16. Report of the curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum  (Department of Ethnology and Prehistory) for the year ending  31 July 1958

STAFF
Curator: T.K. Penniman, M.A., Trinity College.
University Demonstrators and Lecturers in Ethnology: B.M. Blackwood, B.Sc., M.A., Somerville College; A.J. Butt, B.Litt., M.A., D.Phil., Lady Margaret Hall.
University Demonstrator and Lecturer in Prehistory: J.S.P. Bradford, M.A., Christ Church.
Secretary to the Museum and Librarian: R.C. Gurden.
                        
From its inception, the Pitt Rivers Museum has been one of Ethnology and Prehistory, and in its collections, field-work, teaching, and research has always considered the two as the present and past of the same subject. The original gift of General Pitt Rivers balanced the two subjects very evenly, and collections ever since from all parts of the world have maintained that balance. The General’s own field-work and lectures and publications include both, inclining more heavily to Prehistory, and Professor Henry Balfour and the present Curator in their work and teaching and publications have maintained the tradition of dealing with both the past and the present. The Museum series of Occasional Papers on Technology deals both with Ethnology and Prehistory. From 1883, when the collections first came to Oxford, until today, collecting, teaching, and research, including field-work, have included sections and examination papers in both. From our foundation, we were named the Department of Ethnology, because it was understood then and for many years after that Ethnology naturally included Prehistory, and dealt with the past as well as the present, as Tylor’s lectures and his book Anthropology so clearly show.

Now, however, when people desire exact designations and like to define provinces of activity, it seemed best to ask the University to translate fact into law, and we are named the Department of Ethnology and Prehistory, with the right to have Demonstrators, who are also Lectures, appointed in both subjects. At the same time, Mr. Bradford’s title was changed in accordance with the nature of his publications and teaching to that of University Demonstrator and Lecturer in Prehistory. The new titles in no way infringe on the Ashmolean use of the title ‘Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology’, nor on its title ‘Department of Antiquities’. and recognize our very large collections from the earliest periods, a great bulk of which are from outside the Ashmolean range of collections or sphere of teaching.

Dr. Audrey Butt’s second expedition to British Guiana lasted from March to October 1957. The aim of her return expedition was to complete her anthropological field research among the Akawaio of the Upper Mazaruni District which was begun in 1951-2. She obtained considerable ethnological data on this return visit and was able to correct, and extend the information and conclusions reached on her first expedition. In addition she was able to visit the famous Roraima area on the borders of British Guiana, Venezuela, and Brazil, and to extend her research to the neighbouring tribes of Taulebang and Arekuna. The information obtained is now being prepared for publication in articles and in a book. Besides full notebooks, she brought back some 2,200 feet of film, mostly Kodachrome colour, made by the Museum’s camera, and so gained a fairly complete moving picture of Akawaio life and activities. This film is now being edited in the Museum. It is supplemented by her 150 Ektachrome colour negatives which have been made into slides here. 38,000 feet of tape recordings were made on the Museum’s E.M.I. portable battery machine of the folklore, shamans, performances, and music of the Akawaio, Taulebang, and Arekuna people. This is a complete record of the music of a large group of tribes and is probably unique. Some selections have been taken by the B.B.C. for their permanent record library and in return the Museum is being presented with a long-playing record. Most of the tape has been played through and checked in the Museum, and copy tapes have been made and have proved to be very valuable for lectures to our Diploma students and others.

This expedition has also enriched the Museum by an ethnological collection of 138 articles, including basketwork, implements, pottery, decoration, weapons, musical instruments, and ancient burial urn, &c., all of which are fully documented with native name, use, mode of making, and origin.

Dr. Butt also achieved one of the special objects of her return by photographing completely and obtaining all relevant information on some rock paintings in the Upper Mazaruni District, which are unique in British Guiana. This was done with some difficulty, and the results will published shortly, together with colour photographs.

A botanical collection was made with the assistance of a Botanist kindly sent by the Forestry Department from Georgetown for a period of some six weeks. Most of the collection is in Kew and Georgetown, but Dr. Butt retained a collection of the charm plants together with all the information on their magical and medicinal uses, and some of these are now being investigated by the Department of Pharmacology. One rare plant which she obtained as a ‘snake-bite cure’, Echidnium dubium, has recently been exhibited at Kew. This collaboration between an Anthropologist and a Botanist has proved very satisfactory in both the economic and magical spheres of investigation.

Work on the Museum series of Occasional Papers on Technology has continued throughout the year. Mr. H.H. Coghlan’s ‘Notes on Prehistoric and Early Iron in the Old World’ continues to be well reviewed in the principal technical and archaeological journals of the world, and is in regular demand from practically all countries. Number 9 by Mr. Anthony Baines on Folk Bagpipes is almost ready for press, and is expected to run to over 150 pages. Mr. K.H.H. Walters has prepared 16 pages of half-tone plates, and Mr. Anthony Wootton has drawn over 70 text-figures for the book. It will be a valuable and authoritative addition to our series, not only because our collection of bagpipes is extensive, but because of our good fortune in persuading Mr. Baines to undertake the book. He has been a member of the woodwind section of the London Philharmonic Orchestra for fifteen years, a conductor of concerts and ballet, a successful teacher of many pupils, founder member of the Galpin Society and editor of its Journal, as well as author of numerous works on woodwind, including book on Woodwind Instruments and their History.

Work proceeded on the Curator’s programme towards an exhibition and ultimate publication of the British Bronze Age implements in the Pitt Rivers Museum. Dr. E.T. Hall of the University Laboratory of Archaeology and the History of Art provided spectrographic analyses of 80 specimens, and for these Mr. I.M. Allen has so far put together a bibliography with about 100 entries, and written chemical and metallographic reports on 45 of our specimens, while Mr. Anthony Wootton has drawn 38 of the artefacts and 58 microsections.

The Curator was asked to be responsible for Great Britain in an International Corpus of Ancient Metallurgical Furnaces sponsored by the Centro di Studi Preistorici ed Archeologici of Varese, under the direction of Professor Mario Bertolone and Dr. Costantino Storti, and gladly agreed. Mr. Allen and Mr. Wootton have already extracted short summaries for about 70 furnaces, and Mr. Wootton has drawn plans and sections of many of them. The references ran into hundreds, and considerable correspondence was needed, including some checking on the spot. The Corpus will be published in Sibrium, the journal of the foundation at Varese, which has already published material from the Museum.

There was no pause in the work of cataloguing, exhibiting, and storing the collections. Miss Blackwood typed and distributed about 1,500 cards for the Subject Index, and distributed about 2,000 typed by the Curator, as well as about 1,100 cards done in duplicate, for both the Regional and Subject Indexes, these last including the year’s accessions, done by Mr. Wootton, and another 500 detailed cards of the Gunther collection of Japanese netsuke, prepared by Mr. R.C. Gurden, who also continued the Regional and Subject Indexes of specimens in the Examination Schools. Mr. Wootton has as usual been responsible for keeping the index of donors, vendors, and lenders up to date.

As there are now well over half a million cards, Miss Blackwood is preparing a hand-list of headings and sub-headings, which will itself be indexed in detail, so that those in charge of the catalogue will be able to ascertain quickly where to look for or to place any card. Apart from the difficulty of always knowing the habitat of a tribe or the various names by which it has been known or the position of an archaeological site, there is the much greater difficulty in the Subject Index of deciding under which heading to place many specimens which fit equally well into two or more sections, and this master-list is designed to avoid the necessity for a very large number of cross-references, which are apt to be confusing if too greatly multiplied. While making the hand-list, she is taking the opportunity to check each card to make sure that none is displaced and that the sub-divisions are suitable and adequate in the light of our experience in the use of the index. As time permits, she is going through the drawer containing cards for specimens without provenance. Many of these can be assigned at least to an approximate locality by comparison with photographs or specimens in this or other museums. Such work is time-consuming and unspectacular, but in the long run adds considerably to the accuracy of our records and so to the usefulness of the collections.

Dr. Butt has prepared descriptive cards for 50 slides made from Dr. Lienhardt’s negatives of the Dinka and other Nilotic tribes of the Sudan, and another 50 cards for slides made from Dr. Alport’s negative taken in Morocco. Mr. Gurden has kept up to date the Regional and Subject Indexes of negatives taken by Mr. K.H.H. Walters, which amounted to about 100 during this year.

The work of modernizing the exhibition of musical instruments continued, but somewhat more slowly than last year because of the work involved in preparing material for our book on bagpipes and their affinities, and for our programmes on ancient metallurgy and furnaces. But Mr. Wootton completed an exhibition of primitive harps, including the proper storage and checking or revising documentation, and also finished a large exhibition of musical instruments with oboe and clarinet reeds. This consists of a small section showing the outline evolution of the primitive bagpipes, based on Balfour’s classic paper on the pibcorn, and sections showing clarinets and oboes subdivided into areas. In the desk case below are shown some of the more primitive bagpipes, but these as well as those arranged last year in the large wall case have been many times disarranged during the year as they were drawn or photographed for our forthcoming book. Beneath the exhibition of reed instruments, the remaining specimens have been stored by subject and area. Mr. Wootton is now engaged on an exhibition of free-reed instruments, including the rectification of their storage.

Mr. Wooton also sorted a large miscellaneous collection of prints and pictures, cleaned them, and arranged them in order in one of Mr. H.F. Walter’s specially built cupboards. Certain of them were selected for display, and fixed on the wall of the Library and of the corridor leading to the Catalogue Room by Mr. R.P. Rivers. Among the more interesting were a Russian ikon of Christ the Light of the World, of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, and an ikon entitled ‘The Holy, the Great Angel Michael’, dated between 1500 and 1650, probably made by Joseph Phoros for a monastery in Cappadocia near Caesarea, both identified by the Rev. A.G. Mathew. Some of the others selected for display were a coloured print of a Hobby Horse, 1819, one of the Rocket, 1830, a series showing travel on the Manchester and Liverpool Railway between 1825 and 1833, and a couple of eighteenth-century prints of African forts.

Besides the work towards exhibition and ultimate publication of our British Bronze Age artefacts, Mr. Allen has completed about 20 analyses, both chemical and metallographic, of Far Eastern bronze implements in the Museum, and has extracted enough analyses from other sources to bring the number up to about a hundred. Mr. W.D. Bennett kindly provided spectrographic analyses for those in the Museum, and Mr. Wootton has drawn many of the artefacts and micrographs, and generally prepared the information for display in a desk case and on two screens above. At the time of writing, work on setting up the exhibition has begun, but before completion, a few Siberian implements from the Minusinsk area await analysis.

Miss Blackwood sorted the stored specimens of three series, head, neck, and breast ornaments, fans and combs, into smaller geographical areas within each continent, so that any object in these extensive series can be more quickly found, and the Curator and Mr. Gurden continued the task of reducing the ratio of wood to specimens by sorting homogeneous collections from many small cabinets into fewer large cabinets. All such sorting led invariably to more precise documentation than was contained in the original entry for some specimens.

None of this work would have been possible without the regular provision of new cupboards and rebuilt cabinets by Mr. H.F. Walters, ably assisted by Mr. R.P. Rivers. By now they have built 28 cupboards each 8 feet high by 4 feet 4 inches wide by 2 feet 6 inches deep, and 7 of the same width and depth but 4 feet 6 inches tall, all internally designed to suit the material they hold. These are on big castors, so that they can be easily moved back to make room for tables when new material comes in, or old material is sorted, and if the new accessions are fit to store, the cupboards can take them until they are entered as time permits, thus preventing our being bogged down in a mass of specimens. Moreover, when we build, a great mass of material can be moved out and back to the area in good order, and so prevent vexatious loss of time in sorting, and prolonged hindrance to our teaching programme or use of the collections by research students. Two of the large cabinets which hold the Gunther collection of netsuke were rebuilt to make them safer, and Mr. Rivers fitted the storage drawers under the display cases with small lined compartments, so that each netsuke is in its own small enclosure in its numerical order, a great help to Mr. Gurden in the card catalogue which he is compiling, and also a safeguard against the netsuke damaging each other when the drawers are opened.

In addition to a large amount of work on the Museum Catalogue and helping the Curator in the better ordering of the collections in storage and on exhibition, Mr. Gurden has been responsible for the general administration of the Department, including the ordering of supplies, equipment, and books, scrutinizing and advising the Curator thereon, keeping and presenting accounts to the auditors and paying wages, supervision of the Library with over 100 regular readers and a good many research workers, and generally attending to the needs of the many people who come to the Museum to work on the collections, as well as dealing with a great bulk of correspondence independently and for the Curator. Some of this requires fairly lengthy answers, such as Mr. Gurden’s recent preparation of a complete list of our holdings of periodicals for the British Union Catalogue of Periodicals.

Besides work on the Museum publications, catalogue, and exhibitions already mentioned, Mr. Wootton assisted Mr. Gurden and the Curator with correspondence, and took over the duties of Secretary when Mr. Gurden was away. He is now responsible for sending out our Occasional Papers on Technology, and for producing the considerable number of stencilled bibliographies and maps which Miss Blackwood and Dr. Butt prepare for all those who attend their lectures, as well as typing a good deal of material for publication and for exhibitions, and attending to various people who use the catalogue and collections. His work on our forthcoming publications has involved a good many visits to the Ashmolean Museum, and visits to the Clarendon Press and to the firm of Kraske, Vaus, and Crampton at Long Acre, London, to observe the various techniques used in illustrations of all kinds. With Mr. Allen he visited Wells Museum, where Professor L.S. Palmer, the Curator gave then every facility to examine and report and draw plans and sections of the Iron Age furnace found at Chelms Combe, Cheddar. During the year Mr. Wootton published two articles in Seaby’s Coin and Medal Bulletin. One in the March issue was ‘Some Notes on the Antoninianus, a Roman “Silver” Coin’, and the other in the June issue, ‘The Roman Silver-washed Coinages: Notes on the Probable Evolution of an Early Blanching Technique’. Further articles are in preparation for future publication.

Mr. K.H.H. Walters has photographed 93 specimens in the Museum, made 240 finished prints, and 139 standard lantern-slides, labelled and prepared for projection, and has done a great deal of miscellaneous work such as mounting, and documentation of negatives. He has practically finished the 16 pages of plates required for the book on bagpipes by Mr. Baines for our series of publications. In addition he has bound up Dr. Butt’s 150 2.1/4 x 2.1/4-inch colour transparencies, put them through the new still projector recently bought by the Museum, and proved them all to be technically excellent. He has already prepared for showing about 500 feet of Dr. Butt’s 2,200 feet of 16 mm. colour film. With Dr. Butt, as time allowed, he has played through nearly all of her 38,000 feet of magnetic tape recording and checked it, and has already made several copy tapes of excerpts from the originals, each designed to last for the usual lecture of one hour. No cutting is done to the original tapes. All editing is done by making copy tapes, and so the originals receive minimum amount of handling and remain intact. Using this method, he will in time build up a library of tapes to suit various lectures at the will of the lecturer concerned. He had done a good deal of work on the problem of making permanent records of the 850 soft wax cylinders from West Africa and Melanesia in the Museum collections. Towards the end of last year a start was made by using one of the Edison Standard Phonographs given to us by Miss Helen Roberts, fitted with an electro-magnetic pick-up assembly and feeding the pick-up’s output directly into a Vortexion tape recorder. The pick-up assembly was designed for our purpose by Mr. Stanley Kelly, and comprises a heavy brass housing carrying a light-weight low-output cartridge of standard type, but fitted with a specially ground sapphire stylus having similar characteristics to that used for the original recording process. The brass housing was designed to fit into the sound-box cradle of the original machine.

At first a good deal of trouble was experienced with wax shredding caused by the needle digging into the soft surface of the cylinder. This was found to be due to insufficient clearance having been allowed for free vertical movement of the pick-up head to take place within the housing. To overcome this a small modification was made to the machine in order to raise the carriage slightly. However, this only partially overcame the trouble, and it was found necessary to alter the position of the locating pins in, and to increase the height of, the walls on the housing itself by approximately 0.1 inch. There has been no further trouble with wax shredding, and the cylinder can now by played repeatedly if necessary without damage. Another difficulty was the very low output voltage delivered by the pick-up being insufficient adequately to load the recording amplifier. To deal with this Mr. Walters built a small two-stage pre-amplifier from a circuit suggested by Mr. Kelly, using subminiature Mullard transistors of a type used in hearing-aids. These, having very low power requirements, can be fed from a small dry battery and thereby the need for a separate power supply unit with its associated hum problems is eliminated.

The whole arrangement now works very well, the output being amply sufficient fully to load the following stages and without distortion. It is now possible to go ahead with recording these cylinders. Mr. Walters is, however, not fully satisfied with the noise level, which though mainly inherent in the cylinders themselves, could he believes be reduced with the aid of a suitable control unit, and he is experimenting in this direction before proceeding with the entire lot.

As a precaution to safeguard recordings, he had modified the recorder amplifying wiring so as to include a key-operated switch in the oscillator circuit and coloured indicator lamps. This reduces to a minimum the possibility of accidental erasure, even by a person not used to the machine. Possession of the key and deliberate action is now necessary before erasure can occur.

To house the cylinders in order so that each could be found at once, and also to keep the new recordings, Mr. K.H.H. Walters designed a cupboard of our larger standard size containing shelves and a sixteen-drawer cabinet, which he built with the aid of his father and Mr. Rivers. The Curator prepared two copies of a catalogue with wide spaces for annotation as the work proceeds, and Mr. Gurden arranged the collection in order with suitable labels so that the work can proceed in good order as time allows.

Much of Mr. Allen’s work on British Bronze Age artefacts and on ancient Far Eastern bronze implements as well as his work for the International Corpus of Ancient Metallurgical Furnaces has been already noted. He has also found time to prepare for publication a paper on ‘A Metallurgical Study of Four Irish Early Bronze Age Ribbed-halberds in the Pitt Rivers Museum’. Throughout the year a good deal of his time was spent looking out material for lectures and practical classes and for research students, with the help of Mr. Rivers, identifying specimens for visitors, entering specimens of technical interest, and restoration work except for the huge burial urn brought in many pieces by Dr. Butt from British Guiana, which was restored to its original shape with the aid of a photograph by Mr. H.F. Walters.

For the next two years we shall greatly miss the cheerful and willing help of Mr. R.P. Rivers, who was called up for National Service with the H.M. Forces on 7 August. We hear from him regularly as he settles into the well-known army routine, and already, though it is vacation, we are noting how many things he did that were necessary and useful for museum work and for our teaching programme, working the lantern for lectures, looking out and putting away specimens required for demonstrations, keeping the books in the library clean, treating many specimens against moth and other destructive agents, preparing old cases for new exhibitions, playing a considerable part in making new cupboards, and making ingenious plastic and wooden stands for the display of specimens. His knowledge of geography and ethnology has proved decidedly good. He left us as a Junior Technician, and will return as a qualified Technician.

A few only of the year’s accessions will be mentioned because of interest or special importance. From Africa we have Mr. H.E. Merry’s collection of Neolithic flint implements made by himself in the Libyan Desert round Siwa, Jerabub, and Gara, and Mr. Ralph Tanner’s collection of Chinese sherds from sites in Tanganyika, which will enable us to complete our exhibition of Chinese trade with other countries in the past. With it he brought over 500 unbaked clay images of various kinds, each given to a child as a mnemonic for a moral precept. Judging by the number and the tone of the accompanying precepts the children of Tanganyika must be more exposed to good moral conduct than is usual in many parts of the world.

From the Americas, Dr. Audrey Butt’s outstanding collection of perfectly documented specimens, films, negatives, and tape recordings has been noted and described.

Outstanding collections from Asia are the Muller collection of Malayan silverware which Mr. H.H. Coghlan placed on loan from the Newbury Museum, Miss Margaret Eyre’s gift of Chinese and Burmese material including a soapstone carving of the Eight Immortals, white porcelain figures of Kwanyin and of Ryu-jin, the dragon king of the sea, a Burmese figure of a Nat, a forest spirit, a silver bowl and box, and two large pictures painted on cotton to hang on a respected monk’s funeral pyre. Five more of the ever-welcome water-colours painted by Colonel R.G. Woodthrope between 1872 and 1885 of scenes and events in Assam and Kafiristan were given by our old friend Professor J.H. Hutton, and H.H. the Maharajah Rajsaheb of Dhrangadhra enriched our collections with a set of dolls in various of the costumes of India. Miss Coltart gave us a small collection of interesting Japanese specimens collected by her brother Mr. A.H. Coltart in Japan in 1907, and Mr. T.E. Love sent us a large and heavy brass mirror with a reflecting surface of native antimony from Travancore.

Among interesting accessions from the Pacific area are a painted frieze of locally woven hemp cloth with figures from the Ramayana made to hang in a shrine, and a bright-coloured cloth patterned by the pelangi resist technique, both from Bali, obtained through Dr. J. Weutcher, excellent photographs from Portuguese Timor, taken and given by Mr. Ruy Cinatti, two working axes, a ceremonial axe, and various other specimens used by the Kyaka people of the Baiyer River area of the Western Highlands of New Guinea, collected and given by Mr. Ralph Bulmer, a barkcloth mat from Samoa given by the Rev. Professor L.W. Grensted, and a large painted pot from Socotra given by Mr. D. Botting.

European accessions included further volumes of the Oxford History of Music and the accompanying H.M.V. History of Music in Sound, the early volumes of which contain illustrations of Primitive and Oriental instruments in our collections, chosen by Dr. Egon Wellesz and the Curator, a side-flute by Preston of London given by Mr. A. Renshaw, and a noble meat skewer suitable for a baron of beef given by Mr. I.M. Allen.

During the year we gave lectures and instruction to 8 candidates for the Diploma in Anthropology, 44 Colonial Probationers, and 67 candidates for the Preliminary Examination in the Honour School of Geography, besides giving help to many research students from all parts of the world.

The Curator lectured in all three parts on Origins of Civilization, and examined for the Diploma in Anthropology and for the B.Litt. degree. He continued to serve on the Board of the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography, the Committee of Management of the Griffith Institute, the Committee of the Fine Arts, the Joint Advisory Science Committee of Council, and continued as Diploma Secretary for Anthropology, Interviewer of Research Students, and Secretary to Heads of Science Departments.

Miss Blackwood lectured twice weekly in all three terms, and gave a long practical class once weekly for students of the Diploma in Anthropology, and two shorter practical classes each week to students for the Preliminary Examination in the Honour School of Geography, in the former being assisted by Mr. Bradford and Dr. Butt, and in the latter by Dr. Butt. Her general title for Michaelmas and Hilary Terms was Lands and Peoples, the first term being given to Hunters and Herders, and the second to Cultivators. These lectures were given both to Diploma and to Geography students. For Diploma and research students she gave a once weekly course in Trinity Term on The Higher Civilizations of Pre-Conquest America, a course of lectures and demonstrations on Some African Arts and Industries for Overseas Cadets going to Africa, and a course of lectures and demonstrations on Ethnology of the Western Pacific for cadets going to the Fiji Islands and to the British Solomons. As usual, she found time from the large amount of work she has done on the catalogue and collections to give a great deal of help and advice both personally and by correspondence to our regular students and to research workers from all parts of the world.

She served on the Council of the Folklore Society, and on the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute as an elected Vice-President, contributed reviews to Folklore, the American Anthropologist, and The Antiquaries Journal, and the section ‘Museum News’ in Folklore, vol. 68, Dec. 1957, and vol. 69, March and June 1958.

Mr. Bradford lectured once weekly in all three terms, his Michaelmas lectures being on The First Farmers in Europe, a Survey of Neolithic Economy and Society, the Hilary lectures on Asian Nomads, with special reference to Scyths, Huns and Mongols, and the Trinity lectures on Tribal Life in Britain in the First Millenium B.C. He assisted in practical instruction to Diploma pupils in all three terms, tutored 26 Geography pupils in ethnology, and served as an examiner for the Preliminary in the Honour School of Geography. He gave lectures on his recent aerial discoveries in Mediterranean lands to Sheffield University, the Society of Antiquaries, the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, and the N.A.E. (R.A.F) Technical Society, Bedford. Apart from reviews, he contributed a long illustrated chapter on ‘Asian Nomadism’ to the Encyclopaedia of World History, and ‘Air Archaeological Discoveries in Mediterranean Lands’ to Proceedings of the International Classical Congress held at Copenhagen. The University has given him leave of absence for the Long Vacation and Michaelmas Term and for next Trinity Term to prepare his work in Apulia for publication, both her and in Italy.

Dr. Butt lectured once weekly throughout the year. In Michaelmas Term her subject was The Material Culture of the Special Area, East Africa, and in Hilary and Trinity Amerindian Tribes of the Guianas. She also assisted Miss Blackwood in the Diploma and Geography practical courses each week, and supplemented her course by some extra lectures on South American subjects, illustrated by film, as well as giving tutorials to 16 students for the Preliminary Examination in the Honour School of Geography, and examining for the Preliminary in Trinity Term 1958. Outside lectures included one on Symbolism and Ritual among the Akawaio to University College, London, and to the Oxford University Anthropological Society, a lecture with colour slides on her expedition to British Guiana for the Geography Society at a London Grammer School, and a paper on Radcliffe-Brown’s Andaman Islanders to the Institute of Social Anthropology. An article on two burial urns discovered during her work in British Guiana is in the press in Timehri, 1958, and in Man.

We do not as a rule record in this report those who have visited us, however distinguished, but wish here to make a rare exception. In July the Museum was pleased to welcome Mr. Mungo Martin, the carver of the 100-foot Centenary Totem Pole presented to Her Majesty the Queen by the people of British Columbia, and his granddaughter and interpreter, Mrs. Helen Hunt, in the lovely costume of their people. Mr. Martin, whose hereditary native name, Naka’penkim, means ‘Ten times Chief’, was born 79 years ago on the Kwakiutl Indian Reserve at Fort Rupert, Vancouver Island, and has been a carver for a great part of his working life, latterly doing much work for the University of British Columbia. He was shown round the collections by Miss Blackwood, Dr. Butt, and Mr. Turner, and we are grateful to him for giving us additional information on some of our under-documented specimens from the Indians of the North-West Coast. We are indeed happy to learn that he has taught his craft to his son, Mr. David Martin, and other members of his family, and that he is insistent on his pupils working strictly in the great tradition of North-West Coast art, and resisting modern innovations foreign to the style.

It remains to offer our usual grateful thanks to our oldest and most active member, Mr. F.J. Nipress, Attendant and Messenger, for his many and cheerfully given services. Both he and our new garden, now flourishing, add much to the joy and tranquillity of our lives.

Apart from research students, there were 9,354 visitors to the Museum, including parties from 60 schools.

T.K. PENNIMAN


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