Oceania and Insulindia are composed of groups of archipelagos reaching from the south of Malaysia to the limits of the south Pacific. This geographical and cultural area is connected by the history of its settlement. It contains Insulindia – eastern Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, Melanesia, Polynesia, Micronesia and Australia.
This geographical division is inherited from the work of the French navigator J.-S. Dumont d'Urville, published in 1834. It serves as a framework for visits to the Oceanian collections, with the exception of Micronesia, which is very little represented. Cultural and social themes such as the conquest of prestige, exchanges, initiation, funerary rituals, the relationship with ancestors and divinities, metamorphoses of bodies and modernity are examined through a geographical distribution.
