 A portrait of Pitt-Rivers in later life. Pitt Rivers Museum 2012.33.1
T his is a website about a man and his collections. His son-in-law and colleague, John Lubbock, described Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers' first collection as "perhaps, one of the finest collections in the world". [Hansard, Education, Science, & Art. HC Deb 08 August 1881 vol 264 cc1300-42] Pitt-Rivers himself was more modest, "I look upon my Museum as being in no way an exception from the ordinary laws affecting all human affairs in regard to development, and that so far from considering it perfect as it is, I cannot conceive any idea of finality in a Museum of the kind." [Pitt-Rivers writing to E.B. Tylor, 5 February 1883, L106 Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum Pitt-Rivers Papers]
Pitt-Rivers was a man who identified a series of intellectual questions that interested him; and who—through exhaustive investigation and the acquisition of large and significant collections—attempted to answer these questions to his own satisfaction. Part of his collections would eventually be donated to the University of Oxford and become the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum. His awareness of the scale of the task he had set himself, trying to procure comprehensive collections to illustrate the technological development of mankind from the early 1850s, perhaps encouraged him to proceed to acquire a second separate collection after 1880, similar in size and content to his first, which he displayed at a private museum in Farnham, Dorset. This museum closed in the 1960s and this second collection has been dispersed. Until the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project the full extent of Pitt-Rivers' entire collections has never been known but it now clear that during his lifetime he probably owned in excess of 50,000 separate artefacts. In 1884 Pitt-Rivers donated at least 20,000 items to the University of Oxford and his second collection was at least the same size. He used the objects in these collections as tools in his study of archaeology and anthropology.  Carved storehouse door, Maori, New Zealand 1884.62.36 The Leverhulme Trust has generously funded two research projects on Pitt-Rivers: the first ran from 1995 to 1998 and resulted in the compilation of the first comprehensive computerised catalogue of the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum. The second project, Rethinking Pitt-Rivers, which runs from September 2009 until the end of August 2012, funded this website which has been live from September 2009 to provide access to as much of the raw research that the project generates as possible. The website will be enhanced regularly, so please visit it often to see new resources, research and raw data. During the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project his collections and all the published and unpublished writing by and about him were surveyed: and his life and work were re-examined in the light of this new knowledge. You can find information about all the objects in his collections by selecting the 'Databases' link on the left hand menu. Statistics based on these collections are provided here. There are a wide range of articles about all aspects of his life, work and collections available via the 'Articles' link. A series of papers, written by a variety of different people, about specific artefacts from his collections can be found under the heading of Objects Biographies. In addition information is available about his art collection and his library, the progress reports and news about the project. The work has been greatly helped, enhanced and supported by Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum (who kindly lent their Pitt-Rivers papers to the Pitt Rivers Museum for the second half of the project); Cambridge University Library, who hold the catalogue of the second collection; and Anthony Pitt-Rivers, the General's great-grandson. Finally, the website and databases were designed by Dan Burt, who also provided much-needed technical support, hand-holding through various website related traumas, and excellent design skills. This project has attracted a great deal of scholarly interest and generous support from many colleagues. A diversity of other scholars generously gave their time, effort and fruits of their labour towards this project. So, as well as the primary researchers, a wider team of researchers and volunteers was formed; to find out more about them, see here. We are most grateful to Bill Chapman who agreed to allow us to make available his D.Phil thesis from 1981 about Pitt-Rivers, Ethnology in the Museum, via this website; improved access to this thesis in this way will make other scholars' lives much easier. We are most grateful to each and every one of the wider team for their support, especially Peter Rivière and Rachel McGoff who have provided much valuable support since the project began.  PRM ms collections Box 1, 27-30 letter 1 page 1 Sue Johnson has used the catalogue of the second collection as inspiration for two art exhibitions, the second of which is on public view in the Long Gallery of the Pitt-Rivers Museum from January to June 2012. Find out more about the exhibition here. Later in 2012 a new temporary display of objects related to one of Pitt-Rivers' most famous set of objects - the set of paddles that he used to display the evolution of design in Evolution of Culture - will be shown in the Lower Gallery of the Pitt Rivers Museum. There will also be a display of manuscript collections relating to Pitt-Rivers in the Archives case on the Lower Gallery entrance area adjacent to the lift in the main Museum from 10 September 2012. The copyright for the contents of this website resides with the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. The only exceptions are the reproductions of the drawings from the catalogue of the second collection, either in the database or as illustration of pages on this website, which reside with Syndics, Cambridge University Library; Sue Johnson's artworks, for which she retains the copyright; and the transcriptions from other archives (like Salisbury and South Wiltshire and the Ashmolean Museums) which are held by the respective institutions. Please send any feedback about the site or its contents to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Alison Petch [AP] and Jeremy Coote [JC], [First written September 2009, updated regularly ever since] |