More than 8,000 artifacts from Pohnpei, Chuuk, Yap and Kosrae are held in museums abroad. Find your island, see the photo, and follow each one back to the museum that holds it.
This collection lists artifacts from the Federated States of Micronesia that are held in museums outside Micronesia. It now draws on five museums: the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, MARKK in Hamburg, the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Cologne, the Museum Natur und Mensch in Freiburg and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
Records with photos come from the museums' online catalogs. Hamburg has not published photos yet, so its artifacts are listed from the museum's own published lists, with a link to the page each entry is on.
Records of human remains, and of items made from human hair, are not shown.
Nothing here is a guess. Every fact on an artifact's page comes from the museum's record or from a named, published source.
What the museum's catalog says, translated into English, with the original wording underneath.
Published research and other museums' records about the artifact or the person who collected it. Each note names its source.
Names, uses and meaning from people who know the artifact's culture. Each entry will say who shared it.
Each record also links to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which may hold earlier copies of the museum's page if the museum changes or removes it.
Returns of artifacts from museums usually start with a request from the government of the place they came from. In Germany, federal, state and city authorities agreed shared principles in 2019 for collections from colonial contexts, and returns since then have mostly followed requests from countries of origin.
In the Federated States of Micronesia, heritage matters are handled by the Office of National Archives, Culture and Historic Preservation (NACH) in Palikir, and by each state's historic preservation office.
This site does not make requests. It lists what is held and where, so anyone can see it and follow it back.
Not recorded means the museum's public record does not say. The museum's inventory books may hold more. Unclear is the museum's own word for how an artifact arrived. A question mark after a name or place is the museum's own uncertainty.
Photos are from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, credited to the photographer named on each image. Most are licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: they may be shared with credit, not sold, and shared under the same terms. Photos from Cologne and Freiburg are credited on each image; Cologne's are licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, which allows sharing with credit but no changes. Records were accessed on 22 October 2026.