The Hampton Archive, an ethnographic collection of around 1,000 cultural artefacts from the central highlands of Papua, was formally handed over to representatives of Highland Papua Province on 30 December 2025.
On 7 May, the archive left the Tracing Patterns Foundation in Berkeley, California, beginning its long journey home-an arrival eagerly awaited by the communities of Jayapura and Wamena.
Packing the Hampton Archive at Tracing Patterns Foundation
For the next few years, the collection will be housed at Museum Loka Budayain Jayapura, while Highland Papua Province builds a new museum in Wamena, where the Hampton Archive will form its core collection. The repatriation project, which began five years ago at the Tracing Patterns Foundation, encompasses objects from both daily and ritual life, including stone tools, personal adornments and rare textile materials such as spider-web cloths and looped-fibre bags. Among them is a 20th-century headdress, made by the Dani people of Papua's Baliem Valley.
