Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum as of 1 October 1996
The Vice-Chancellor (Dr P. North)
The Senior Proctor (Dr M.E. Ceadel)
The Junior Proctor (Dr A.M. Volfing)
The Assessor (Dr R.J. Goodman)
Mr John Flemming (Chairman)
Dr J.A. Bennett
Dr M. Von Clemm
Professor Barry Cunliffe
Dr Schuyler Jones
Dr Tom Kemp
Dr J.M. Landers
Professor David Parkin
Dr Jessica Rawson
Professor Peter Rivière
Dr Steve Simpson
Dr Donald Tayler
Professor Christopher White
The Pitt Rivers Museum
The Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum, having received the following annual report from the Director, presented it as its report to Congregation.
A Personal View from the Retiring Director
It is now, give or take a year or two, something like 110 years since the Pitt Rivers Museum first opened its doors to the public. Any institution that has survived its first century and has entered its second in style (and Oxford is full of such institutions) has undergone many changes. The Museum is no exception. One can only admire the years of labour on the part of Henry Balfour, Beatrice Blackwood, and others that laid the foundations of the Museum that increasing numbers of visitors enjoy today. I am confident that our illustrious predecessors would have approved of much that has been accomplished since their time.
I am equally confident, however, that they would not approve of other changes. For example, Henry Balfour was pointing out to the University in his annual reports of the 1930s that the Museum was getting too crowded with displays—more space was needed. The over-crowding, of course, was due to his success in adding to the collections—something he did for nearly fifty years. As we have continued the example he set, the Museum is now more crowded than ever. I recall an occasion when Bernard Fagg, the Museum’s third Curator, authorized an anthropologist who was about to return to the field in Africa ‘to collect ethnographic artefacts for the Museum of any size, excluding buildings’. I also recall hearing Bryan Cranstone, the Museum’s fourth Curator, remark, ‘You can’t turn down important collections just because there’s no room for them!’ Thus encouraged, I brought two dog sledges back from Greenland, reasoning that, as the Museum collections contained no Arctic dog sledges, these were needed. When they arrived in Oxford a few staff members gathered round to have a look. After a minute or two of glum silence, someone said what was on everyone’s mind, ‘Where are we going to put them?’ Bob Rivers, having brought them over from Denmark, came to my rescue and said, ‘We’ll find a place.’ And his solution, as many of you who read this will already know, was admirable and well in keeping with the time-honoured traditions of the Museum.
These brief reminiscences may or may not properly belong in an annual report, but they are occasioned by my retirement at the end of September 1997 after twenty-seven years in the Museum. This may sound like quite a stretch, but it fades abruptly when set against the forty-eight years which, coincidentally, both Henry Balfour and Beatrice Blackwood worked in the Museum. If asked to sum up my time here (which no one has asked me to do), I can do no better than say that on the day I retired I took the Museum’s visitors’ book, wrote the date, and added, ‘Signing off and handing over one Museum in reasonably good condition.’
Introduction
The retirement of Schuyler Jones, who first worked at the Museum when Beatrice Blackwood was in post, marks the end of an era. His time as Director spanned the opening of the Balfour Building, the establishment of an undergraduate degree in Archaeology & Anthropology, the reopening of the Museum’s upper gallery, and the initial planning for the development of the green shed site. A traditionalist who liked to get things done, Schuyler Jones’s concern for the welfare of the Museum was allied to a wide breadth of knowledge about the collections, together with practical experience as a collector and researcher in the field.
Dr Jones may well feel that he handed over the Museum in ‘good condition’ as, along with the other three major University museums, it was awarded designated status in June 1997 for the quality of its collections. This acknowledges the national and international importance of the Museum’s holdings but also raises a number of questions about the levels of access and collections care that are possible within the present financial, staffing, and spatial constraints.
At the time of writing, no viable alternative accommodation for the conservation facilities or the textile collections (numbering nearly 5000 textiles and some 600 shoes) has yet been provided, even though the Centre for American Studies is due to be built on part of the site in 1998. This is a matter of continuing concern and discussion with the University surveyors.
It was agreed that the re-roofing of the main museum should be postponed for a year. Meanwhile, however, much work was carried out at the building housing the Museum’s reserve collections by technical services staff, assisted by the conservators, to relocate objects at potential risk during the proposed re-roofing of that building, planned for the summer of 1997. It was only after this preparatory work had been completed that the surveyors’ department devised an alternative plan that did not involve the removal of the roof. However, the work was not totally in vain as conservation staff were able to begin a programme of safer storage for the clubs.
More positively, a notable feature of the year has been the involvement of the Museum’s graduate students in practical museum activities, particularly in planning Pitt Stops and special exhibitions. The Museum acknowledges the contribution of, among others, Joshua Bell, Sarah Beynon, Sophia Handaka, Jessica Sack, and Claire Warrior.
Main Museum
In 1996 the Museum commissioned Tim Hunkin, one of Britain’s best known craftsmen, to produce an automated collecting box suitable for use in the main museum. It was hoped that this would not only produce financial benefits but also add to visitors’ enjoyment and understanding of the Museum and its history. The collecting box, which utilizes an original display case, was installed in the court in May 1997. The design incorporates figures, representing identifiable anthropologists and travellers who have contributed to the collections, which move to attract attention and again when a coin is deposited. The work, which was generously sponsored by Southern Arts and by the Friends, proved an immediate success.
Special Exhibitions in the Main Museum
The exhibition Native American Photographs: Nineteenth-Century Images from the Collections was taken down at the end of September 1996, so that the year opened with no special exhibition in place. This was soon rectified, however, as Glimpses of Kyoto Life: Japanese Arts and Crafts from the John Lowe Collection opened on 1 November. In February 1995 the Museum had received a large collection of Japanese material from John Lowe comprising a wide range of Japanese domestic and craft products. The exhibition, organized by Marina de Alarcón, was designed to demonstrate the collector’s interests in different sorts of craft materials and techniques, and the individual displays were designed to provide insights into the aesthetics, the history, and the social context of the material. A book by John Lowe, also entitled Glimpses of Kyoto Life, was published in conjunction with the exhibition. The exhibition and the accompanying publication were generously supported by grants from the Daiwa Foundation, the Sanderson Trust, and the Idlewild Trust.
A small exhibition relating to the work of two famous Australian anthropologists, W. Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, was mounted in the Lower Gallery. The Museum’s archive holds many letters written by Gillen to Spencer between 1894 and 1904, the recently published, annotated edition of which has been widely recognized as a major contribution to the intellectual history of Australia. The exhibition, organized by Alison Petch, incorporated some of the material associated with their fieldwork, together with objects collected by them in Central Australia during their expedition of 1901–2.
Special Exhibitions in the Balfour Building
The exhibition Stories from South Africa closed after Easter 1997 (see previous annual report). It was replaced in May by A Rainy Season among the Arawe: Collecting in Melanesia, an exhibition about Beatrice Blackwood’s 1937 fieldwork in New Britain, Papua New Guinea. It illustrated aspects of Arawe life as it was in the 1930s and included a display of Blackwood’s field equipment and related material. The exhibition relates to the ongoing Leverhulme-funded research project on the Arawe being undertaken by Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles. Help with the planning and organization of the exhibition was given by the Museum’s graduate students.
The exhibition Arctic Lives ran from 10 January to 15 March 1997. Organized by Elizabeth Edwards and Emma Dean, it featured fine colour prints of the contemporary life of Arctic peoples by Bryan Alexander. In September 1997, an installation by contemporary artists Simon Callery and Andrew Watson, relating to the ‘Segsbury Project’ was mounted. The project comprises a collaboration between the artists and the University of Oxford’s Institute of Archaeology and Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, and involves Callery working alongside excavators at an Iron Age site on Segsbury Castle in Oxfordshire. The installation was organized by Elizabeth Edwards and Chris Gosden, with Paul Bonaventura from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.
Other Exhibition Matters
The exhibition Wilfred Thesiger’s Photographs: A Most Cherished Possession continued to be shown at various venues. A version of the whole exhibition was shown at the Russell Coates Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, while the Middle Eastern and Asian material from the exhibition was shown at the Oriental Museum at the University of Durham.
Museum Events
On 10 October 1996 the well-known television presenter Loyd Grossman hosted ‘Food For Thought: Food for Funds’, an evening of culinary entertainment in the main museum in support of the Museum’s education service. Guests were able to sample an international selection of food as well as to enjoy a specially devised museum trail around the theme of food and drink. Local schools provided the decoration for the special exhibition area and most of the evening’s food was generously donated by local businesses. The evening raised approximately £3000. The Museum is very grateful to Loyd Grossman for finding the time to host the event and for making the evening such a success. The Museum is also grateful for the energy and commitment of Shahin Bekhradnia, Jean Flemming, Liz Yardley, Joyce Weil, and Felicity Wood, all Museum Friends, without whom this very successful event would not have been possible.
The Museum participated in National Museums Week, offering a family trail, ‘Glimpses of Animals’, focused on the exhibition Glimpses of Kyoto Life. In September a Saturday morning talk on General Pitt Rivers and the founding of the Museum, followed by an informal introduction to the collections, was provided by Alison Petch and Kate White, as part of the City of Oxford’s heritage open day events.
The series of Pitt Stops were reorganized this year so that they now occur regularly on the first Saturday of the month. Chantal Knowles took responsibility for organizing the group of graduate students who take part in these. She also planned the year’s programme of themes. For each month a theme was chosen that related to a particular aspect of the Museum’s displays; activities, including trails, crafts, and storytelling, were then built around it. The Pitt Stops continue to give the Museum’s students valuable practical experience of museum work.
Visitor Numbers
Visitor figures again rose overall, by 6106 to 115,863. Half of this increase occurred in July and August, indicating the increasing popularity of the Museum as a tourist destination. In the City of Oxford’s recent tourism survey the Museum proved to be the seventh most popular of the city-centre attractions. The Balfour Building’s visitor figures were slightly down, to 3791. A third of these visitors were regular attenders of the classes that take place there.
New Acquisitions
Bequests were as follows: Mrs Dorothy Dix (a collection of baskets from all parts of the world; 1997.11).
Donors were as follows: Mrs Mary Arnold (a whip from South Africa; 1997.26); T. S. Binyon (a dress sword from Germany; 1997.7); Beatrice Blackwood (a lucet for making laces for corsets and bodices, found unentered; 1997.5); M.R. Collyer (a pair of Iroquois beaded moccasins and a hat; 1996.42); Mrs M.W. Cordy (a collection of miniature puppet figures from China; 1997.14 / a collection of other material from China; 1997.25); Mr and Mrs F.L. Cousins (a book of handmade paper from Madagascar; 1997.22); Julia Cousins (a pad of forms for recording physical anthropological details; 1997.27 / replicas of museum objects; 1997.31); Cathi Darling (leather boots and a cap from Russia, ski sticks from Switzerland, and a pair of sandals from Asia; 1996.49); Lorraine Da’Luz Vieira (a collection of traditional medical material from China; 1997.8); Mrs Mary Davidson (a Kikuyu girl’s skirt from Kenya; 1996.38); Elizabeth Edwards (a toy made of matting and a sample of matting from Hawaii; 1996.44); Mrs M. Elphick (a collection of Roman and Anglo-Saxon handbells; 1997.17); Ernest L. French (a bark painting from Groote Eylandt, Australia; 1996.39); Professor S.S. Frere (a mixed collection from Africa, North America, and Oceania; 1997.19); Mrs M.F. Hanley (a stone axe from Kenya; 1997.30); Jeremy Herklots (fragments of Mayan pottery from Middle America; 1997.12); Mr C.J.V. Jones (a belt from East Africa; 1997.1); Lis and Dr Schuyler Jones (a collection of costumes from Tibet and China, and objects from Japan; 1996.36); Dr Schuyler Jones (two pairs of shoes from Iran; 1996.37 / two pieces of tapa cloth from Honolulu, Hawaii; 1996.47 / amulets from Jerusalem; 1996.50 / a bayonet for a Kalashnikov from Peshawar, Afghanistan; 1997.6); Chantal Knowles (a lady’s razor from England; 1996.46); June Knowles (a collection of necklaces and ornaments from Kenya; 1996.52); Norman McBeath (twigs used by wild chimpanzees to obtain termites, from Mount Assirik, Senegal; 1997.16); Linda Manning (a collection of objects from Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea; 1996.40); Sheena Marner (a barkcloth sack and two hats; 1997.4); Cressida Miller (a Christmas tree decoration from Michigan, USA; 1997.20); Masami Motohashi (calligraphy specimens from Japan; 1997.9); Alby and David Nall-Cain (a Naga cloth; 1996.41); Robert Oliver (a collection of rifles from Austria and England; 1997.23); Sylvia Platt (a collection of material from Tibet and Japan; 1997.24); Powell Cotton Museum (a Zande book-end from Sudan; 1996.53); students of ICCROM’s PREMA course (two African musical instruments; 1996.45); Louis Sarno (a collection of sound recordings and a harp-zither from the BaAka, Central African Republic; 1997.21); Mr C.P. Smith (a collection of weapons from Sudan and Eritrea; 1997.18); Martha Struever (a Hopi tile from the Tewa of the Southwestern Pueblo; 1997.3); Mrs Diana Walker (a Yoruba beaded stool from Nigeria; 1997.15); Mr R. Wise (a Tanzanian hoe; 1996.51); Robin Woodhouse (a collection of Peruvian and Bolivian textiles; 1997.2).
Purchases were as follows: Sandra Dudley (a collection of textiles and other material, from Thailand and Myanmar (Burma); 1997.28); Chris Morton (two baskets and a toy car from Botswana; 1996.43); the Pitt Rivers Museum shop (a basket made from bottle-tops, from the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe; 1996.48).
Some items of Beatrice Blackwood’s field equipment that had been stored at the Museum since her death were also accessioned (1997.10).
Among donations to the archive collections was a collection of Chilean photographic material given by Dr Malcolm Deas. A photographic collection from India and Central Africa, with related documentation, belonging to the late Dr H. Meinhard was acquired by purchase. A small album from Malaya and a series of French prints of African subjects were also purchased.
Loans to other Museums
In early January 1997 eleven netsuke from the Gunther collection were lent to the National Art Collections Fund for the exhibition at Christie’s, London of Treasures for Everyone: Saved by the National Art Collections Fund; they were returned later the same month. In March 1997 two mounted photographic prints and an album were lent to the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford for the exhibition In Visible Light: Photography and Classification in Art, Science and the Everyday; they were returned in July.
Research Visits and Enquiries
The Museum’s documentation section dealt with more than 400 written enquiries (including many by e-mail), more than 150 telephone enquiries, and more than 125 visiting researchers. Enquiries continue to be wide-ranging in nature, ranging from very general enquiries about ‘non-Western’ art to detailed enquiries about specific items in the collections, and meeting the demand for information is very time-consuming. Alison Petch contributed to the section’s work by dealing with enquiries about the founding collection. The section also dealt with a number of objects brought in for identification. As usual, technical services staff assisted greatly with researchers requiring access to material in the reserve collections and in getting the more unwieldy material off display where necessary. The conservation section assisted in dealing with researchers requiring access to material in the textile store.
There were 97 research visitors to the archive collections (photographs and manuscripts) during the year, the same as in the previous year, as well as innumerable postal, e-mail, and telephone enquiries from all over the world. One identifiable trend is increased student research use. The new dedicated study space at 64 Banbury Road has allowed for very much increased efficiency in dealing with research enquiries.
Museum Documentation and Records
It was, as usual, a busy year for the department’s three permanent members of staff, Marina de Alarcón, Julia Nicholson, and Jeremy Coote. They were assisted for much of the year by Nicolette Meister who returned to the Museum as a paid intern. The main focus of her work was the Museum’s collection of material from Captain Cook’s second great voyage of discovery, which the Museum is re-cataloguing as part of its ‘Cook project’ with funding from the South Eastern Museums Service and the University of Oxford’s Hulme Fund. Meister computerized the disparate records for the collection, surveyed the collection with the project’s specialist adviser Peter Gathercole, and collated related materials. The section is also grateful to Tristan Arbousse-Bastide who worked with Jeremy Coote on re-cataloguing some of the Museum’s collection of weapons from North Africa.
Alison Petch continued work on the project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, to research the Museum’s founding collection. The preparation of full computer records for all accessioned and previously unaccessioned objects donated by General Pitt Rivers was completed. This now comprises a large, comprehensive, computerized database that will facilitate future research into the collection as well as its day-to-day management. Work was begun on preparing publication of parts of the catalogue in various forms.
The records for the material collected by Beatrice Blackwood among the Arawe were computerized by Chantal Knowles as part of a research project on ‘Historical Change and Material Culture in Papua New Guinea’ also funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Additional information will be added as research progresses. Work on cross-referencing this database with that for the related photographic collections was also begun.
Jeremy Coote gave introductory talks and tours of the Museum to various groups, including parties from Kensington and Chelsea College and the Courtauld Institute.
Archive Collections
Emma Dean left her post as Curatorial Assistant (Archive Collections) to move to a similar post at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. Christopher Morton, who was previously a graduate student at the Museum, was appointed as her replacement from September.
Much of the year was spent refining the organization in the new stores, and identifying specific cataloguing backlogs. Some inroads have been made but the situation remains serious. As part of ‘the Arawe project’ funded by the Leverhulme Trust, Chantal Knowles catalogued the outstanding Blackwood manuscript material and enhanced the documentation of much of the Blackwood photograph collection. Elizabeth Edwards worked on the Schomberg collection, Emma Dean on historical photographs of the Museum, and Chris Morton began work on the Nash collection from West Africa.
The section again benefited from the continuing work of volunteers Mrs Audrey Smith and Mrs Ruth Wickett. They completed work on the Penniman papers, and the final catalogue is being prepared. They also completed the sorting and cataloguing of a small collection of papers from Kenneth Oakley and undertook repair work on the Tylor papers. The department is also grateful to Caroline Hayes for continuing work on the Museum’s collection of American photographs and some of the European material, and to Rachel Miller for work on the Garrod collection. These volunteers did sterling work, but it is difficult to maximize their input, and indeed staff cataloguing initiatives, owing to lack of adequate computing facilities and support.
The system of two research access days per week has worked well, for both visitors and staff, and has lead to more effective use being made of both time and space. However, the problems of understaffing and part-time staffing continue. Moreover, research and teaching demands continue to rise, especially at a senior curatorial level. The chronic shortage of staff and the fragility of the system were highlighted in the summer when coinciding staff illness and staff changes meant that the collections were effectively without any curator for two months, basic access being maintained only through casual student labour; hardly a desirable state of affairs.
The section also contributed to other aspects of the Museum’s work, including providing material for the exhibitions Letters from Central Australia and A Rainy Season among the Arawe.
Sound and Music Archives
The accessioning and computer cataloguing of this area of the Museum’s collections has received little attention in the past. With the help of external funding, however, much progress was made during the year towards compiling a complete initial catalogue and carrying out some basic research. The Music Faculty’s sound library collections were listed and records for them added to the database. Father Damian Webb’s collection has been sorted and listed and missing material recovered from Ampleforth. The Claussen collection has been sorted, listed, and added to the computer database. This latter work was carried out by Tina Stoecklin, who also designed a Web page about the collection. Two further collections have been added this year: the Sharpe archives and the Elphick collection of bell founders’ marks. Both of these were the focus for work through the summer, and considerable progress was made in organizing them.
Musical Instrument Catalogue Project
Hélène La Rue reports that work on this major project continued steadily but slowly this year due to the demands on her time made by the necessity of bringing the Bate Collection’s database up to the standard of the Museum’s.
Balfour Library
Through the year the Balfour Librarian, Dr Veronica Lawrence, continued the process of automation with further retrospective conversion of material onto OLIS and extensive use of its acquisitions module. More sophisticated search strategies became available using the new form of OLIS; for example, internet access to the Anthropological Index Online improved the available bibliographic resources. At the end of the reporting year, Dr Lawrence resigned as Balfour Librarian to become Assistant Information Specialist at Nottingham Trent University. She was replaced by Mark Dickerson. Library Assistant, Ms Ruth Emsley, also left during the year to work at Oxfam. She has been replaced by Mrs Elizabeth Carr.
Volunteers continued to play an important role in the Balfour Library, with continued stalwart support in book conservation being received Mrs Ros Kendall and her team of NADFAS volunteers. Special thanks are also due to Dr John and Mrs Joy Crammer, and to Ms Jane Christie-Miller, for completing their cataloguing of Baden-Powell’s pamphlet bequest at the Quaternary Research Centre.
The Library gratefully received a bequest of books from Mrs Dorothy Dix. Donations of books were also received from the following individuals and institutions: Professor and Mrs K. W. Allen, Dr and Mrs Ahmed Al-Shahi, Dr A. Colson, Mr Jeremy Coote, the Department of the History of Art, Mr Peter Gathercole, Ms Jessica Hallett, Dr Schuyler Jones, Mr Serge Lacasse, Lady Margaret Hall, Ms Rosemary Lee, the National Museum of African Art (Smithsonian Institution), Ms Julia Nicholson, Dr Kathryn Norman, Dr Derek Roe, Ms Beatrice Sonderhoff, Mr Michael Spencer, Dr Donald Tayler, the Tylor Library, Ms Valerie Vowles, Mr Bryan Ward-Perkins, and Mr Stephen Watters.
Conservation
As noted above, the Conservation section has had a difficult year and still faces uncertainty about the new location for its activities in 1998. However, despite these handicaps, preparations for the special exhibition Braving the Elements: Conserving Plant Fibre Clothing (opening November 1997) took shape. As the conservation staff are curating this exhibition, it involves far more work for them than the Museum’s exhibitions usually entail. The treatment of the objects and the design of their support stands was carried out with the invaluable help of Maree Lee Haynes, a freelance conservator who worked with the department for three months at the beginning of 1997. This freed conservation staff to spend time on all the other work that an exhibition involves, including preparing an information pack on the exhibition in a quest for sponsorship. (Further information about the exhibition will appear in the next annual report.)
Conservation records show that nearly 450 objects were treated during the year. As always the variety of objects treated was vast. To mention just a few: archaeological material from Cyprus and Japan; plant-fibre clothing for Braving the Elements; objects from Papua New Guinea including barkcloth, oyster shells, and adzes; and Bunyoro drums and milk-ceremony equipment.
The systematic, rolling programme of examining objects on permanent display for damage caused by pest or other agents of decay continued as conservation staff cleaned inside the display cases throughout the year, both at the main museum and at the Balfour Building. Although this was done only one morning a week, staff did manage to get around to everything, ending the calendar year by cleaning some of the objects on open display.
At the Balfour Building conservation staff helped in the dismantling of Stories from South Africa. This was followed by the installation of A Rainy Season among the Arawe. All the objects for the displays were treated in the lab. Most of the objects chosen for Glimpses of Kyoto Life were new and many did not need any treatment at all. However, one of the pieces was a large house shrine that arrived completely dismantled. Fortunately, few of the parts were broken but many were badly warped. It was a joy to be able to reconstruct the shrine and discover on its completion a splendid gilded and lacquered piece that contrasts wonderfully with the contemporary pieces in the collection. Objects were conserved and assistance given for their display in Letters from Central Australia.
The survey of the barkcloth in the reserve collection was completed. The survey of archaeological metalwork continued and improved storage conditions are being implemented. It is hoped that all this material will soon be kept together in the Balfour Building. We are grateful to Andrew Crutchley for voluntary help with improving the storage of the archaeological collections. A space survey at Osney, and in the court and lower gallery, was carried out to obtain accurate information necessary for the Museum’s development plans. Pest-management procedures are now well established. While the rolling programme of examination and freezing is time-consuming, it continues to be preferable to using chemical alternatives. Conservation staff have continued to treat books for the Bodleian Library.
Environmental monitoring and control continued as usual. There is now a monitor placed outdoors, which confirms how the environments of the main museum and the conservation laboratory are directly related to the external environment, reaffirming the need for efficient building insulation. Monitoring at the Balfour Building is still by the old-fashioned recording thermohydrographs. It is hoped that in the future the same telemetric system in use in the main museum will be installed. Monitoring continues for the reserve collection at Osney as well as the archives and musical instrument store on Banbury Road. Two large humidifiers were purchased and placed in the court to compensate for the drying effect of the heating system. There have been some improvements, but the environment is still far from ideal. New fibre-optic lighting continued to be installed in the cases in the court. Conservation staff shared the task of supervising this work with technical aervices staff.
In January Birgitte Speake spoke to a visiting group from the Society for Economic Botany about objects made from plants and about future plans for the improvement of environmental condition in the Museum. Conservation staff also spoke to a visiting group from the National Trust Houses in Thame and the Chilterns about the Museum’s environmental conditions and plans for their improvement. During a visit by members of staff of the ethnographic museum at the University of Oslo, Birgitte Speake gave a talk on the environmental assessment report prepared by Short, Ford & Associates and the improvements it is hoped to achieve. Several of the visitors were conservators with experience of environmental building conditions around the world and they were able to endorse proposals for a natural ventilation system, as they had seen examples in operation.
There were a number of visitors to the conservation section during the year. Carol Milner, head of the conservation unit at the Museums & Galleries Commission, who came to investigate how museum conservators operate within a university structure. Lydia Koranteng (Senior Curator of Ethnography at the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board) came as an intern to learn more about the conservation of ethnographic textiles. A programme of examining, documenting, and improving the storage of the Japanese textiles was designed for her. Heidi Y. Leseur, a conservation student at the Institute of Archaeology, spent a day with conservation and documentation staff to discuss preventive conservation. Her resulting report ‘Preventive Conservation Policies at the Pitt Rivers Museum’ was submitted as part of her course work on professional practice in conservation. Conservation staff also assisted Margrit Reuss, a German conservation student, with her dissertation on the deterioration of cellulose-nitrate materials.
Conservation staff supplied Tamsin O’Connoll, from the University of Oxford’s Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art ,with further human-hair samples for her analysis of diet. Conservation staff were also pleased to be able to provide Dr Vincent Daniels of the British Museum with samples of barkcloth dyes for his ongoing study of ethnographic dyes.
Education Service
Once again the education service was very busy. During the course of the year it welcomed 56 school groups (representing a total of 1728 children) to the Museum. The smallest group consisted of 8 pupils, the largest of 60. The schools were mostly from Oxfordshire and adjoining counties, but they also came from further afield, including groups from the London Science Forum. The subjects covered were mainly those laid down by the National Curriculum, that is, Ancient Egypt, the Aztecs, and occasionally Benin. But there was also a noticeable increase in the number of groups of older pupils needing a more general tour as part of their GCSE studies. As a result of needing to fill their coaches, schools have increased the size of their groups, sometimes bringing between 50 and 60 children, causing significant logistical problems in the Museum.
The guiding service continued with the new training programme in an effort to recruit new volunteers, and three new members joined as probationary guides. A first draft of a guiding service policy was discussed as part of the production of a broader education service policy and forward plan covering the variety of educational needs met by the Museum. Links were made with the education service at Oxford’s Museum of Modern Art in connection with the exhibition In Visible Light. During Oxfordshire Museums Week a presentation about the Museum’s education service was given in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. This helped to introduce many local teachers to the services offered by the Guides.
As a result of the city-wide initiative to provide a better service for foreign student groups visiting Oxford, Kate White helped to organize a familiarization day in March for representatives from language schools, in which groups were taken to a variety of tourist destinations and also made aware of the new code of conduct. A poster providing information on booking details, sponsored by Oxford University Press, was widely distributed. It was agreed that in view of the difficulties presented by such groups the Museum could introduce a charge per head, on a trial basis, to include the cost of a specially designed trail introducing students to the collections. The trail was devised by two of the Museum’s graduate students, Jessica Sack and Claire Warrior, with the help of Chantal Knowles. This, plus tighter booking regulations, successfully reduced the overcrowding on summer afternoons and freed some mornings for UK school bookings. This trial is to be continued for a further year, and then reviewed.
The number of people on educational group visits was down, by around 1800 to 16,717. This reduction primarily reflected the new afternoon booking procedures, but also included a significant reduction in bookings from art schools and colleges and fewer visits to the Balfour Building.
Marketing and Visitor Services
During the year ideas for the structure and content of the Museum’s Website were discussed at meetings of the Museum’s publications committee. It finally went on line during the year and several messages of appreciation about the way the range of material was presented were received.
The existing visitor survey was adapted for analysis by computer by Tim Johnstadt, an American undergraduate student at Oxford Tutorial College on a three-month work placement with Kate White. With the help of Maria Economou, Mr Johnstadt managed not only to design and test the new spreadsheet but also to enter all the information from questionnaires completed prior to the conversion. Although there is still much to be done to finalize this work, it should prove an invaluable tool in monitoring public appreciation of the Museum and planning future developments.
In July the Museum, together with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, hired Rebecca McGinnis to complete a disability access audit. The findings are eagerly awaited as they will be of great help to the Museum in enabling it to take proper account of the new regulations under the Disability Discrimination Act.
Demand for photographic prints and for reproduction rights continued to rise rapidly. Sales for the year amounted to £6191, an increase of 77% over two years. The continuing developments in new technologies are leading to a general reassessment of issues concerning copyright and intellectual property. This is especially so in institutions holding ethnographic collections and the Museum is making efforts to keep abreast of developments and develop policies accordingly.
Five different television companies hired the Museum as a location for filming. These represented a wide cross-section of interests, including two special-interest programmes (‘Mars and Venus’ for HTV and ‘Rock Art’ for the BBC), a Channel 4 news feature, an interior design item for BBC’s ‘Real Rooms’, and a holiday programme for Channel 5. Such hirings provide a valuable source of income for the Museum.
The Museum Shop
The shop turned over £68,005 (net £61,949), slightly less than the previous year, although the net profit after overheads increased marginally to £9873. It is clear that it will be difficult to increase the sales turnover without a significant reorganization of, and investment in, the sales area. Book sales dropped by £2400 to £22,662, postcards sales rose by £1100 to £7844. £1366 was raised through the sale of trails to language schools.
Publications
The most substantial new publications were The Coming of the Sun: A Prologue to Ika Sacred Narrative by Donald Tayler (published as number 7 in the Museum’s Monograph Series) and Glimpses of Kyoto Life, by John Lowe (published to accompany the special exhibition). Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch was published in the booklet series. The Japanese Collections: An Introduction, by Julia Nicholson was published in the concertina booklet series, as was Arts of the Pacific in the Eighteenth Century: The ‘Cook Collection’ at the Pitt Rivers Museum, by Jeremy Coote. The Origin and Development of the Pitt Rivers Museum, by Beatrice Blackwood, was reprinted in the booklet series.
Teaching and Examining
Jeremy Coote was appointed as a Departmental Lecturer (half-time) for the academic year. He lectured in the series ‘Art, Aesthetics, and Material Culture’, co-chaired the series of M.Phil. seminars, and organized a workshop for the Museum’s graduate students on ‘Problems in the Anthropology of Aesthetics’. He supervised one M.St. student in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography, three Archaeology & Anthropology undergraduates for their dissertations, and gave tutorials to other graduates and undergraduates, including a student reading for the M.St. in Islamic Art and Archaeology
Elizabeth Edwards continued giving lectures, seminars, tutorials, and supervisions in critical history and theory of still photography to the Museum’s graduate students, as well as to a small but increasing number of students from other faculties. She also contributed to teaching in museology.
Chris Gosden lectured in the series ‘The Nature of Archaeological Enquiry’, ‘Regional Studies in Material Culture’, and ‘People, Environment, and Culture’. He also continued to supervise several M.Phil. and D.Phil. students.
Schuyler Jones gave a number of lectures in the series ‘People, Environment, and Culture’. He also continued to supervise several M.Phil. and D.Phil. students.
Peter Mitchell lectured for the undergraduate degree in Archaeology & Anthropology and co-ordinated the Honour Moderations course ‘Introduction to World Archaeology’, as well as serving as an examiner for Mods, Chairman of Examiners for the M.St. in Anthropological Archaeology, and organizer of the second Archaeology & Anthropology open day. He also served as Secretary and then Chairman of the Sub-Faculty of Archaeology, Secretary of the Standing Committee for Archaeology & Anthropology, and Secretary of the Management Committee of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography.
Dr Roe gave his usual courses on Palaeolithic Archaeology and associated topics for graduates taking M.St. and M.Phil. courses, and for undergraduates taking certain Final Honours School options, in both Archaeology & Anthropology and Geography. He also gave several special lectures and classes for first- and second-year undergraduates in Archaeology & Anthropology. As an experiment, which proved successful, he shared his Hilary Term undergraduate course on ‘Aspects of Palaeolithic Archaeology’ with Mr Paul Pettitt and Dr Ruth Charles. He continued to supervise three doctoral research students, one of whom (Mrs Julie Scott-Jackson) successfully completed her D.Phil thesis during the year. He acted as an Assessor for the Final Honours School in Archaeology & Anthropology. For a second and final year, he served as Director of Graduate Studies for the Committee for Archaeology. In July 1997 he was awarded the title of Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology by the University of Oxford’s distinctions committee.
Birgitte Speake gave a seminar on the work of the Museum’s conservation section for the Museum’s graduate students.
Veronica Strang was appointed as a Departmental Lecturer (half-time) for the academic year. She lectured in the series ‘People, Culture, and Environment’ and ‘Art, Aesthetics, and Material Culture’, and organized a workshop for the Museum’s graduate students on ‘Cultural Landscapes’. She supervised an M.St. student and gave tutorials to other graduates and undergraduates.
Donald Tayler gave lectures in both the ‘Art, Material Culture, and Aesthetics’ and ‘People, Culture, and the Environment’ series, and co-chaired M.St. and M.Phil. research classes and seminars. He tutored several graduate ethnologists and also undergraduates in Human Sciences, Archaeology & Anthropology, and Geography Mods. He also supervised eight doctoral students. He set and assessed the ‘Ethnology’ option paper in Geography moderations and served as an examiner for the M.St. and M.Phil. in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography. He also continued to act as co-ordinator for Paper III in Archaeology & Anthropology Mods and for Paper IV in the Human Sciences prelims. He examined three doctoral theses during the year and assessed a fourth.
The Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre
The Centre was as busy as ever, although during the course of this year it has had to adapt to a somewhat changed way of life, following the retirement of Mr John Morris, its caretaker-cleaner. The Centre is very grateful to him for all his efforts over the years, and wishes him well in his retirement.
Visitors to the Centre included Professor Michael Walker and Mr Isaac Serrano, from Murcia University, Spain, and Dr John B. Campbell from James Cook University, Queensland, Australia. The latter was joined for a while by his colleague, also from James Cook University, Dr Alan Watchman. Amongst the long list of those making shorter visits, it was a particular honour and pleasure to welcome Professor Phillip Tobias from Johannesburg, Professor J. Desmond Clark from Berkeley, California, Professor Anthony Marks from Dallas, Texas, Dr Lars Larsson from Lund, Sweden, Dr Nikolas Praslov from St Petersburg, and Dr Wang Youping from Beijing.
Mrs Julie Scott-Jackson successfully completed her D.Phil. thesis. Dr Ruth Charles, postdoctoral researcher at the Centre, completed her tenure of the Randall MacIver Studentship at The Queen’s College, and left to take up a Sir James Nott Research Fellowship at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
The two major research projects associated with the Centre both continued throughout the year, with considerable success: the ‘ARC Oxford Mammoths Project’, involving excavations at Stanton Harcourt directed by Dr K. Scott and Mrs C. Buckingham; and work on the Prehistoric Archaeology of the Balearic Islands, directed by Dr W.H. Waldren.
Through the kindness of some of the Friends of the Museum, it has been possible to get some very useful and long-needed work done on the reordering and cataloguing of the books and reprints in the Centre’s library. Dr John Crammer, Mrs Joy Crammer, and Mrs Jane Christie-Miller have been coming in to do this work. They have already spent a great number of hours on it, starting with Donald Baden-Powell’s own pamphlet collection, and will certainly be continuing the task well into the next academic year. We are extremely grateful to them, and hope they enjoy being part of the community at 60 Banbury Road.
Other Staff Activities
Jeremy Coote was invited to be the official collaborator on a £120,000-project funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of their support of bio-archaeology. The project, entitled ‘Systematic Studies of Isotopic Signals in Modern Humans and their Application to Palaeodietary Reconstruction’, is being undertaken by Dr Tamsin O’Connell of the University of Oxford’s Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art. In September, he attended the conference ‘Science and Exploration: European Voyages to the Southern Oceans in the 18th Century’, organized by the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and held at the Royal Society, London. He continued to serve as an associate editor of JASO: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford.
Elizabeth Edwards gave an invited paper in a session on ‘Genre and the Traditional Arts’ at the College Art Association conference in New York in February 1997; she received a CAA Interdisciplinary Award to attend. She also took the opportunity to continue work, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, on the photography of the Torres Strait Expedition. In June she was one of three British visual anthropologists invited to a week’s workshop on visual collections, ethnography, and history at the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Bucharest. She participated in the Open University seminar ‘Museum as Contact Zone’, giving a paper in response to the keynote address by Professor James Clifford. She also presented a joint paper at a meeting of the Association of American Geographers (actually delivered by Joan Schwartz, the co-author). She attended the Museum Ethnographers Group conference in London and completed her term as Chair of that organization. She worked in the collections of the National Museum of Finland in Helsinki and the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology. She gave a seminar at the University of Cambridge and lectures at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. She continued to teach at the Royal College of Art, to serve on the editorial board of History of Photography, and to serve on the Photographic Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute. She attended the Royal Anthropological Insitute Film Festival at the University of Kent.
For Hilary and Trinity terms Chris Gosden was on sabbatical leave and held a Fellowship in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. Here he finished writing up fieldwork on New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, and wrote most of a book on archaeology and anthropology, in addition to writing up fieldwork in Turkmenistan. He also edited a volume of papers, on ‘Subsistence and Social Change’, from the 1994 World Archaeology Conference. With Chantal Knowles, he began work on a project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, on material culture and colonialism in Papua New Guinea and examined collections of material from Papua New Guinea in the Field Museum in Chicago. In March and April, he led an archaeological expedition to the Bolshoi Balkhan Mountains, Turkmenistan where three cave sites were excavated in order to attempt to find sequences from both the Neolithic and Palaeolithic periods. This work was supported by a grant from the British Academy and involved researchers from Turkmenistan, the Institute of Archaeology, London and the University of Sheffield. He served as external examiner at the Institute of Archaeology, London. He sat on the editorial boards of World Archaeology, Archaeology in Oceania, and Cambridge University Press’s ‘World Archaeology’ series.
Emma Hook continued as co-ordinator of the Oxford Conservators Group (OCG) for which she organized termly meetings, and at one of which she reported on the triennial conference of the Committee for Conservation of the International Council of Museums. She attended the inaugural meeting and conference of the Conservators of Ethnographic Artefacts, held at the Museum of Mankind in November 1996. She attended the conference ‘The Interface between Science and Conservation’, held at the British Museum in April 1997. She also attended the Museum Ethnographers Group meeting, held at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew in May. With her colleagues in the Museum’s conservation section, she organized a visit to the Conservation Centre in Liverpool for members of OCG and other museum professionals in Oxford.
Schuyler Jones continued to serve as English-language editor for the Carlsberg Foundation’s Nomad Research Project. He also continued to serve as Honorary Treasurer for the University Museums Group, of which he is a founder member.
Chantal Knowles completed the first year of her research assistantship on a project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, to study ‘Historical Change and Material Culture in Papua New Guinea’. In addition to her work in the Museum (computerizing the records for the material collected by Beatrice Blackwood among the Arawe and collating the associated documentation) she carried out additional research on Beatrice Blackwood herself. This comprised interviews with people who knew her and a thorough examination of the Blackwood papers in the Museum’s archives. She also researched other New Britain material held at the Museum of Mankind, the University of Cambridge, and the London Missionary Society. In March 1997 she attended a conference at the Horniman Museum on ‘Collecting and Innovation’.
Hélène La Rue attended a conference at the Horniman Museum on ‘Collecting and Innovation’. She also attended the conference of the International Committee of Musical Instrument Museums and Collections (CIMCIM) in Vienna, and a conference in Budapest. In July 1997 she started work on the National Database and Register of Musical Instruments. This is a major, long-term research project of national importance that has developed out of a recommendation made in her book Museums of Music. Some 1500 letters were sent out as the first step in gathering information.
Dr Peter Mitchell continued to write up fieldwork from previous season’s excavations and field surveys in Lesotho, and again visited South Africa to develop plans for a co-ordinated programme of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research in the Lesotho Highlands. Though not carrying out fieldwork himself this year, he made arrangements for some Oxford undergraduates to work on projects in South Africa. He completed work on a catalogue of the Southern African Stone Age archaeological collections of the British Museum and continued to serve as Secretary to the Commission on Archaeology and Human Palaeoecology of the International Quaternary Association (INQUA).
Derek Roe examined a doctoral thesis for the University of Pune, India. He also provided a number of lecture-cum-demonstrations on the subject of Palaeolithic artefacts for parties of visiting students. He continued his research involvements with the Earlier Palaeolithic of Southern Spain and the British Palaeolithic. He also assisted with the final editing for publication of his long report, completed and submitted many years ago, on a collection of Lower Palaeolithic stone artefacts from Kalambo Falls, Zambia. He participated in an exchange of visits, sponsored by the British Council in Madrid through its Acciones Integradas scheme for Anglo-Spanish co-operation in research, with colleagues from the University of Murcia. The Spanish team spent several weeks in Oxford during Michaelmas Term, and the British team visited Spain during the Easter vacation. The main object was the setting up of a microwear facility in Murcia, modelled on that created over the years at the Donald Baden-Powell Research Centre. When this had been done, a programme of study of artefacts from selected Spanish Lower and Middle Palaeolithic sites was begun, for the Spanish team to continue. The opportunity provided by the visit to Spain was taken to obtain some samples for dating from the important cave sites of Cueva Negra and Cabezo Gordo: these samples will be processed in Oxford at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art. In Britain, Dr Roe continued to study the artefacts from the important Middle Pleistocene site at Stanton Harcourt, which is being excavated by Dr Katharine Scott and Mrs Christine Buckingham, both of the Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre. This year saw the publication of the first substantial interim report on the site’s geology, fauna, and artefacts.
Lorraine Rostant attended the inaugural meeting and conference of the Conservators of Ethnographic Artefacts, held at the Museum of Mankind in November, and at which she was elected Treasurer and Membership Secretary. She also attended the conference ‘The Interface between Science and Conservation’, held at the British Museum in April. She participated in a six-week international course on ‘The Principles of Textile Conservation’ at the National Museum of Hungary.
Birgitte Speake reported to the Oxford Conservators Group (OCG) on a trip to the newly opened Conservation Centre in Liverpool and, with her colleagues in the conservation section, she organized a visit to the Centre for members of OCG and other museum professionals in Oxford. She attended the inaugural meeting and conference of the Conservators of Ethnographic Artefacts, held at the Museum of Mankind in November 1996. She also attended the Museum Ethnographers Meeting meeting, held at the Royal Botanical Gardens, at Kew in May 1997. She gave an illustrated lecture about the Museum to Combe Historical Society.
Donald Tayler acted as visiting examiner for the B.A. and B.Sc. degrees in Anthropology at University College London.
Staff Publications
Jeremy Coote, Arts of the Pacific in the Eighteenth Century: The ‘Cook Collection’ at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996).
Jeremy Coote, Review of Collecting for the British Museum (Quaderni Poro 8), by M. D. McLeod (Milan, 1993), in Journal of the History of Collections, Vol. IX, no, 1, pp. 177–8.
Jeremy Coote, ‘Quote, Unquote’, in Made in India: Utilitarian Objects and Toys from the Collection of Tony Hayward, London: Tony Hayward (1997), p. 2.
Marina de Alarcón, Review of The Dictionary of Art, edited by Jane Turner (New York, 1996), in Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 9 (May 1997), p. 142.
Marina de Alarcón, ‘Sir Charles Bell’, in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), pp. 9–12.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘E. H. Man’ , in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), pp. 36–40.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Wilfred Thesiger’, in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), pp. 49–51.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Beyond the Boundary: A Consideration of the Expressive in Photography and Anthropology’, in Rethinking Visual Anthropology, edited by Marcus Banks and Howard Morphy, New Haven: Yale University Press (1997), pp. 53–80.
Elizabeth Edwards (guest editor), Anthropology and Colonial Endeavour (Special Issue of History of Photography, Vol. XXI, no. 1 (Spring 1997)).
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Guest Editorial’ in Anthropology and Colonial Endeavour (Special Issue of History of Photography, Vol. XXI, no. 1 (Spring 1997)), pp. 1–2.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Ordering Others: Photography, Anthropologies and Taxonomies’, in In Visible Light: Photography and Classification in Art, Science and the Everyday (catalogue of an exhibition with the same title held at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 16 March to 7 July 1997), edited by Chrissie Iles and Russell Roberts, Oxford: Museum of Modern Art (1997), pp. 54–68.
Chris Gosden, ‘Transformations: History and Prehistory in Hawaii’, in Archaeology in Oceania, Vol. XXXI (1996), pp. 165–172.
Chris Gosden (with Gary Lock), ‘Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project: Excavations on White Horse Hill 1995’, in South Midlands Archaeology, no. 27 (1997), pp. 64–9.
Chris Gosden (with Gary Lock), ‘Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project: Excavations at Segsbury Camp 1996’, in South Midlands Archaeology, no. 27 (1997), pp. 69–77.
Chris Gosden (with D. R. Harris and M. P. Charles), ‘Jeitun: Recent Excavations at an Early Neolithic Site in Southern Turkmenistan’, in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, Vol. LXII (1996), pp. 423–42.
Chris Gosden (with P. J. Matthews), ‘Plant Remains from Waterlogged Sites in the Arawe Islands, West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea: Implications for the History of Plant Use and Domestication’, in Economic Botany, Vol. LI, no. 2 (1997), pp. 121–33.
Chris Gosden (with John Edward Terrell and Terry L. Hunt), ‘The Dimensions of Social Life in the Pacific: Human Diversity and the Myth of the Primitive Isolate’, in Current Anthropology, Vol. XXXVIII, no. 2 (1997), pp. 155–95.
Emma Hook (with others), ‘Report of the ICOM-CC 11th Triennial Meeting’, in SSCR Journal: The Quarterly News Magazine of the Scottish Society for Conservation and Restoration, Vol. VII, no. 4 (November 1996), pp. 7–13.
Emma Hook (with Birgitte Speake), ‘Report on the ICOM-CC Triennial Meeting in Edinburgh 1–6 September 1996’, in ICOM UK News, no. 46 (March 1997), pp. 3–5.
Schuyler Jones, Tibetan Nomads: Environment, Pastoral Economy, and Material Culture (The Carlsberg Foundation’s Nomad Research Project), London: Thames & Hudson (1996).
Hélène La Rue, ‘Makereti’, in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), pp. 31–35.
Hélène La Rue, ‘Marie Antoinette Czaplicka’, in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), pp. 18–23.
Veronica Lawrence, ‘Dr Schuyler Jones’, in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), pp. 24–7.
Peter Mitchell, ‘Southern African Advanced Foragers’, in Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa: Archaeology, History, Languages, Cultures, and Environments, edited by Joseph O. Vogel, Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press (1997), pp. 341–6.
Peter Mitchell, ‘Lesotho Archaeology in the 1990s’, in World Archaeology Society Newsletter, Vol. V, no. 1 (1997), pp. vi–vii.
Peter Mitchell, Review of The Mabilles of Basutoland, by Edwin W. Smith (Morija, 1996), The African Book Publishing Record, Vol. XXIII, no. 1 (1997), p. 23.
Peter Mitchell, Review of A Guide to Morija, by Stephen Gill (Morija, 1995), in The African Book Publishing Record, Vol. XXIII, no. 1 (1997), p. 33.
Peter Mitchell, Review of Spirit of the Rocks, by Brenda Sullivan (Cape Town, 1995), in The African Book Publishing Record, Vol. XXIII, no. 3 (1997), p. 223.
Peter Mitchell (with J. N. F. Binneman), ‘Microwear Analysis of Robberg Bladelets from Sehonghong Shelter, Lesotho’, in Southern African Field Archaeology, Vol. VI (1997), pp. 42–9.
Peter Mitchell (with A. B. Esterhuysen), ‘Palaeoenvironmental and Archaeological Implications of Charcoal Assemblages from Holocene Sites in Western Lesotho, Southern Africa’, in Palaeoecology of Africa and the Surrounding Islands, Vol. XXIV (1997), pp. 203–32.
Julia Nicholson, The Japanese Collections: An Introduction, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996).
Julia Nicholson, ‘Ursula Graham Bower (Betts)’, in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), pp. 13–17.
Alison Petch (co-editor with Howard Morphy and John Mulvaney), ‘My Dear Spencer’: The Letters of F. J. Gillen to Baldwin Spencer, Melbourne: Hyland House (1997).
Alison Petch (with Howard Morphy and John Mulvaney), ‘Anthropological Partners: Selected Letters from F. J. Gillen to W. Baldwin Spencer’, in Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 5 (October 1996), pp. 65–84.
Alison Petch (editor), Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996).
Alison Petch, ‘Preface’, to Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), p. 1.
Alison Petch, ‘Mary Kingsley’, in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), pp. 28–30.
Alison Petch, ‘Spencer and Gillen’, in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), pp. 41–44.
Alison Petch, Letters from Central Australia: Correspondence between the Anthropologists F. J. Gillen and W. Baldwin Spencer, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996).
Alison Petch, The Early History of Lieutenant-General Pitt Rivers’s Collection and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1997).
Derek Roe, ‘Acheulean Tradition’, in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, edited by Brian M. Fagan and others, New York: Oxford University Press (1996), pp. 1–2.
Derek Roe, ‘Paleolithic: Lower and Middle Paleolithic’, in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, edited by Brian M. Fagan and others, New York: Oxford University Press (1996), pp. 552–3.
Derek Roe, ‘Summary and Overview’, in Plio-Pleistocene Archaeology, Vol 5 of Koobi Fora Research Project, edited by Glynn Ll. Isaac, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1997), pp. 544–67.
Derek Roe (with C. J. Proctor and others), ‘A Report on the Excavations at Rhinoceros Hole, Wookey’, in Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society, Vol. XX, no. 3 (1996), pp. 237–62.
Derek Roe (with C. M. Buckingham and K. Scott), ‘A Preliminary Report on the Stanton Harcourt Channel deposits (Oxfordshire, England): Geological Context, Vertebrate Remains and Palaeolithic Stone Artefacts,’ in Journal of Quaternary Science, Vol. XI, no. 5 (1996), pp. 397–415.
John Simmons, ‘F. W. Beechey and E. Belcher’, in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum, edited by Alison Petch, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), pp. 3–8.
Birgitte Speake (with Emma Hook), ‘Report on the ICOM-CC Triennial Meeting in Edinburgh 1–6 September 1996’, in ICOM UK News, no. 46 (March 1997), pp. 3–5.
Donald Tayler, ‘Neglected Plumes [review of Arts of the Amazon, edited by Barbara Braun (London, 1995)]’, in The Times Higher Educational Supplement, no. 1209 (5 January 1996), p. 20.
Donald Tayler, The Coming of the Sun: A Prologue to Ika Sacred Narrative (Pitt Rivers Museum Monograph 7), Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1997).
Kate White, ‘Collecting and Collectors: An Introduction’ in Collectors: Collecting for the Pitt Rivers Museum , Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum (1996), p. 2.
The James A. Swan Fund
This research fund, established out of a bequest by the late J. A. Swan, is for research work, either at the Museum or sponsored by the Museum, on the archaeological, historical, physical, and cultural nature of the Batwa, Bushmen, and Pygmy peoples and their prehistoric antecedents in Africa. The fund is administered by the Director of the Museum in consultation with the Professor of Biological Anthropology and the Professor of Social Anthropology. The balance at 1 August 1996 was £44,760. Payments from 1 August 1995 to 31 July 1996 amounted to £28,545. Nineteen grants were made, mostly ranging between £1,000 and £2,000.
Grants, Donations, and Sponsorship
Three grants were received towards the costs of the special exhibition Glimpses of Kyoto Life and the accompanying book. From the Daiwa Foundation: a grant of £1000 towards the costs of the exhibition. From the Idlewild Trust: a grant of £1500 towards the book. From the Sanderson Trust: a grant of £5000 towards the costs of both the exhibition and the book.
The following other grants and donations were also received during the year. From the Leventis Foundation: a grant of £1500 towards the cost of conservation work on the Museum’s collection of Cypriot archaeological material. From South Eastern Museums Service (SEMS), the Oxford Asian Textile Group, and the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM): grants to fund Lorraine Rostant’s participation in a six-week course on ‘The Scientific Principles of Textile Conservation’ organized by ICCROM and the National Museums of Hungary. From SEMS: grants of £2000 towards ‘the Cook project’ and £1695 towards the preparation and conservation of material for the forthcoming special exhibition Braving the Elements. From the University of Oxford’s Hulme fund: a grant of £3300 towards ‘the Cook project’. From the W. H. Delafield Charitable Trust: a grant of £4000 for the care, maintenance, and display of the collections.
Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum
The Friends lectures for the year were as follows: ‘Wine, Cheese, and Olives: The Origins of Civilization as we Know it’, by Andrew Sherratt (Ashmolean Museum and Institute of Archaeology, Oxford); ‘Materials, Mechanisms, and Magic: Culture and Technology through Toys’, by Robert Race (maker of moving toys and automata); ‘The Colours of India, East to West: The North-East Frontier and Rajasthan’, by Paul Harris (photojournalist); ‘Painted Books of Mexico: Recent Discoveries’, by Gordon Brotherston (Professor of Literature, Essex University); and ‘Lifting the Lid off Tuluma Boxes: Material Culture of the Pacific Atoll Environment’, by Beverley Lear (research student at the Museum).
The Beatrice Blackwood lecture, the Friends annual public lecture, was given by John Mack (Keeper of the Department of Ethnography of the British Museum (Museum of Mankind)) on 14 May 1997. His title was ‘Art, Divination, and Knowledge’. June Bedford introduced the speaker and Kenneth Kirkwood proposed the vote of thanks. There was an excellent attendance for this lecture. The Friends are most grateful to the administrator of the Inorganic Chemistry Department for allowing the use of the lecture theatre free of charge and to Catherine Fagg and her daughter, Angela, for hosting a supper for the speaker.
There were several other events during the year. In November some of the Friends attended the private view of the exhibition, Glimpses of Kyoto Life. Later some Friends attended a gallery talk on the exhibition given by John Lowe, the collector. In February, Bryan Alexander gave a gallery talk at the Balfour Building on the Nenet of Northern Siberia; his photographic exhibition, Arctic Lives, was on display in the Balfour Building at the time. In April there was a Friends visit to the Museum’s reserve collections at Osney, at the kind invitation of Bob Rivers and John Simmons. As for purely social events, the Christmas party in the Museum for Friends and their guests proved to be a great success. Mince pies and mulled wine provided the evening’s diet and entertainment was provided by African drums.
In November Friends helped with the fund-raising event, ‘Food for Thought, Food for Funds’, being active in the team that raised contributions for this event, organized the raffle, and helped on the evening. Friends also helped with the launch party at the Balfour Building for the book Rethinking Visual Anthropology, edited by Howard Morphy and Marcus Banks.
The AGM in June was held in the Quaternary Research Centre. It was announced that the membership stood at 265—exceeding the target figure of 250. The Chairman, Geoffrey Harrison, announced that Felicity Wood and Christine Wrigley would be stepping down from the Friends Council. Liz Yardley, who had been co-opted to the Council earlier in the year, agreed to be Secretary and Shahin Bekhradnia agreed to be Programme Co-ordinator. Three other new members of Council—Dymphna Hermans, Margaret Jenks, and Terry Wright—were welcomed by the meeting. It was announced that this year the Friends had contributed £1250 towards an automated collecting box, specially designed and made by Tim Hunkin. They had also paid for hardwood needed for the repair of two garden benches in the Baines music garden (£60). It was announced that, following the death of Friends’ patron Mary Leakey earlier in the year, Michael Palin had agreed to be a patron of the Friends. After the business meeting the Friends repaired to the Balfour Building. Refreshments were served and the Friends were able to listen to demonstrations by the tabla and Javanese gamelan groups.
Friends continued to help with the education service and a number of Friends contributed to the new training programme for guides. Friends helped to prepare education material related to the exhibition In Visible Light at Oxford’s Museum of Modern Art, and some Friends also attended the Museum Ethnographers Group conference on museums and education. Friends helped in the library of the Quaternary Research Centre and in the Balfour Library.
Felicity Wood was among those invited to speak at the AGM of the British Association of Friends of Museums, held at Kew in November. The theme was ‘Refreshing your Membership’. Felicity also conducted a small survey during Museums Week. This was part of a national survey to evaluate, amongst other things, the impact of Museums Week.
The Newsletter continued to be edited by Janet Sharpe. Liz Yardley continued to compile the back page. Sally Owen stepped down as co-ordinator of the Newsletter after the July issue. This was the Friends twenty-first issue and the milestone was celebrated by launching a new terracotta heading, designed by Isabella Whitworth. Felicity Wood became the Newsletter co-ordinator and acts as the Friends e-mail/WWW link.
