The Curator of the National Museum of Vanuatu, Takaronga Kuautonga, has recently returned from a two-month attachment with the Australian Museum in Sydney, learning how to conserve and reconstruct Lapita pots from fragments found at Teouma on Efate island in 2004 and 2005. This attachment was been made possible through ICOM Australia's Museums Partnership Program, under which the Australian Museum has recieved funding to assist the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in gaining capacity to conserve and reconstruct Lapita pots as well as to produce a pilot interactive web portal from the National Museum of Vanuatu to the Vanuatu collections held in the Australian Museum. The pot sherds that were conserved as part of this training exercise are those from complete but shattered 3,200 year old Lapita pots found at the now famous Teouma site in Vanuatu in 2004 and 2005. Takaronga worked with the Australian Museum's Materials Conservation Department to conserve the sherds and reconstruct them into complete pots, which will soon be returned to Vanuatu for permanent display at the National Museum.
Photos show Takaronga working on conserving the pot sherds and reconstructing the pots with Colin MacGregor, Senior Materials Conservation Officer at the Australian Museum, and being watched by Kirk Huffman, Honorary Curator of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, now based at the Australian Museum.
