anthropology. Even Malinovsky once published an article on stone axes, one very good, but at least he made the attempt. So the history, the early history of archaeology and anthropology in the Pacific, these are very much intertwined and yet that you won't get that impression from reading, particularly histories of British social anthropology, which are very strange things. Also, although there's been quite a lot of work on the history of Australian archaeology, it's very much, and the New Zealand material is the same, it's just about people in Australia and New Zealand, as if they didn't have wider connections with the outside world. And in fact they did, and many of the figures who are quite important in the history of Australian archaeology, people like Fred McCarthy, who was a curator at the Australian Museum in Sydney, and Norman Tyndale in South Australia, also worked in the Pacific and or Southeast Asia as well. Also, I didn't want this to be the dead white Anglo-Saxon male history of archaeology in the Pacific, so the two post-docs that I recruited, one is a Francophone and the other's a, if there is such a word, a Germanophone, I don't know what the word for a German speaker is, and particularly French archaeology in the Pacific up until the present day is very strong. And the Germans made a lot of interesting, mainly pre-World War I contributions, i.e. before they were kicked out of the Pacific at the Treaty of Versailles. So some important stuff. Also, and this was something, I don't know if it's impact coach's latest version of his on the road to the winds, but the original version, he suggested that outside of New Zealand, the number of excavations done before World War II in the Pacific could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. That is complete rubbish. There were lots of excavations and they were done, some of them were as good as excavations anywhere else in the world at the time. So I wanted to kind of bring these back into focus. Also, one problem that we have is that quite often the artifacts and the field notes are in separate institutions or they have the artifacts in a museum, but they have no documentation about them. So part of the aim, too, is to try and sort of find where these archives were. And the immediate result of that was that we found there was in fact an enormous body of material because no one had really looked for it. You know, we had no idea how much there was, but there is a real, there are archives all over the world about this stuff. Just as a notable example, Catherine Routledge, who was an early archaeologist who worked on Rapa Nui Easter Island, and her field notes are in the Royal Geographical Society in London and the artifacts are in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. So this kind of stuff happens all the time. Also, I wanted to look at this perennial issue. Every few years it comes up again of trans-oceanic contacts, particularly contacts between South America and the Pacific, and also to try and understand why they've been so persistent and what we might get out of knowing about them, what it might tell us about wider ideas about the Pacific. And I have a PhD student who's just finishing up her PhD on that very topic. And she's a Mexican citizen. And so she's been able to bring together all the Spanish language material, which may be more accessible to people in the US, but it's not very accessible to people. We don't have many Spanish speakers in Australia. So that's going to be a very interesting thing. We also wanted to redress and neglect to the role of women archaeologists. And I'm very pleased to say that my postdoc, Emily Dot-Siru, has now got another postdoc or another fellowship to concentrate on that for the next four years after the project finishes at the end of this month. And we have done a bit with the project so far. But again, there's a lot more material. There are women who were identifiably archaeologists in their own right. And then of course, and this will come up again in relation to Edward Gifford from this very university. Often they went on expeditions with their wives and who were doubtless doing a lot of the work, but never mentioned and barely get into the books. In fact, the only time that Delilah Gifford got her name on an Edward Gifford monograph about his work, even though she accompanied him on almost every expedition, was after he died and she ended up editing the monograph on Yap. That's one of your series here. It's the only one that her name appears on, even though she was there and obviously doing stuff in lots of them. So we're trying to recover some of that. And also, I don't know why the N agency is, I must have made some word I left out, just the agency contribution of indigenous scholars and interlocutors. And this is very largely the subject of what I'll be talking about today. Okay, just a couple, because there, a lot of them have just come out, there's a few references, which if you're interested, are certainly worth having a look at. The whole sort of rationale of the project can be found in the 2017 paper I wrote in the book in the history of archaeology, which is an open access journal, also available for free download in a book on archaeologists of island Melanesia. I tried to put together a different way of looking at the history of really Pacific archaeological practice, but particularly Melanesia, which is to look at the technologies available to archaeologists at different times, like, you know, you can't really get an absolute chronology until you've got radiocarbon dating. So what was the effect of that? When did it come in? When did people start using it? And a whole range of archaeological techniques such as petrographic thin sections of axes and pottery and other stuff. When these come in, they're kind of game changes in terms of what archaeologists can even talk about exchange, for instance, can be talked about much before then. Particularly in relation to what I'm talking about today, in Journal of Pacific History, not sadly not an open access journal, but I'm sure your library has it. I did particularly write about Indigenous Agency and Giffords Fiji and Archaeological Expedition of 1947. And that came out last year. And then an article which I'm very proud about, which came out the day before yesterday. In the Bulletin of History of Archaeology again, not really relevant to what I'm talking about today, but it fits in with the, it came out of the idea to make the history of Australian archaeology take note of the fact that Australians were also working in other places in the Pacific, for instance. However, it morphed into a basically realizing that the whole history of Australian archaeology is a lie. The standard history of Australian archaeology begins in January 1956, when John Mulvaney starts excavating at Froms Landing. And everyone before that was a horrible sort of racist, you know, pot hunter. Well, they didn't have pots, but you know what I mean, an artifact collector and just wandering around kind of at random. This is so not the case. You know, there was really good archaeology being done in Australia, long before John Mulvaney came on the scene. And certainly in the 1940s, there was excellent work as good as work being done anywhere in the world being done, particularly looking at trying to get at issues such as when was Australia first settled by humans? And in the absence of radiocarbon dating in a place like Australia, it was a pretty, pretty difficult subject to address. But people were doing great work. So again, I think that's going to essentially going to annoy a lot of people in Australia, which is great. Okay, my project very sadly is coming to an end soon, the end of this month. But we're ending with a histories of archaeology conference. And really there, we're part of the idea is to bring in some of the sort of heavy hitters in the history of archaeology, Nathan Schlanger, Margarita Diaz-Andreou, Oscar Mauro Aberdia, Tim Murray, other people, and to try and get a bit more of a theoretical reflection on on our work that we've done working on the project in the Pacific. Because I think that where we've been weakest really is in relating our work to the wider sort of histories of archaeology that being done in the world. I think partly just because we became kind of overwhelmed with the amount of new material that is available. So just like documenting that there have been all these excavations, which had happened in the Pacific from the 1870s onwards, was kind of tough enough without having to without kind of getting heavily involved in some of the theoretical debates. So we're hoping to sort of get a bit of a boost and get a pull our theoretical socks up with some of the contributions from that conference. Also, we're running a workshop for Pacific Island Museum and Archive people to really let them know what the project has done, what resources we have. And we have ongoing collaborations with several of these museums. And really it's to sort of look at new collaborations or things where we can help each help each other. The biggest headache has been organising many exhibits at something like 35 museums around the world, all meant to be opening today. At least the Hearst Museum one is open today. And on Friday I was in the Bishop Museum and we were installing the exhibit there. And then I'm going on from here to Harvard where they're opening on the fourth, I think. And the idea for each museum was just to do a single case, but to tell a story which contributes to the history of Pacific archaeology from their perspective. Now, if you went to any museum in the world and you said, let's have a giant exhibition on the history of Pacific archaeology, they'd go like, get out of here. But if you say, just give us a case, come on guys, you know, it can't be that hard. Then they will actually come to the party, including the British Museum, whose I think their exhibit is opening today or tomorrow. Anyway, it was a complete nightmare dealing with all these museums. I exclude, of course, the Hearst Museum, which it was a joy to work with them. But some of the museums are really difficult. Other museums, you know, they're like, yeah, fine, fine, fine. And then that person leaves and the next person comes in and he goes, I don't know anything about it. I'm not interested. Or people are all keen and keen and keen. And then they just stop answering emails. And one of them stopped answering emails. But then I thought, I wonder if, you know, are they still in this or not? So I sent an email to the guy last week. And to my amazement, he got back to me, he said, no, absolutely, we're meant to be installed on the second of March. But the exhibitions, people say, can't do it till the 12th. But it's all happening. This is someone who's refused to answer a single email from me for the last six months. Yeah. So that's why I don't actually know how many museums are putting on exhibits. But I'm sort of going to be traveling around the world to find out. Okay. And oh, yeah, then there's a final party. So that should be exciting. Now, this is great. Bishop Museum. There's Gillian Swift and myself and the subject there of their exhibit is John F. G. Stokes and early Hawaiian archaeology. Stokes did the first recognizably scientific excavation in 1913 on the island of Kahua Lave. And so we've got a small exhibit about him and fish yolks and other artifacts that were found there. And as I said, these are various places where these exhibits are happening. And there may even be more countries where they're happening. But that was, it was great to be there and see it set up from like there being a, you know, a gap against the wall to people coming in. I mean, it was wonderful. So that was Friday. And then today I got this, one of our exhibitions is of Lapida Pottery from Waterm Island that was sent by Father Meyer, who's one of the first discoverers of Lapida Pottery, the earliest pottery in the Pacific. And he found it on Waterm Island off New Britain in Papua New Guinea. And so we arranged for an exhibit at the Melbourne Museum, or Museum Victoria, since also known. And I wanted to try and contact the Waterm Island community who are like, you know, this is a little island in the middle of nowhere. It's very hard to get hold of people. But just the other week I found the man who can do it. And his name is Kepis Pound. And he's a businessman. But he goes backwards and forwards from Port Moresby, where they actually do have good internet connections and stuff, to Watton. And I asked him to kind of, you know, I asked him to explain, yeah, we're going to have this little exhibition. It's 26 Shirts or something. And, you know, what are people on Watton think about it? Are they interested? And in fact they were. And then they, he, this is, this would be yesterday, or on Sunday, so other so the date line, so I guess two days ago. And he held a meeting after church in the church, and right where this church is, is on top of the Lepidocyte of Watton at Rakival. And so they got the statement saying they look forward to a future collaboration with the Melbourne Museum, Papua New Guinea Museum, another host of evidence of Lepidiculture and revealing more knowledge about it. And a whole bunch of photos of people taken on Sunday in Watton, at the place where Lepidopotry was found in 1909. So that was a rather nice thing. And then this very morning, this picture was taken at 10 o'clock this morning. This is the exhibit in that sort of first room where you enter the Hearst Museum. And this is about a collection of, I'll talk about it a bit more in a minute, a collection of Lepidopotry that you have here. That was sent, it wasn't found by Delilah Gifford during his 1947 expedition to Fiji, but it was sent to him by two people, Lindsay Verrier, a local doctor, and Ratu Ramvithi Longavatu, who is really the subject of the talk today. Now, Edwin Delilah Gifford. Edwin Gifford course the director or curator, what he was called of the what is now the Hearst Museum and his wife Delilah, who was a conchologist, a shell person of some renown. And yeah, he did this expedition to Fiji in 1947 and these collections and field notes and everything are here in the museum. I would acknowledge and I think I've spelt her surname right, I think it's S-O-N, Maureen Fredrickson, who's the granddaughter of Edward and Delilah. And she gave me this lovely photo of them about to set off, they're about to get on the boat to sail to Fiji in 1947. Now Gifford published his monograph, Archaeological Excavations in Fiji and I won't read it out, but as Pat coach said, this was a kind of pioneering piece of work, it was the first major piece of field work in the Pacific after World War II. And he did look at two very interesting sites, Nabatu and Vunda, excavated them. And then as I said, by the time his monograph came out in 1951, he had received this small collection of Lepidopotry there. But the point that I made in the article that I wrote about covert control was that really, and I don't think Gifford was aware of this, but I also don't think he would have minded at all. His whole expedition was really being directed towards certain ends by Ratu Zalala Sukuna, who was the major Fijian political figure of the time. And it related to these two sites, Nabatu and Vunda, which are both very important within oral traditions and the origins of the Fijians, and they're spread across the main island of Viti-Lebu. And Sukuna clearly thought that perhaps Gifford could tell him something about, sort out the land disputes or something. Well, of course, as we all know, archaeology can't actually do that. And Sukuna, I think, quite quickly lost interest. And when his annual report of the Fijian administration came out for 1947, it doesn't mention Gifford's work at all. Although his administration provided tremendous help to Gifford. But so he mentions Zalala Sukuna, his deputy in the Fijian administration, George Kingsley Roth, who was a notable anthropologist of Fiji, and son of Ling Roth, H. Ling Roth. But also here Ratu Rambethivu Kandavu Longovatu, an educated young Fijian of chiefly rank. And he was ostensibly put in as the assistant of Edward Gifford, but was also very much the eyes and ears of the Fijian administration to sort of keep an eye on him, make sure he didn't kind of screw up. And also that he that he didn't do things he shouldn't be doing. And also he was a chiefly rank. And so he, you know, Gifford kind of sees him as just, oh, you know, they've got this young Fijian, he's going to kind of help me out. But he was clearly much more than that, given his chiefly status. Now, Ratu Soala Sukuna was a truly amazing character in Pacific history. He was the first Fijian to go to university, went to Wadham College, Oxford just before World War One. It's very interesting that no other Fijian went to university until after World War Two. And that was only because of the sponsorship of certain European residents of Fiji who paid for scholarships. So Ratu Soala Sukuna, he was very happy that he was the only educated Fijian. He also was not allowed to join the British Army because he was black in World War One. So he hopped over to France, joined the French Army, or probably the foreign legion, I guess it was, would have been the foreign legion. And he won the Medaille Militaire, which is equivalent for whatever it was that he did to the Victoria Cross, the highest military honor you can get in Britain. So he was a truly amazing character. He clearly really, he was like the king of Fiji. I mean, you had governors, but they all took notice of what he said. In 1944, he set up this amazing governmental system in Fiji, where basically the colonial officers who'd been kind of running the place were told to butt out. And native Fijians were ruled by the Fijian administration of which he was the head. And it had its own staff. So it was a government within a government. And this system carried on until, essentially until independence of Fijian in, I think, 1970. So really was a quite, it wasn't your average colony with the, you know, the, the Europeans in charge. A quote from Derek Skar's book about him, he was just below God and the King, with only the governor intervening. As one who dealt authoritatively with land, he was practically a God himself. So Ratu Sukuna is a Sukuna park in the middle of Suva and all this sort of stuff. Incredible character. I won't read this out, but yeah, he was, he had very high chiefly, chiefly rank. As I said, he'd won this meddling World War One and really a unique figure in, in, in Fiji and very supportive of Gifford's expedition for the reasons that I said. Also, Gifford published another book, University of California again, Tribes of VT11 and their origin places that was essentially a gazetteer of information collected by members of the Fijian administration. And it's interesting that Sukuna wanted to have this information published by a university professor, even though all of the information in there was given by his own staff. But I think he thought that an academic imprimature would give more power to the statements that were in it, which relate to tribes in relation to land. So again, this is more covert control by the Fijian administration of Gifford's, Gifford's work. His deputy was George Kingsley Roth. And the complaint, and I think it's about Roth of later sort of commissions of inquiry into the colony of Fiji and the processes of decolonization sort of said, you know, the white men working for the administration are more Fijian than the Fijians. You know, they were sort of complaining they were more on the side of the Fijians. And certainly Kingsley Roth was very much like that. He was rather a long suffering deputy to Lala Sukuna, I think. I love this bit with his razor keen sense of efficiency and preoccupation to the nth degree with detail. He was a fine foil to Sukuna's statesmanship, which was an imposing formidable mixture of the global and the tribal. So, yeah, you know, you had a hard time working for Ratu Salala Sukuna. A wonderful thing just before Gifford's going out there and this is all material from the Bancroft Library. He had some, you know, he got advice from a lot of people, one of whom was Otto Degener, who was a botanist and with this wonderful quotation about how he saw the colonial administration working in Fiji. He was there, I think, maybe before the war. I'm not quite sure. I like this, you know, being an American, I can't help being democratic. How times have changed. OK, now, Ratu Rambithilongavati. As I said, he's put on to assist Gifford and also really he's he's he's there as the eyes and ears of the Fijian administration. And he has a lot of roles. He's he in the end he's doing his own excavations in another part of the site than Gifford is doing. So he's directing excavations. He's he takes many of the photographs of the expedition and becomes a very keen photographer. And he he's already trained as part of his training as a surveyor. So he does a lot of the maps. So this is someone who, you know, one would really like to know more about because he's quite, obviously, a key figure in the whole operation. But of course, his name isn't appearing on apart from in the acknowledgments. Also, this is an interesting event. The actual label, I think, in the in the monograph says presenting Yangona, that's carver to the dead before removing bones from burial number one. In fact, they're putting the bones back, not removing them because they had excavated a burial the day before. And then the local pastor, who was also a chief, was possessed by spirits. I'm kind of having fits and things like that. So they realized that this could well be to do with the fact they disturbed these bones. So they quickly got them all together and buried them back, had a ceremony with the carver, the Yangona. And then he he got instantly better again. So the caption was not quite what happened. Here's some examples, some 3D drawings that Ratu Rambithi did for for Gifford of some sites Gifford couldn't go to. He was 60 and not in great health. And and so some of the places he couldn't really get to, but Ratu Rambithi could. This is another particular site that that Rambithi was able to get details of from one of the chiefs of Raki Raki, with whom he was staying. That's in Gifford's field notes from Witter and the Hearst Museum. There was originally going to be an appendix by Ratu Rambithi, Longavatu, which would have been a very interesting document. And and this was to do with his trips to various places. He he climbed Novatu Peak and did drawings of the areas of it, which had had the village on top before. But this was cut out of the monograph. And I haven't been able to figure out why. I presume it was because of, you know, the thing was getting too long or it cost too much to print. But I'm trying to while I'm here, I'm trying to track down who made the editorial decision to cut out the appendix, which would have been I think there's only three appendices now, but there originally a plan to be eight. So it wasn't just his that was cut out, which is why I think it's an editorial decision to do with the length of the monograph. But he would have got a lot more recognition had he had an appendix there under his own name, and that's a draft of it. Instead, we we get some of the some of Rambithi's statements from his appendix that included in the general text of the monograph. That's the nearest we get. Now, as I said, after Gifford left, went back, came back to Berkeley. He was then later on, he was sent a bag of pottery, accession 948, received on the 25th of October, 1948. In the museum and among it was some what we now know to be Lapida pottery, the earliest pottery in the Pacific and beyond the area marked on the map as near Oceania, the pottery used by the earliest settlers who came out as far as Western Polynesia and whose descendants then came on to settle places such as Tahiti, Hawaii, Rapa Nui and Aotearoa, New Zealand. So this is the distribution of it as we know it today, Lapida pottery. But of course, when Gifford receives this little bag of pottery, he can see that the Lapida, what we now know to be Lapida pottery is different. But he doesn't know, he's got no idea where it fits in the Fijian sequence because he hadn't found anything like it in excavation. He actually, first of all, he thought it was quite late. But in fact, it turned out to be earlier than any of the material that he had found. Okay, and where this bag of sherds came from was the Singatoka sand dunes, which are down here on the southwest coast. Very impressive sand dunes, one of the biggest dune fields, I believe, I think it is the biggest dune field on any Pacific island and sand continually shifting and revealing pottery, skeletons, other remains, many of which are from a time before the sand dunes were there. So originally the coast did not have sand dunes, the sand dunes are actually a result of human-induced erosion of the uplands of the Singatoka Valley. And then the material was brought by currents and blown up to form these dunes within the last 1500 years or so. And the pottery was sent to Gifford by Lindsay Verrier, who was a local doctor. At this time, Ratu Rambithi, he'd gone back to work and he'd been sent as a provincial scribe to the provincial headquarters in this area. And so he was there, as was Lindsay Verrier. And so they went wandering on the sand dunes and they found this pottery that both of them, I think, noticed was quite different than anything, certainly that Rambithi had seen having accompanied Gifford on all of his work. And in another place, I'm trying to work out exactly where they found this pottery. There's a strange thing. In the 60s, there's actually been work at the Singatoka dunes almost continuously ever since because the sands are always shifting, new remains come up. A big piece of work was done, I think, around 63, 64, 65 by Lawrence and Helen Berks. And they actually found a piece of pottery that is identical to one of these sherds here, just one. And I, but from the account that Rambithi gives, I don't think it can come from the same place. And I really wonder if Verrier had two pieces of this pot. And in 1963, he thought he'd be a bit mischievous and he dropped it where the Berkses were digging because I really cannot see that this is the same site, but there's no doubt it's from the same pot. So there's a mystery there that whether we'll ever sort it out. Now, these are the Lapida sherds and the piece of pottery that the Berkses found is exactly like this. But this is here, I've seen it, it's in the museum. That is on display. And these are both dentate stamped Lapida sherds. And the important thing about them, I mean just a couple of sherds, three or four or something, is that they, from discoveries that were made after Gifford had done his work, discoveries in New Caledonia, Gifford realized that this looked very much like pottery that was found, published in 1948 on the, from the Ildepan, which is an island just off the New Caledonian mainland, related to that. He also remembered that in 1921, he had been working in Tonga as an anthropologist collecting oral traditions with McCurn, McCurn of the Midwest taxonomic system. Isn't it cool, is that McCurn? I think it is. Anyway, it's the same guy, WC McCurn. And McCurn had found pottery in Tonga, the first pottery ever found in Polynesia. And of course it was Lapida. And so Gifford in 51, when he publishes, he says, I don't know what this stuff is, but it looks like the stuff in Tonga and it looks like the stuff they've just found in New Caledonia. Well, of course, nobody was using any radiocarbon dating at the time, so it couldn't relate any of these. And of course the sherds that he found were just from a surface blowout, so there was no dating associated with them. But then by 53, he's gone to New Caledonia on his next expedition and he has excavated at the site of Lapida, which gave the name later to Lapida Pottery. And he could see that the stuff he found at the site of Lapida, which he mainly called Site 13, was again the same style. And by then, he had also realized, because he'd been told by Father O'Reilly, who was, despite his name, was a Frenchman, obviously descended from Irish settlers, as Jacques Avias had already seen the connection between the Ildepashers and those from Waterm Island, where our friends just sent the nice statement from that you saw earlier on. So this is when really the idea that there's this very widespread, what Jack Goulson later in 961 called, a community of culture, bridging the divide between Melanesia and Polynesia. And that was Lapida Pottery. So the distribution of the Lapida culture really became known through this work. Ratu Rambithi, I won't read out his whole history, but I found his employment file in the Fijian archives. And he later became in charge of an entire province, until sadly about 1967, he had a very terrible car smash and had to then retire. But he in fact lived until I think 2005. And because we wanted to have an exhibition in the Fiji Museum, the exhibition that's opening today, I don't know, it's actually opening today in the Fiji Museum, I'm not there, but the exhibition there was gonna be about or is about Ratu Rambithi, who also features here, because he and Varia are the ones who found the Lapida Pottery. So this picture of him is also in the exhibit here. Ratu Rambithi and a guy called Aubrey Park, who was a British colonial officer who went to Fiji in 1951. But was a trained archeologist. So the exhibition in Fiji is about Rambithi and Park, both at times employed by the Fijian administration, which means the Fijian native administration, as opposed to the colonial administration. And I thought I'd better get in touch, see if I can find any of the family, because it would be a bit unfortunate if they didn't know about it and they wandered into the museum. Yeah, well, they got these pictures of my grandfather or something. So I started making inquiries to try and find out what happened to Rambithi. We knew that he had his first daughter, he called Delilah, after Delilah Gifford, and his second son, he called Gifford. So I thought, are these people still alive or what? Anyway, with great help from the Apeta Alaphio, the archivist at the Fiji archives, I eventually tracked them down on my last trip there last October. And just, so there's a picture of Rambithi. Now on the left, child there is Rambithi Gifford. And then the girl in the middle is Delilah. And then Emery Longavati was the eldest son named after, not Kenneth Emery, sorry to say, but after Rambithi's father. And here's an amazing photo that the family later gave me which shows Rambithi and his wife Vasimatha at the ball for Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Fiji in 1954. So again, you go, this guy's a fairly low level Fijian administration's provincial scribe. How come he's getting invited to, you know, because he had this chiefly rank. He had a whole other thing going for him. Anyway, I'm very happy to report that I did track them down. And this is the second daughter, Bulusalata. This is Lavigne, who's the wife of Ratu Rambithi Gifford Longavati. And when it was Bulusalata who took me to, I don't think the family get together very often because first of all, she got the wrong house. We would kind of like went up the wrong driveway. Anyway, very steep driveway and she goes up there. I thought I'd wait outside the gates, you know, you can't just walk into somebody's house in Fiji. And then I saw this guy coming down the steep driveway and I said to him, are you Gifford? And the guy kind of freaks out and he goes like, no one knows I'm called Gifford. And then I said to him, do you know why you're called Gifford? He goes, not really. I said, yeah, my father said that Delilah, my sister and I were named after some American friends of theirs and I said, do I have a story to tell you guys? And so, yeah, then that night we went to another son, Seneko Nakuru, Ratu Ambiti Maritwai. So he had the first family, had five children, I think had four with his second wife. And the first person I actually met was Seneko, who's in the Army. And he put me on to Bulu Salata, we phoned her up, I spoke to her and then she took us to meet Gifford. And none of them had any idea that their father had ever been involved in archeology. And first of all, they were like Seneko when I met him at the archives, he came to the archives to meet me. He was like, are you sure you're talking about my father? And they had no idea. And then I'm talking about, and I said, you guys ever heard of Lapida Pottery? And they go, yeah, of course, we're not idiots, of course we heard of Lapida Pottery. I said, well, your father found the first Lapida in Fiji. And they're going like, get out of here. So it's been a kind of, a bit of a sort of life-changing experience for this family to find out. Now, one thing that Gifford did after he left, Fijian came back here, was he sent a camera to Ratu Ambiti because he could see the guy was really interested in photography. Two of Ambiti's sons are professional photographers. So that all started with Gifford. So it was just a very nice thing. Just to wind up, the sort of take-homes. Clearly, Ratu Sakuna kind of had a lot of control over, well, control over everything that Gifford did when he was in Fiji, unbeknownst to Gifford, but I know that Gifford wouldn't have been worried about it or felt bad about it. Rambithi was clearly more than just an interpreter and an aide. And also, he and Lindsay Berrio then found the first Lapida pottery, sent it to Gifford and that's what the display is about in the Hearst Museum. But Rambithi and Gifford established a lifelong exchange relationship and friendship. And the letters are in the Bancroft Library. And they continued corresponding. Gifford's granddaughter, who would be a woman, probably if she's still alive now, because I saw her in 2015, she'd be probably in her 80s. And she had met Delilah because Delilah and some of the other children migrated to the States. They were Mormons and they were first in Hawaii and then they've kind of spread out. So she had had, she had met Delilah in Hawaii. She'd gone on a cruise to Fiji and tried to reconnect with the Gifford family to Ratu Rambithi. And just the last day that we're there, that she kind of may manage to get hold of him, but it was too late and they were, the cruise ship was leaving the next day or something. So I kind of feel that I've re-established the link between the archaeologists and Berkeley and the Ratu Rambithi's family. And also I think what it shows is when there is good documentation, it is possible to recoup the contributions and agency of indigenous interlocutors and collaborators. It's often hard, but in this case it was possible to do. And there's much more that I hope to do when I see them all again in April when I go back to Fiji. Thank you very much.