Collection: Pitt Rivers Museum

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  The Museum was founded in 1884, when General Pitt-Rivers gave some 30,000 artefacts to the University of Oxford. Since that date, artefacts, photographs, books and other archival material have continuously been added to the collections, so that the Museum now holds one of the most important, comprehensive, and best-documented ethnographic and archaeological collections in the world.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2016

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  Size, coverage and significance of current collections

  The Museum’s collections comprise artefacts from all parts of the world from prehistoric times to the present day, along with major manuscript, photograph, sound and film collections. In 2015 the collections numbered over 550,000 artefacts (including objects, photographs and sound recordings) and 81 collections of manuscripts. All collections are Designated as of national or international significance, reflecting the fact that the Museum has one of the most significant archaeological and ethnographic collections in the world.

  Collections are used for research and teaching in the University of Oxford, and by scholars and students nationally and internationally, as well as in the Museum’s award-winning programme of public outreach and educational activities. The Museum is committed to making its collections accessible to the widest possible audience, as detailed in the Museum’s Access Policy. Displays are open to the general public daily.

  The collections are managed, documented and displayed according to the Museum’s Documentation Policy and Procedural Manual, Collections Care and Conservation Policy, and Access Policy. Backlogs in documentation are being addressed according to the Museum’s Documentation Backlog Plan.

  Strength and significance of collections

  Ethnographic collections

  Selective highlights of the ethnographic collections include the Forster collection of Pacific artefacts from Captain Cook’s Second Voyage (1772–75), one of the great collections of eighteenth-century Pacific art and material culture; rich collections from central Australia donated by pioneer ethnographers W. B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen; great depth of nineteenth- and twentieth-century collections from South Sudan, including those of eminent anthropologist Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard; the Hopkins collection, made by the Governor of the Hudson’s Bay company in 1841–2, containing rare examples of painted and quilled Northern Plains war shirts, which have become benchmark references for scholars; European music collections, including a virginal by Marco Jadra (dated 1552) – the oldest keyboard instrument in Oxford, as well as musical boxes and mechanical musical instruments; the collection made in 1825–28 by F. W. Beechey and E. Belcher, officers on the sloop HMS Blossom, among the earliest Inuit collections in the world; the contents of the private museum of the Second Rajah of Sarawak, donated to the Museum in 1923; exceptional Naga holdings (more than 6,000 objects) many collected by J. H. Hutton and J. P. Mills between 1915 and 1945 and constituting one of the best-documented collections in the world; the collection of European firearms (General Pitt-Rivers’ original interest), which includes many early and type examples of great significance to firearms specialists.

  Archaeological collections

  Selective highlights of the archaeological collections include the magnificent collections of Neolithic and Bronze Age materials from the Swiss Lake Villages exposed during the droughts of 1853–4; important Cypriot material; an impressive collection of Danish Neolithic and Bronze materials, as well as some of General Pitt-Rivers’s own archaeological collections; part of the mid-nineteenth-century Bowker collection; the earliest known collections of stone implements from South Africa (and probably from anywhere south of the Sahara); some of the oldest human artefacts from the lowest levels of Olduvai Gorge, and large and important collections of Acheulian artefacts donated by Louis Leakey in the 1940s. The Museum’s South American archaeological collections include more than 500 ancient Peruvian textiles, as well as the Acland collection of Peruvian mummified material.

  Photograph collections

  Selective highlights of the photograph collections (many of which have associated object collections) include: the C. F. Wood collection of over two hundred photographs (wet collodion plates and albumen prints) of Fiji, Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Samoa (1872–3), some of the earliest from the region; the C. W. & F. Dammann collection (c.1872-5) of over one thousand photographs compiled for the comparative study of race; R. G. Woodthorpe albums of watercolours and photographs (c.1872–6) from Assam and Northeast India; the R. S. Rattray collection of photographs relating to 1920s Ghana, taken by a distinguished colonial administrator and ethnographer; R. Hottot collection (1908-9) of nearly 600 verascope stereo positives from ethnographic and hunting expeditions to the Congo; Evans-Pritchard collection (1926-36) of photographs from fieldwork in South Sudan; H. Richardson collection (1936–1950) of photographs of Tibet charting a long involvement with the country; and the Wilfred Thesiger collection (1930s–1980s) of 38,000 negatives and 74 albums relating to the Middle East, Arabian Peninsula, Asia and East Africa taken by the travel writer and photographer.

  Manuscript collections

  Selective highlights of the manuscript collections include: correspondence on the early days of the Museum; E. B. Tylor Papers, correspondence and notes 1877–1916, from one of the founders of British anthropology; Pitt-Rivers Papers, including correspondence and notebooks of the Museum’s founder; correspondence and notebooks of W. Baldwin Spencer 1892–1928 from a key figure in early anthropology in Australia; South Sudan, especially the papers of Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard, Godfrey Lienhardt and Jean Buxton; Henry Balfour Papers, especially field diaries from Africa (1905, 1910–30) and Assam (1922); Beatrice Blackwood Papers, especially a candid set of field diaries from North America (1924–7) and Melanesia (1929–37).

  Film collections

  The Museum has a small but interesting collection of original films, most of which either accompanied donations of artefacts or photographs, or else were acquired for teaching and research purposes. Much of the material is unique and of significant historical importance, such as the films of Frederick Spencer Chapman made from the 1930s onwards in Tibet, Greenland and Africa, Beatrice Blackwood in Papua New Guinea in 1936 and Ursula Graham Bower in India in 1939.

  Sound collections

  The Museum’s sound collections contain unique historical field recordings, most of which are directly related to collections of objects and photographs held by the Museum. The sound collections exist in a variety of historical formats, such as wax cylinders recorded as early as 1910, reel to reel tapes, and audio tapes. The Museum completed a major project to digitize these field collections in 2012 and a selection of the recordings along with information about the collections is available via the Reel to Real project website. Selected highlights include the largest archive of Bayaka music in the world, recorded by Louis Sarno over 30 years in Central African Republic and Diamond Jenness’s wax cylinder recordings from the D’Entrecasteaux Islands in 1911-12.

  Material not accepted for permanent collection (handling collection)

  The Museum may occasionally, and with the written agreement of the donor or person transferring the material, acquire items that are not intended to be retained for the permanent collection. These items may be used as part of educational or school handling activities, to supplement student teaching or for destructive research.

  These acquisitions will be recorded separately outside the main accession record of the Museum and shall not be treated as part of the permanent collection since their intended use implies that preservation cannot be guaranteed. A record will be kept of how and when any material is disposed of.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2016

  Licence: CC BY-NC