PITT-RIVERS (AUGUSTUS) LT. GENERAL
4 volumes, Privately Printed, 1887- 1898, Presentation inscription to head of Volume I title, 284 plates (some after photographs), 38 maps and plans. Quarter blue Morocco, 4to.
An excellent set of the most important work by the founder of the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford. The Museum was founded in 1884 when Pitt-Rivers gave his collection to the University of Oxford.
Presentation copy from the Author to Northampton Free Library with an occasional stamp.
[WITH]
PITT- RIVERS, AUGUSTUS
Antique Works of Art from Benin
Limited First Edition, Privately Printed, 1900. Pp iv, 100. With 50 plates from photographs of 389 objects. 310 x 240mm, blue cloth decorated in gilt, spine lettered in gilt.
The design on the binding of the volume is a facsimile of that on a tablet of Kimmeridge shale found by Pitt Rivers in the Romano-British village at Rotherley near Rushmore in 1887. The antiques pictured in this volume are from the 1897 expedition of Benin and are currently on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum for the moment.
Lieutenant-General Pitt-Rivers inherited the Rushmore Estate on Cranborne Chase in 1880. This estate, on the borders of Wiltshire and Dorset, contained many archaeological sites that were exceptionally well preserved. This was because the area had been a deer hunting preserve until 1828. It had been forbidden to harm the deer and the vegetation on which they lived, agriculture had been strictly controlled and archaeological sites therefore remained untouched. The area included a vast number of monuments and settlements dating from prehistoric times to the medieval period.
Pitt-Rivers already had a deep interest in archaeology which he pursued after inheriting the Rushmore Estate. What was remarkable was that his archaeological methods turned away from the treasure hunting of his antiquarian predecessors. Employing a team of archaeological assistants, he was able to excavate a wider range of sites aiming to recover as much information as possible to reconstruct their history. His work was fully documented and he retained many of the objects found including everyday items. Artefacts were measured and drawn with detailed plans and models showing where all the finds were made.
Pitt-Rivers believed in educating the wider public about his discoveries. He founded a museum at Farnham, Dorset where he displayed his discoveries and models. For academics his work was privately published in the four-volume Excavations in Cranborne Chase (1887–98). Many of the places he excavated became type sites for the period: Wor Barrow for the Neolithic, South Lodge for the Bronze Age and Woodcuts for the Roman period.
Today Pitt-Rivers is regarded as one of the founders of modern archaeology, who moved the subject away from an amateur hobby to a scientific discipline. The key aspects of his legacy are the archaeological finds and models relating to his work on Cranborne Chase which were given to Salisbury Museum in 1975. Frederick Beaumont
By the time he retired he had amassed ethnographic collections numbering tens of thousands of items from all over the world. Influenced by the evolutionary writings of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, he arranged them typologically and (within types) chronologically. He viewed archaeology as an extension of anthropology and, as consequence, built up matching collections of archaeological and ethnographic objects to show longer developmental sequences to support his views on cultural evolution. This style of arrangement, designed to highlight evolutionary trends in human artefacts, was a revolutionary innovation in museum design.
Pitt Rivers’ ethnological collections form the basis of the Pitt Rivers Museum which is still one of Oxford’s main attractions. His research and collections cover periods from the Lower Paleolithic to Roman and medieval times, and extend all over the world.
The Pitt Rivers Museum did curate more than half a million ethnographic and archaeological artifacts, photographic and manuscript collections from all parts of the world. The rapid pace of these changes has faced criticism from some historians and visitors who argue the museum is sacrificing historical accuracy for a “decolonising zeal”.
The museum was founded in 1884 when the university accepted the gift of more than 20,000 artifacts from Pitt Rivers, and awarded him the Doctorate of Civil Law in 1886. He was later named a Fellow of the Royal Society.
The museum has been described as one of the “six great ethnological museums of the world”.The Pitt Rivers Museum did curate more than half a million ethnographic and archaeological artifacts, photographic and manuscript collections from all parts of the world.
However, the museum has recently removed hundreds of items, including Naga trophy skulls and South American tsantsas, in response to long-standing complaints regarding the exhibition of ancestral remains.
The rapid pace of these changes has faced criticism from some historians and visitors who argue the museum is sacrificing historical accuracy for a “decolonising zeal”.
Under director Laura van Broekhoven, the museum has transformed into an anti-racist institution that acknowledges and dislikes its history as a “preserve of colonialism”.
With its modern noticeboards and the removal of so many historical artifacts the museum sadly is a shadow of its past.
