Every year, in the last month of the Islamic calendar, millions of Muslims from around the world come together in Mecca to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage that all capable Muslims should perform at least once in their lives. In 2013, the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden organised the exhibition Longing for Mecca. The Pilgrim’s Journey.

This book discusses the impact of tourism on traditional societies, in particular tourist encounters between Native American peoples and Euro-Americans.

‘Authenticity’ and authentication is at the heart of museums’ concerns in displays, objects, and interaction with visitors. These notions have formed a central element in early thought on culture and collecting.

The story of ethnographic collecting is one of cross-cultural encounters. This book focuses on collecting encounters in the Kamoro region of Papua from the earliest collections made in 1828 until 2011.

In this book the concept of mobility is explored for the archaeology of the Amazonian and Caribbean region. As a result of technological and methodological progress in archaeology, mobility has become increasingly visible on the level of the individual.

Sharing Knowledge & Cultural Heritage (SK&CH), First Nations of the Americas, testifies to the growing commitment of museum professionals in the twenty-first century to share collections with the descendants of people and communities from whom the collections originated.

Central Javanese temples were not built anywhere and anyhow. On the contrary: their positions within the landscape and their architectural designs were determined by socio-cultural, religious and economic factors.