20. Report of the Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum
(Department of Ethnology and Prehistory) for the year ending
 31 July 68

Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum and Head of the Department of Ethnology and Prehistory: B.E.B. Fagg, M.A., Fellow of Linacre College.
University Lecturers in Ethnology: Audrey J. Colson (ne'e Butt), M.A., D.Phil., Fellow of St. Hugh's College; K.O.L. Burridge, M.A., Ph.D. (A.N.U.), Fellow of St. Cross College.
University Lecturers in Prehistoric Archaeology: D. Britton, M.A., Fellow of St. Cross College; D.A. Roe, M.A., Ph.D., Merton College.
Honorary Assistant Curator: Miss B.M. Blackwood, B.Sc., M.A., Somerville College.
Secretary and Librarian: H.P.G. Unsworth; Assistant Secretary-Librarian: Miss E. Torr; Personal Secretaries: Mrs. P.M. Bowler, Mrs. P.A. Ross.
Technical and General: K.H. Walters (Principal Technician) R.P. Rivers (Senior Technician), V.P. Narracott (Senior Technician-Photographer), L.H. Taylor, Mrs. M.E. Fowler.

The Museum
The plans for the new Pitt Rivers Museum and proposed centre for the study of Anthropology and Human Environment received very favourable comment in the architectural press on the occasion of Professor Nervi's visit to Oxford on 21 March.

The Fund-raising Committee appointed by the Hebdomadal Council under the chairmanship of Dr. Kathleen Kenyon, Principal of St. Hugh's College, began work during the year, and hopes to raise the necessary capital for building and some measure of endowment to help cover the Museum's annual recurrent expenses.

In the middle of May the Curator suffered a stroke which incapacitated him for the rest of the academic year. His duties and functions as Curator and Head of the Department of Ethnology and Prehistory were taken over by a committee of six members just previously set up by the Board of the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography as a first step towards the proposed establishment by University decree of a Board of Visitors of the Pitt Rivers Museum to take over responsibility for the Museum, which until then had been the sole responsibility of the Curator since the Museum's foundation in 1884.

By the end of the academic year, 31 July, the Curator had been discharged from hospital, much improved in health but still on sick leave.

Laboratory Facilities
The most significant achievement of the technical staff during the year was the construction and equipment inside the Museum, with Museum funds supplemented by funds provided by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, of a fully operational laboratory for the extraction of fossil pollen from loess, silt, clay and other deposits poor in pollen preservation (see also under Research below).

 The equipment and re-equipment of the conservation and photographic laboratories and museum workshop have now been completed and these facilities are functioning well.

Acquisition of Specimens
A total of £62 was received in grants from the fund administered by the Victoria and Albert Museum for the purchase of works of artistic merit. These purchases include a Tapirape 'spirit' mask from Mr. Malkyn and a Yoruba iron staff, bronze figure, and pottery head from Mrs. Cooke.

Other purchases included collections of Masai material culture from Kenya, and of objects mostly concerned with the fishing economy of the peoples of the Shimoni peninsula, also in the Republic of Kenya.

The Museum has recently been fortunate enough to acquire on permanent loan from the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society the Elworthy Collection of amulets, charms and kindred material, amounting to nearly 500 pieces. Miss Blackwood brought these from the Somerset County Museum at Taunton, checked them with Elworthy's manuscript catalogue and arranged them in numerical order, pending entry in our records. This collection was made by Frederic Thomas Elworthy over many years, mainly but not exclusively in Italy. Many of the amulets are described and figured in his book The Evil Eye published in 1895. It forms an excellent complement to the Museum's already extensive series of amulets and charms, which is probably now among the largest in the world.

The Balfour Library
With the installation of a new card index cabinet in which the cards are secured from extraction by rods, the administration and security of the valuable collection have been greatly improved. The old cabinet is being put to good use for the card index of separate articles, pamphlets, manuscripts, etc., of which the Museum has a very large collection. The cataloguing of these, of which no record formerly existed, has been largely carried out by the voluntary exertions of Mr. Robert MacKilligin, to whom the Library and Museum staff are greatly indebted. He has been assisted by students employed on a temporary basis to help during afternoons with the invigilation of the display galleries. This monumental indexing task is at last nearing completion.

Teaching, Research and External Academic Activities
Mr. Baden-Powell, formerly University Lecturer in Prehistoric Archaeology, has continued his research at the Pitt Rivers Museum on early fossil men and their implements as dated by numerous fossil shells in relation to changes of climate during the Pleistocene in Europe and Africa; and a written communication on this subject was sent to the British Association Meeting at Dundee. He has also made a further collection of very early Palaeolithic implements from Norfolk and has done field-work on the east coast of Scotland to examine the connection between the first Mesolithic immigrants and the retreat of the ice-sheets.

Miss Beatrice Blackwood: In addition to her indispensable services on the maintenance of the museum catalogue and card indexes, Miss Blackwood has prepared an index for Occasional Paper No. 1 which is to be reprinted, and found time also to serve on the Council of the Folk-Lore Society and the Middle and South American Research Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and on the General Committee of the Field Studies Council.

Mr. Britton: Lecture courses on The First Farming Communities in the Near East and Europe, Raw Materials and Techniques in the European Neolithic, Prehistoric Europe:3500-1500 B.C., Aspects of the Bronze Age in Europe. Secretary of the Neolithic and Bronze Age Research Committee and Member of the Publication Grants Advisory Committee, Council for British Archaeology. Diploma Secretary, Diploma in Prehistoric Archaeology. Acting Diploma Secretary, Diploma in Ethnology, Member of the Committee for Archaeology, and Examiner for the Diploma in European Archaeology.

Dr. Burridge was absent on sabbatical leave throughout the year. Dr. Peter Ucko of the Department of Anthropology of University College, London, was appointed for lecturing and supervislon on a part-time basis during Dr. Burridge's absence. Dr. Burridge resigned his appointment as University Lecturer in Ethnology to take up his appointment as Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Mr Peter Gathercole, M.A. (Cantab.), was selected to replace him by the Faculty Board's appointment committee.

 Dr. Butt: Lecture courses and classes on Ecological Systems of Selected Peoples of America and Africa, Material Culture and Technology, Practical Aids to Field Research, South American Systems of Belief; Prophets and Shamans. Continued research into the history of contact between the Amerindians of the Guiana Highlands and European colonists in Essequibo, on the Orinoco and Rio Branco. Member of the Council of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Exploration and Research Committee of the R.G.S. Honorary Secretary of the Committee for Middle and South American Research Committees of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Member of the Inter-Faculty Committee for Latin American Studies University of Oxford.

Mr. Fagg: Lecture courses on West African material culture, on the preservation and documentation of archaeological and ethnographic material. Diploma Secretary for Ethnology. Member of Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and of the Advisory Committee of the Horniman Museum, administered by the Greater London Authority. Elected to the Governing Council of the British Institute of History and Archaeology in East Africa. Appointed U.K. representative in the Museological section of the I.C.O.M. Symposium on Museum Architecture to be held in Mexico City in December, 1968.

Dr. Roe: Lecture courses and classes on The Old Stone Age and the Middle Stone Age (three terms), and Material Culture of the Old and Middle Stone Ages (three terms). External lectures include papers to the Prehistoric Society and to University College, London. Secretary, Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Research Committee of the Council for British Archaeology. Served on the Council of the Prehistoric Societv, Board of the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography, Member, Committee for Archaeology, Secretary, Sub-faculty of Anthropology, University of Oxford. Examiner, Diploma in Prehistoric Archaeology, 1968. External Examiner, M.Phil., University of London.

Field Research
1. British Upper Palaeolithic
Archaeological research on the Palaeolithic of the British lsles has yet to produce reliable radiocarbon dates: these may, however, soon be forthcoming as may pollen profiles of a number of relevant cave and open-site deposits.

The new laboratory mentioned under Laboratory Facilities above is now being operated by Mr. John B. Campbell, Jnr., a D.Phil. student, who is concurrently conducting field research into the Upper Palaeolithic of the British Isles. In March 1968 presumably Late Rissian pollen was isolated from Middle Palaeolithic loess samples from La Cotte St. Brelade, Jersey, Channel Islands. In June 1968 presumably Middle Weichselian pollen was isolated from the basal red silt of Wookey Hole Hyena Den, Somerset, in one test case. This same silt had yielded Middle/Upper Palaeolithic Mousteroid 'Proto-Solutrean' industry to Prof. Boyd Dawkins in 1859-63. Its pollen content of birch, pine, hazel and various grasses has now indicated an interstadial flora, perhaps part of the Upton Warren Interstadial Complex of c. 45,000 to c. 22,000 B.C. This is the first time that pollen has been successfully obtained from any Pleistocene cave deposit in Britain, excluding La Cotte St. Brelade which is, in palaeoecological terms, virtually on the Continent.

During the 1968 spring and summer field seasons excavations were conducted at the following four British Upper Palaeolithic sites: a second undisturbed Late Upper Palaeolithic open-site at Hengistbury Head (Hants.), the Creswellian cave-sites of Cathole (Gower, S. Wales) and Sun Hole (Cheddar, Somerset), and the 'Proto-Solutrean' cave-site of Badger Hole (Wookey, Somerset). In terms of artifacts Hengistbury Head was the most productive; a total of 1,747 flints was excavated of which 65 are tools, including backed blades, scrapers and burins. Samples for pollen and granulometric analyses were collected from all four sites. Samples for radio-carbon dating were collected from Hengistbury Head, Cathole and Badger Hole and have since been submitted to the British Museum for pre-treatment. It is hoped that all of these samples will prove productive, but in any event work will be resumed and finished at Hengistbury Head in April 1969 and additional excavations will probably be undertaken at cave-sites in Derbyshire Staffordshire. and South Wales in the summer of 1969.

2. The Iron Age in West Afnca
With further financial help from the British Academy and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research the Curator was enabled to return by air to Nigeria in December 1967 to continue the excavations, mentioned in the 1966-7 Annual Report, at Taruga near Abuja in the North West State of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, in co-operation with the Federal Department of Antiquities. The party included Dr. R.F. Tylecote of the Department of Metallurgy, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, who joined the expedition to study the remains of iron-smelting furnaces located by the proton magnetometer survev undertaken in the 1966-7 season.

Of the eleven furnaces excavated ten have produced charcoal samples sealed under a crust of iron slag. Radiocarbon analysis of the sample excavated from below the slag layer in furnace no. 2 has been carried out by Isotopes Incorporated (Laboratory Determination No: I 3400) with the following result:
Age in years: 2250 B.P. + 100 or 300 B.C. + 100 Years.
This is fully consistent with the two previous determinations for Taruga:
(I 1459: 2230 +120 B.P. or 280 s.c. + l00 years);
(I 2960: 2390 +140 B.P. or 440 s.c. + l40 years).
Many more fragments of terra cotta sculpture were excavated as well as some complete specimens, thus tending, with the continued absence of any specifically neolithic elements, to support the hypothesis that the terra cotta figurines relate to the practise of iron-smelting and that the Nok Culture should, therefore, be regarded as of essentially Iron Age character, and not, as formerly believed, belonging to a phase transitional between the Neolithic and the Iron Age.

Publications
Baden-Powell, D. F. W. Review of Ancient Men of the Arctic by J. Louis Giddings (Martin Secker & Warburg) in New Scientist, XXXVII, 28 March 1968, p. 721.

Blackwood, Beatrice. 'Museum News', Folklore, 79, Spring 1968.

Butt, A. J. ' The Present State of Ethnology in Latin America: the Guianas.' XXXVI Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, 3, Sevilla, 1966.

Butt, A. J. 'The Shaman's Legal Role.' Revista do Museu Paulista, N.S. XVI. Sao Paulo, 1965-6.

Butt, A. J. 'Akawaio Charm Stones.' Folk, 8-9, 1966-7. (Essays presented to Jens Yde.)

Butt, A. J. Review of Kwakiutl Ethnography by F. Boas, in Nature, 216, 884-5, 1967.

Fagg, B. E. B. Review of Background to Evolution in Africa, ed. by Walter W. Bishop and J. Desmond Clark, in Nature, 20 July 1968. . .

Fagg, B. E. B. Review of Ife in the History of West African Sculpture by F. Willett, in Antiquity, XLII, 165, March 1968.

Fagg, B. E. B. Review of African Miniatures by Margaret Webster Plass, in African Affairs, 67, 269, pp. 372-3.

Roe, D. A. ' A Gazetteer of British Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Sites.' xvii+355 pp. C.B.A. Research Report No. 8, published by the Council for British Archaeology.

Pitt Rivers Museum Publications
Occasional Paper No. 10 in the Pitt Rivers Series, on Metallurgical Reports on British and Irish Bronze Age Implements, by Allen, Britton, and Coghlan has gone to press, and will shortly be available.

With this editorial chore behind him, Mr. T. K. Penniman who is living in retirement in Northampton, has now been able to turn his attention to the proposed monumental illustrated catalogue of the Hermann Gunther Collection of Japanese Netsuke, for which the 1,100-odd actual size photographs have now been completed in the Museum studios. These include some 90 Netsuke of medical interest in the Museum of the History of Science, of which R. W. T. Gunther the first Curator.

Acknowledgements
The following gifts and transfers are gratefully acknowledged: Mr. E. Battiscombe, large collection of ethnographic specimens from East Africa, mainly Kenya, collected by him in the early 1900s. Mr. F. Beecher, revolving pistol, Belgium. Miss Maud E. Crum Ewing, large collection of fine old silverwork and other items acquired in Malaya by her brother, Mr. Nigel Crum Ewing, and Mr. Hilary Moullin in the early 1900s Mrs. Anita Gladwell, Rumanian woman's costume for festive occasions. Professor E.G.T. Liddell, fowling-piece and 12-bore hammer-gun, English. London School of Economics, box of 309 lantern slides made from photographs taken in the Sudan by the late Professor C.G. Seligman. Miss Dorothy Mathews, box of 78 lantern slides made from photographs taken in Nigeria by her brother, the late H. F. Mathews, who gave many specimens of Nigerian origin to the Museum during his lifetime. Mrs. Dorothy Mayers, two Japanese embroidered wall-hangings and four specimens of Indian textilcs; also two seals presented by her mother, Mrs. Helen Maria Dennis. Mr. Jeremy Montagu, collection of musical instruments, records, and photographs from Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Dr. K.P. Oakley, twelve pieces of jewellery made in Devonshire from Devonian fossil coral (Pachypora cervicornis), locally called 'featherstone'. Miss O. Robertson, brass ewer from Northern Nigeria. Dr. and Mrs. Gavin Shearer, ethnographic specimens from Eastern Nigeria and the Republic of West Cameroon (textiles, ceremonial cap, and smoking pipe).  Mr. C.R. Stoner, collection of ethnographic specimens, mainly from Naga Hills, Assam. Dr. A.J. and Dr. A.M. Strathern, eight items used as 'valuables' in the Mt. Hagen area of New Guinea, collected by them in 1964-5, consisting of Avicula and Nassa shells mounted in various ways. Dr. J.E.S. Thompson, hammock of henéequen fibre from Yucatan.
 
BERNARD FAGG