[3] Founded in 1884 as the university's Museum of General and Local Archaeology, the museum's initial collections included local antiquities collected by the Cambridge Antiquarian Society and artefacts from Polynesia donated by Alfred Maudslay and Sir Arthur Gordon.

[5] Haddon and Rivers would encourage their Cambridge students — including Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, John Layard and Gregory Bateson — to continue to collect for the museum in their ethnographic fieldwork.

The MAA reopened after a lengthy refurbishment in 2013, with a completely redeveloped ground floor, new temporary exhibition space and new archaeology galleries.

In 1770, after returning to England from their voyage in the South Pacific Ocean, Captain James Cook and botanist Joseph Banks brought with them, along with a large collection of flora and fauna, many cultural artefacts.

The spears were given to Cook's patron John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who then gave them to his alma mater Trinity College, and four are still in existence.