Polynesia
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of 416 objects from Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean. These date from about 1775 to 1996. This collection contains carved wooden, stone and bone figures and totems, furniture, weapons, domestic items and ritual apparatus. It also includes hunting and fishing equipment, body ornaments, ceremonial art, musical instruments, masks, armour and costume. Many of the objects were collected by merchant seamen or missionaries to the region. The Maori material is significant and boasts a free-standing ancestral figure, one of only six acknowledged to exist and the earliest item in the collection. The focus of 19th century Presbyterian missionary activity is reflected in the collection from Tonga, which also includes two recent tourist items from Hawaii, donated in 1996. Oceania is a geographic region consisting of many different countries and surrounding islands in the Pacific Ocean. It is generally defined by its subregions of Australasia, Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia. Polynesia is comprised of over 1,000 islands, which are divided into the main island groups of Samoa, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Niue, the Pitcairn Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Wallis and Futuna.
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