ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE FOR THE PITT RIVERS MUSEUM 1986-87
THE COMMITTEE FOR THE PITT RIVERS MUSEUM AS AT 1 OCTOBER 1986
The Vice-Chancellor (Sir Patrick Neill, QC, BCL, MA)
The Senior Proctor (P.A. Slack, MA, D.Phil.)
The Junior Proctor (M.D. Deas, MA)
The Assessor (M.B. Gearin-Tosh, MA)
R.H. Barnes, B.Litt., MA, D.Phil.
J.K. Campbell, MA, D.Phil.
Professor B.W. Cunliffe, MA, D.Phil
Professor G.A. Harrison, B.Sc. MA, D.Phil.
W.J. Kennedy, MA, Ph.D., D.Sc.
Professor K. Kirkwood, MA
M. McLeod, MA, B.Litt.
D.F. Shaw, MA, D.Phil.
E.B. Smith, B.Sc., MA, Ph.D.
C.J. White, MA, Ph.D.
Secretary: Schuyler Jones, MA, D.Phil.
PITT RIVERS MUSEUM
The Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum, having received the following annual report from the Curator, presented it as their report to the Congregation.
Introduction
The Committee met three times during the year, once each term, and considered a wide range of museum issues including loan requests, plans for the development of the Banbury Road/Bradmore Road site, protests from Cree Indians in Canada, and temporary exhibitions.
Mr. Peter Narracott, museum photographer since 1966, retired at the end of December 1986, and was replaced by Mr. Malcolm Osman. During his 20 years in the Department Peter proved to be unfailingly courteous, helpful, and reliable, cheerfully keeping up with an ever-increasing work load. His many friends in the Department and in the University wish him well in his retirement.
The Committee extends its grateful thanks for two outstanding gifts: to Professor David Hendry of Nuffield College who very kindly gave us a much needed Epson P.C. microprocessor for use in the Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre and to Professor Kenneth Kirkwood for donating to the Balfour Library his large collection of pamphlets and off-prints on a wide range of anthropological, sociological, colonial and historical subjects.
The Museum
Work on improving some of the permanent displays in the main museum continued, concentrating on the large wall cases around the Court, many of which contain displays dating from the 1920s and 1930s.
A new exhibit entitled 'Treatment of the Dead' was designed for the south side of the Court by Mr. Ivor Morris and this provided an opportunity to have x-rays taken of several of the Museum's Egyptian mummies, in particular that of Irterau, a lady who lived between 720 and 650 B.C. and who died sometime between her 25th and her 30th year. The x-rays did not reveal any artefacts under the cloth wrappings, but they did provide medical information. We are extremely grateful to Dr. Helen Whitehouse of the Ashmolean for providing Egyptological information, to Wendy Hills of the Radcliffe Infirmary for taking the x-rays, to Dr. Philip Anslow, Consultant Radiologist, and Jill Northover for carrying out a body scan of Irterau, and to Mr. Brian Austin for making all the arrangements and for securing the large sheets of x-ray film necessary.
Also on the south side of the Court, Mr. John Todd completed a permanent display of artefacts relating to magic and witchcraft and began the work of designing a major permanent display of looms on the north side to complement and supplement the textile display. By the end of the reporting period modern lighting units had been installed by Mr. Ken Walters in most of the wall cases around the Court. We wish to thank Ms. Sian Rule for generously giving her time to the Museum. She worked closely with Linda Cheetham on a variety of jobs and, among other things, researched and designed the new permanent needlework display now on view in the Court.
Temporary Exhibitions
The successful exhibition, 'On Top of the World', was taken down at the end of 1986 and work began on 'Making Light Work'. This exhibition was open to the public from January to July 1987, and provided a welcome opportunity to select examples from the Museum's extensive, world-wide collection of lamps and lighting accessories. These were shown in conjunction with the work of Margaret O'Rorke, an Oxford potter, who specializes in the making of porcelain lamps. For the exhibition she also made oil lamps and candlesticks on patterns derived from specimens in the Museum's collections. Ms. Linda Cheetham planned the exhibition and had technical support from Mr. Ken Walters, Mr. Bob Rivers, and Mr. John Simmons. Others who generously gave their time were Mr. Kozo Hida, Ms. Linda Poulsen, and Ms. Laura Tayler. Thorn EMI expressed an interest in the exhibition and provided sponsorship for a colour poster and some postcards.
'Between Gandhara and the Silk Roads: Rock-carvings from the Karakorum' opened on July 21st, 1987, with a lecture by Professor Karl Jettmar of Heidelberg University on recent research carried out in northern Pakistan. The exhibition, consisting mainly of colour photographs taken by Prof. Jettmar and his colleagues, was planned and set up by Dr. Peter S.C. Parkes, in conjunction with museum staff. Dr. J.C. Harle, Keeper of Eastern Art at the Ashmolean, cooperated generously and arranged for the loan of some Buddhist artefacts from the Ashmolean's collections for the exhibition.
Balfour Building Events
For the first time, as part of Oxfordshire Arts Week, a temporary exhibition was held in the new Balfour Building. This was organized by Chris Dorsett, together with sculpture students from the Ruskin School of Art.
Visitors and Enquiries
During the year the Museum received 45,717 visitors, an increase of nearly 11,000 over the previous year. Of this total 8,974 visitors, mostly school children, came as members of groups that had booked by telephone or letter, an increase of almost 4,000 on the previous year. The Balfour Building received over 5,000 visitors, approximately 25% in organized parties. The number of school bookings increased sharply during the year, largely due to the tireless work of Dr. Helene La Rue who continues to cooperate closely with the Oxfordshire Education Authority, individual schools and school teachers, and has secured the valuable assistance of a dedicated group of volunteer guides.
The report of a survey, published by the Department of Education & Science, on the use Oxfordshire schools and colleges make of museum services states that "Certain museums have become very popular .......particularly the Pitt Rivers, which received 23% of locally made visits..." This is gratifying evidence of the Education Service's success.
Again the year has brought an increased number of research visitors and academic enquiries. In Documentation, Ms. Linda Cheetham received and dealt with some 120 written enquiries concerning the collections. Eighty visitors came to the Museum to examine individual specimens or entire collections under her supervision.
In the Archive Department Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards received 47 visiting scholars from many parts of the world and dealt with a great many postal enquiries. The archive collection remains in high demand and consumes an ever increasing amount of staff time. The Pitt Rivers solution to photographic storage and cataloguing continues to attract considerable interest from other museums and archives, and colleagues frequently come to see our unit for themselves.
Museum Documentation and Records (Ms. Linda Cheetham) -
The accessioning of newly acquired artefacts was kept up to date, with 31 new collections being received during the year. All of these have been entered using a microprocessor and this has greatly eased the task of cataloguing. In addition it provides multiple indexes and allows the rapid retrieval of information. A thesarus of terms, based on Beatrice Blackwood's Classification of Artefacts in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, is being built up as data entry proceeds.
As a pilot scheme for the retrieval of data relating to earlier accessions, all records pertaining to collections from Mexico have been entered and enquiries concerning artefacts from this country can now be answered by print-out.
To date we have been unable to obtain funds for a temporary research assistant to work on the Wellcome collection of amulets, received by the museum in 1985. A start has, however, been made on the computer cataloguing of these and the basic procedure for future work has been established with entries for some 300 amulets from Central and South America.
The on-going project of recording the contents of all the Museum's accession registers on microfiche continued during 1987.
Specimens Acquired by Purchase
Ms. P. Z. Dransart: a collection from Bolivia and Peru of 1 backstrap loom, 1 ball of alpaca yarn, 1 skirt, 4 bags, 5 belts and 1 amulet. Ms. M. O ' Rorke: a porcelain lamp, made by the vendor, for the temporary exhibition 'Making Light Work'. Mr. A. Shelton: 25 carved wooden masks from Mexico.
Specimens Acquired by Donation
Dr. E. Allman: an Ashanti chief's cap, sandals, and staff of office, from Ghana; also a bow, quiver with 4 arrows, dagger and sheath from Ghana. Ms. P. Ambrose: a palm-leaf hat from Kumasi, Ghana. Mr. R.J. Baker: a lead spindle-whorl found in Oxford. Mrs. M. Bantock: a Singhalese drum, a drum-skin, and a Veddah axe from Sri Lanka. Mr. L. Carrington: an African bracelet of beads and teeth. Mr. J. Collins: an English gramophone needle sharpener. Mrs. E. Dawson: an iron spearhead, probably from the Sudan (given via the Ashmolean Museum). Mr. A. Dipper: an English banjo with an American patent dated 1887. Mrs. M.A. Prayling: a Yoruba carving of a girl from Nigeria, and two figurines from Tanzania. Mrs. Griffiths: a cane hat from Lesotho and a necklace of ostrich eggshell beads from the Kalahari. The Rev. M. Grubb: a pair of Naskapi snowshoes, an Inuit model kayak, an Inuit baby-carrier, and 32 examples of Inuit clothing and animal skins (given via the Banbury Museum). Guizhou Normal University Art Department, Guizhou, Guiyang Province, The People's Republic of China: 12 watercolour illustrations of minority nationalities in Guizh Province made by art students in the department. Mr. Peter Jones: three arrowheads of flint and glass made at Brandon, Suffolk by Mr. Fred Snare. Dr. and Mrs. Schuyler Jones: 5 imitation dZhi beads, a mani stone, 3 amulets, a device for securing pack loads, some handprinted pages of the Kaniur, all from Lhasa, and a packet of tiny barley flour cakes, believed to have medicinal properties, from Ganden Monastery, Tibet. Mrs. M. Khun: a child's toy from Austria, a batic textile from Java and an embroidered apron from Hungary. Miss B.P. Legg: a headrest from South Africa. Mr. S. Maw: a grass skirt and a barkcloth cloak from New Guinea. Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino: 2 cassettes of recordings of pre-Colombian music instruments. G. Oakley: trilobite tie pin from the collection of the donor's father, Dr. K.P. Oakley. Peter S.C. Parkes: a nineteenth century woollen jacket from 'Kafiristan' in N.E. Afghanistan. Miss J.M. Richards: a Hausa cowhide makeup container from Kano, Nigeria. Mrs. V. Sillery: a sword and sheath from Sierra Leone and a Bushman quiver with 3 arrows. Ms. R. Smith: 2 large currency bars from West Africa and a Bamende mask from the Kingdom of Kom, Cameroon. Ms. P. Weston: a doll with clothes from China, 3 dolls from India, parts of a Chinese shoe, and 2 woven shoe uppers. Mr. G. Wilches-Chaux: 3 costume dolls from Colombia
Conservation Laboratory (Ms. Sue Walker)
The Conservation Lab continues to be staffed, as it has for some years past, by one full time conservator and one part-time assistant, Mrs. Birgitte Speake. As is the case with all of the units making up the Department and the Museum we are here operating with a bare minimum of staff. A grant from the Area Museums Service, made it possible to employ Mrs. Barbara Moore (former Pitt Rivers Museum Conservator) to help organize and move many hundreds of specimens that had been stored in the top gallery since the 1972 move from 18 Parks Road. The specimens were examined, cleaned, conserved as required, and transferred to the main reserve collection area at Osney Mead. This was the necessary first stage of a plan to re-open the entire top gallery to the public, although that goal is still many months away.
At the same time the reserve collection of hats was re-sorted and arranged geographically. This not only resulted in better storage conditions, but also created more space.
A second grant from AMSSEE enabled us to improve facilities for the reserve collections of ancient Peruvian textiles. These are in frequent demand by visiting scholars; the new system both improves the storage and makes it possible to study the textiles under safer conditions. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Mr. Geoffrey Fouquet in the cutting of boards and mounts which greatly facilitated the completion of this project.
The Conservation Lab was much involved during this reporting period with the conservation and cleaning of artefacts for the temporary exhibition 'Making Light Work', and 'Tibet: A Great Mountain Land' scheduled to open during the autumn.
The on-going permanent display projects in the Court meant that a large number of wooden carvings from Africa and the Pacific needed to be examined conserved, and cleaned.
Once again, we gratefully acknowledge the able assistance of the following volunteers from the National Association of Decorative and Fine Art (NADFAS) who have generously given their time to carry out work on the collections under the supervision of the Conservator: Mrs. Cooper, Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Verney, Mrs. Whitehouse, Mrs Marshall, Mrs. Woolcott, Miss Lockett, and Mrs. Ollett
Photographic Studio (Mr. Malcolm Osman)
Mr. Osman took over from Mr. Narracott in December 1987, and was immediately involved with final preparations for the 'Making Light Work’ exhibition, for which a number of large black and white exhibition prints and large format colour transparencies were required.
During the year a report was prepared concerning the general out-dated state of the studio and darkroom equipment. It was a agreed that a process of modernisation must be undertaken as soon as funds could be found.
The Balfour Library (Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards)
During the year the Library accessioned 394 volumes, 94 pamphlets, 287 microform units, and 339 journal parts (current journals totalling 194). One hundred and seventy new readers were registered; the total active readership was maintained at around the 300 mark as in previous years.
The trend in recent years towards an increasing number of loans has continued with a total of 2,623 loans being recorded, an increase of over 10%. It has again been an extremely difficult year from the viewpoint of maintaining services and providing facilities. Financially, the Library's purchasing power continues to be eroded, especially in the case of journal subscriptions. There is real concern that we shall soon no longer be able to maintain a holding which caters satisfactorily for the needs of both the Museum and the Teaching and Research Department.
The staffing level continues to be inadequate. The entire Library operation is covered by two half posts (Archivist/Librarian and Library/ Administrative Assistant) which makes no allowance for the increasing work load, nor does it allow flexibility. The situation has been alleviated to some extent this year by Mrs. Ione Tayler who has looked after the library enquiry desk on a voluntary basis every Wednesday morning throughout Trinity Term. We are most grateful to her for this generous assistance.
The reclassification of the Library on the Bliss Bibliographic Classification 2 system progresses well. The whole of Asia, one of the largest sections, has been completed, as has Australia. Work has now started on the Pacific holdings and at this point we feel that the end is at least in sight. The system becomes increasingly useful as more of the Library is reclassified, and the ease and efficiency with which specialist information can be extracted from the collection becomes evident.
The Library wishes to thank the following who kindly donated materials in the course of the year: The Ashmolean Museum Library, Dr. A. Barnard, Dr. and Mrs. L. Blair, The Bead Study Trust, Mr. D. Britton, Dr. A. Claerhout, Dr. A. Colson, Mr. B.A.L. Cranstone, Miss Penny Dransart, Ms. N. Erzini, Mrs. E. Ettlinger, Dr. M. Hitchcock, The Hope Department of Entomology, Dr. Schuyler Jones, Dr. J. Mulvaney, the Museum voor Volkenkunde (Rotterdam), the Museum of the History of Science, Mr. Y.D. Nuristani, Mr. C. Paine, Mr. J.M. Popkin, Miss I. Pulini, Mr. G. Reed, the Research Laboratory for Archaeology, Dr. E.R.C. Reynolds, St. Antony's College, Miss C. Sayer, Mrs. V. Vowles, Mrs. V. Weyland, and Ms. L. Williamson.
The Archives
During the year the Archives received and accessioned some 5,000 historical photographs and various manuscripts of anthropological interest. The most notable accessions during the year were Jean Buxton's fieldwork material on the Mandari in the Southern Sudan (still being catalogued) and Dr. Kenneth Oakley's working notes on folklore. A series of Underwood & Underwood stereocards of India was purchased. We are most grateful to the following people for their kind donations to thc archive collections: Mrs. M. Bantock, Mr. R. Buxton, Mr. R. Manley, Mr. Giles Oakley, The Reading Museum and Art Gallery, and Mr. N. Singer.
Various improvements have been made to the storage of manuscripts but the bulk of the work on the archive collections this year has centred on the establishment of a computer database for information retrieval, using the same programme as that being developed for the Museum's artefact collections. All new accessions since September 1986 have been put on to this system. Work is progressing slowly on the major task of entering accessioned but only partially catalogued material. Most of the North American collection, which is in frequent demand, has been added to the database so the system is fully operational for one part of the world. In addition, the research potential of the collection is becoming even more apparent through the more efficient management of data.
Publications
Two booklets were published: Making Light Work by Linda Cheetham, with drawings by Kozo Hida, to complement the temporary exhibition, and Making Fire by Patrick Cave-Browne, ESA (Scot), a booklet full of practical ethnographic information on techniques and materials for firemaking. Several new postcards and another greetings card were produced during the year.
Running small shops in both museums has definitely proved worthwhile. The Balfour Building is gaining a reputation for its collection of unusual non-European records and tapes.
Teaching
The Department continues to offer optional courses to undergraduates reading for both moderations and the honour school in Geography, as it has done for the past 47 years. We also contribute to the Human Sciences Prelims course. Each year we offer lectures and provide tutorials for about 50 undergraduates.
As anticipated in our 1985-86 annual report, the new M.St. and M.Phil. graduate courses in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography will commence in Michaelmas 1987. Already the course has generated a good deal of interest and a large number of enquiries were received during the year, including requests for information about the M.St. in Anthropological Archaeology.
The total number of graduate students carrying out research for higher degrees in the Department during this reporting period was 19.
Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre ( Dr. D.A. Roe)
The Centre had a busy year with a total of more than 150 visitors. Professor Andrew Moore of Yale University was based in the Centre during his sabbatical year. Various meetings and receptions took place during the year, including the visit of a delegation of senior Quaternary scholars from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a meeting on the Syrian tell site of Abou Hureyra, a discussion to plan the dating of artefacts made of mammoth ivory from Paviland Cave in Wales, and a guided tour of the Centre for undergraduates from Liverpool University. Several visitors gave informal lectures on their work to audiences of Oxford
archaeologists.
Lack of space is a growing problem in the Centre as elsewhere in the Department and Museum. We shall, however, continue to provide what space we can for visiting scholars and graduate students.
During 1987 Drs. W.H. Waldren, S.N. Colcutt and R.N.E. Barton were based at the Centre as Research Associates.
Educational Services
Our education service has continued to develop ans has become more widely known. A total of 3,123 visitors were assisted by the guides.
Several meetings for primary and secondary school teachers were held in the Museum to explain the new Education Service and to introduce both the system of trails and the guides. The trails have been written to compliment the BBC Education for Schools programmes and deal with the following subject areas: Indians of the Northwest Coast of America; the Inuit; Captain Cook; China; Japan; and Nigeria.
More than 70 teachers attended and as a result there was a noticeable increase in the numbers asking to use the Education Service. The most popular trails proved to be 'The Inuit', closely followed by 'Northwest Coast Indians' and 'Music'.
We gratefully acknowledge the generous help given by Mrs. Allen, Mrs. Duncan, Mrs. Fleming, Miss Holden, Mrs. Owen, Mrs. Rookwood, and Mrs. Shaw, without whose help this service could not have been offered.
GCSE
As a result of an emphasis on multicultural music in the new GCSE syllabus, the Music Makers Gallery, which provides an invaluable resource, has been of special interest to many teachers and school inspectors. During the year we have worked with the Local Education Authority to hold an 'In Service Training Day' for teachers as well as giving help and advice to a number of individual enquirers. We hope to be able to develop these links and make the Museum's resources more widely available.
Inspectors
As a result of increased interest in what the Museum has to offer, the Music Advisors and Inspectors held a meeting in the Balfour Building on June 17th, 1987. They showed great enthusiasm for the collections and the new Music Makers Gallery. We look forward to taking up some of their suggestions in order to develop a music service for schools.
Arts in Schools Project
During the spring and summer terms we worked closely with the Arts in Schools Project which centred on the work of the Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore. During the summer term part of the Museum's collection of Indian instruments given by Sorindro Mohindro Tagore (an older kinsman) was on display, and an audio-visual exhibition in which Tagore's poems could be heard in Bengali and English was available for visiting schools. The schools taking part visited the Museum several times. Each school made at least one visit accompanied by a museum guide, and, by briefing teachers at a special workshop and helping them with enquiries on the day, subsequent visits could be unaccompanied. This scheme worked well from the Museum's point of view as it was possible to help a large number of children by working with their teachers.
Our thanks are due to Gill Parvin who helped to organize the Tagore audio-visual exhibition for the booth in the Balfour Building.
Visits for the Handicapped
During the year a number of events were organized with the aim of making the Museum more accessible to handicapped groups. Working with the sculptor Chris Dorsett from the Ruskin School of Art and the dancer Cecilia Macfarlane, a number of visits were made to the Balfour Building by members of the Kidlington Centre for the Handicapped. This project was sponsored by Southern Arts Link. The project has been documented and a short programme is being prepared as an example of the use of sculpture, music, and dance with a group of mentally handicapped adults in a museum setting.
A museum visit was organized for a group of visually handicapped people in conjunction with the project, 'Blind People on the Move'. This involved several members of the Museum staff as well as the guides. Objects which could be safely touched were selected from the collections, and, after a handling session, the visitors were guided around the galleries to other objects which could be touched.
Publications by Staff Members
Cheetham, Linda 1987 Making Light Work, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum.
Cheetham, Linda 1987 The South American Glass Bead Apron: Some thoughts arising from a Collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Museum Ethnographers’ Group Newsletter, 21: 52 - 75
Cheetham, Linda 1987 The Innocent Researcher & the Museum, Museum Ethnographers’ Group Occasional Paper No. 3.
Edwards, Elizabeth 1987 Pitt Rivers Museum Photographic Collection: A Case Study of a Neglected Corner.
Inskeep, R.R. 1986 A Preliminary Survey of Burial Practices in the Later Stone Age, From the Orange River to the Cape Coast, in Singer, R. & J. K. Lundy (Eds), Variation, Culture, & Evolution in African Populations. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, pp. 221 - 239
Jones, Schuyler 1987 Den Sidste Bus til Himlen, Kina, Mnr. 2, pp. 14 - 17, Copenhagen.
Morphy, Howard 1987 The Art of Northern Australia, in Edwards, W. (Ed), Traditional Aboriginal Society, Melbourne.
Morphy, H. & F. 1987 Waiting for the Dirrapuyngu, in White, J.P. & D.T. Mulvaney (Eds), Australians to 1788, Sydney.
Roe, D.A. 1987 Eynsham's Oldest Archaeological Find, The Eynsham Record, 4: 6-9.
Roe, D.A 1986 Introduction: 'Progress in the British Palaeolithic', in Collcutt, S.N., The Palaeolithic of Britain and its Nearest Neighbours.
Staff Activities
Ms. Linda Cheetham was instrumental in organizing two seminars for members of the Oxfordshire Museums Panel. One of these, held on February 20th, 1987, was to explain and demonstrate our new computerized documentation system; the second, held on June 5tb, 1987, was a seminar on fund-raising for museums. Both were well attended and proved to be very successful. On February 18th, 1987, a 'behind the scenes' visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum was organized for the Anthropological Society of Oxford Polytechnic.
Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards was elected to the Committee of the Museum Ethnographers' Group and was joint organizer of a two-day conference at the Horniman Museum in April 1987 on 'A Question of Image: Ethnography and Still Photography'. She also gave lectures to various groups and institutions on the photographic archives in the Museum and on various aspects of the history of anthropological photography. In March she attended the 'Museum Studies in Material Culture' Conference at the University of Leicester.
Mr. Ray Inskeep spent the major part of the reporting period on sabbatical leave (April '86 to April '87) working on a monograph on the results of excavations in Nelson Bay Cave, Cape Province, South Africa. He continued to serve as a member of the Editorial Board of the journal, World Archaeology.
Dr. Schuyler Jones was involved in the planning and organization of an international conference on 'The Crisis of Migration from Afghanistan: Domestic and Foreign Implications' held at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford from 29 March to 2 April, 1987, by the Refugee Studies Programme under the direction of Dr. Barbara Harrell-Bond. In July, at the invitation of Guizhou University, the Provincial Museum of Guizhou, and the Institute of Minorities Studies, he went to Guiyang in the People's Republic of China to give a series of lectures. In August he travelled to Tibet to obtain preliminary data on high altitude pastoralism. He continued to serve as a member of Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, and of approximately a dozen boards and committees at Oxford University.
Dr. Helene La Rue arranged a museum sponsored concert of traditional West African Kora Music in the Holywell Music Room on May 4th, 1987. There was a good turn-out and the two musicians, Mr. Dembo Konte and Mr. Kausu Kuyateh, were given an enthusiastic reception by the audience.
Several concerts were held during the year, each of which had a demonstration or workshop which preceded it. The concerts included a recital of shakuhachi, koto, and shamisen music given by a group of senior Japanese musicians, a recital of pi-pa music given by a musician from Beijing, and a Festival Weekend of music from Rajastan, India, organized with the help of Cultural Co-operation. The musicians from Rajastan also played for school children in Bicester and Banbury, with the Museum providing educational notes to introduce the music to the teachers and pupils. This event served as a useful backup to the Arts in Schools Project.
Saturday afternoon concert of Latin American Music for children was held in the gardens of the Balfour Building. This was the last event of a week of exhibitions and events on Latin America organized by the Barn Bureau, Islip.
Dr. Howard Morphy gave a paper on aspects of Aboriginal Iconography at the Ashmolean Museum in December, 1986. Also in that month he lectured on Aboriginal Art at the Kidlington Adult Education Centre. In February, 1987, he gave a paper on the film 'Walkabout' at the Nottingham Film Theatre. In March he lectured on 'Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Non-Western Art' at the International Conference of Byzantine Studies in Birmingham. In April he gave a paper on fieldwork photography at the Museum Ethnographers' Conference held at the Horniman Museum. In the month of May he lectured on the Roper Bar Aboriginal Land Claim to the Oxford Branch of Survival International, gave a lecture at the Human Sciences Seminar in Oxford, and presented a paper on Art, Myth, and Land at the Australian Studies Centre in London. In June he gave a paper on Aboriginal Art at a conference in Portsmouth. He continued to serve on the Editorial Board of Man, examined a Ph.D. thesis at London University, and served as President of the Oxford University Anthropology Society. The Royal Anthropological Institute in London awarded him the J.B. Donne Prize for his essay 'From Dull to Brilliant; the Aesthetics of Spiritual Power among the Yolngu'.
Dr. Derek Roe concluded his term of office on the Board of the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography and examined two D.Phil. theses for Oxford and one Ph.D. thesis for Sheffield University. He lectured at Liverpool University, took part in various special seminars or day meetings concerned with individual British Palaeolithic sites (Boxgrove, High Lodge, and Pavilard Cave) and made a study visit to Pontnewydd Cave in North Wales.
Outside the Department and the Centre, his academic commitments included membership of the Editorial Board of Quarterly Review of Archaeology and of the Advisory Boards of World Archaeology and L'Anthropologie. He continued to serve as a member of the Advisory Committee (Archaeology & Numismatics) of the National Museum of Wales, and on various governing bodies. Throughout the year he remained Vice-Master of St. Cross College and Chairman of the College's Executive Committee.
Ms. Sue Walker attended the Institute of Archaeology Jubilee Conference for Conservation in London.
Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum (Mrs. Sally Owen)
The programme of occasional lectures sponsored by the Friends during the year began with a talk by Dr. Hunt of the Bath Museums Service, bringing us up-to-date with archaeological work proceeding in Bath. There followed reports on fieldwork by Dr. Mark Horton and Dr. Paul Lane, illustrating recent research on, respectively, ancient Arab trading routes in East Africa and the Dogon of Mali. At the Christmas meeting Dr. Howard Morphy gave an exciting foretaste of the Australian Bicentenary exhibition with his talk on 'Art, Myth and Land in Arnhem Land'.
During the autumn of 1986 a party of Friends visited the Horniman Museum to see a current exhibition on 'The Tent', and to learn about historical links between the Horniman and the Pitt Rivers from Dr. Mike Hitchcock, who gave a tour of the museum. Thanks go to Bob Rivers for skillfully easing the minibus through some memorable South Circular traffic on this occasion.
Another visit to the Conservation Lab and the Reserve Store was well attended, and the Friends are grateful to the staff of these units for giving of their time. The highlight of the A.G.M. in May 1987, was a demonstration by Dr. La Rue of some of the early mechanical music instruments kept at 60 Banbury Road. A small group visited Avebury and its surrounding archaeological sites on a fine July day, under the expert guidance of Dr. Nick Barton.
As reported earlier, members of the Friends have continued to work as volunteer guides, conducting school parties and preparing new trails. Some Friends also took turns to look after the top gallery during times of staff shortages.
The Friends are pleased to have been able to contribute funds to the Museum for the purchase of a collection of Mexican masks, and to pay for the design of a new greetings card.
Membership continues to maintain a steady level, but we hope that the increased number of visitors to the Museum will cause a corresponding increase in the numbers of those wishing to join the Friends.
Dr. SCHUYLER JONES
