Until the twentieth century barkcloth was a vital material in the social, cultural and ritual lives of Pacific islanders. Barkcloth, or tapa, was widely used in tropical areas instead of weaving cloth on a loom and was used to create clothing, furnishings, carpeted pathways for royal weddings and funerals, and masks and garments for ritual and religious ceremonies. Sheets of the inner bark of trees and flowering plants were stripped and soaked to soften them, then beaten with wooden mallets to stretch the cloth and make it softer and stronger, before decorating it with painted designs. The production and use of barkcloth were disrupted by increasing western impact on the Pacific islands in the nineteenth century and in some areas missionaries completely suppressed its use. There is a continuous tradition of making barkcloth in some areas of the Pacific, but the skill has been lost in other islands, such as Hawai'i. Today the re-introduction or re-interpretation of barkcloth is an important aspect of cultural identity in these islands. Barkcloth was of great interest to travellers from the west, and Pacific barkcloth objects in western museums are a significant legacy from eighteenth and nineteenth century explorers, scientists and colonists. There are many good collections in museums in the UK and around the world but there are still major gaps in our understanding of it as a material. This project will examine the development of barkcloth production in the Pacific in the nineteenth century. We want to investigate whether materials, techniques and designs originated from particular islands, how they were transmitted around the region and the effect of globalisation on this tradition. This is important both for our understanding of objects in museum collections and for contemporary barkcloth makers in the Pacific. The project will focus on three internationally important collections at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow and The Economic Botany Collection at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, in the UK, and The National Museum of Natural History, part of the USA's Smithsonian Institution. We will research the provenance and history of objects in the collections and analyse their materials and manufacture. We will also carry out fieldwork in the Pacific islands, talking to barkcloth makers, growers and designers and experimenting with making barkcloth using different plants and beating techniques. We know that a variety of plants, including breadfruit, banyan and mamaki, were used to make barkcloth but it is often assumed that objects in western collections are made from the paper mulberry tree though in fact paper mulberry is not indigenous to the Pacific. However it is currently extremely difficult to identify barkcloth species because the fibres were badly damaged during production. The research will explore different identification techniques including the staining of sections, scanning-electron microscopy, protein analysis and DNA analysis. We aim to use some of these methods to identify the plant species in museum objects so that we have a better understanding of the plants used in different islands and how globalisation affected their use. An investigation of preservation and conservation techniques is an integral part of the project. Many barkcloth objects in museum collections are in poor condition; many pieces are very large and have been folded for storage but the cloth becomes brittle and inflexible with age and the folds become fixed. A programme of conservation treatment and improved storage will make the Hunterian and Kew artefacts accessible for current and future research. This will also improve our understanding of the physical properties of barkcloth; we will be looking for links between the objects' physical characteristics and degradation patterns and the plant species. This could result in different conservation treatments for objects depending on their fibre type or condition.