PACIFIC SCIENCE CONGRESSES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27148, 18 September 1953, Page 8

PACIFIC SCIENCE CONGRESSES

Dr. R Duff To Visit Philippines ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH Dr. Roger Duff, director of the Canterbury Museum, will attend the Eighth Pacific Science Congress in Manila and the Fourth Far-eastern Prehistory Congress in Quezon City, under the auspices of the Canterbury Museum Trust Board. He will leave by air for the Philippines on November 12, attend the two congresses from November 16 to 28, and return after discussing proposals for an archaeological expedition which he has been invite to lead in the Pacific as part of a widespread survey of changing cultures. Originally it had been hoped that the New Zealand Government would sponsor Dr. Duff’s visit to the Philippines, said the chairman of the board (Mr J. L. Hay) at a meeting yesterday; but when no action was taken the board agreed that it should send Dr. Duff to the congresses and gain the benefit of his consultations there. The Prehistory Congress will be held conjointly with the anthropological

division of the Science Congress, and Dr. Duff has been asked to present two papers. One will be on the stone adzes of Polynesia, which are of special interest to delegates from South-east Asia because they almost precisely correspond with adzes of the new stone age of the Philippines and Formosa. The other paper will be on the archaeology of New Zealand. Gift for Philippines As president of the New Zealand Museums’ and Art Galleries’ Association, Dr. Duff has also been invited to take part in a symposium on the role of museums in research in the Pacific for which Dr. Robert Cushman Murphy, of New York, will be chairman.

In the same capacity Dr. Duff has been invited to select a considerable collection of stone implements of the Philippines for distribution among the museums of New Zealand. The invitation to the Prehistory Congress was given to Dr. Duff by its chairman. Dr. H Otley Beyer, professor of anthropology in the University of the Philippines, and it is he who wishes to present material to the museums of New Zealand, the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and two museums in America.

During the Japanese occupation about half the archaeological collections of the Philippines museums were destroyed, and Dr. Beyer is anxious that some of those remaining should be distributed for safe custody and for wider examination.

The Eighth Pacific Science Congress is the first of its kind held since the Congress in Auckland and Christchurch in 1949. Delegates representing all branches of science will come from the Philippines, Holland and Indonesia, Siam. Indo-China, Japan, Formosa, Hong Kong, Malaya, Borneo’, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and France. The Prehistory Congress alone will have about 70 delegates, chiefly anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists. The New Zealand delegation to the Philippines will include Dr: R. A. Falla, director of the Dominion Museum in Wellington, and Dr. Gilbert Archey, director of the Auckland Museum, who will travel as guests of the congress, because they were president and secretary respectively, of the congress in New Zealand; Dr. W. R. B. Oliver, president of the Royal Society o2 New Zealand; Mr A. W. B. Powell, assistant-director of the Auckland Museum: Dr. H. D. Skinner, director of the Otago Museum; and two delegates from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Other Distinguished Delegates Among the distinguished visitors will be Mr Tom Harrisson, of the Sarawak Museum in North Borneo, a social anthropologist who introduced mass observation techniques to Britain; Dr. G. H. R. von Koenigswald, of the University of Utrecht, Holland, who dis-* covered in Java the oldest known human remains; Professor Felix Keesing, of Stanford University, California, the first New Zealander to write on the changing culture of the Maoris; and Dr. Alexander Spoehr, who succeeded Sir Peter Buck as director of the Bishop Museum, Honolulu. Dr. Spoehr has asked Dr. Duff to assist in a survey of culture changes in the Pacific islands, a five-year project sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, to be conducted jointly by the Bishop Museum, Yale University, and the University of Hawaii.

Part of this major survey will include three archaeological investigations in Micronesia, in Tahiti, and in Tonga or Samoa. It has been suggested that Dr. Duff should lead the third research party. The work may last two or three months. Dr. Duff will discuss plans when he is in the Philippines.