The Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum as at 1 October, 1989

Vice-Chancellor (Sir Richard Southwood)
The Senior Proctor (Dr. P. Newell)
The Junior Proctor (Mr. P. Mirfield)
The Assessor (Dr. J.K. Aronson)
Dr. R.H. Barnes
Dr. J.K. Campbell
Dr. Malcolm Coe
Professor B. Cunliffe
Professor G.A. Harrison
Professor K. Kirkwood
Mr Francis Maddison
Dr. D.F. Shaw
Dr. S. Simpson
Dr. C.J. White
Secretary: Dr. Schuyler Jones

1989 - 1990
The Pitt Rivers Museum
The Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum, having received the following annual report from the Director, presented it as their report to Congregation.

Introduction
The Committee met three times during the year. The reorganization of Anthropology was completed in the course of this reporting period, resulting in a newly-formed School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography consisting of the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Institute of Biological Anthropology, and the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. The latter unit supersedes the old Institute of Social Anthropology and the Department of Ethnology and Prehistory. One result of these changes is that the first undergraduate students for the new joint Honours Degree in Archaeology and Anthropology will arrive to begin their studies in Michaelmas 1992.

The title of the principal officer of the museum was changed from Curator to Director in order that Assistant Curators, who in other institutions are often quite junior members of the establishment, could be styled Curators.

During the year two ethnographic issues were the subject of much discussion among museum staff both here and abroad: human remains and 'sacred objects'. In correspondence and at meetings held in Europe, North America, and Australia, the discussions and, occasionally, arguments, ranged over such topics as 'rightful ownership', the 'return of cultural property', the public display of human remains and sacred objects, and other related issues.

In this museum these discussions had begun two or three years earlier when, following informal representations from North American Indian and Maori peoples, the Director decided to remove from public display some skulls and tattooed heads which were then put into the reserve collections.
    
In March 1990 the museum received a formal request from two representatives of Australian Aboriginal organizations (Mr. Mike Mansell and Mr. Bob Weatherall) for the return of all aboriginal remains to Australia. After consultation with museum staff the Director recommended to the Pitt Rivers Committee that five skulls and a sample of soft tissue (a pickled penis) be returned under the University rule (vide Statutes, Decrees and Regulations) which says that "The Curator shall have power, subject to the concurrence of the Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum, to delete from the registers of the museum and to remove permanently from the collection: (1) any object deemed to be or to have become...irrelevent to the purposes of the museum."

As the five skulls were relatively recent and were not decorated or otherwise modified in any way, they were neither of archaeological nor of ethnographical interest and, arguably, never should have been in the collections in the first place. The same could not, however, be said for some other aboriginal remains in the collections, such as crania with carrying cords used as water containers. It is not the Director's intention to remove any artefacts of ethnographic or archaeological interest from the collections. This of course includes 'sacred objects' and this position has been explained to the Australian Aboriginal representatives who visited Oxford.

On June 15th, 1990 the five skulls and the soft tissue sample were delivered by the Director to the Australian High Commission in London and were subsequently handed over to representatives of Aboriginal organizations and returned to Australia.

The Main Museum
Work continued throughout the reporting period on the museum's on-going programme of temporary exhibitions and permanent displays. The refurbished display of boat models at the Eastern end of the Court was completed by Mr. Rivers and Mr. Simmons and the adjacent large central display of canoes and boat models was completed by Mr. Simmons and Mr. Munsch under the supervision of Mr. Rivers.

On the South side of the lower gallery work continued on the new permanent display of netsuke and it is now largely complete except for labelling. The many demands made on our technical staff inevitably results in prolonged interruptions to projects of this kind, as technicians are frequently diverted onto more pressing tasks.

In the North-East corner of the upper gallery Mr. Todd continued work on the new permanent display of bows and arrows which is to form part of a major refurbishment of that gallery. It is hoped that we will be able to re-open the entire gallery to the public again in 1993.

The Summer of 1990 saw the end of an era in the museum's history with the retirement of Mr. Ken Walters, the Head Technician, after 44 years of service. His grandfather, Henry John Walters, worked in the museum from 1896 until 1940, and his father, Henry Frederick Walters, from 1931 until 1962. The men of the Walters family have thus given the University a total of 120 years’ service, spanning the period from the Museum’s earliest days down to the present. Mr. Bob Rivers, Senior Technician, was promoted to Head of Technical Services to fill the vacancy caused by Mr. Walters' retirement.

Temporary Exhibitions
I. Main Museum
Molas - Textiles of the Kuna Indians, opened on July 28th, 1989, and continued until the end of April 1990. It proved to be popular with the general public as well as with textile specialists. During the period of the exhibition an OxMus Club session on mola-making was held for children, and in November Mrs. Herta Puls lectured to the Friends of the Museum on the Kuna Indians of the San Blas Islands (Panama). In March 1990 a further collection of molas was donated to the Museum by Mr. Clive Rogers.
The Goddess of Batik - Textiles from China by Chen Ning Kang and Fu Mu Lan opened on 9 May 1990. The idea for this exhibition was conceived in the Spring of 1988 when staff members from Guizhou Normal University in Guiyang, Guizhou Province, China, visited Oxford and the Pitt Rivers Museum. Among their number was Professor Chen Ning Kang, Dean of the Art Department at Guizhou and Director of the Batik Research Institute in Guiyang. Professor Chen left with us 50 batik textiles, made by himself and his wife Fu Mu Lan and inspired by the textile crafts of the minority peoples of Guizhou Province. Subsequent visits to China by the Director and Dr. Hélène La Rue strengthened the Pitt Rivers Museum's academic links with Guiyang and augmented our collection of artifacts from this area. The beautiful batiks made by Chen Ning Kang and Fu Mu Lan were displayed with photographs and watercolours of Guizhou Province and its minority peoples, particularly the Miao, the Buyi and the Dong, as well as examples of local embroidery, theatrical masks and musical instruments. An illustrated booklet was produced by Linda Mowat to accompany the exhibition. In the summer of 1990 Chen Ning Kang and Fu Mu Lan were able to visit Oxford, bringing with them more examples of batik including two immensely long narrative 'tapestries' depicting, respectively, the events of the Dong New Year and a Miao wedding. The former was added to the exhibition, extending around the perimeter of the entire gallery with several metres to spare. On the afternoon of July 21st Professor Chen gave an illustrated lecture to a group of fascinated batik enthusiasts from all over the country. During their visit he and his wife were able to visit a number of batik artists and examine various textile collections in the UK.
Showcase - a joint Oxfordshire museums project. The Pitt Rivers Museum contributed specimens and photographs to Showcase, a joint Oxfordshire museums exhibition organized for Museums Year. Linda Mowat wrote the text for the exhibition which was on view to the public at the Oxfordshire County Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in November and December 1989.

II. The Balfour Building
Shadows and Strings; a changing exhibition from the Museum's puppet collections opened on June 14th and ran until January 20th. During the Autumn term three large processional puppets from the Queensway School (Banbury) project were added to the puppets exhibition. These puppets had been made in conjunction with a festival of music from West Africa which was held in the school and in the Balfour Building during the summer of 1989. After the festival the children used these puppets, which they had made, both for their own performance of an Annansi spider story in the school and for the Banbury Carnival.
Maoritanga, an exhibition of artefacts illustrating Maori traditions, opened on February 6th and ran until April 20th in commemoration of the Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Much of the planning and execution of this exhibition was carried out by volunteer Odile Jansen, an anthropology student from Nijmegen University in the Netherlands.
Upturned Ark, an exhibition held in conjunction with Oxfordshire Art Week, ran for two months (May and June) and featured temporary installations set up in both of the Museum's buildings. This was organised by Chris Dorsett, sculpture tutor from the Oxford University Department of Fine Art, Ruskin College. The sculptors who took part were Simon Lewty, Lea Andrews, David Atkinson, Brian Catling, Kate Davis, Chris Dorsett, Kathy Prendergast and Elizabeth Rosser. There was a school project in Henry Box School which was led by Jessica Shaw, a sculpture student from the Ruskin College of Art.

Other Museum Events
As it had become more and more difficult to find the resources needed to fund the big Music Festivals that had taken place at the Balfour Building, it was decided to try out a new format of events for the public based on various aspects of the collections. Starting in January 1990 we were fortunate enough to have Odile Jansen with us as a volunteer for three months. Enthusiastic assistance was also provided by Wendy Buck, one of our M.St. students. As an experiment a series of events which families could enjoy together were arranged for Saturday afternoons during University full term. The first term's activities were inspired by the Molas exhibition and the Maori exhibition and involved respectively pattern making and story telling and the making of cat's cradles. One other event which proved very successful was an introduction to the playing of different kinds of board games from many African countries. There were over 100 participants at this activity.
    
Since this first term's events had proved so successful another series was arranged for Trinity Term. This time the Oxford branch of Friends of the Earth participated, running their own events as part of the rainforest festival. This included story telling sessions, collage workshops and a dance workshop organised by Cecilia MacFarlane. Jessica Shaw and Chris Dorsett also prepared an Art Week event which was a great success. The only problem we encountered in running these afternoon events was that some parents arrived with their children and then left them unsupervised. This was an unintended situation as the events had all been planned with the idea of family groups in mind. Similarly, some teachers, having discovered the programme of events, turned up on our doorstep with 30 children in tow. The programme had not been designed with this in mind, especially the 18 brownies who on one occasion were abruptly left in the music curator's sole care. It was decided that Pitt Stop events would continue, but that future publicity would have to make it clear that this was for family groups or accompanied children only.

Concerts: It was decided to include some of our musical activities in the new Pitt Stop programme by putting on family concerts which included an element of participation. During Trinity Term our programme included a delightful outdoor afternoon concert by the Andean Group Chan Chan. Our one evening event was a concert by the London Chinese Orchestra.

Museum Visitors and Enquiries
During the year there were 70,634 visitors to the Museum, of whom 8,227 came in the mornings with schools, colleges of art and other groups.

In addition to numerous postal and telephone enquiries, 48 visitors from all over the world used the photographic archive collections during the year. In addition to those working on archival materials, there were a number of visitors who came to discuss more general questions of visual representation in photography or to look at the Museum's approach to archival collection management.

About 100 written enquiries concerning the collections were received by the Documentation and Records Department during the year, in addition to numerous telephone and personal enquiries. About 60 visiting researchers made arrangements to study the reserve collections during this reporting period.

Individual curators continued to deal routinely with a substantial number of postal and telephone enquiries directed to them by students and specialists in various fields, and to receive personal visits involving research consultation with colleagues and members of the public.

Museum Documentation and Records (Mrs. Linda Mowat)
Fifty-four new collections were accessioned during the year and the computerization of the index cards for mainland Central America was completed.

Specimens Acquired by Purchase
Mr. S. E. Carter: from Guatemala, a man's costume from Nahuala; a huipil (woman's blouse) from Quetzaltenango and another from San Antonio Aguas Calientes; a women’s costume from San Juan Sacatepequez; and a hair ribbon from Aguacatan. Professor Chen Ning Kang: from Guizhou Province, SW China, a collection of 50 batik textiles made by Professor Chen and his wife Fu Mu Lan; 2 batik 'tapestries' (each over 30 metres long) depicting the events of the Dong New Year and a Miao wedding, also made by the donor and his wife; a reference album containing samples of cloth illustrating Buyi weaving designs; a collection of Gejia wax paintings for batik; a collection of woodblock printed Chinese New Year pictures; other textiles and related items from Guizhou Province. Christie's: two Aboriginal bark paintings from Central Arnhem Land, Australia. Ms. Anna Claude: a tortoiseshell perfume container made by the Ju'wa people of Namibia. Mrs. Hella Hollyer: a 19th century embroidered blouse and apron, a bag and two braids from the Bukovina, USSR. Linda Mowat: a collection made in Southern India in December 1989, in particular, items of women's costume from Karnataka State, and a collection of contemporary handicrafts from Cyprus including textiles, pottery and baskets. Mrs. Iveta Shevkane: a newly-made married woman's costume from Krustpils, Latvia.

Specimens Acquired by Donation
Brighton Museum: an organ from the USA. Mr. Michael R. Bradle: a ceramic griddle for baking tortillas, from the Pame Indians of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Mrs. Anne Brown: a collection of personal ornaments and other items from Papua New Guinea collected during missionary work between 1938 and 1970. Dr. Jean Brown: a toy clay cow from the Pokot of Kenya. Mr. Ben Buxton: a brass scent bottle from the Middle East. Mr. John Byam-Grounds: a divination bag used by members of the Leopard Society in Sierra Leone. Mr. S. Callaway: two Yoruba drums and a carved human figure from Nigeria. Mr. D. W. Chapman: a Korean man's hair-net of horse-hair. Miss M. Christopherson: a 19th century tea-cosy woven by a Maori woman using New Zealand flax, and a Japanese picture book. Mrs. Amanda Cornford: two Kuna mola blouses from Panama or Columbia, a woman's bead apron from the Amazon, some Oceanic shell ornaments, some S.E. Asian bamboo containers, a West African mask, an Italian necked box lute and a collection of gramophone records, all items collected in the course of his travels by the late Mr. George Dixon Aked in the 1930s. Mr. David Cranstone: a Naga woven bag, a New Guinea stone axe and a celadon sherd, probably from Brunei. All collected by his father, the late Mr. Bryan Cranstone. Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards: a printed towel from China. Dr. Rosemary Fennell: a model milk-churn from Pakistan. Norman Geary: A xylophone from northern Ghana. Mr. Raymond Glasspole: a collection of gramophone records of music from all over the world. Miss Esme Hadfield: a beaded Easter egg from Romania. HM Customs & Excise: a collection of carved ivory artefacts from Asia and Africa. Hannah Jones: three children's cardboard cut-outs of Inuit costumes from Greenland. Dr. Schuyler Jones: a wooden spindle and four women's dress oranments from Afghanistan. Dr. and Mrs. B.E. Juel-Jensen: a large Japanese collection made by Mrs. Juel-Jensen's mother and grandparents in 1909. Included are items of costume, porcelain, lacquer and brass. Mrs. R. Gillian Kay: a collection of personal ornaments, baskets and carvings from Oceania. Mrs. Eleana Kingdon: a guitar made by a Twa man from Kayonza, Uganda. The Koto and Samisen Factory, Tokyo: a samisen (lute) and a piece of kiri wood used for making kotos (zithers). Dr. Hélène La Rue: from Staphorst Village, the Netherlands, a sample of painted cloth for women's hats and some silver buttons for a man's costume. Mrs. Patricia Lichtenstein: two silver spoon-pins from the Quechua or Aymara people of highland Peru. Bequeathed via her nephew Mr. James Griffin. Nicholas Mann: an Australian Aboriginal message stick. Mrs. Emma Milburn: a carving by the Yoruba artist Osula of the donor's late husband Stanley Milburn, formerly Assistant Director of Education, Western Province, Nigeria. Mrs. Money: four pairs of shoes collected by her husband in South America and the Middle East; a Swedish army toboggan and a pair of snowshoes. Professor Rodney Needham and Professor James J. Fox: a modern Javanese shadow puppet. Newbury Museum: a European dagger with ivory handle with a metal sheath. Mr. R. Oliver: a replica of a German Army 08 self-loading pistol. Mrs. Helma Pattanshetti: two babies' bonnets from Karnataka State in India and an imitation mungala sutra (the 'auspicious chain' worn by married women in India) for offering to a goddess. Mrs. Sylvia Pickett and Mrs. Sylvia Jeskowiak: a Belgian walking stick made so as to be capable of firing .410 shotgun cartridges. Mr. Clive Rogers: a collection of 30 mola textiles from the San Blas Islands of Panama. Mr. T. D. Rogers: a sword from Malaya. Mrs. Hilda Snelling: a Chinese ivory steelyard for weighing silver. Mr. Peter Strong: a souvenir bell made from oak and metal salvaged from York Minster when it burned down in 1840. Dr. H. C. Swaisland: An Igbo robe and matching trousers from eastern Nigeria. Miss Freya Tareporewala: two packets of stick-on bindis (forehead marks) from India. Miss Janet Tinbergen: a string of shell and glass beads, probably from Indonesia. Miss Dilys Williams: items from South Africa including beadwork and spoons. Mrs. Y. K. Zwozdiak-Southall: a small collection of Peruvian textile fragments.

Volunteers
We would like to thank Julia Nicholson for her help during the summer and autumn of 1989 while on attachment from Leicestershire Museums Service. Miss Nicholson undertook valuable work on the storage of specimens in the Museum Court and the numbering of items for a new display of model boats.
    
In August 1990 we were pleased to receive two Polish students, Miss Barbara Slembarska and Miss Malgorzata Zieba, who were attached to the Museum for two weeks as part of their course in the Department of Slavonic Ethnography at Jagiellonian University, Krakow. During their period of attachment they re-organised the storage of the reserve collection of dolls and puppets as well as assisting with a variety of other tasks.

It is also a pleasure to record the generous assistance of Mr. Bob Oliver for his research on the museum's collection of firearms, for his expert advice regarding the selection of individual pieces for display, and for filling gaps in our collection by generously donating examples of his finely turned out replicas.

As always we would like to express our gratitude to Mrs. Sally Owen for her regular and good-humoured assistance with secretarial and other work in the Documentation Department.

Conservation (Ms. Sue Walker)
The main task of the lab during this period was to examine, clean, and treat the model boats for permanent re-display at the Eastern end of the Court in the central wall case behind the totem pole. Some of these boats were quite large, in particular the model of the Maori war canoe, and therefore took some time to complete.

Items for loan which passed through the lab included a Palestinian coin head-dress for display in the British Museum and substantial quantities of Naga materials for an exhibition in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University.

From October to the end of January Eva Bjorkhund, a Conservator from the Malmö Museum in Sweden, worked with us as a volunteer. As a trained Conservator she was extremely useful and, although her work in Sweden does not involve the treatment of ethnographic objects, she required little supervision. We also benefitted from an exchange of views on a range of museum issues. Geoffrey Fouquet continued to provide his invaluable help in the lab during this reporting period.

In September 1989 Birgitte Speake began a course in Archaeological Conservation and Material Science at the Institute of Archaeology at University College, London. The course is part-time as it is designed for people already working in conservation. She receives a grant from Oxfordshire County Council to cover fees and travelling expenses.

In May 1990 a Pest Control Survey of the museum was carried out by Robert Child of the National Museum of Wales and David Pinniger of M.A.A.F. Having been alarmed by the discovery of a number of museum beetles wandering about in some of the cases, we were reassured by the Survey (which included the Reserve Collections at Osney Mead and the Textile Store) as there proved to be little evidence of problems. Good housekeeping was cited as the reason for the generally good state of the collections.

Photographic Department (Mr. Malcolm Osman)
The studio was kept very busy during the year with an increasing number of job requests from inside and outside the museum. Requests from publishers, in particular for high quality large format transparencies and usually at short notice, have steadily increased. Due to these factors the archive negative printing programme had virtually come to a standstill. To remedy this situation alternative techniques for storing positive images were evaluated. The cheapest and quickest solution was found to lie in existing video technology and it was decided to go ahead with this system. When fully operational the procedure will allow access to unprinted material which is otherwise unavailable to researchers. It was expected that the new system would be fully operational by mid 1990.

Balfour Library (Mr. Richard Hanson)
This year saw the departure of Ms. Jane Feaver to pursue a career in publishing in London. In April Richard Hanson took over the running of the library having gained previous experience in the library of the School of Geography, University of Oxford. In the early stages of working in the library Mr. Hanson was greatly supported by Mrs. Edwards, the previous librarian of the Balfour Library.

In August Mr. Mike Morris took over as librarian of the Tylor Library at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. It is expected that the two libraries will be run in a spirit of close co-operation and that the two librarians will meet on a regular basis in order to plan the joint development of the collections.

The library added almost ten linear metres to the monograph collection in addition to 346 periodical parts. Overcrowding of the shelves has become an ever increasing problem and it is hoped that space will be found for more shelving in the coming year.

Archives (Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards)
The trend of increasing use and activity in the Archive Department continued, as predicted, after Mrs. Edwards returned from maternity leave in March 1989. Efforts this year have been concentrated on extending the range of the computer catalogue, collating and cataloguing large collections in the archival backlog, and developing systems of collection management consistent with the requirements of the Museums and Galleries Commission guidelines.

Achieving the objectives outlined above has meant that most research on the collections this year has been in the field of enhancing documentation. During this reporting period Elizabeth Edwards has become increasingly involved in the teaching of visual anthropology and photographic analysis which has meant that the Archives in general have become more closely integrated with the Museum's teaching role. The Museum's photographic collection was one of those featured in Images, a series of television programmes to celebrate photography's first 150 years. We should like to thank Catherine James and in particular Alison Petch for their valuable voluntary work on the photographic collections.

Donations
The archives were most fortunate in receiving a number of gifts including materials relevant to Sierre Leone, Nigeria, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India, Assam and Papua New Guinea. The most substantial collection was some 3,000 photographs by the artist George Dixon Aked, donated by Mrs. A. Cornford. These cover the artist's travels in Asia, South America and the Pacific during the 1930's. We should like to thank the following for their kind donations: The Department of Eastern Art at the Ashmolean Museum, Mr. J. Byam-Grounds, Mr. M. Carey, Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards, Mrs. Geraldine Hobson, Mrs. Adi Inskeep, Mr. Stuart Jenness, Mrs. C. Juel-Jensen, Mrs. Linda Mowat, and Mrs. M. A. Pearson.

Publications (Ms. Julia Cousins)
The success of the booklet written to accompany the Goddess of Batik exhibition has undoubtedly set a trend for the future. It was produced in-house and printed in the University Offices so that it could be sold inexpensively. Turnover from the two museum shops increased to just over £10,000.

Teaching
1. Cultural Anthropology
Dr. Schuyler Jones, Dr. Howard Morphy, and Dr. Donald Tayler continued to offer lectures in the Man, Environment, and Culture series for first year undergraduates reading for Geography and the Human Sciences degrees and for M.St./ M.Phil. students reading for qualifications in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography. They also gave tutorials to undergraduates and held classes, gave supervision, and conducted seminars for graduates reading for the M.St. in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography. Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards and Dr. Hélène La Rue also continued to contribute to the teaching.

As part of the Museology option of the M.St. in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography, Linda Mowat gave seminars on Museum Documentation and Research and The Organization of Temporary Exhibitions. She also contributed a lecture to the textile series organized for M.St. and undergraduate students.

2. Prehistoric Archaeology
Archaeologists carried out their usual teaching (lectures and tutorials) for the M.St. and M.Phil. in Prehistoric Archaeology, and for the Quaternary Environments option in the Final Honour School of Geography and served as examiners, both in Oxford and elsewhere.

Dr. Roe examined a D.Sc. degree for Bristol University and at Oxford was examiner for the M.St. and M.Phil. qualifying examinations in Prehistoric Archaeology.

Mr. Ray Inskeep delivered 12 lectures to Human Science students for the optional paper in Human Evolution, supervised one D.Phil. student, and examined one D.Phil. thesis for Cambridge University.

Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre (Dr. Derek Roe)
In a preceeding Annual Report, the Committee expressed the hope that Prehistoric Archaeology and the Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre would both retain their identities and their teaching and research roles within the new structure for Anthropology at Oxford. In the event, Prehistoric Archaeology has become submerged within the new Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, though the teaching and research of the members of staff involved continues as before. The Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre was more fortunate, being added to the scheme under its own name at the final meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography which considered these matters. Within the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, the Centre is now formally a unit of the Pitt Rivers Museum. Its actual work continues unchanged.

The Centre looks forward to the arrival of the new SEM facility at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, having participated in the application for the funding which made this important acquisition possible (SERC/SBAC). Projects are being planned for the study of (a) various aspects of the function of stone tools and (b) the traces left on animal bone by human modification and by postdepositional natural processes.

Through its members, the Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre has been involved in various research projects, to which it has contributed personnel, space and research facilities:

Peter J. Mitchell, British Academy Research Fellow. The archaeology of Middle and Late Stone Age sites in southern Africa.

Katherine Scott, Research Associate, other members of the Centre, and numerous external participants: Faunal remains, archaeological material, dating and environmental evidence from the Pleistocene deposits of the Upper Thames. (An unfunded but highly successful cooperative effort).

S. Milliken and R. Skeates, Graduate Research Students: The Alimini Lakes Survey, Southeast Italy. Support from the Meyerstein Fund and the British School at Rome.

W.H. Waldren, Research Associate: The Prehistoric Archaeology of the Balearic Islands. Support from the Centre for Field Research, the DEMARC Foundation and various U.S. sources.

Educational Services (Dr. Hélène La Rue)
There has been an appreciable effect on the numbers of teachers using our education system since the introduction of the new National Curriculum and Local Management of Schools. It seems that there are now fewer schools willing to pay 50p's towards the cost of help from the Education Service, and many of the groups coming round seem to consist of children of an older age group than those who have come in earlier years. It will be interesting to see how the numbers of children visiting the museum will be influenced by the set requirements for using Museum collections.

As a result of the Local Management for schools policy and cuts in the budgets of local authorities it was deemed to be no longer possible for the local education authority to continue helping the Museum's education service in any way. Up to this point their support had consisted of dealing with the printing of the Trails used by school children coming from Local Education Authority State schools. Now our own Education Service (unfunded from any source) had to fulfill this service. As a result the charge for children in groups using the education service rose from 20p to 50p to allow for the cost of photocopying the trails. At the same time the trails were condensed and the design work refined as a result of the Apple Macintosh desk top publishing capabilities which the Museum had acquired.

Once again it is a pleasure to express our grateful thanks to our Guides who continue to contribute so much towards making our Education Service a success: Joan Shaw, Jean Flemming, Sally Owen, and Frances Martyn.

James A. Swan Fund
On the 31st July, 1990 the total assets of the James A. Swan Fund were £30,967. During the year seven grants totalling £6,300 were given in support of a variety of anthropological and archaeological research projects.

Publications by Staff Members and Research Associates
Edwards, E. 1990. Photographic Types: The Pursuit of Method. Visual Anthropology 3 (2-3).
La Rue, H. 1989. The Harp that Once. M.E.G. article.
Morphy, Howard. 1990. ‘A Memorial for the dead, an interview with Jund Mundine. Artlink ‘10 (1@2): 1-2. ISSB 0727-1239.
Morphy, Howard. 1990. ‘Art Co-Ordinator: no ordinary job.’ Artlink 10 (1@ 2): 31-32. ISSN 0727-1239.
Morphy, Howard. 1990. ‘Myth, totemism and the creation of clans’. Oceania, 6:312-28.
Mowat, L. 1989. Cassava and Chicha: Bread and Beer of the Amazonian Indians. Princes Risborough: Shire Publications
Mowat, L. 1990. The Goddess of Batik: Textiles from China by Chen Ning Kang & Fu Mu Lan. Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum.
Roe, D. A. 1989. Contributions to Chronicles of the World, ed. J. Burne. General supervision of the text dealing with the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods and contribution of three essays entitled, respectively, 'From Genesis to the Stone Age', 'Fossilised clocks on the sea bed' and ‘Making knives as sharp as steel'.
Roe, D. A. 1989. Oakley, Kenneth Page. In Dictionary of National Biography: Supplement 1981-5, eds. Lord Blake and C. S. Nicholls.
Roe, D. A. 1990. Late Glacial in Northwest Europe: the 1989 Oxford Conference. Quarternary Newsletter. 60: 26-31.
Roe, D. A. 1990. Two Archaeological Phenomena: B.A.R. and the Beginnings of the Upper Palaeolithic. Review of Archaeology. 11:1: 28-35.
Tayler, Donald 1990. Contributions to the Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Arts. Oxford. O.U.P.

Staff Activities
Mrs Elizabeth Edwards has continued work on editing the Royal Anthropological Institute's project Anthropology and the Camera which is due to be published by Yale University Press sometime in 1991. In September 1989 she attended the European Photographic Historians conference in Göteborg, Sweden and took the opportunity to do research on the photographic collections of the Museum of Ethnology in Göteborg. She also attended various functions relating to the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography and was involved (including substantial interviews) in a television programme on colonial and anthropological photography for Channel 4's Image series. She attended a conference on the Representation of Pacific Cultures in Birmingham on May 10 1990.

Mr Ray Inskeep received enquiries throughout the year which included identification of specimens from Israel, Oxfordshire and York; accommodated four visiting researchers for longer or shorter periods of work on different parts of the Palaeolithic collections, and dealt with a number of enquiries by correspondence, including checking entries for an Oxford Dictionary of Chronology. He also dealt with a substantial number of postal enquiries. Work was continued, as time permitted, on the remaining displays for the Hunter-Gatherer gallery, and on re-organisation of the reserve collections of archaeology. He continued to serve as a member of the Editorial Board of the journal World Archaeology, and began work on a volume dealing with Archaeology and Arid Environments. He was invited to write two papers, one on Fifty Years of Archaeology in Southern Africa for a conference in Nigeria (in press), and another on the origins of hunting for a London conference on The Politics of Hunting.

Dr. Schuyler Jones, in addition to his duties as Director of the museum, returned to Copenhagen and spent the period from March 20th to April 20th studying Prince Peter's Tibetan collections and carrying out other research on Tibet in the National Museum of Denmark as part of preparations for writing a volume in the Nomad Project series which is being funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. In September he travelled to Pakistan to take part in the Second International Hindu Kush Conference, which was held in Chitral. He continues to serve as a Trustee of the Horniman Museum and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the History of Collections. As time permitted he continued work on a book-length annotated bibliography of Afghanistan which is to be published by Clio Press, Oxford.

Dr. Hélène La Rue continued to organise the OxMus Club, served as a Committee member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science for Section H, and as Editor of the Newsletter of the International Council of Museums International Committee of Musical Instrument Museums and Collections.

Dr. Howard Morphy spent much time working with Celia Lowenstein to produce the Channel 4 documentary on the Pitt Rivers Museum, ‘The Pitt Rivers Museum is Shut’. He was a council member of the Royal Anthropological Institute and a Trustee for the Esperanza Fund. Dr. Morphy became Chairman of the sub-Faculty of Anthropology and became Chairman of the steering Committee for the new degree in Archaeology and Anthropology. He was a member of the Editorial Boards of Man and Oceania, was Chairman of the Oxfordshire Museums Panel and a member of the Working Party to develop a five year plan for Oxfordshire Museums. Dr. Morphy gave papers at Conferences in Manchester (ethnographic film), SOAS (mortuary rituals), Birmingham (rethinking the South Pacific). He gave seminar papers at Cambridge and University College, London. He spent a week at the University of Kansas appraising a collection. In Michaelmas Term 1989 Andrée Rosenfeld visited and gave a joint lecture course on Australian Aboriginal Art with Dr. Morphy.

Mrs Linda Mowat visited Southern India with her husband David in December 1989. During their travels she made a collection for the Museum, concentrating particularly on women's costume from Karnataka State. She also took a series of slides for the Museum's Photographic Archive. Together with Julia Cousins and Sally Owen she took part in the Museum Ethnographers' Group Study Tour to Cyprus during Easter 1990. This tour included visits to museums, archaeological sites and craft centres in the south of Cyprus and culminated in Easter itself being spent in Orthodox monasteries. During the tour a collection of contemporary Cypriot crafts was made for the Museum. In May 1990 she attended the Annual General Meeting of the Museum Ethnographer's Group in Birmingham and continued to edit MEG News, the organisation's newsletter.  

Dr. Roe, in addition to his duties as University Lecturer, made study visits to excavations at Pontnewydd Cave in North Wales (September 1989), the Hoyle Caves in Southwest Wales (July 1990), and in December 1989 evaluated the claimed discovery of early Palaeolithic artefacts at a site near Axbridge, Somerset. He remains a member of the Advisory Committee for Archaeology & Numismatics of the National Museum of Wales, is a member of the International Scientific Advisory Panel, CARE, a Contributing Editor for the Review of Archaeology (USA), a member of the Advisory Panel for L'Anthropologie (France) and a member of the Advisory Panel for World Archaeology (UK). During the reporting period he presented a paper at a Liverpool Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Meeting. In Oxford in September 1989 he acted as co-organiser (with R.N.E. Barton and A.J. Roberts) of a three-day International Conference on the Environment and Archaeology of the Late Glacial period in Northwest Europe. He chaired two conference sessions, and is co-editor, with the two other organisers of the publication (in press for 1991). In February he acted as co-organiser (with R.N.E. Barton) of a day meeting of the Lithic Studies Society at the Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre to discuss topics in British Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology.

Dr. Donald Tayler was on Sabbatical leave for most of the academic year 1989-1990 writing up fieldwork results from his previous Sabbatical (1978-1979) on the socio-economies and technology of hill farming in Asturias.  

Friends of the Pitt Rivers
During Michaelmas Term 1989 the Friends sponsored a talk on Kuna Textiles by Herta Puls, who had lent specimens of Molas from her own collection for the special exhibition in the main museum. Howard Morphy gave a stimulating talk on Aboriginal culture at the Christmas meeting, discussing the book Songlines by the late Bruce Chatwin, who was a member of the Friends.

Lectures in the spring of 1990 brought speakers from further afield - Jane Wilkinson from the National Museum of Scotland on the Ainu of Hokkaido, and Ruth Phillips from Carleton University, Ottawa, on 19th century American Tourist Art. A rare film about the Kwakiutl Indians, made in 1914, was shown at the A.G.M. in May.
     
Volunteers from the Friends have continued to provide the backbone of the Education Service, and given help to the Museum in various other ways.