Systems of value in Vanuatu: reflections on the Ambae textile complex

Abstract

• This chapter discusses the diverse forms of value attached to plaited pandanus textiles on Ambae, an island in the south-western Pacific nation of Vanuatu. I explore their cultural and historical contexts and show the dynamic nature of textiles both as types or categories, and as individual items. Textiles are made valuable through their links to places, people and events, and through their increasing importance in exchanges. Specific categories of textile are used in status-alteration ceremonies to demonstrate or enhance the status of those who deploy them. In the contemporary context textiles also now have meanings and value as a marker of Ambaean identity within Vanuatu. Reflecting on Ambaean engagement with museum collections draws attention to the ways in which cataloguing systems often struggle to capture the complex ranges of significance attached to a specific object or object category. Documenting textiles with Jean Tariesei, an Ambaen employee of the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta, confirmed why value is perhaps the most difficult aspect of an object to record, just because it can be so transient. Yet at the same time the complexity of the ways in which textiles are valued affirmed how important it is not to fall into the trap of evaluating objects according to European scales of value.