University Of Oxford
THE PITT RIVERS MUSEUM ANNUAL REPORT 1998 – 1999
Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum
as of 1 October 1998
The Vice-Chancellor (Dr C.R. Lucas)
The Senior Proctor (Professor R.W. Ainsworth)
The Junior Proctor (Dr M.W. Hart)
The Assessor (Dr A.M. Bowie)
Mr J. Flemming (Chairman)
Dr J.A. Bennett
Dr C.P.H. Brown
Professor B. Cunliffe
Dr C. Gosden
Professor A.S. Goudie
Dr J.M. Landers
Dr M. O’Hanlon
Professor D.J. Parkin
Professor P. Rivière
Dr S.J. Simpson
Dr P. Slack
Professor K.S. Thomson
The Pitt Rivers Museum
The Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum, having received from the Director the following report for the period 1 August 1998 to 31 July 1999, presented it as its annual report to Congregation.
Introduction
For the entirety of the period covered by this report the main museum was either absorbed in preparations for the closure for re-roofing or closed, which it was from 10 April 1999 for the rest of the reporting year. The scale of the work is substantial, the operation unusual, and the environment unique. Internally, the museum was scaffolded to the ceiling, leaving virtually all cases and artefacts in place, but protecting them with layers of tissue, bubble-wrap, and boxing. Externally, the museum was scaffolded and topped with a false roof. The opportunity is also being taken to redecorate much of the higher levels of the museum and to restore the Victorian upper-level ventilation system, though costs have forced the temporary abandonment of a more elaborate scheme to implement much-needed environmental controls.
Although the closure meant that visitor numbers and shop takings were substantially down on the previous year, the normal service to research visitors was nevertheless maintained as far as possible. Moreover, a vigorous programme of events and activities, with a particular focus on the Balfour Building (which remained open while the main museum was shut), was maintained. The Director of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History also generously made available cases in which to display a selection of objects from the collections while the museum itself was closed. Closer relations between the two museums were also fostered by two joint coffee mornings held for all the staff in both institutions. Meanwhile, in an effort to clarify the distinction in the minds of the public between the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Museum of Natural History, new signs were produced for the front porch of the latter. These sign both museums and provide clear colour-coded ground plans.
An international colloquium on ethnographic collecting, organized by the Director, was held at the Museum’s Research Centre. Among the invited discussants were the Museum’s two new lecturer–curators, Dr Clare Harris and Dr Laura Peers, to both of whom we extend a warm welcome. The Museum’s very successful Friday lunchtime seminar series also continued throughout the year (see Annex J for details). Clare Harris and Laura Peers have filled the vacancies left by the departure of Howard Morphy in 1996 and Donald Tayler this September. Donald joined the staff of the Museum in 1972 and saw many changes in the quarter-century he was here. The affection in which he is held by all the Museum’s staff was very evident at his retirement party in the Museum. Given the fact that the re-roofing project has been dominant in our minds this year, it was especially poignant to hear him reminisce about the days when the Museum still had a glass roof and how magical it was to walk around with the stars and moon shining in on the exhibits.
The Museum always owes much to its volunteers, to its energetic Friends, and to all its sponsors. This year it has owed more than usual to the staff of the University Surveyor’s office, as well as to its own technicians, conservators, and other dedicated staff.
Visitors
The total number of visitors to the main museum and the Balfour Building was 75,851. The figures for visitors to the Balfour Building were down, in part due to the unfortunately irregular opening times (the consequence of staff shortages) at the beginning of the year. The main museum attracted 10,609 visitors on booked educational visits in the first seven months of the year, a proportionally significant increase on the previous year. However, visits by the general public, compared month by month with the previous year, were down; no doubt as a consequence of the confusion caused by a postponement of the closure. During the year, 1624 primary school and 4149 secondary school pupils visited the main museum on booked visits. A further 722 pupils took advantage of the trails provided by the guiding service and occasional talks by members of staff. In addition, 3258 students from further and higher education institutions visited, as well as 4014 from language schools and adult organizations. The high proportion of tertiary-level students reflects the increasing reputation of the Museum as a significant teaching resource.
Despite large parts of the collections being inaccessible due to the building works, the documentation section tried to remain as helpful as possible to researchers and as a result dealt with more than 100 research visitors during the year. There were also some 60 visitors to the music collections. Among the many notable research visitors were Dr Innocent Pikirayi of the University of Zimbabwe, who surveyed the Museum’s archaeological holdings from Zimbabwe in general and from Khami in particular, and Dr Eric Venbrux of the University of Nijmegen, who made a detailed study of the H. K. Fry collection from the Tiwi Islands in Australia. Members of the documentation section gave introductory talks about the Museum’s systems and related matters to a number of visiting groups including staff from the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside and the Friends of the Museum voor Volkenkunde in Rotterdam. By special arrangement, documentation staff also coordinated a two-day programme of visits, talks, and seminars about the Museum and museological issues for graduate students from University College London.
The photograph and manuscript collections were visited by 87 scholars and students during the year, both to examine material and to discuss issues of curatorship, documentation, and representation. In itself this comprises a 10% increase over the previous year. However, it should be noted that there is an increasing tendency towards longer research visits of several days and thus towards increased use of the collections in real terms.
Exhibitions and Events
Last year’s major special exhibition, Braving the Elements: Conserving Plant-Fibre Clothing from Around the World, closed on 3 January 1999. It was followed by A Home of Signs and Wonders: A Photographic Work in Progress by Owen Logan, which ran from 22 January to 10 April 1999. The exhibition was a product of an ongoing photographic project in southern Nigeria by the Scottish photographer Owen Logan, whose work is concerned with the cultural, religious, and political experience of power and identity. The exhibition was intended to articulate current debates within academic visual anthropology and to make the visitor think about visual approaches to understanding culture. The exhibition was originally developed and toured in Nigeria by the British Council. We are very grateful to the British Council for their generous support and for allowing us to show the exhibition in Oxford. We are also grateful to Owen Logan himself for his collaboration in developing the version of the exhibition shown at the Museum.
While the main museum was shut, two display cases were made available in the University Museum for a temporary exhibition. Entitled Animals and Artefacts: Selections from the Pitt Rivers Museum Collection, this focused on representations of animals in material culture from around the world. Much of the background research for the exhibition was carried out by the students taking the graduate degrees in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography.
A wide-ranging series of photographic exhibitions was organized for the Balfour Building. The exhibition of Barbara Hind’s photographs, Going Home: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Mongolia, a collaborative project between the Museum and the Department of Lens-Based Media at De Montfort University, closed on 21 November (before being shown at Trinity House, Leicester, in February). It was followed by Imaginary Homecoming: Photographs by Jorma Puranen, which ran from 27 November 1998 to 12 March 1999. The Museum was privileged to be the venue for the largest ever exhibition of the work of this internationally acclaimed photographer. Puranen’s work is based on early photographs and the opportunity was taken to exhibit some of the Museum’s nineteenth-century photographs alongside Puranen’s work. We are most grateful to Jorma Puranen for his generosity in lending the Museum a set of prints of his photographs.
Imaginary Homecoming was followed by Pacific Islanders: Photographs by Evotia Tamua, which ran from 19 March to 12 June 1999. Many of Tamua’s photographs are about her own family and friends, offering slightly offbeat and affectionate insights into their lives. This was the first time that Tamua, who has been supported by the Pacific Islander Board of Creative New Zealand, has had her work shown in Britain.
Pacific Islanders was followed by West African Journeys: Photographs by Michael Pennie, which opened on 17 June 1999 (and is to continue into the next reporting period). The exhibition featured photographs taken by British sculptor Michael Pennie during ten journeys in West Africa between 1987 and 1999. Many explore African wood sculpture from his perspective as a sculptor. We are grateful to Southern Arts and Bath Spa University for their support of this exhibition.
Among other events during the year was a special Sunday opening at the Balfour Building on 16 May as part of National Museums Week. Under the title ‘Travellers Tales, Travellers Trails’, Museum staff and guides provided an afternoon of family activities, trails, talks, videos, and stories. The guides organized children’s activities based on the permanent displays of Inuit material and Clare Harris and Chris Gosden gave illustrated talks and answered questions about their fieldwork. The series of ‘Pitt Stops’ continued throughout the year. One of the most popular, entitled ‘Play It Again Sam’, featured a demonstration of mechanical musical instruments. Hélène La Rue also organized a series of musical events under the title ‘Cornucopia’ at the Ashmolean and the Bate Collection, as well as at the Pitt Rivers. A gamelan weekend and summer school were also held at the Balfour Building. On 20 May, the University’s Department of Continuing Education held a day school about General Pitt Rivers entitled ‘Pitt Rivers: The Man and the Museum’. Several members of the Museum’s staff spoke during the day and in the evening a reception was held in the main museum for the 100 or so participants.
Just after the main museum closed in April, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a week-long series of five fifteen-minute programmes on the Museum’s collections, each programme being presented by a different enthusiast. For example, Tim Hunkin spoke about the inspiration behind the automated collecting box he made for the Museum, while P. D. James spoke about the Fijian necklace that features in one of her novels. A short extract from the series was repeated on ‘Pick of the Week’. The series provided the Museum with excellent national publicity. It also led to some good-natured professional envy, as few other museums have been so favoured by a national broadcaster. It is hoped the series will be repeated after the main museum reopens.
Collections
Acquisitions
Among the more significant new acquisitions during the year were: an album of black-and-white photographs taken by Mrs Rhoda Cowen in Nigeria in the late 1930s; a collection of several hundred photographs and some 8mm film shot in Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet in the 1940s; and a general material culture collection from the Turkana of northern Kenya, presented by the journalist and broadcaster George Monbiot. A list of the new acquisitions during the year is given in Annex B.
Loans
A number of items that had been on loan to other institutions were returned this year. The veranda post carved by the Yoruba master-sculptor Olowe of Ise that had been lent to the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, for the exhibition Olowe of Ise: A Yoruba Sculptor to Kings was returned in September. The objects relating to Indian Ocean trade that had been lent to the Museu Nacional de Arte Antigua, Lisbon, for the exhibition Cultures of the Indian Ocean, were also returned in September. The portraits of Ngairo Rakai Hikuroa and Ana Rupene by Gottfried Lindauer that had been lent to the British Museum for the exhibition Maori were returned in November.
A number of new loans were also arranged. In September, fifty-four items from the photographic collections were lent to the Barbican Art Gallery, London for the exhibition Native Nations: Journeys in American Photography. The Museum was the second largest lender to the exhibition after the Smithsonian Institution and it was pleasing to have such a prominent show-case, including national press coverage, for the Museum’s photograph collections. The material was returned in January. In November, a club that once belonged to Chief Bungaree was lent to the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales for the exhibition at the Museum of Sydney of Flesh and Blood: Family Connections in Sydney 1788–1998; it was returned in May. Also in May three Zande (Central African) harps were lent to the Musée de la Musique in Paris for the exhibition ‘La Parole du Fleuve’: Harpes d’Afrique; they are due to be returned in the next reporting year.
Cataloguing and Collections Research
With the appointment of Alison Petch to a new temporary, half-time, post of Registrar, it was possible to introduce a number of improvements to the Museum’s accessioning procedures. In addition, all recently acquired object collections were processed. With funding in the form of a grant from the Pilgrim Trust, Alison Petch also started work in January on a nine-month project to computerize the records for the objects transferred from the Ashmolean Museum to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1886. With funding from a Jerwood/Museums and Galleries Commission Cataloguing Grant, Jeremy Coote also began work in January on a one-year project to prepare a catalogue of the Forster collection, the Museum’s collection of artefacts from Captain Cook’s second voyage. In March, the project was selected by the Humanities Computing Development Team (of the Humanities Computing Unit at the Oxford University Computing Service) as a project for development in 1999–2000. This will enable the development of an on-line resource devoted to the collection. Records were computerized for a number of other collections, including the material collected by Beatrice Blackwood among the Anga; archaeological material from Cape Verde; the collections made by Barbara Freire-Marreco in the south-western United States; and the Tibetan collections.
Work continued on a number of longer-term cataloguing projects during the year. Marina de Alarcón continued her work on, and research into, the Museum’s holdings of Cypriot archaeological material. In connection with this project, Dr Evanthia Baboula of Lincoln College, Oxford studied the metalwork in the collection, which was also subjected to electron probe microanalysis by Dr Peter Northover of the Department of Materials. Marina de Alarcón also located, numbered, and catalogued the Museum’s collection of Southern African rock art and related materials. The Museum has an extensive collection of copies of southern African rock art, including a large number made by Louis Tylor in the late nineteenth century in the Drakensberg Mountains of KwaZulu–Natal, as well as early twentieth-century photographs of paintings in South Africa and Zimbabwe, rubbings of rock engravings in the South African interior and tracings of paintings from Ntlo Kholo, Lesotho. Research into the history and significance of the collection was carried out by John Hobart under the supervision of Peter Mitchell, with funding from the James A. Swan Fund. Meanwhile, Jeremy Coote continued as official collaborator on ‘Systematic Studies of Isotopic Signals in Modern Humans and their Application to Palaeodietary Reconstruction’, a project being undertaken by Dr Tamsin O’Connell of the University of Oxford’s Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art. As part of his contribution to the project, and with the assistance of volunteer Meghan O’Brien, he located, numbered, and catalogued the Museum’s collection of hair samples. Minute samples from a selection of these were then subjected to isotopic analysis by Dr O’Connell.
Following completion of a project on the history and significance of the southern African Stone Age collections of the British Museum, Peter Mitchell has made a start on a comparable project within the Pitt Rivers Museum, building on the historical and biographical research already undertaken. The initial focus is the mid-nineteenth century collections from the Eastern Cape Province, which are among the earliest stone artefacts to have been recognized as such in southern Africa.
Progress with cataloguing the photographic and manuscript collections continued to be hampered by the acute staff limits. Photographic collections often need many months of careful and informed collation before cataloguing or documentation can even begin. Although new accessions are inventoried in as much detail as possible and catalogued and documented as soon as possible, it is impossible at present to tackle major backlogs. The situation has been exacerbated by the absorption into the photographic collections of historic lantern slides and related photographic material that had been used in teaching by Beatrice Blackwood and others. This all needs careful appraisal before any cataloguing work can begin. It should also be noted that the lack of a basic research library at 64 Banbury Road means that staff cataloguing time is not used as efficiently as it could be; a point that should give pause for thought before contemplating any wholesale transfer of the Balfour Library off the Museum’s main site.
Despite these problems, work has continued on streamlining the documentation. A retrospective numbering system, integrated with the accessioning system for objects, has been implemented after a successful pilot project. This has allowed easier retrieval and closer integration with the object collections. In conjunction with preparing material for loan to the Barbican, much work was done to enhance the documentation of the North American collections. Christopher Morton completed the catalogue of the Nash collection of photographs and began work on a full database for nineteenth- and early twentieth-century South African material. Gwyneira Isaac began work on the records for material from the southwest United States, while Elizabeth Edwards continued work—as time allowed—on the early Pacific photographs, especially the Wood and Acland collections. Good progress was also made on the locations index. Details of the Ettlinger, Jameson, Caton-Thompson, and Spencer Chapman manuscript collections were added to the database.
Conservation
The conservation section finally moved into the new laboratory in February 1999, six months later than had been originally anticipated. The new facilities offer better environmental and working conditions, though the location of the new premises a mile away from the main museum makes the transportation of objects very problematic and time-consuming. In the adjacent textile and footwear store a rolling programme of improving the storage conditions has been implemented. The wooden storage cabinets will gradually be replaced with state-of-the-art metal ones, giving safer storage and access. The storage of the footwear has also been upgraded; 292 pairs and single shoes having been photographed and packed in their own acid-free boxes. Conservation staff were heavily involved in the re-roofing project. Lack of funding has led to only a partial implementation of the recommendations made in the original Short/Ford report on the environmental conditions of the building. The roof will be insulated and its glass panels removed. The louvres, long in disuse, will be upgraded and fitted with a new manual mechanism. In this way it will be possible to open and close them in response to conditions within the museum. The original plan to introduce ventilation at ground level to improve air flow in the building has been postponed. Prior to the building work, the objects within the Museum were protected from the possibilities of accidental damage: the ceramics were packed and all the cases protected with layers of bubble-pack, plywood, and heavy-duty polythene.
Once the scaffolding was erected it was possible to reach some of the larger objects on open display, such as the outrigger from East Africa and the dugout canoe from India, and to remove the years of accumulated dust and debris. During building work, conservation staff are also carrying out a survey to monitor the dust levels in different areas in the main museum. This will continue for some time after the work has finished so as to give comparative results, which it is hoped will be useful to other institutions contemplating building work.
Throughout these upheavals, the day-to-day work of the section has continued. More than 160 objects have received remedial treatment. The majority of the targets set in last year’s forward plan have been achieved. Those that are outstanding form part of the continuous work of the section, such as the ongoing survey of the collections for evidence of pest activity. The methodology and recording of results have been put on a more systematic basis by Robert Pearce, who has produced an excellent report with recommendations generated from the previous year’s findings. It is hoped to extend the pest survey to include the collections housed in the Power House and the textile store. Eventually, all the Museum’s objects will be surveyed annually.
Balfour Library
Library staff continued the process of retrospective conversion of manual records and a greater proportion of material has been ordered using OLIS Acquisitions. Use of e-mail facilitated contact with readers, and Internet-searching has helped with sourcing out-of-print books. Stock-taking and the rearrangement of the author card catalogues have improved stock control. Library assistant Elizabeth Carr successfully obtained a City & Guilds Certificate in Library Assistance. We have continued to be helped by the NADFAS conservation volunteers and by the Friends cataloguing team working at 60 Banbury Road.
Public Education
Work continued during the year on the Museum’s Access, Education, and Guiding Service policies and final drafts of these important documents were approved.
Education Services
A series of five training sessions was arranged for the Guiding Service. In September members of the academic staff led a discussion about sensitive issues concerning the interpretation of the collections to the public, such as the display of human remains, the colonial history behind the acquisition of some material, and the importance of using appropriate language. In January documentation staff explained the processes by which objects are recorded in the databases and how the records can be retrieved. Two further sessions focused on the North American and Tibetan collections and provided a chance for the guides to meet the new lecturer–curators. The last session focused on the Music Makers Gallery, as part of the preparations for developing new trails based on these displays.
In November the third in the series of ‘familiarization days’ for representatives of local language schools took place; this included a talk in the museum. The City’s tourism manager reported favourable feedback from national operators to this initiative, which had developed out of the Museum’s long-felt need to improve the management of visits by groups of overseas students.
During the year Anne Stevenson was commissioned by the Museum to conduct a survey to evaluate the use of the Museum by primary schools and to identify activities and facilities most requested by teachers. She interviewed teachers from schools that both do and do not currently use the Museum and produced a detailed report that will be extremely valuable for the future planning of education services. One of the report’s conclusions was that teachers who work with children with special educational needs and learning disabilities would like to bring their pupils, but feel excluded. As a result of this, arrangements have been made for a group of children from the Mabel Pritchard School to visit the Music Makers Gallery in the New Year.
Guided Tours
Owing to the closure of the main museum, guiding activities were limited to the autumn term and half of the spring term. The numbers of children on guided visits were 448 for the autumn term and 138 for the spring term. All these parties were in the 7–11 age group, and were mainly covering the subjects laid down in the national curriculum. There were no visits from GCSE or A-level art groups during the year. The visiting schools came from Oxfordshire and the adjoining counties; a great many were repeat visits, but the service continues to attract new schools, including a group with special educational needs, and even a large family group with parents. Amongst the adult groups were the Oxford Newcomers Club; the Business School, University of Hertfordshire; and a group from Asia House, London. The group of guides remains very small. While the main museum is closed, we feel we are not in a position to recruit more members.
Voluntary Assistance
The Museum is extremely reliant on and grateful to the volunteers who have given their time during the year. Individual acknowledgements are made in Annex C.
Friends
The Friends of the Museum continue to flourish and to give generous support to the Museum. A report from the Honorary Secretary is included as Annex D.
Teaching and Examining
The main University teaching and examining duties undertaken by members of the Museum’s staff were for the undergraduate degrees in Archaeology and Anthropology, Human Sciences, and Geography; the M.St. and M.Phil. degrees in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography; and variously for M.St., M.Phil., and D.Phil candidates in Social Anthropology, History of Art and Visual Culture, Archaeology, and Music. Details for this year are given in Annex E.
Staff
The staff of the Museum over the period of this report are listed in Annex F. An account of staff activities is given in Annex G. Publications by the Museum’s staff continue to be extensive in both number and range: these are listed in Annex H.
Museum Publications
There were no new Museum publications or reprints during the year.
Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre
A report on the work of the Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre from Professor Roe, its Honorary Director, is given in Annex I.
Estate
The major estate matters over the reporting period were the re-roofing and the movement of the conservation laboratory and textiles store to new premises. Both of these matters are covered elsewhere in this report.
Miscellaneous Financial Matters
The James A. Swan Fund
The Pitt Rivers Museum sponsors archaeological and anthropological fieldwork within areas of interest to the late James A. Swan, including the Later Stone Age prehistory of southern Africa and the study of the contemporary Bushman and Pygmy peoples of Africa. Research on museum collections relating to these fields may also be supported, as may the costs of publishing the results of fieldwork that has been aided by the Fund. The terms of operation of the Fund were revised during the year and a single closing date of 1 March introduced as from 1999. Details of the terms of the Fund were advertised in key journals in the field.
This year fourteen applications were received and nine grants were awarded to a total of £12,376; the average grant was £1375. In addition, part of the Fund has been used to support research on the southern African rock art collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum itself. External grants were awarded to: Dr L. Bartram, University of Cape Town (spatial analysis of Dunefield Midden, South Africa); Mr C. Coffland, Washington State University (demography and kinship relations of Pygmies in Gabon); Dr M. Dobres, University of South Carolina (analysis of bone artefacts from Elands Bay Cave, South Africa); Mr P. Jolly, University of Cape Town (rock art of the Contact Period in Lesotho); Mr A. Manhire, University of Cape Town (radiocarbon dating of painted shelters, Cedarberg Mountains, South Africa); Mr S. Mguni, University of the Witwatersrand (recording of rock art in the Matopo Hills, Zimbabwe); Dr K. Sadr, University of Botswana (early pastoralism in southern Africa); Ms M. van der Ryst, University of South Africa (Later Stone Age of the Waterberg, South Africa); and Ms B. Williamson, University of the Witwatersrand (residue analysis of Later Stone Age stone tools from Rose Cottage Cave, South Africa).
Grants
The following are gratefully acknowledged: a grant of £82,639 from the Economic and Social Research Council to fund a three-year study by Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles of ‘Material Culture and Colonialism in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea’; a grant of £11,600 from the Arts and Humanities Research Board to Peter Mitchell for post-excavation analysis of artefacts and charcoals from an open-air Later Stone Age site at Likoaeeng, Lesotho; a grant of £10,000 from the Pilgrim Trust to fund the computerization of the records for the material transferred from the Ashmolean to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1886; a grant of £10,000 from the Jerwood/Museums and Galleries Commission Cataloguing Grants Scheme 1997–98 to produce a catalogue of the Forster collection of material brought back from Captain Cook’s second famous voyage of discovery; grants of £5000 and £4000 from the W. H. Delafield Charitable Trust for the care of the collections; a grant of £3500 from the British Academy to Chris Gosden for work by himself and Chantal Knowles on material in the Australian Museum, Sydney and the Australian Archives, Canberra; a grant of £2000 from the Roman Research Trust to fund excavations by Chris Gosden, and Gary Lock of the Institute of Archaeology, at Alfred’s Castle, Oxfordshire; a grant of £900 from the British Academy to fund the travel costs of those attending the colloquium organized by the Director; a grant from the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum towards the cost of two new textile storage cabinets; an International Travel Grant from the Museum and Galleries Commission (MGC) towards Lorraine Rostant’s travel expenses during her study tour in Australia; and a second MGC International Travel Grant and Travel Bursary from the Committee for Conservation of the International Council of Museums (ICOM–CC) towards Birgitte Speake’s travel expenses in attending the ICOM–CC conference in Lyon.
Collecting Box
The sum of £2915 was received through the collecting box during the year. This is, of course, less than the previous year, but still provides a useful sum to offset the loss in revenue usually provided by the shop.
Museum Shops
The shops’ net takings were £4208, significantly less than in 1997–98 due to the loss of four of the best trading months of the year. However, after deducting the full year’s overheads, the shops were still nearly £1500 in profit. Stocks were transferred to the Balfour Building after the stocktake, and many items were reduced in order to clear the cupboards for restocking in the new year.
Photographic Services
There has been a good deal of pressure on the service this year to meet demands created by internal research projects and new accessions, as well as recording the displays prior to and during the process of wrapping and encasing them. Nevertheless, the sale of prints and reproduction rights produced a net income of £5731, an increase of more than £1500 on the previous year.
Annex A
The Pitt Rivers Museum
The Pitt Rivers Museum is an ethnographic and archaeological museum of international standing with more than 100,000 visitors a year. The Museum is also an important centre of research with a strong role in the University’s teaching of anthropology and archaeology. It has more than forty staff.
The Museum takes its name from General Pitt Rivers, who in 1884 donated an ethnographic and archaeological collection of some 20,000 objects to the University. The collection has since been extensively added to and today numbers some 400,000 artefacts (275,000 objects, 125,000 historical photographs), making it second in size only to the Department of Ethnography at the British Museum. The Museum is noted for the density of its displays, which are arranged by artefact category and activity rather than by cultural area, as most ethnographic museums are. The Museum also holds some 60 collections of manuscripts. Its Balfour Library specializes in cultural anthropology and museology.
The Museum’s operations are distributed over five sites. Two of these are visitor attractions. The main museum, a Victorian building entered through the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in Parks Road, is acknowledged to be a cultural artefact in its own right, ‘a museum of museums’. This is complemented by the Balfour Building beside 60 Banbury Road, which opened in 1986 and currently houses displays devoted to musical instruments and to hunter–gatherers past and present. The main museum and the Balfour Building are open to members of the public free of charge from 1.00 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. Monday to Saturday; both sites also cater for pre-booked educational parties from 10.00 a.m. to 12.00 noon, Tuesday to Friday.
Two further sites are major repositories: one at the old power house at Osney and the other at the recently converted old rifle range site off St Cross Road. The latter houses the conservation laboratory and the reserve collections of textiles and associated material together with research facilities for studying them. Reserve collections of musical instruments and archaeology collections are housed at 60 Banbury Road, which is also home to the Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre. Though the latter is formally attached to the Museum, and meagrely financed from its budget, it is in effect a largely independent institute with its own honorary director.
The fifth and final site is the Pitt Rivers Museum Research Centre at 64 Banbury Road. This accommodates the photograph and manuscript collections and attached research facilities, as well as the offices of most of the teaching staff, and associated facilities.
Annex B
Acquisitions
Purchases
A small collection of manuscripts relevant to the history of the collections was acquired by purchase.
Donations
The following donations are gratefully acknowledged:
To the Museum:
Jean Brown (a kit for shaping cow-horns, from the Pokot of northern Kenya; 1999.15); Mrs R.E. Clausen (a collection of objects from Vanuatu; 1999.6); Rupert Cook (a Portuguese ox-yoke; 1999.21); Mrs Rhoda Cowen (a collection of tracings of uli (women’s body-painting) motifs, Ibo, Nigeria; 1998.38 / a photograph album; 1999.14); Dr. H.G.A. Hughes (ornaments from Micronesia; 1998.36); the Institute of Archaeology, University of London (duplicates of Indian kite string-reels in the Museum’s collections, made by students in 1998; 1999.9); George Monbiot (a collection of Turkana material culture; 1999.20); Jeremy Montagu (a collection from Papua New Guinea; 1999.7); Masami Motohashi (three examples of Japanese calligraphy, including a poem scroll; 1998.29); Kenji Nakamura (an eel-trap and a tea-cup from Japan; 1999.17); Mrs Ovenell (a pair of shoes; 1998.31 / a photographic print from British Guiana, circa 1905); Sheila Paine (a carpet from Central Asia; 1999.5); Alan W. Pennington (model reindeer and a kayak from Labrador, Canada; 1999.22); Daphne Randall (two puppets and a weight from Myanmar (Burma); 1999.16); Mrs Raybould (six miniature wax puppets and an embroidered jacket; 1998.37); Professor Paul Raymaekers (a Moroccan slave manacle; 1998.32); Dr G. and Mrs A. Reichel-Dolmatoff (a pipe from the Colombia–Venezuela border; 1998.34); Professor Peter Rivière (a musical instrument from Brazil; 1999.3); Joachim Schmid (a mug made from a lager can; 1999.10); Aritaka Senzan (a Japanese engagement set; 1998.30); William F. Snow (a collection of musical instruments from The Gambia and East Africa; 1998.41); Sir Richard Southwood (two framed sets of model masks from Korea; 1998.40); Ms Diana Hughes H. Staunton (photographic material from Tibet, Bhutan and Sikkim, dating to 1940–42); Miss E. R. Tattersall (a painting on cloth by Michael Ayodele and an embroidery by an in-patient at a mission hospital in Nigeria; 1999.1); Dr Donald Tayler (two ox-yokes from the Asturias, Spain, a blow-gun case and darts from north-west Amazonia; 1998.33 / a plant fibre hat, probably from the Northwest Coast of America; 1999.2); Roger Taylor (a collection of 140 glass plates from Borneo and Sarawak, circa 1900, by an as yet unknown photographer); Dr Anthony R. Walker (a milk-churning stick from the Toda, Southern India, and a model house from Chiang Mai Province, Thailand; 1998.35); and Dr and Mrs Anthony Wrixon (objects from Uganda and Lesotho; 1999.4).
To the Library:
The library gratefully received a large bequest of books, mainly on North American subjects from Newton Turvey. Donations were also received from Monisha Ahmed, Julie Anderson, June Bedford, the Bodleian Library, Sally Chilver, Jeremy Coote, Rhoda Cowen, Elizabeth Edwards, Kepe Fernandez de Larrière, Bernard Gardi, Peter Gathercole, Eva Gillies, R. F. Gombrich, Chris Holdsworth, Patricia House, the Indian Institute Library (Oxford), the Institute for Chinese Studies Library (Oxford), Schuyler Jones, Vassos Karageorghis, Lady Margaret Hall Library, Latin American Centre Library (Oxford), Hélène La Rue, Rosemary Lee, Alan MacFarlane, Linda Mowat, Paul Raymaekers, P. J. Riis, Peter Rivière, Julia Tredwell, the Tylor Library (Oxford), Steven Vertovec, G. Westlake, and Kate White
Annex C
Volunteers
We are, as always, extremely grateful to Mrs Audrey Smith and Mrs Ruth Wickett for their invaluable work on the manuscript collections. This year they have finished work on the Penniman papers and enhanced the cataloguing of a number of other collections, preparing them for database entry, numbering, and repairing as they worked their way through them. They have also started work on the Donald Baden-Powell manuscripts. They are an invaluable and irreplaceable part of the team. Without them no work on the manuscript collections would be possible. We are also grateful to Neil Rogerson and Isobel Edwards for voluntary work on the locations index for the photographic collections. We are grateful to Meghan O’Brien, one of the Museum’s doctoral students, who provided valuable help over the summer with a number of documentation projects, and to Ahmed Abd Al Rahman, Li Lisha, Brenda Neece, and Robert Pacey for their contributions to the ‘Cornucopia’ series of musical events.
Sophie Rowe, a third-year conservation student from the Institute of Archaeology in London, spent four weeks working in the conservation section as part of her final training. Among the projects she undertook was analysis of the pigments used in the decoration of ‘The Life of Many Shots’, the famous North American painted skin cape that hangs prominently in the Court of the main museum.
Annex D
Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum
(Report By Liz Yardley, Honorary Secretary)
The very well attended Friends’ annual public event, the Beatrice Blackwood Lecture, was given by Dr Jessica Rawson, Warden of Merton College. Entitled ‘Ancestral Spirits and Extraordinary Deities: Religious Change in Ancient China’, the lecture was as usual recorded for the archives. The Friends are most grateful to the Administrator of the Inorganic Chemistry Department for once again allowing the use of the lecture theatre free of charge, to Jose Allen for arranging the audio-taping of the lecture, and to Dymphna Hermans and the Warden of All Souls for hosting the supper for the speaker.
The Annual General Meeting was held at the Museum’s Research Centre in June. The Treasurer reported a healthy £10,190 in funds. Of this £5000 is earmarked as matching funding for grant applications for the Museum’s education service. A further £1500 has been set aside to inaugurate the Kenneth Kirkwood Memorial Trust to help finance research and travel, not covered by other Museum funds. Deborah Kirkwood thanked the Friends for this fitting memorial to her late husband. A donation of £1000 has been made to the Museum for a new display case. Membership continues to increase and now stands at 371 individuals. The Chairman, Geoffrey Harrison, thanked two retiring Council members for their service: Tim Brierly, who has given excellent service as Treasurer over the past six years, and Dennis Shaw, a long-time supporter and Council member, who has been a source of invaluable advice. The meeting was followed by ‘The Anthropologist’s A to Z of Tibet’, a lively and entertaining illustrated talk by Clare Harris.
The Friends enjoyed a varied and most interesting programme of lectures during the year. This included: ‘Threads of Continuity and Change: Field Research and Collecting Textiles in Thailand and Burma’, by Sandra Dudley (D.Phil. student at the Museum); ‘Persian Steel Working: Techniques and Motifs’, by James Allan (Department of Eastern Art, Ashmolean Museum); ‘Medusa’s Art: Interpreting Melanesian Shields’, by Michael O’Hanlon (Director, Pitt Rivers Museum); ‘Gender Division of Labour in Rural Uganda’, by Elinor Chemonges (Rhodes Scholar, St Cross College); and ‘Dancing with the Devil: Cultural Syncretism in the Hispanic Caribbean’, by Paul Henley (Director, Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester). An additional summer lecture was given by visiting anthropologist and Andean textile expert, Ed Franquemont.
A Saturday morning gallery talk on the temporary exhibition Home of Signs and Wonders: Photographs and Digital Images by Owen Logan was given by Elizabeth Edwards. Friends also enjoyed three ‘away days’: a trip to London to see the Maori and Native Nations exhibitions; a trip to Cambridge to see the Torres Strait Islanders exhibition; and a trip to Kew to visit the Gardens, the newly refurbished museum, and the store.
The Christmas party was held in the main museum. It included an entertainment by Gloucestershire-based puppeteer Donald Workman using replicas of the famous Walter Wilkinson puppets. Friends were again most generous with donations of food and raffle prizes—and a good profit was made for the Friends’ funds. The ‘Balfour Book Bonanza’, a sale of second-hand books organized by Felicity Wood and Julia Cousins, raised more than £500 for the Education Fund.
The October 1999 issue of the Newsletter will be the last one to be edited by Janet Sharp and co-ordinated by Felicity Wood. The Friends are enormously grateful to Janet and Felicity for their long and distinguished service in producing the Newsletter, which won the ‘Liveliest Newsletter’ award of the British Association of Friends of Museums during their time. Deborah Manley has taken over as the new editor, while Liz Yardley will continue to compile the back page
Annex E
Teaching and Examining
Jeremy Coote co-ordinated the seminar series ‘Introduction to the Pitt Rivers Museum’ for the M.Sc./M.Phil. students in Ethnology and Museum Ethnography and supervised three doctoral students for the Faculty of Anthropology and Geography and the Committee for Archaeology.
Elizabeth Edwards gave lectures, seminars, tutorials, and supervisions in critical history and theory of still photography within visual anthropology and museology to graduate students at all levels in the Ethnology and Museum Ethnography programme and to a small but increasing number of students from other faculties, especially History.
Chris Gosden lectured in the series ‘People, Environment, and Culture’, ‘Material Culture, Art, and Society’, ‘The Nature of Archaeological Enquiry’, and ‘Material Culture in Papua New Guinea: Material Culture and the Anthropology of Things’ and gave tutorials to both undergraduates and graduates. He supervised eighteen graduate students at various levels.
Clare Harris lectured in the series ‘People, Environment, and Culture’ and ‘Material Culture, Art, and Aesthetics’, taught the M.Sc. option ‘Art and Society’, and was a discussant at the weekly M.Phil. research class throughout the year. She gave tutorials to both undergraduates and graduates and supervised four graduate students at various levels. She also served as assessor for papers in the M.Sc./M.Phil. examinations and examined an Oxford D.Phil. thesis. She examined theses at the Royal College of Art and De Montfort University.
Chantal Knowles lectured in the series ‘Material Culture in Papua New Guinea: Material Culture and the Anthropology of Things’.
Hélène La Rue taught courses in ethnomusicology (for anthropology students) and on musical instruments in culture (for music students).
Peter Mitchell lectured for the undergraduate degree in Archaeology & Anthropology and co-ordinated the Honour Moderations courses ‘Introduction to World Archaeology’ and ‘Evolution, Environment, and Culture’. He served as an examiner for the M.St. in World Archaeology and as an assessor for the Final Honour School in Archaeology & Anthropology.
Michael O’Hanlon co-chaired the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology’s departmenal seminar series in Michaelmas term and chaired the Museum’s Friday lunchtime seminar series in Michaelmas and Hilary terms. He lectured in the series ‘People, Environment, and Culture’ and ‘Material Culture, Art, and Aesthetics’, gave tutorials to graduate students, and examined a D.Phil. thesis.
Laura Peers lectured in the series ‘People, Environment, and Culture’, ‘Material Culture, Art, and Aesthetics’, and ‘Fieldwork and Research Methods’ and taught the M.Sc. option ‘Museum Studies’. She gave tutorials to both undergraduates and graduates and supervised eight graduate students at various levels.
Derek Roe gave courses on Palaeolithic Archaeology and associated topics for graduates taking the M.St. and M.Phil. qualifying courses, and for undergraduates taking certain Final Honours School options in Archaeology & Anthropology and Geography. He also gave special lectures and practical classes for first- and second-year undergraduates in Archaeology & Anthropology. He supervised two doctoral research students. He served as Examiner for Honour Moderations in Archaeology & Anthropology, and as Assessor for the Final Honours School in Archaeology & Anthropology, and for the M.St. and M. Phil. in European Archaeology. He served as Director of Graduate Studies for the Committee for Archaeology.
Annex F
Staff List
(Part-time staff are indicated by * and staff on temporary contract by +.)
Director Michael O’Hanlon
Administration Julia Cousins (Administrator)
Sue Brooks (Administrative Assistant)
Christina Fox (Museum Secretary)
Marketing Kate White (Marketing and Visitor Services Officer)
Shirley Careford (Shop Manager)
Lecturer–Curators Chris Gosden
Clare Harris (from October 1998)
Hélène La Rue (also Curator of the Bate Collection)
Peter Mitchell
Laura Peers (from October 1998)
Donald Tayler (to September 1998)
Lecturer Derek Roe
Assistant Curators Jeremy Coote*
Elizabeth Edwards*
Julia Nicholson*
Registrar Alison Petch+
Museum Assistants Marina de Alarcón
Chris Morton (to September 1998)*/+
Gwyneira Issac (from September 1998)*/+
Claire Warrior (to September 1998)+
Conservation Birgitte Speake (Head of Conservation)
Lorraine Rostant
Robert Pearce
Technical Services Bob Rivers (Head of Technical Services & Head Technician)
Caspar Muncaster+
Andy Munsch
John Simmons
John Todd
Photography Malcolm Osman
ICT Haas Ezzet
Library Mark Dickerson (Balfour Librarian)
Elizabeth Carr*
Ione Tayler (to June 1999)*
Chantal Knowles (November 1998)*/+
Security Staff Neil Owen
Sue Phillips+
Peter Stimpson
Roger Taylor (from August 1998)
David Turvey
Norman Weller (to January 1999)
Brian Winkfield
Caretaker Sandy Fowlie (to December 1998)
(at 64 Banbury Road) Norman Weller (from January 1999)
Researchers Chantal Knowles (Leverhulme/ESRC)+
(fixed-term) John Hobart (Swan Fund)*/+
Gwyneira Isaac (ESRC)+
Chris Morton (Hulme University Fund)*/+
Katherine Scott (ARC Limited)+
Julie Scott-Jackson (Company Services Associates)+
Annex G
Staff Activities
Jeremy Coote made research visits to the National Museum of Natural History and the National Anthropological Archives in Washington, DC, in September. Later in the year he made research visits to the Natural History Museum in London, the British Library, the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, and the BBC Written Archives at Caversham. In August he attended the Museum Ethnographers Group meeting at the British Museum to see and hear about the Maori exhibition. In May he attended ‘Glimpses of Africa: Museums, Scholarship, and Popular Culture’ a joint conference of the Horniman Museum and Gardens and the UK Museums Ethnographers Group. With Chris Morton, he presented a paper comparing and contrasting the intentions, style, and effects of two of the Museum’s special exhibitions: Art from the Guinea Coast (1965) and Kuba Textiles (1995). In June he attended a special meeting of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology’s North East Africa Seminar held to mark the publication of the Special Issue of JASO: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford in Memory of Godfrey Lienhardt. At this special event he introduced and presented some further previously unpublished work by Godfrey Lienhardt that, with Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi, he is preparing for publication. He also continued to serve as an Associate Editor of JASO.
Elizabeth Edwards had an unusually busy and demanding year. In July she gave the opening keynote address ‘Photography and the Performance of History’ at the international conference ‘Encounters with Photography’ in Cape Town, South Africa. She took the opportunity to meet colleagues from the University of the Western Cape to discuss common interests and possible collaborations. She also gave a live radio interview for an arts programme on Fine Music Radio, Cape Town. She gave invited papers at a number of other international conferences: the ‘Torres Strait Expedition Centenary Conference: Anthropology and Psychology’ at St John’s College, Cambridge; the ‘Islands: Histories and Representations’ conference at the University of Kent; and ‘The Conditions of Photography’ conference at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. She also gave invited papers at the meeting of the Pacific Arts Association in Cambridge and at ‘Glimpses of Africa: Museums, Scholarship, and Popular Culture’ a joint conference of the Horniman Museum and Gardens and the UK Museums Ethnographers Group. She acted as moderator for a session at the ‘Vision/Witness/Profession’ conference held at Goldsmiths College, University of London in conjunction with the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival; and gave an invited workshop paper on new approaches to curating anthropological photographs at the same event. During the course of the year she gave seminars and lectures at University College London, the University of Wales, De Montfort University, the University of Cape Town, the V&A/RCA History of Design Research Programme, and the University of Brighton. She gave papers in the series ‘Empire, Race and Culture’ at St Antony’s College Oxford, the ‘Hunting the Gatherers’ colloquium held at the Museum in May, and in the Museum’s Friday lunchtime series. She also gave a gallery talk on the exhibition A Home of Signs and Wonders for the Friends of the Museum. In December she acted as Visiting Commissioner on behalf of the Dutch Foreign Ministry to assess the international status, research potential, and curatorial needs of the photograph collections at the Tropenmuseum Amsterdam. She served on the Board of Consultants for the exhibition Native Nations: Journeys in American Photography at the Barbican Art Gallery, London and contributed to the accompanying catalogue. The final report of the ESRC grant-funded project she has been conducting with Howard Morphy and Gwyneira Isaac, ‘Repatriation and Cross-Cultural Interests in Anthropological Archives’, was submitted. She continued to teach as a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Photography at the Royal College of Art, London, and to serve on the editorial boards of the journals Visual Anthropology Review and History of Photography. She also continued to serve on the Photographic Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Chris Gosden attended the meeting of the World Archaeological Congress in Cape Town and the meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group in Reading. In August and September 1998 he was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Natural History of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra, from where he carried out museum and archival work in Canberra and Sydney. With Gary Lock he carried out a second season of excavation at the Iron Age and Romano-British site of Alfred’s Castle. With Chantal Knowles he continued to write up the results of their investigation into material culture and colonialism in Papua New Guinea. With Gary Lock he continued to write up the results of their excavations at the late Bronze and Iron Age site of White Horse Hill.
Clare Harris gave papers at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA) departmental seminar, at the Museum’s Friday lunchtime series, at the ‘Ethnicity and Identity’ series held at ISCA, at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Programme, and in Linacre College’s ‘Linacre Lectures’. She was also a discussant at the ‘Hunting the Gatherers’ colloquium held at the Museum. She completed the manuscript of a book on painting in Tibet.
Chantal Knowles was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Natural History of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra in August and September. From there she visited museum collections and carried out archival work on Papua New Guinea in Canberra and Sydney. In October she attended the meeting of the Pacific Arts Association in Cambridge. In May she gave papers at the University Museums Symposium at Southampton and at the ‘Hunting the Gatherers’ colloquium held at the Museum. Also in May she attended ‘Glimpses of Africa: Museums, Scholarship, and Popular Culture’ a joint conference of the Horniman Museum and Gardens and the UK Museums Ethnographers Group (MEG). At the MEG AGM she was elected Secretary for a term of three years. In July she attended a half-day MEG meeting at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Hélène La Rue continued to be the Chairman of the Musical Collections Forum and a Music Advisor for Southern Arts.
Peter Mitchell organized the fourth Archaeology & Anthropology Open Day and served as Chairman of the Sub-Faculty of Archaeology (Michaelmas Term 1998), Secretary of the Management Committee of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Secretary of the Swan Fund, Chairman of the Archaeology & Anthropology Tutors’ Forum, Organizing Secretary for Archaeology & Anthropology Admissions, and Tutor for Admissions at St Hugh’s College. He continued to serve on the Council of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and on the editorial board of World Archaeology. He acted as external examiner for a doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge. During a term’s sabbatical, in Hilary 1999, he was able to prepare the first six chapters of a book on the archaeology of Southern Africa and to complete and revise several papers.
Michael O’Hanlon gave the Lurcy Lecture at Amherst College, and while in New England also gave lectures at Dartmouth and Hartford. In October he gave a paper at the Oxford Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology’s departmental seminar. In May he organized ‘Hunting the Gatherers’, a colloquium at the Pitt Rivers Museum Research Centre on ethnographic collecting in Melanesia (an edited volume arising from the colloquium is in preparation). He continued to sit on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Journal of Material Culture, and Ethnos.
Robert Pearce attended a seminar on the conservation of metalwork organised by the Metals Section of the United Kingdom Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. He also attended an ethnographic beadwork seminar at the Liverpool Conservation Centre organized by the Conservators of Ethnographic Artefacts.
Laura Peers gave a paper at the ‘Native Art of the North American Woodlands’ conference at the British Museum. In March she gave a paper at the Association of Social Anthropologists conference at Goldsmiths College, London. In April she attended the AGM of the Cornwall Archaeological Society and gave a keynote lecture. Also in April she spoke at the 20th American Indian Workshop held in Lund, Sweden. In May she was a discussant at the ‘Hunting the Gatherers’ colloquium at the Museum and lectured for the Distance Education Programme at the School of Museum Studies, Leicester. She also gave a talk in the Museum’s Friday lunchtime series. She was appointed to the American Society for Ethnohistory’s Heizer Prize Committee and to the Committee of the Museum Ethnographers’ Group.
Alison Petch gave a joint talk with Sandra Dudley and Haas Ezzet in the Museum’s Friday lunchtime series. She gave a talk on ‘The Founding Collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford’ at the study-day ‘Pitt Rivers: The Man and the Museum’ organized by the University’s Department for Continuing Education.
Derek Roe’s duties as Director of Graduate Studies in Archaeology allowed him minimal time for either research or writing during much of the year. However, he continued his research involvements with the Earlier Palaeolithic of Southern Spain, and the British Palaeolithic. The Spanish team have resumed excavations in the Orce Basin (Andalucía), so important new finds can be expected, while in Britain he was involved with studying or advising on a number of new finds of Lower Palaeolithic age. In September 1998 he visited the Republic of Georgia, taking part in the First International Symposium ‘Early Humans at the Gates of Europe’, based at Tbilisi and at Dmanisi, where he delivered an invited paper entitled ‘Early Human Migrations: Using all the Evidence’. With the other conference members, he visited the important early hominid site of Dmanisi, and studied the finds from the excavation. This visit was supported by a travel grant from the Faculty of Anthropology & Geography. At the end of September he visited South Korea, with Professor Paul Mellars of Cambridge University, at the invitation of Kyung Hee University, and delivered a lecture on the occasion of the Second Remembrance of Professor Hwang. During this trip he was able to visit one of the principal early Palaeolithic sites in Korea, to study material in museum collections, and to meet colleagues from several Korean universities. In July 1999 he made a brief study visit to Israel, at the invitation of Professor O. Bar-Yosef, visiting several Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites, and spending three days with Professor Bar-Yosef’s international team at the excavation of the very important Hayonim Cave in northern Galilee. In the spring of 1999, he began a two year project as co-principal investigator with Professor Clive Gamble, of Southampton University, of the effects of differing raw materials on handaxe manufacture at a selection of Lower Palaeolithic sites across the Old World from Southern Africa to Britain. This project is supported by a £139,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB).
Lorraine Rostant continued to act as Treasurer for the Conservators of Ethnographic Artefacts (CEA) and in that capacity helped organize and run an international workshop and various seminars. While in Australia on Museum business, she undertook a short study tour of conservation and storage facilities in museums in Sydney and Canberra. She attended the Jerwood Conservation Awards 1998 ceremony for which Braving the Elements had been nominated. In December 1998 she hosted, with Birgitte Speake, a Museum Ethnographers’ Group meeting on Braving the Elements.
Katherine Scott completed her excavations for the ‘ARC Oxford Mammoths Project’ at the important Middle Pleistocene site at Stanton Harcourt. Right to the end, faunal and floral remains of great significance continued to be found, though in the final stages the yield of stone
artefacts was rather disappointing.
Julie Scott-Jackson continued her four-year research fellowship at the Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre, in which she is working on the high-level Lower Palaeolithic sites of the clay-with-flints areas of the English chalk downlands.
Birgitte Speake attended the Jerwood Conservation Awards 1998 ceremony for which Braving the Elements had been nominated. In December 1998 she hosted, with Lorraine Rostant, a Museum Ethnographers’ Group meeting on Braving the Elements. She attended a seminar on display techniques organized by the Conservators of Ethnographic Artefacts and attended the Triennial Conference of the Committee for Conservation of the International Council of Museums in Lyon, France.
Kate White attended a Museum Trading and Publishing Group day on ‘Merchandising, Display, and Product Development’ at Waddesdon Manor in October. In November she attended the Museums Association seminar ‘Responding to Cultural Diversity’. She also attended a Welcome Host Management Training day on ‘Management and Producing Promotional Literature’. She attended meetings of the Museum Marketing Group at the Museums and Galleries Commission, set up to raise awareness and offer guidance in the area of audience development. In April she attended a seminar organized by Drivas Jonas on ‘Cultural, Heritage and Public Buildings’. She attended a meeting hosted by the British Museum for Visitor Services officers, and joined the Visitor Studies Group concerned with audience survey and profiling techniques.
Annex H
Staff Publications
Jeremy Coote, ‘Leave the kiteki Alone [review of The Scramble for Art in Central Africa, edited by Enid Schildkrout and Curtis A. Keim (Cambridge, 1998)]’, The Times Literary Supplement, no. 5014 (7 May 1999), p. 9.
Jeremy Coote, ‘The Story of an Egg’, Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 29 (July 1999), pp. 9–10.
Jeremy Coote, Review of African Art: An Aesthetic Enquiry, by Mohamed A. Abusabib (Uppsala, 1995), African Arts, Vol. XXXII, no. 2 (Summer 1999), pp. 17, 87.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘La Expedición al Estrecho de Torres de 1898: Hacer Historia’, Revista Española del Pacifíco, no. 8 (1998), pp. 179–98.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Performing Science: Still Photography and the Torres Strait Expedition’ in Cambridge and the Torres Strait: Centenary Essays on the 1898 Anthropological Expedition, edited by Anita Herle and Sandra Rouse, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1998), pp. 106–35.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Photographic Exhibitions at the Pitt Rivers Museum’, Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 27 (January 1999), pp. 9–10.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Photography and Anthropological Intention in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares, Vol. LIII, no. 2 (1998; Special Issue: ‘Perspectivas en Antropología Visual’), pp. 23–48.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘The Resonance of Anthropology’, in Native Nations: Journeys in American Photography (catalogue of an exhibition of the same name held at the Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre, London, 10 September 1998 to 10 January 1999), edited by Jane Alison, London: Barbican Art Gallery (1998), pp. 187–203.
Elizabeth Edwards (with Jorma Puranen), Imaginary Homecoming / Kuvitteellinen kotiinpaluu, Oulu: Pohjoinen (1999).
Christina Fox, ‘One of My Favourite Things’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 28 (April 1999), p. 9.
Chris Gosden, Archaeology and Anthropology: A Changing Relationship, London and New York: Routledge (1999).
Chris Gosden, ‘Introduction’, in The Prehistory of Food: Appetites for Change (One World Archaeology, 32), edited by Chris Gosden and Jon Hather, London and New York: Routledge (1999), pp. 1–9.
Chris Gosden, ‘Oceania’, in A Dictionary of Archaeology, edited by Ian Shaw and Robert Jameson, Oxford: Blackwell (1999), pp. 439–442.
Chris Gosden, ‘The Organization of Society’, in Companion Encylopedia of Archaeology, edited by Graeme Barker, London and New York: Routledge (1999), pp. 470–504.
Chris Gosden (co-editor, with Jon Hather), The Prehistory of Food: Appetites for Change (One World Archaeology, 32), London and New York: Routledge (1999).
Chris Gosden (with Lesley Head), ‘Different Histories: A Linked History for Papua New Guinea and Australia’, in The Prehistory of Food: Appetites for Change (One World Archaeology, 32), edited by Chris Gosden and Jon Hather, London and New York: Routledge (1999), pp. 232–51.
Clare Harris, ‘Imagining Home, Imaging Exile: Children’s Paintings from the Tibetan Homes Foundation, Mussoorie’, in The Art of Exile: Paintings by Tibetan Children in Exile, Sante Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press (1998), pp. 121–35.
Chantal Knowles, ‘Comparing Collectors and their Collections’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 28 (April 1999), pp. 5–6.
Chantal Knowles, Review of An Anthropologist in Melanesia: A. B. Lewis and the Joseph N. Field South Pacific Expedition, 1909–1913, by Robert L. Welsch (Honolulu, 1998), Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 11 (May 1999), pp. 136–8.
Peter Mitchell, ‘Africa, 4. Southern Africa [Introduction]’, in A Dictionary of Archaeology, edited by Ian Shaw and Robert Jameson, Oxford: Blackwell (1999), pp. 23–4.
Peter Mitchell, ‘Africa, 4. Southern Africa, 4.1. The Middle and Later Stone Ages’, in A Dictionary of Archaeology, edited by Ian Shaw and Robert Jameson, Oxford: Blackwell (1999), pp. 25–6.
Peter Mitchell, ‘Africa, 4. Southern Africa, 4.2. The History of Stone Age Archaeological Research in Southern Africa’, in A Dictionary of Archaeology, edited by Ian Shaw and Robert Jameson, Oxford: Blackwell (1999), pp. 25–6.
Peter Mitchell, ‘Archaeological Collections from the Anglo-Zulu War in the Collections of the British Museum’, Southern African Field Archaeology, Vol. VII, no. 1 (1998), pp. 12–19.
Peter Mitchell, ‘The Archaeology of the Alfred County Cave Kwa–Zulu Natal’, Natal Museum Journal of Humanities, Vol. X (December 1998), pp. 1–17.
Peter Mitchell, ‘The South African Stone Age in the Collections of the British Museum: Content, History and Significance’, South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. LIII, no. 167 (June 1998), pp. 26–36.
Peter Mitchell, Review of Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa: Archaeology, History, Languages, Cultures, and Environment, edited by Joseph O. Vogel (Walnut Creek, CA, and London, 1997), American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. CII, no. 4 (October 1998), pp. 823–4.
Peter Mitchell, Review of A Hunter–Gatherer Landscape: Southwest Germany in the Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic, by Michael A. Jochim (New York, 1998), South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. LIII, no. 168 (December 1998), pp. 139–41.
Peter Mitchell (with Ruth Charles), ‘Archaeological Fieldwork in the Lesotho Highlands, July and August 1998: The Second Season of Excavation at the Likoaeeng Open-Air Site’, Nyame Akuma: Bulletin of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists, no. 50 (December 1998), pp. 13–21.
Laura Peers, ‘Curating Native American Art: The North American Perspective’, British Museum Magazine, no. 34 (Summer 1999), pp. 24–7.
Laura Peers, ‘The “S Black” Bag’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 28 (April 1999), pp. 7–8.
Laura Peers, ‘Fur Trade History, Native History, Public History: Communication and Miscommunication’, in New Faces of the Fur Trade: Selected Papers of the Seventh North American Fur Trade Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1995, edited by Jo-Anne Fiske, Susan Sleeper-Smith, and William Wicken, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press (1998), pp. 101–19.
Alison Petch, ‘Cataloguing the Pitt Rivers Museum Founding Collection’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 11 (May 1999), pp. 95–104.
Derek Roe, ‘The Earlier Stages of the Palaeolithic in Britain’, in The Hominids and their Environment during the Lower and Middle Pleistocene of Eurasia: Proceedings of the International Conference of Human Palaeontology, Orce 1995, edited by J. Gibert, F. Sánchez, L. Gibert, and F. Ribot, Orce: Museo de Prehistoria e Paleontología ‘Josep Gibert’, Orce City Council (1995), pp. 415–21.
Derek Roe (in Korean; translated by H. W. Lee), ‘[Some Aspects of the Lower Palaeolithic in Britain]’, in [Lectures given by P. A. Mellars and D. A. Roe at the Second Remembrance of Professor Hwang, 29 September 1998], Kyung Hee: Kyung Hee University (1998), pp. 5–10.
Roger Taylor, ‘One of My Favourite Things’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 29 (July 1999), pp. 8–9.
Claire Warrior, ‘“Small Meetings across Cultural Boundaries”: Model Totem Poles and the Imagination of Cultures on the Northwest Coast of America’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 11 (May 1999), pp. 105–20.
Claire Warrior, Review of Pottery in the Making: World Ceramic Traditions, edited by Ian Freestone and David Gaimster (London, 1997), Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 11 (May 1999), pp. 125–6.
Kate White, ‘Ethical Trading: Kate White Looks at the Challenges and Pitfalls of Products Sourced from the Third World’, Museum Shop and Publishing News, no. 10 (Spring 1999), pp. 4–5.
Annex I
The Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre
(Report by Professor Derek Roe, Honorary Director)
The Centre has continued to operate successfully under the difficult practical circumstances referred to in last year’s annual report, which have not altered. As usual, Derek Roe provided a number of lecture–demonstrations on the subject of Palaeolithic artefacts for parties of visiting students, and this year for two Oxford Summer Schools. The two long-running major research projects associated with the Centre both continued successfully throughout the year: the Stanton Harcourt ‘ARC Oxford Mammoths Project’, directed by Dr K. Scott and Mrs C. Buckingham (with digging finally ending in August 1999), and work on the Prehistoric Archaeology of the Balearic Islands, directed by Dr W. H. Waldren. Amongst the Centre’s research students, John Mitchell and Marcos Llobera completed and were awarded their doctorates. Dr Jordi Hernandez Gasch, from Barcelona University, was again with us as a long-term visitor for much of the year, and many overseas scholars made shorter visits. Dr Sarah Milliken, a former research student at the Centre, became a research associate this year, having returned to Oxford after some years working in Italy. Amongst her many valued contributions to the Centre’s life, she organized during Hilary Term a series of eight tea-time seminars given by visiting speakers, with the support of a grant from the Committee for Archaeology. This series proved very popular and was well attended; we shall try to repeat it in future years if possible. The Centre also hosted two special lectures on topics of Palaeolithic interest by distinguished visiting speakers Professor Nicolas Rolland, of the University of Victoria, Canada, and Professor Olga Soffer, of the University of Illinois at Urbana.
The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum’s generous and much valued assistance in the Centre’s Library has continued throughout the year, in the capable hands of Mrs Joy Crammer and Mrs Jane Christie-Miller, to whom we are again extremely grateful. It being an ill wind that blows nobody at all any good, the library at No 60 Banbury Road has actually benefitted from the re-roofing of the main Pitt Rivers Museum, since the NADFAS volunteer team had to suspend its work on book restoration in the main Balfour Library, and we were allowed to have the benefit of their skills instead.
Annex J
Museum Seminars
Clare Harris (PRM), ‘Compelled to Purchase: Anglo-American Reactions to Tibetan Material Culture’.
Laura Peers (PRM), ‘Many Tender Ties: Identities, Identification, and the “S Black” Bag’.
Marcus Banks (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford), ‘Trade, Industry, and Changes in the Indian Urban Landscape’.
Gail Baker (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford), ‘The Role of Photographic Mementoes among the Bene Israel in Greater London’.
James Leach (University of Cambridge), ‘Drum and Voice: Convergences in Making Musical Instruments on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea’.
Jeremy MacClancy (Oxford Brookes University), ‘A Museum, or What Exactly? Views on the Bilbao Guggenheim’.
Cris Shore (Goldsmiths College, London), ‘Symbolizing Boundaries: The Euro and the Art of European Government’.
Gwyneira Isaac (PRM student), ‘Zuni, New Mexico: A Tribal Museum within the National Context’.
David Zeitlyn (University of Kent), ‘Spiders at Noon’.
Joy Hendry (Oxford Brookes University), ‘Is Ethnography as Well Displayed in a Museum as in a Theme Park? Some Musings from the Coalface’.
Alison Petch (PRM), Sandra Dudley (PRM student), and Haas Ezzet (PRM), ‘Using Multi-Media Tools to Teach Anthropology: Pitt Rivers, Anthropology, and Ethnography in the Nineteenth Century’.
Sharon Macdonald (University of Sheffield), ‘The Politics of Producing Public Culture: Inside the Science Museum’.
Peter Gow (London School of Economics), ‘Piro Designs: Painting as Meaningful Action in an Amazonian World’.
Sarah Posey (British Museum) and Gabriel Hanganu (ISCA student), ‘Fabricating Ritual: Romanian Masquerade and Mixed Media’.
Beverley Lear (PRM student), ‘Ideas towards an Ethnography of English Gardening’.
Nick Stanley (Birmingham Institute of Art and Design), ‘“In the Middle of Nowhere but at the Centre of the World”: Asmat Carving, Indonesianization, and Melanesian Identity’.
Vibha Joshi (PRM student), ‘From Naga Hills to Nagaland: Recontextualizing the Pitt Rivers Museum’s Naga collection’.
Elizabeth Edwards (PRM), ‘Photography Making Histories: Torres Strait 1898’.
Jeremy Coote (PRM) and Peter Gathercole (Darwin College, Cambridge), ‘Thirty Years On: Research on the PRM’s Forster (“Captain Cook”) collection, 1969 and 1999’.
Brian Durrans (British Museum), ‘Blurred Boundaries and New Opportunities: Future Exhibitions at the British Museum’.
