Māori fishhooks at the Pitt Rivers Museum: comments and corrections: Tuhinga 27

Tuhinga 27: 10-19

ABSTRACT: Chris D. Paulin’s account in the pages of this journal of the Māori fishhooks at the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum provides an inaccurate picture of the collection and its history. In particular, he misattributes to Hawai‘i an important Māori fishhook acquired on Cook’s first voyage (1768–71). An accurate account of the museum’s collection is provided here, some of the errors in Paulin’s report are corrected, and the evidence for the Māori provenance of the first-voyage hook is presented.

KEYWORDS: Māori fishhooks, Cook-voyage collections, collections history, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

Chris D. Paulin provides a response to ‘Māori fishhooks at the Pitt Rivers Museum: comments and corrections’ on Page 20.