Guest Talk Alina Berg
Beyond nature and culture: Pounamu
19.10.2026 at 16:15
19 October 2026, 16.15
Raum L 155
Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Oettingenstraße 67
80538 München
Alina (LMU Munich):
Beyond nature and culture: Pounamu (greenstone from Aotearoa New Zealand) as a living archive
Abstract
Pounamu – jade/greenstone from Aotearoa New Zealand – is a taonga (treasure) or more-than-human entity that has been deeply engrained in Māori cosmo-ontology, while also having been subjected to geological inquiry and (colonial) collecting and trade for centuries. Using a storytelling framework, it will be explored how pounamu ‘things’, when read as archives of combined natural-cultural knowledge, can tell stories of entangled knowledge regimes and intercontinental and -temporal encounters.
Pounamu comes alive in Māori pūrākau (legends) that highlight its deep affiliation with its land and place of origin - the West Coast (Te Tai Poutini) of Te Waipounamu (Aotearoa’s South Island) - as well as through kōrero (stories) of ancestors and formative events. Geologists and provenance researchers try to retrace pounamu’s particular journeys, the former creating stories of formation through tectonic temporalities and environmental changes, and the latter of exchange, acquisition and imitation across space and through time.
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