ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE FOR THE PITT RIVERS MUSEUM 1981-82
The Committee, having received the following Report from the Curator, presents it as its Report to Congregation.
The Committee met three times during the year, once in each term. The main topic for discussion was the continuing problem of atmospheric control, which prevented preparations for opening the new building on the 60 Banbury Road site. The Committee learned of the resignation of the Principal of St. Anne’s with great regret, and welcomed Dr. D.F. Shaw, C.B.E., as a new member.
Museum Matters
Before the end of the year the University had decided in principle to install an air-conditioning system in the three “modules” of the new building, in which it is intended to exhibit the unique collection of musical instruments, and to provide running costs, but details had not been finally agreed. When completed this will enable preparations to begin for the opening of the whole building, since the remaining space will be used for an archaeological exhibition using specimens not vulnerable to atmospheric fluctuation.
In anticipation that preparations to open the new building might soon begin some approaches were made to charities and institutions for the purpose of raising funds to enable the exhibitions to reach a very high modern standard. Efforts were suspended pending a decision on air-conditioning, but there was found to be much sympathy and interest, and useful contacts and experience were gained for a possible appeal in the future.
The closure for renovation of the University Museum from November 1981 prevented access to the public entrance of the Pitt Rivers Museum, and an alternative entrance was opened on the north side. Direction signs and Portaloo lavatory facilities were provided by the Surveyor’s department, and the Museum remained open throughout, but the inconvenience had some effect on attendance figures.
In the main museum building work has continued on the Arms and Armour exhibition in the upper gallery. Mounting of a new exhibition of textiles on the north side of the court was commenced under the supervision of Dr. Tayler. Some of the cases used for it had been cleared for an abortive fire-escape project, and anther case was made available by transferring an exhibition of New Guinea art to the east end. New lighting was installed in all these cases. As part of an emergency conservation project the exhibition of baby-carriers in the lower gallery was largely remounted and relabelled. The attendants (who are also responsible for cleaning) have given special attention to the floors and to inaccessible parts of the Museum and have also cleaned the totem pole, with excellent results.
Visitors to the exhibitions totalled 22,883, about 1/3 or 11,000 fewer than the previous year. As visitors had to follow directions signs through the Science Area to the temporary entrance, and could not therefore be regarded as casual, this may be considered a satisfactory figure.
The improvement of storage for vulnerable specimens, listing of stored material and erection of new racking have continued at the Museum and at the Old Power House store. A substantial part of the reserve archaeological collections is now housed at 60, Banbury Road, where Mr. Inskeep (Assistant Curator for Archaeology) is based, and inquiries and requests for access to this material are now mostly dealt with there. The voluntary assistance of Mr. Stephen Terry in checking and reboxing the British material was greatly appreciated.
The conservation technician (with the help of a part-time assistant) has had to spend most of her time on emergency treatment, largely of material formerly stored in unsatisfactory conditions in the Examination Schools, and on cleaning and preparing textiles for the new exhibitions; as a result it has again been impossible to adhere to a long-term programme, which is an urgent need.
Safety considerations made it necessary to modify the fumigation chamber, which caused further delay, and as a result the chamber remained out of use. The help of members of the National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies, mainly in cleaning specimens and tidying and re-arranging display cases and storage drawers, is gratefully acknowledged. The technician and the assistant attended a conference on the use of resins in art conservation and the assistant took a course in chemistry for conservators.
A grant was received from the Area Museum Service towards the cost of restoring a horse-hair loom from Norfolk.
The accessioning of recent acquisitions was nearly up to date at the end of the year, and good progress had been made with the retrospective numbering of older materials. Projects to augment or improve the documentation of Fijian barkcloth collected during the voyage of H.M.S. Herald (1853-5) and of Haida argillite smoking pipes from the North-west Coast of America were completed; a similar project on the archive collection of prints and drawings continues.
The photographic section had a steady flow of work throughout the year. Sixty commercial and other external private orders were received. Including work for museum record purposes and in connection with teaching, 851 transparencies and 2,842 prints were made.
Three items of Chinese clothing were lent to the City Museum.
The Balfour Library
In the course of the year the reclassification of the Library’s holding to Bliss Bibliographic Classification (2nd ed.) has got well under way. Most general and theoretical anthropology has now been reclassified. Early signs suggest that, as hoped, the system is stimulating a wider and more varied use of the collection.
Work on the improvement of storage conditions for the photographic archive continues. The research and cataloguing programme on the collection has revealed more unusual and valuable historic material, particularly on Oceania. The systematic copying of material as it is catalogued has been started, so that ultimately there will be reference contact prints and copy negatives of the whole collection. There has been a marked increase in demands on both the photographic and manuscript archive, and more staff time has had to be devoted to it. A number of items have been added to the collection, notably eight photographs of Chinese subjects in 1900, given by Mrs. K. Pirenne, and 30 of Turkey and the Middle East 1890-1950, from the late Miss B. Blackwood.
The Library gratefully acknowledges a grant of £145 from the Inter-Faculty Committee for Latin American Studies for the purchase of books in that field, and was fortunate to receive a bequest of books and pamphlets on archaeology, anthropology and folklore from the late Dr. K.P. Oakley, who had given many useful items to the Library over the years. The Library was also very grateful to receive gifts from the following: Ashmolean Museum, Dr. A. Baines, Dr. A. Barnard, Mr. F. Cameron, the late Dr. S. Cole, Dr. A. Colson, Mr. B.A.L. Cranstone, Mrs. E. Ettlinger, Mrs. R Hönigsberg, Dr. S. Jones, Mrs. J. CcG. Kennedy, Dr. C.M. Kraay, Mrs. Kuhn, Prof.J. Parkington, Major R.J. Powell, Prof. r. Thompson and Mr. M.D. Willis.
Our thanks are also due to Mr. S. Bach for his invaluable voluntary assistance in undertaking the cataloguing of Miss B. Blackwood’s papers.
The following were accessioned during the year: books, 330; pamphlets and sheets, 314; periodical parts, 354. The Library is receiving a further two periodical titles by subscription and three by exchange. The total of new readers registered was 144 and 1981 loans were recorded.
Publications
Sales and exchanges of Occasional papers and Monogrpahs amouted to 618; of other publications to 463; and of postcards to 8,580. Two small folding guides, one to the Museum as a whole and one to the musical instrument collection, were produced during the year.
Staff
Dr. A.J. Colson (University Lecturer in Ethnology) was co-organizer of a symposium on Carib Political and Social Organization for the 44th International Congress of Americanists.
Mr. B.A.L. Cranstone (Curator) served as a Vice-President of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Mr. R.R. Inskeep (Assistant Curator) was Executive Editor of World Archaelogy. At the invitation of Eduardo Mondlane University he visited archaeological sites in Moçambique and advised on research programmes and the organization of the newly-established Archaeology Department.
Dr. H. La Rue was employed throughout the year, on a whole-time or part-time basis, as Assistant Curator in charge of the musical collection, initially with the aid of a grant from the General Board and subsequently with departmental funds. After attending the annual conference of CIMCIM (International Committee of Musical Instrument Museums and Collections) in the three Scandinavian countries, she visited a number of museums with musical collections in the countries of Europe, and undertook to organize the CIMCIM conference in Oxford in 1983.
Dr. D.A. Roe (University Lecturer in Prehistoric Archaeology) was chairman for two sessions of the Prehistoric Society’s conference on Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology, a member of the Editorial Board of World Archaeology, a contributing editor of Quarterly Review of Archaeology, and a member of the Reading Committee for L’Anthropologie. He was also co-opted as a member of the advisory Archaeology and Numismatics Committee of the National Museum of Wales.
Mr. W.R. Orledge, Head Attendant, retired during the year, and Mr. J. Molan was appointed to succeed him.
The following publications by members of the staff appeared during the year:
Colson, A.J. 1981. “Los Akawayos y su tierra. Otra cara de guayana y la reclamacion”, SIC, 44, no. 439. (Caracas).
-- 1982. “Los Akawaio y su tierra”, Resumen, 34, no. 431 (Caracas).
Jones, S. 1981 (with Edelberg & G. Buddruss). “Notes on the ‘horn chairs’ of Nuristan”. Monumentum Georg Morgenstierne, 1 (Leiden).
La Rue, H. 1982. “The problem of the cymbala”, Galpin Society Journal, 35.
Roe, D.A. 1982.“Flint artefacts at Hassocks and East Chillington”, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 119.
-- “Quaternary Research in Wales”, Quarterly Review of Archaeology, 3, no. 2.
-- (with J.W. Olsen, J.R. Underwood & P.F. Gregengach). “A handaxe of Lybian Desert glass”. Antiquity, 56.
Williamson, L. 1982. “South American Indian Collections in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford”, JASO, 13, no.2.
Students
Student Numbers
Prehistoric
Ethnology Archaeology
Diploma 1 1
M.Phil. - -
M.Litt. And D.Phil. 7 14
Total 8 15
Both Diploma candidates were successful. Three D.Phil and one M.Litt. Degrees were awarded.
l
The Donald Baden-Powel Quarternary Research Centre
The RML Microprocessor and Leitz automatic microscope camera systems, purchased at the end of last year with a grant from the Equipment Committee, have been heavily used and have proved invaluable. Main features of research have been micro-wear analysis and practical experimentation with flint artefacts. The number of research students was unchanged, and the number of academic visitors to the Centre, 127, was close to that for the previous year. An especially welcome visitor was Mr. Francis Baden-Powell, son of Donald Baden-Powell to whom the Centre owes its existence.
Donations
Mr. A.C. Baines: two books of pictures, painted on talc, of Indian scenes. Mr. C. Bayley: a copy of a bagpipe chanter of Irish form, made in Pakistan. Mr. J.A.C. Blumer: a small ethnographical collection formed in Tanganyika between 1928 and 1950. Captain J. Bongaertz: a collection of 15 wax ex votos from Diest, Belgium. Mr. B.A.L. Cranstone: a musical box with 17 steel discs. Mr. G. Crocker: a Moroccan lute. Mr. B.E.B. Fagg, M.B.E.: a collection of beads and other ornaments, mostly of carnelian, from Nigeria and Ghana. Mr. J.S. Hamburger: five specimen shells, used for making artefacts, from the Pacific. Lady Maybury: two bank notes of early 20th century date, from Angola and French Equatorial Africa. Miss Nagasawa Mizuho: two charms from a shrine at Kawagoe Daisha Kotain, Japan. The late Sir Charles Pawsey (Bequest): two paintings of Assamese subjects, dated 1875 and 1884, by Colonel R.G. Woodthorpe. The late Professor Anne Pennington (Bequest): a collection of Balkan material, mainly clothing and textiles.
Dame Margery Perham (per Mr. R. Rayne): a stool, a table and a mask from West Africa, and strip of parchment with text, perhaps Coptic. Mr. S. Plowman: an Egyptian coin of 1820. Mr. G. Rodriquez: a magical object consisting of two crossed sticks and leaves, from a women’s sacred house of the Kogi Indians, Colombia.
Purchases
Mr. D.P. Andersen: a nephrite adze blade from New Zealand. Ms. A. Aranow: a weft ikat cloth from Inlay Lake, central Burma, Messrs. Christie, Manson & Woods: a painted paddle from the North-west Coast of America; a bark cloth and fibre mask-costume and a skirt of vegetable fibre, probably from the Tukana Indians of the Upper Rio Negro, north-west Brazil. Mr. M. Colchester: an ethnographical collection from the Sanema Indians of Venezuela (purchased in the field with funds provided by the Museum). Mr. B.F. Darcey: six items of ethnographical art from the Sepik region, Papua New Guinea. Mr. J. Gillow: fifteen specimens from southern Pakistan, mainly clothing and textiles. Mr. N. Guppy: a large figure of tree-fern root from Ambrym and a plaited sling from Tana, Vanuatu; a weft ikat sarong from Bali; and a blowgun from the Auca of Ecuador (the fern-root figure purchased with the aid of a grant from the Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund). Mr. J.S. Hamburger: a giant clam shell (Tridacna gigas) from the Pacific. Mr. M.J. Hitchcock: a collection mainly connected with textile production, from Sumbawa, Indonesia (purchased in the field with funds provided by the Museum). Mr. R. Lornie: an ethnographical collection from the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, mostly from the Wosera people. Miss N. Tobert: a collection illustrating the pottery techniques of a group in the Darfur region of the southern Sudan (purchased in the field with funds provided by the Museum). It is now the policy of the museum, in appropriate cases, to commission research students of this or of other departments to make collections while undertaking fieldwork. By this means collections of authentic material, fully supported by documentation, are obtained at minimum cost.
