University of Oxford
THE PITT RIVERS MUSEUM ANNUAL REPORT 1 August 2000 to 31 July 2001
Mission Statement
The Pitt Rivers Museum celebrates human ingenuity and creative skill.
It is committed to bringing its world-wide collections to public attention,
encouraging the sharing of knowledge, and inspiring deeper understanding
amongst people of all cultures, ages, and abilities.
Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum as of 1 October 2000
Dr J. Landers (Chairman)
The Vice-Chancellor (Sir Colin Lucas)
The Senior Proctor (Dr M.D.E. Slater)
The Junior Proctor (Professor R. Sharpe)
The Assessor (Mr L.N. Goldman)
Dr J.A. Bennett (Museum of the History of Science)
Dr C. Brown (Ashmolean Museum)
Professor B. Cunliffe (Institute of Archaeology)
Dr C. Gosden (Pitt Rivers Museum)
Professor A. Goudie (School of Geography)
Professor B.J. Mack (British Museum)
Dr M. O’Hanlon (Pitt Rivers Museum)
Professor D. Parkin (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology)
Professor P. Rivière (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology)
Professor S.J. Simpson (Oxford University Museum of Natural History)
Professor K. Thomson (Oxford University Museum of Natural History)
Ms J. Vitmayer (Horniman Museum)
The Committee for the Pitt Rivers Museum, having received from the Director the following report for the period 1 August 2000 to 31 July 2001, presented it as its report to Congregation.
Introduction
After three years in post, I realise that it is redundant to begin each report by noting that the year in question has been an exceptionally busy one.
The first strand of activity this year involved assimilating the recommendations of last year’s General Board review of the Museum. The most obvious external evidence of this to date, aside from a number of overdue staff upgradings, is the creation of a new post of Assistant Administrator to strengthen the hard-pressed, and harder-working, administrative core of the Museum. The General Board’s review also recommended a space audit (assisted by an external consultant) of the Museum’s dispersed estate, scattered as it is in six buildings on five sites (for more details, see Annex A). The audit, whose meetings were chaired by Professor Barry Cunliffe to whom the Museum offers its thanks, produced two main conclusions. The first is that the Pitt Rivers and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History should press strongly to occupy the space that Chemistry is to vacate at the front of the Natural History Museum. This would provide the space for ideally positioned joint education facilities, shop, café, and cloakroom for the greatly increased visitor numbers now attracted by the two museums. We are reaching a situation in which we cannot cater for the numbers who wish to visit. The audit’s second recommendation echoed the findings of the General Board’s review: that the dispersed nature of the Museum’s estate was inefficient and hampered its public operations, which should be refocused on the main site. The concomitant to this is that the Museum should start fundraising for a new building on its adjacent ‘Green Shed’ site; once built, this would allow the Museum to return a number of its other properties to the University. It is to progressing this recommendation that the Museum must next devote itself.
The urgency of doing this has been highlighted by a second strand of activity: seeking yet a further new home for the Museum’s conservation laboratory and textile collections. It was only in February 1999 that these moved in to refurbished accommodation at the St Cross site, after their eviction from 5 South Parks Road, with the assurance of at least five years’ tenure and the expectation of many more. Now they are being ‘moved on’ again, as previously, in order to release space for another new building project. Until the Museum is more rationally accommodated on a reduced number of sites, it will always find itself vulnerable to forced migrations of this kind.
The seriousness of this is underlined by a third strand of activity this year: the necessity for the Museum to bid (in common with other university museums) to the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) for 50% of its running costs. The bid was a successful one, the Museum being awarded £2.8 million over the five years commencing 1 August 2001. However, this is subject to meeting performance targets that assume that the Museum’s energetic and able conservation team will be conserving artefacts and not moving house for the second time in three years. The General Board’s review had drawn attention to the necessity for a sustained programme to upgrade the Museum’s storage, and it is to such long-term strategies of preventative conservation that the Museum’s team wish to dedicate their energies.
A fourth and most welcome strand of activity was the start of the two-year programme, funded by the Heritage Lottery Access Fund (HLAF) and shared with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, to investigate new audiences and to pilot programmes to attract them. Ann Nicol (as Audience Development Research Officer) and Andy McLellan (as Education and Outreach Officer) joined the staff in December. In conjunction with Kate White, who had done much of the groundwork that made the project possible, a fresh energy and drive was imparted to this aspect of the Museum’s work. The Museum must never again find itself without an Education Officer, and in this respect, it owes a great debt to its Friends who are funding part of that post. As a condition of the HLAF grant, the Museum is now open on Sundays, making it a seven-day-a-week operation.
The fifth strand of current activity lies in two projects supported by the Designation Challenge Fund (DCF), at a combined total of some £100,000 a year. Now in its third and final year, this immensely welcome grant is expected to enable the transfer on to electronic database of the entirety of the primary existing records for the Museum’s artefact and photographic collections. The Museum owes a great debt to Alison Petch, employed as Registrar for the duration of the project, and to the team entering the data, who between them have exceeded the most optimistic of the goals set at the start of the project. Quite soon, the entirety of the collections’ records, with their weighty documentation, will also be available on-line through the Museum’s web site. A taste of what can be achieved once collections are fully computerized was provided by the launch of the Museum’s web site devoted to the Forster collection, assembled on Captain Cook’s second voyage and perhaps the single most important collection held by the Museum. Organized by Jeremy Coote, with the support of the Humanities Computing Development Team at the University’s Computing Service, this web site offers a new and rich way of consulting the collections, and has already become the basis of a further grant application to extend it in innovative ways. In all such projects, the Museum owes much to the technical knowledge, and calmness, of the Museum’s ICT Officer, Haas Ezzet.
The second project supported by the DCF grant comprises a display programme in the main museum, focused—though not exclusively—on the redisplay of the Museum’s materials relating to body arts along the north wall of the lower gallery. Further information about this aspect of the Museum’s work will be found below.
Such projects are both part of, and support, the Museum’s academic profile. It is increasingly important that the Museum attracts the external research grants that fund the academic input into upgrading the documentation of the collections. Over the course of the year, Laura Peers was awarded an £80,000 grant from the AHRB to work on the collection of Beatrice Blackwood’s photographs, while in their Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change Chris Gosden and Chantal Knowles published the results of work carried out with a grant from the Leverhulme Trust. Meanwhile, Clare Harris’s recent book In the Image of Tibet: Tibetan Visual Culture after 1959, won the jury prize for best book in visual anthropology from the International Centre for Ethnohistory, Palermo, Italy; while Elizabeth Edwards’ new volume Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology and Museums is set to consolidate the Museum’s position as a pioneer in the innovatory interpretation of ethnographic photographs.
The Museum was particularly pleased to host the annual conference of the Museum Ethnographers Group in April. Drawing on the theme of the Museum’s current major special exhibition, the conference explored the theme of ‘transformations’ in material culture and museums. The conference was organized by Julia Nicholson and Laura Peers and a number of other members of staff presented papers and/or chaired sessions.
I am also pleased to report that Laura Peers was invited to join the Parliamentary Working Group on Human Remains chaired by Norman Palmer. The group will work through the next reporting year, exploring contexts of collecting, storage, display, and curation of human remains in United Kingdom museums. They are expected to frame legislation facilitating repatriation of remains in situations where this seems sensible but might not be permitted by museum statutes.
As ever, the Museum has benefited greatly during the year from the assistance of volunteers. Thanks are due to Rachel Miller and Lindsay Richardson for work on the photograph collections and, as always, to Audrey Smith and Ruth Wickett for their sterling work on the manuscript collections and, this year, on the eighteenth-century print collection. The conservation section also wish to thank Rachel Miller for her efforts. The volunteer guiding service continues to benefit from the experience and enthusiasm of Jean Flemming, Frances Martyn, Rosemary Lee, Joan Shaw, and Marlene Hinshelwood. They have been joined this year by a number of new guides: Barbara Topley, Natasha Montgomery, Margaret Dyke, and Alan Lacey. The Museum’s sincere thanks are due to them all.
In addition to thanking all staff, whether formally acknowledged here or not, I should record our thanks to the Museum’s many supporters. I have already mentioned its Friends, whose manifold activities include the immensely lively and recently re-designed Newsletter, which continues to attract praise. And there are the host of donors: from our longstanding supporter, Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey, who is providing substantial assistance to the programme to computerize the records of the holdings of the Balfour Library, to new friends such as Mrs A. G. Elliott-Smith, who sent me a brief note saying that she was enclosing a small token of her enjoyable visit to the Museum; inside was a cheque for £2,000. The Museum’s capacity to move its visitors and supporters to such acts of generosity continues to surprise and delight us all.
Access
The Museum’s commitment to providing access to its collections and the knowledge held about them continued to inform all aspects of its work, from collections management and conservation to teaching and research. This section, however, focuses on those aspects of its work—such as Education and the Guiding Service—that are most directly aimed at the Museum’s present and future publics.
In recent years, the Museum has taken a very proactive approach to access and throughout this reporting year it continued to improve the services offered to visitors. The new ‘random access’ audio-guide system was installed, using the original recording adapted to the new technology. This greatly enhances visitors’ enjoyment by allowing them to wander at will. User research highlighted the excellent sound quality and ease of use, as well as praise for the content. Funded by the Friends, the ‘basic language’ tape was rewritten and re-recorded by Hélène La Rue and Sir Brian Rix, to whom we are again most grateful.
The illustrated trail for wheelchair users was finally completed and proved of interest to many other visitors as well. Unfortunately within months of the launch of the trail, the aged Museum lift was condemned, putting the galleries out of reach to anyone with mobility problems, not to mention causing difficulties for families with young children in pushchairs. The Museum is investigating urgently how it can comply with the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act, in ways that are in sympathy with the building and its displays.
In addition to these and other developments, the Museum received a major boost to its work in this area with the start of a new project funded by the Heritage Lottery Access Fund (HLAF).
HLAF Project
In January 2001 the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History began ‘Including Everyone’, a major new project to increase access to both museums. The project is funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Access Fund (HLAF) that allowed Ann Nicol to be employed as an Audience Development Research Officer, the first joint staff appointment between the two museums in modern times. The project is also part-funding the Museum’s new Education Officer (see below).
In the early stages of the project, staff have focused heavily on research into Oxford demographics and national trends, as well as investigating issues surrounding access, inclusion, and trends in visiting. Staff have made new contacts as a first step in forging partnerships with intermediaries for new audiences. The museums now work together to conduct a regular visitor profile survey, covering weekdays, weekends, term-time, and school holidays so as to get representative samples from throughout the year. Little statistical information was previously available in the two museums regarding visitor profiles. This survey will measure change over time and provide a good base for subsequent evaluation of the success of the HLAF project’s initiatives.
Activities that have been trialled with a wide range of audiences have included: courses for adults with learning disabilities; a visit to the Museum from Right Angle Productions (an East Oxford youth group); setting up ‘Return to Sender’ a prospective new participatory exhibition to encourage visits to the Museum from those taking part in outreach activities; and a visit by a group of 160 potential further education students (16–17 year olds from north-west England) through the Department for Education and Skill’s ‘Excellence in Cities’ scheme for high-achieving pupils in under-achieving schools. This latter activity included trails round both the museums and four lectures by museum staff and associates, including Professor Richard Dawkins.
As the reporting year drew to a close, preparations were under way for more activities of this type and other trials: including In-service Training (INSET) days for teachers in the Museum and African ceramics workshops with local artist David Odwar, involving refugee children who have been housed in the Oxford area.
Education Services
The Museum’s ability to provide educational services was fundamentally improved in January 2001 when for the first time it was able to employ a full-time Education Officer. Andy McLellan, a teacher with several years experience teaching in the UK and overseas, joined the staff, funded in part by the HLAF and in part by other monies raised by the Friends of the Museum, to whom many thanks are due, and through other sources.
The first task was a re-evaluation of all the Museum’s education activities and resources. There were two main points of focus: first, getting the existing education services up-and-running properly; and secondly, developing initiatives to attract new audiences, a requirement of the HLAF project. The first priorities were: to update the existing schools ‘trails’; to begin running a training programme for existing volunteer guides (see below); to recruit and train new guides; and to offer introductory talks for a larger number of visiting groups from schools and colleges. In addition, more extensive family activities at weekends and during school holidays were developed, and work began on the development of an education web site so that all the Museum’s education resources could be available to the public free of charge.
The volunteer guiding service, established in 1985, quickly proved to be an immense asset to the Museum. However, in recent years it has been handicapped by the lack of a professional Education Officer to guide its development. Since Andy McLellan’s appointment, the guides’ role has been properly supported and a training programme devised to retain existing members, and encourage others to join. The training has included short talks from other members of staff, and covered various aspects of teaching in a museum: teaching methods, how to learn from objects, rethinking trails, problem-solving, and disaster management. It is now possible to think about widening the scope of the volunteer service by involving volunteers in such other activities as family days and holiday activities.
Education staff have also been active in relation to the HLAF project; for instance, in developing a trail designed for groups of foreign students to cover both the Pitt Rivers and University museums; in setting up a handling collection, which is slowly beginning to grow; and, towards the end of this reporting period, in research for Objects Talk, a special exhibition to open in October 2002. One of the aims of this project is to create an exhibition that also provides a flexible space to be used for activities with school and adult groups and other visitors.
Amongst other activities, the Museum contributed to Campus 2000’s summer activities for local children aged between seven and fourteen. Participants were given hands-on experience of being a conservator, including trips to the conservation laboratory to look at pests, poisons, and the processes of decay. The participants were also involved in discussions about body arts, which provided an ideal opportunity to carry out some formative evaluation for the prospective new displays. Interesting lessons were learned about the real interests of this age group.
Visitor Numbers
All the initiatives and activities outline above are aimed at improving visit quality and increasing access to the Museum and its collections for existing visitors and prospective new visitors. Some idea of the success of earlier work can be seen in the fact that total visitor figures have increased by 9% over the last three years.
Given the disruption to services over the previous two years with the closure of the Museum for reroofing, increased competition in the leisure industry generally, reduced overseas tourism during 2001 (due to foot and mouth disease), and the continuing strength of the pound, this is very encouraging. The summer season, however, was disappointing with visitor numbers down nearly 5,000 on the previous comparable period. The lack of a major new special exhibition may perhaps have led to a decrease in repeat visits by local residents who had already visited Transformations. The overall increase also reflects the additional Sunday afternoon opening. Sunday visitors average 342 per day, roughly 63% of the average Saturday numbers (544), but slightly higher than the average afternoon figure taken over the whole year (332). The last year in which the Museum was not closed for at least part was 1997–98. The total number of visitors in 1997–98 was 112,322, while in the present reporting year it was 123,064. The figures for visitors in booked educational groups were 16,531 and 18,541 respectively. As usual, the Museum hosted visits by a number of specialist groups, providing them with tours, talks, and ‘behind the scenes’ introductions. Among these were groups of trainee teachers from Oxford Brookes, delegates to the Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians, and groups from the Costume Society and the Japan Society.
Based on the recommendations of the space audit, it was decided early in the year to close the Balfour Galleries to casual visitors. Small numbers of booked groups have continued to make visits.
The number of ‘virtual visitors’ to the Museum continues to grow. During the previous year, 1999–2000 (when, of course, the ‘virtual’ Museum was not closed, unlike the ‘real’ one) 18,537 unique visitors made 370,000 ‘hits’. The number of unique visitors to the site during 2000–2001 was 26,863, recording more than 537,000 hits as they consulted various pages.
Events and Activities
A very full programme of activities was organized for this year’s Museums and Galleries Month. This year there were weekend gallery talks and family activities throughout the month. However, while the activities proved very popular, the gallery talks were less well attended. In future, it may be better to schedule them for week-day lunchtimes. Among the gallery talks this year were ‘Reading Historical Photographs’, ‘Transformations: A Gallery Tour of the Special Exhibition’, ‘Meet the Musical Curator’, ‘Meetings in the Himalayas and Tibet’, and ‘Body Adornment: New Displays in Progress’. Family activities included ‘Quest for the Pitt Rivers Dragons’ and ‘Culture on the Ground: The Museum Perceived through the Feet’, which took up the theme of the Friends’ Beatrice Blackwood Lecture. Foot-painting and foot-printing activities for children proved particularly popular. The Friends also produced a trail around the Museum, for all age groups, highlighting foot-related exhibits with relevant quotations from poems.
Throughout the month, a special ‘Millennium Quilt’, produced by the British Association of Friends of Museums to celebrate the work of volunteers in supporting heritage institutions, was hung from the galleries. The quilt uses almost every kind of stitchwork, and includes two panels drawing on material in the Museum made by Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum. For the nationwide late-night opening the Museum and its Natural History neighbour stayed opened until 9.00 p.m. Activities in the Pitt Rivers were organized around the theme ‘Glimpses of Japan’. With his colleague Brian Catling, Japanese artist Mamoru Abe discussed his installation Voices (see below) with visitors. And around the galleries, there were opportunities for visitors to find out about many of the highlights of the Museum’s Japanese collections, such as the armour and archaeology. Among other events were recitals of Shakespeare in Japanese, Japanese animated films, and a chance to learn about and play the game Go.
Display
Permanent Displays
With funding from the Designation Challenge Fund (DCF) the Museum was able this year to carry out some important redisplay work. The most important items from the Museum’s collection of material from the kingdom of Benin were redisplayed in a new purpose-built case in the lower gallery. Entitled ‘Court Art of Benin’, the new display shows the individual works to great effect, and is complemented by the provision of related information both in and out of the case. Also included in the redisplay programme this year were ‘Currency Balances’, ‘Asante Weights’, ‘Steelyards’, ‘Bismars’, ‘Time’, and ‘Trade Ornaments Made in Europe’, as well as the usual number of minor additions and amendments to a number of other displays. The DCF-funded redisplay programme will be completed in March 2002 with the reopening of the north wall of the lower gallery and a new ‘Introductory’ display where the Benin display was previously.
During the year there were a number of meetings of the Museum’s new Permanent Displays Committee, set up as a forum to discuss and plan future changes to the displays. A Museum-wide meeting was also held to discuss the issues surrounding the display (and curation) of human remains.
Special Exhibitions
The special exhibitions Transformations: The Art of Recycling and Transpositions: The Sound of Recycling continued throughout the year at the main museum and Balfour Galleries respectively, while the continuing exhibition Collectomania, curated by the Museum’s graduate students, closed in April (see previous annual report for details of these three exhibitions).
From 4 May to 7 June, the Museum provided the venue—jointly with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History—for Voices, an installation by Japanese artist Mamoru Abe. Professor Abe had been inspired by the museums during his time as Visiting Professor at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art and Voices was his response to their influence. In the Pitt Rivers, the main element of Abe’s installation was a rough circle of hammered sheets of zinc arranged on top of the cases in the court. This was complemented by the exhibition of a series of studies, on paper and in steel, in the lower gallery. A booklet about the exhibition, entitled Mamoru Abe’s Voices and with an essay by Jeremy Coote and photographs by Museum photographer Malcolm Osman, was produced by the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine art as a record of the exhibition. After the exhibition closed, Professor Abe kindly donated a series of studies to the Museum.
The Museum hosted three further special exhibitions by local school and college students during the year. From September to March, work by GCSE students at Didcot Girls School was on exhibition in the Museum. The students had worked with artist Lucy Casson to produce work inspired by the Museum’s collections in general and those in the Transformations exhibition in particular. Focused on items made out of recycled materials and designed to inspire other school children visiting the Museum, the work was of an extremely high standard; so high in fact that some items were chosen to be exhibited within the Transformations exhibition space itself. At the private view there were also performances of music and creative writing on the theme of ‘recycling’.
From 6 April, the Museum hosted Stored and Sorted, a display of work by foundation students at Oxfordshire School of Art and Design in Banbury. This work also drew its inspiration from the Transformations exhibition. Some years ago, twenty drawers for which the Museum had no further use were given to the art school to use for student project work. The students were asked to use the drawers, along with other discarded material of their choice, to create three-dimensional pieces of work. As suggested by the title, the focus was on the activity of sorting and storing collections of objects as processes by which humans can order and understand their world. The twenty drawers were displayed in a single case in the Museum’s lower gallery with accompanying descriptions by each of the students. This exhibition is scheduled to close on 25 August.
From 2 July, the Museum hosted Games, a display of work by students on the Foundation Course in Art and Design at Buckinghamshire and Chilterns University College. In response to the displays of toys and games in the Museum’s lower gallery, the students’ work touched on a number of themes associated with game-playing: fun, competition, rules and regulations, imagination, memories, and childhood. This exhibition is also scheduled to close on 25 August.
Collections Management and Care
Reserve Collections
The General Board’s review of the Pitt Rivers Museum noted the variation in standards of care in different parts of the collection. One of the areas highlighted for improvement was the powerhouse at Osney Mead, housing the majority of the Museum’s reserve collections. Practical proposals for a rolling programme of improvements were then agreed. The conservation team and a documentation staff member would devote one day a week to improving the conditions. They took as their objectives: returning to their correct locations objects deposited at the Powerhouse in preparation for the re-roofing of the museum; returning the paddle collection to the lower gallery, sorting it geographically and improving its storage; moving agricultural objects from the museum to the powerhouse; moving the lithic material to 60 Banbury Road and dealing with boxes containing mixed collections, which have been dispersed and stored within the Museum’s typological storage system. This has all freed up space and allowed for more efficient use of storage areas. Restorage of the shields and agricultural tools are continuing projects with much more work to complete. The powerhouse has been networked so that there is now direct access from there to the Museum’s working databases, which has made information retrieval and object identification more efficient. In addition, the old ‘lighting store’ on the main site has been cleared. Hundreds of lamps and related materials have been checked by documentation and conservation staff and moved to the powerhouse. The powerhouse was also thoroughly cleaned. The results of this reinforced the need for regular housekeeping, once cleaning staff can be allocated.
Acquisitions
A list of all the new acquisitions during the year is given in Annex B. Among the most interesting range of acquisitions during the year were some significant purchases. These included an important collection of ethnographic equestrian material from the James White collection, purchased at auction with the generous assistance of the Manifold Trust, and a collection of Chinese clothing purchased with the assistance of the Resource/V&A Purchase Grant Fund. The Museum is especially grateful to Pat Grover for her assistance in the acquisition of the equestrian collection. The Museum also acquired three contemporary shields from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (an account of which has appeared in the Michaelmas 2001 issue of Oxford Today).
There were also major and substantial accessions to the photograph and manuscript collections during the year. Four major new photograph collections were acquired (totalling in excess of 2,500 items), together with 35 individual items and small collections. An important series of photographs from the 1936 Gould Mission to Tibet was donated by Sir Evan Nepean. An equally important album of photographs, lantern slides, and diaries from Jack Baddeley in Georgia and Chechenya (dating to circa 1890–1910) were donated by Lady Cecily Nepean. Professor Peter Rivière donated his extensive field photographs of Surinam and northern Brazil.
Loans
The Museum’s active loans programme is an important aspect of its work in providing greater access to some of its collections and the Museum was pleased to be able to assist various museums with their special exhibitions during the year.
In September, a Middle Palaeolithic bout coupé handaxe from Drayton near Abingdon was lent to Abingdon Museum for the exhibition Abingdon before the Abbey: The Origins of Britain’s Oldest Town; it was returned in January. In December, three examples of ikat textiles from Sarawak and Bali were lent to the Ashmolean Museum for the exhibition Ikats of Asia; they were returned in February. Also in February, an hour-glass from Wellington in Somerset was lent to the Ashmolean Museum for the exhibition About Time; it was returned in April. In March, nine objects, selected by Jeremy Coote, were lent to the new National Museum of Australia, Canberra for the ‘First Australians Gallery’ and the inaugural exhibition Horizons: The Peopling of Australia since 1788; they are due to be returned in March 2003. In April, twelve items were lent to the Victoria and Albert Museum for the exhibition Inventing New Britain: The Victorian Vision; they were returned in July. This loan included eight items from the Museum’s founding collection that had been on display at the South Kensington Museum, as the V&A then was, in the 1870s, before the collection was transferred to Oxford in 1884
Loans of original historical photographs were made to three institutions. In October fifty-three historic photographs and an album were loaned to the Hayward Gallery, London, for their major exhibition Spectacular Bodies, which explored representations of the human body since the Renaissance. The material, which rubbed shoulders with works by Leonardo di Vinci, comprised anthropometric material by Lamprey, by Lawrence and Selkirk for T. H. Huxley, and the Dammann Album (1874) with loose multiple copies of carte de visite photographs from that project. The material was returned in January. Also in January, sixteen album pages of photographs taken by Sir Wilfred Thesiger during his crossings of the Rub al Khali, Arabia, in 1948–9, were lent to the Fundación ‘la Caixa’, Barcelona for the exhibition El Desierto, which addressed the ‘idea’ of the desert and included an important new commission from William Eggleston. This loan was extended to a second venue at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporàneo in Seville. The material was returned in July.
There were a total of eight separate loans during the year, five within the UK (four from the object collections and one from the photograph collections) and three overseas (one from the object collections and two from the photograph collections). In total, 104 artefacts were loaned, 61 within the UK (17 from the object collections and 44 from the photograph collections) and 43 overseas (9 from the object collections and 34 from the photograph collections).
Cataloguing
As in the previous year, the major advance was undoubtedly the work carried out by the team of cataloguers that the Museum has been able to employ with the grant provided by the Designation Challenge Fund (DCF). The total number of new computer records created during the year was 58,577. It now seems likely that the original aim of completing the computerization of the records for all the Museum’s acquisitions with the exception of the special collections will be exceeded by the end of the two-and-a-half year project, and that the records for the special collections will also be processed. This represents a major advance that is already proving beneficial to many aspects of the Museum’s collections management and research work and to its ability to assist researchers working on its collections. Museum staff are now developing a staged project to carry out a complete inventory of the collections. This would have seemed like a pipe-dream only a few years ago, but has now taken the form of an achievable aim.
Conservation
In April the Museum welcomed conservator Heather Richardson to the staff. Her previous experience of conserving a wide range of materials both in this country and abroad will bring new strengths to the conservation team. Thanks are due to Lorraine Rostant, whom Heather replaces, for her hard work during the previous seven years. Rostant was, however, re-employed for a year from January 2001 in a part-time capacity on a DCF-funded contract to assist with the conservation of material for the new ‘Body Arts’ displays.
The Conservation team enjoyed another year working in the ‘new’ laboratory and textile store and were looking forward to a few more years there. Unfortunately, in May the Museum was informed that the site had to be vacated by August 2002. At present no new location has been agreed. This move will affect forward plans, as again time will have to be spent on finding the space for and designing a new laboratory, and in preparation for the move itself, rather than in collections care. Looking after old and often fragile materials, which make up most of the objects in the collections, is a privilege but it can also be a worrying task. Staff are very aware that many of the stresses and dangers to objects can result from too much transportation and handling. This is exacerbated by the geographical spread of the Museum’s sites. Staff time is not only wasted but objects are under threat while in transit. Some of these problems could be eliminated if the conservation laboratory could be placed within or near to the main museum site.
In January a survey of storage facilities was commissioned from Hallahan Associates, with funding from South Eastern Museums Service and matching funding from the Museum. This survey was of particular importance at a time when the Committee for Museums and Scientific Collections was making the University more aware of the space requirements for adequate storage of its museum collections in order to promote a new joint store for all the University museums. The survey reinforced the Museum’s own findings that the collections are suffering from inadequate, overcrowded storage facilities. Assessing the overall requirements and making better use of the existing space are the first steps towards improvement. The shortage of space for all museum activities was reinforced by a survey compiled by Joanna Eely in April 2001.
Over the course of the year 643 objects were treated in the laboratory. Of these 400 were for the DCF-funded redisplay in the lower gallery. A large collection of lamps, which had been stored in the old ‘lighting store’ above the workshop, were also checked before removal to new storage. The total figure includes objects found with or suspected of infestation during the annual pest surveys and the objects requested for loans. All the objects from the old Benin display were examined in the museum rather than being removed to the conservation laboratory, so as not to hold up progress on the redisplay of these items.
Telemetric environmental monitoring was installed in the photograph and manuscript collections, and in the Hunter–Gatherer and Music Makers galleries. Readings from some of the sites have not been as easy to obtain as had been hoped and a solution is being sought. The conditions in the Music Makers gallery were found to be too extreme and the University Surveyors, working with the conservation team, are looking into a better method of controlling the air-conditioning units. The readings in the main museum have demonstrated how much the new roof has improved the winter conditions, but retention of thermal heat is still a problem in summer. Further consultation with the Surveyors is awaited. Pest surveys were completed in the main museum and Balfour Galleries. On both sites there was a significant reduction in the number of objects requiring treatment. Rentokil were called in twice over the year: first to advise on a suspected wasps’ nest in the roof space above the Music Makers gallery in the Autumn, and then to remove pigeons nesting in the roof space of the Powerhouse in the early spring. In July, Rentokil were employed to look at the pest problem in the Balfour Galleries as a whole. The results will be available in the next reporting year.
Professional assistance to other institutions included advice given to the Museum of Modern Art Oxford on the removal of discolouration from three polychrome sculptures for an exhibition of Brazilian art in July 2001.
Juliet Cresole, from The London Institute, Camberwell College of Arts, had a three-week Conservation Professional Placement in the autumn. Theresa Gallagher from the School of Environmental & Applied Sciences, University of Derby had a one-week placement in the summer. Visits to the conservation facilities by other conservators included: Ann Kvitzong and Sonja Leggewie from the Horniman Museum; Kate Collier (paper conservator) from Worcester Library with two students; and Nichola Smith from the National Museum of Australia with Kylie Roth of the National Gallery of Australia.
Research and Scholarship
Members of the Museum’s staff continue to be involved in numerous research projects both within and beyond the Museum. Some idea of the range of this work can be gained from the individual entries in Annex D: Staff Activities and Annex E: Staff Publications, as well as from Annex F: Museum Seminars. The Museum also contributes to the funding of research and scholarship through its administration of the James A. Swan Fund (see Annex G) and its support of the Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre (see Annex H). It also supports the work of researchers all over the world whose projects draw on the Museum’s collections and expertise. Many of these are regular or occasional, real or virtual visitors to the Museum and its collections.
Collections Research
Over the past few years, a number of members of the Museum staff have refocused their research on the Museum’s collections. This refocus is reflected in the increasing number of publications on the Museum and its collections. It is not possible to detail all such work here, but a few examples will give an idea of the range of the work being carried out.
A prime example of the work being carried out on the collections is the new web site devoted to the Forster Collection of Pacific artefacts from Captain Cook’s second famous voyage of discovery. This was launched on 27 February at a party hosted jointly by the Museum and the Humanities Computing Development Team (HCDT) of the Humanities Computing Unit at Oxford University Computing Services, who have been the Museum’s partners in the project. Building on collections management and research work carried out since 1996 by Jeremy Coote and a former intern, Nicolette Meister, the site provides access to a comprehensive illustrated catalogue of the collection, while also providing information about the collectors and the history of the collection, an archive of related documents, and links to other on-line resources. It is intended regularly to update the site and to seek to develop it further as time and funds allow. The Museum is grateful for the grants it has received for its ‘Cook’ project from the Hulme University Fund, the South Eastern Museums Service, and the Jerwood/MGC Cataloguing Grants Scheme 1997–1998 (supported by the Museums & Galleries Commission, the Jerwood Foundation, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport). The Museum is also indebted to Peter Gathercole who, in his role of external specialist adviser, has been vital to the success of the project. Work on this historically complex collection has continued since the launch of the web site; additional information generated by this continuing work will be added to the site’s databases from time to time.
Scientific analysis of collections is also undertaken from time to time. Analysis of an early cushion-cover from the Kongo kingdom in Central Africa (1886.1.254) was carried out during the year with the assistance of a number of colleagues in other institutions. Tim Lawrence of the Jodrell Laboratory, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew carried out microscopic analysis of the plant fibre and Dr Tom Higham of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit carried out radiocarbon dating. This latter work was carried out free of charge thanks to the generosity of the Natural Environment Research Council Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Dating Service Steering Committee. Discussions have been held with Dr Tamsin O’Connell of the Oxford Archaeology Research Laboratory about the possibility of dye analysis.
Staff also carry out field-based and archival studies in order to research collections held by the Museum. For example, Laura Peers carried out fieldwork and archival research in Minnesota in September 2000 as part of continuing research into Beatrice Blackwood’s Minnesota fieldwork. This included visits to source communities and consultation with elders as well as repatriation of images and data. Community members were extremely pleased to receive copies of Blackwood’s photos and related information, which were deposited in Red Lake with the Red Lake Nation Archives and in Nett Lake with a member of the community designated as community historian by elders pending the construction of a local archive and history centre. Since then, the relevant entries on the Museum’s databases have been amended and enhanced. This research has been supported by a grant from the British Academy as well as by funds from the Minnesota Historical Society (Researcher in Residence), the University of Oxford Astor Fund and Travel Fund.
Similarly, on a visit to Dharamsala (the Tibetan capital-in-exile) and Tibet in the summer of 2000, Clare Harris presented a CDRom of images from the Museum’s collection of Tibetan photographs to the curator of the Tibet Museum Visual Archive. She also conducted a photo-elicitation exercise for the Museum’s collection of photographs taken by Reginald Charles Francis Schomberg in Ladakh in the 1930s with Ladakhis attending the conference of the International Association of Ladakh Studies.
Work was also continued or begun on a number of other projects. For example, Fumiko Ohinata continued her work on the Japanese archaeology collections and, at the end of the year, Peter Mitchell began a survey of the Museum’s holdings of stone tools and other archaeological material from Southern Africa.
Research Visitors
The documentation section recorded 137 research visits by scholars and students from all over the world, compared with 87 in 1999–2000; there were 71 research visits to the music collections; and there were 103 research visits to the photographic and manuscript collections, of which 62 were from within the UK and 41 from overseas. As usual, staff dealt with many hundred postal, telephone, and email enquiries about the collections, the cultures represented in them, the Museum itself and related museological issues, from academics, indigenous communities, students, artists and members of the public.
While the absolute number of visitors to the photographic and manuscript collection was down (from 133 in 1999–2000), the length and complexity of visits has continued to increase as the photograph collections in particular are used analytically, rather than merely illustratively. Major external publication projects, especially relating to the Thesiger collection, have been especially demanding of staff time this year. Building work over the summer months also made it difficult to service research visitors. Work continued through the year on the development of a ‘photographic gallery’ for the Museum’s web site to disseminate more information on the scope and availability of the collections. However desirable these sort of initiatives are, the fact remains that the photograph and manuscript collections are woefully understaffed with only two part-time staff to cope with the ever-rising demand from academics and other members of the public interested in the history of collecting, colonial and cross-cultural histories, and visual culture. Access to some of the collections, from both within the Museum and remotely, has been enhanced by the digitalization programme. The introduction this year of a dedicated computer terminal for research visitors to interrogate the photograph database has led to both greater efficiency and more extensive and fluid use of the collections. The DCF project, and other cataloguing initiatives within the Museum, have also enhanced visitor use of the collections as an increasing proportion of the databases becomes available electronically. During each afternoon of Oxford’s ‘Africa Week’, from 24 to 30 June, Jeremy Coote manned a desk in the Museum equipped with a computer loaded with a copy of the Museum’s working databases. Under the banner of ‘Quiz the Curator’, this proved to be an interesting experiment in providing members of the public with direct, unmediated access to curatorial expertise.
Among many notable individual research visitors this year was Dr Innocent Pikirayi of the University of Zimbabwe, who came to the Museum on a Commonwealth Fellowship awarded by the Commonwealth Scholarships Commission of the Association of Commonwealth Universities. During his attachment to the Museum from November 2000 to April 2001, Dr Pikirayi made a thorough study of the Museum’s collection of ceramic assemblages from Khami in Zimbabwe.
Teaching and Examining
The research and scholarship carried out at the Museum shapes and influences the teaching that members of the Museum’s staff carry out as part of their University duties. Museum staff continue to teach on the University’s undergraduate degrees in Archaeology & Anthropology, Human Sciences, Modern History and Geography; the M.Sc. and M.Phil. degrees in Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography (formerly Ethnology and Museum Ethnography); and variously for M.Sc., M.Phil., and D.Phil. students studying Social Anthropology, History of Art and Visual Culture, Archaeology, and Music. There were some forty students involved in postgraduate research at the Museum during the year. Details of the teaching and examining carried out by individual members of staff will be found in Annex D: Staff Activities.
Balfour Library
The Balfour Library continues to be central to the Museum’s work and is used daily by Museum staff and visitors. The work of the library staff during the year has been dominated by the retrospective conversion project, which has been funded with the generous support of Sir Charles Chadwyck Healey. As of the end of July, more than 10,000 local copy records were available on OLIS, the University’s on-line catalogue, representing around half of the book holdings. This has been achieved thanks to the hard work of a dedicated cataloguing assistant, Ahmed Abd Al Rahman, and the library assistant Ines Asceric.
Cataloguing and rearrangement of the library holdings at the Donald-Baden Powell Quaternary Research Centre continued throughout the year, through the kindness of members of the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum. We are extremely grateful to Mrs Joy Crammer, who sadly was eventually forced by ill health to give up her part in the work, at least for the time being, and Mrs Jane Christie-Miller who has continued work on the Donald Baden-Powell bequest material, particularly maps.
A list of donors to the library’s collection is provided in Annex B: Acquisitions.
Financial Success
The Museum has been awarded £2.8 million over five years as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Board Core Funding Awards for Higher Education Museums, Galleries, and Collections. This funding will support core functions from August 2001 until July 2006.
Project Grants
For everything beyond basic core functions the Museum is increasingly reliant on its ability to raise income from outside grants and donations. The project ‘Including Everybody: Researching New Audiences and Enriching Visitor Experience at the Pitt Rivers Museum’, submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund in tandem with a bid from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, was awarded a grant of £97,367 over two years beginning in December 2000. The second year of the Museum’s Designation Challenge Fund (DCF) project was completed, with a grant of £122,886 for the Retrospective Cataloguing and Redisplay programmes. A bid for a third year of DCF funding was successful in attracting a total of £129,972 for the year that began in April 2001.
Research Grants
The following individual research grants were obtained during the year: £2000 from the Roman Research Trust for investigations at Frilford, Oxfordshire (Chris Gosden, with Gary Lock); a total of £7200, from the British Academy, the Society for South Asian Studies, the Oxford University Committee for South Asian Studies, and the Michael Aris Memorial Trust for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, towards the costs of the tenth Colloquium of the International Association of Ladakh Studies, to be held in Oxford in September 2001 (Clare Harris); £78,315 from the Arts and Humanities Research Board for research on the photographs taken by Beatrice Blackwood among the Kainai (Blood) People (Laura Peers); £1600 from the British Academy to bring speakers to an international conference on material culture in Rupert’s Land, to be held in Oxford in 2002 (Laura Peers); a grant-in-kind of approximately £350 from the Natural Environment Research Council Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Dating Service Steering Committee for a radiocarbon sample analysis (Jeremy Coote).
Museum Shop and other Trading Activities
The total sales during the year (gross) were £73,198.35, resulting in a net profit to the Museum of £5,444.25. In order to cover the extra work resulting from Sunday opening, shop staffing was increased. Mrs Sally Druce was appointed as Shop Supervisor in October 2000. It was a difficult trading year due to the pressures on visitor numbers and increased overheads. However, both visitor spend and customer spend were increased over the year and total sales were up nearly £8,500 on the last full year (1997–98). Other income generated by the Museum included: £2,092.83 from facility hire and filming; £4,650.76 from donations received through the collecting box; and £712.74 received through photographic services.
Annex A
Overview of the Museum
The Pitt Rivers Museum is an ethnographic and archaeological museum of international importance with more than 120,000 visitors a year. The Museum is also a noted centre of research with a strong role in the University’s teaching of anthropology and archaeology. It has almost fifty staff.
The Museum takes its name from General Pitt Rivers, who in 1884 donated his ethnographic and archaeological collection to the University. The collection has since been extensively added to and today numbers some 425,000 artefacts (275,000 objects, 150,000 historical photographs), making it second in size only to the British Museum’s ethnographic holdings. 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 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 Galleries (formerly the Balfour Building) beside 60 Banbury Road, which opened in 1986 and currently houses displays devoted to musical instruments and hunter-gatherers past and present. The main museum is open to members of the public free of charge from 1.00 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. from Monday to Saturday, and from 2.00 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. on Sundays. The Balfour Galleries are open from 1.00 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. on Saturday and at other times by appointment. Both sites also cater for pre-booked educational parties from 10.10 a.m. to 12.00 noon on weekdays.
Two further sites are major repositories: one at the Old Power House at Osney and the other off St Cross Road. The latter houses the conservation laboratory, the collections of textiles and associated material, together with research facilities for studying them. Reserve collections of musical instruments and archaeology collections are housed in 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 collection of Chinese clothing and a Chinese baby-carrier (purchased from John Gillow with the assistance of the Resource/V&A Purchase Grant Fund; 2000.34 and 2000.35); a trench art figure of the Virgin (purchased from Dr Nicholas Saunders; 2000.37); a collection of equestrian material from the collection of James White (purchased at auction with funds made available by the Manifold Trust via Pat Grover; 2000.55); a collection of cosmetics (purchased for the Museum by Jenny Peck; 2001.16); three shields from Papua New Guinea (purchased from New Guinea Arts, Sydney, Australia; 2001.27); and a book of henna designs (purchased for the Museum by Jenny Peck; 2001.47).
Donations
Professor Mamoru Abe (a series of studies for his installation Voices; 2001.48); Mr Colin Allport (a collection of artefacts from Nigeria and Sierra Leone; 2000.52); Francis Baden Powell (a Yoruba ibeji figure; 2000.32); Joshua A. Bell and Dr Robert L. Welsch (a collection of material from New Guinea; 2000.48); Reverend Dr Martin Boord (a brick of Chinese tea; 2000.45); Mr R. Broadbent (a collection of Hausa clothing from Nigeria; 2001.26); Reverend E. J. Clarke (a collection of material from the Congo; 2000.49); H. Copeman (a collection of photographs of New Zealand and India; 2001.42); Ms Marina de Alarcón (a box of sheets of temporary tatoos; 2001.19); Mrs Elizabeth Edwards (a candle and calendar from the shrine of Sta Maria Goretti at Corinaldo, Le Marche, Italy; 2000.79 / a folder of 15 colour photographic cards of Mongolian religious life; 2001.2); Tony Hayward (a collection of educational posters from India; 2000.53); Michael Heppell (an Iban textile; 2000.30); Mr Jeremy Herklots (a miscellaneous collection including a Romanian hat made from bracket fungus; 2001.22); Ms Joceyln Hughes (hair pieces; 2001.31); Dr Merete Demant Jakobsen (a Toucan breast ornament; 2000.44); Rosemary Lee (a collection of paper clothing from Hong Kong burnt at funerals; 2001.3); Mr J. Lewis-Barned (a pair of African shoes; 2001.37); Mrs Deborah Manley (a metal wind-catcher from Syria; 2000.54); Sir Evan Nepean (a collection of photographs of Tibet; 2001.35); Lady Cicely Nepean (a collection of photographs; 2001.34); Ms Leah Niederstadt (a traditional-style Ethiopian bottle-gourd and a version made out of plastic; 2000.72 / a whistle from Portland, Maine, USA; 2001.15); Ms Lynn Parker (a bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier perfume; 2001.18); Ms Jenny Peck (a Nepalese marriage necklace; 2001.28 / Nepalese cosmetics; 2001.29 / an ear pick; 2001.32 / henna paste; 2001.43); Mrs S. M. Peck (an empty bottle of Chanel No. 5.; 2001.38); Robert Pring-Mill (a bird made of fibre in Chile; 2001.20); Dr Paul Raymaekers (a collection of European bottles imported into Central Africa between 1850 and 1875; 2000.72); Mr Bob Rivers (two albums of photographs of the Museum’s stores; 2001.45); Karen Rodham (a South-East Asian sword and shield; 2000.31); Professor Peter Rivière (his fieldwork photographs; 2001.33); Mr Anthony Sadler (a complete Kurdish man’s costume; 2001.23); Dr St John Simpson (a collection from Turkmenistan; 2000.51); Mr Bob ‘Eagle’ Smith (tattooing equipment and related material; 2001.41); Mrs Birgitte Speake (a bottle of Biba aftershave; 2001.17); Keith Stevens (a figure of a Chinese deity; 2000.33); Mrs Kate White (a collection of Biba cosmetics; 2001.12); Ms Ruth Taylor (a collection of material from Rajasthan; 2001.30); Professor Bryan Wilson (a piece of kente cloth; 2001.25); and Dr John Wilson (an early 20th Century postcard of a ‘Zulu warrior’; 2001.24).
The Balfour Library was pleased to receive material from: E. M. Chilver, Jacqueline Coote, Jeremy Coote, Bernard de Grunne, Chris Gosden, Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Hélène La Rue, Cressida Miller, Leah Niederstadt, Michael O’Hanlon, Alison Petch, the Tylor Library, and the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine Library.
Annex C
Staff
(part-time staff are indicated by * and staff on fixed-term contract by +)
Director Michael O’Hanlon
Administration Julia Cousins (Administrator)
Sue Brooks (Administrative Officer)
Christina Fox (Museum Secretary; to September 2000)
Daphne Palmer (Clerical Assistant; from October 2000) +
Rachel Walker (Assistant Administrator; from January 2001) +
Caretaker Norman Weller
(64 Banbury Road)
Cleaner Nick Wicker (from June 2001) */+
Collections Jeremy Coote (Joint Head of Collections Management) *
Elizabeth Edwards (Head of Photograph and Manuscript Collections) *
Julia Nicholson (Joint Head of Collections Management) *
Marina de Alarcón (Senior Curatorial Assistant)
Lynn Parker (Curatorial Assistant)
Conservation Birgitte Speake (Head of Conservation)
Robert Pearce
Heather Richardson (from April 2001)
Lorraine Rostant (part-time only from January 2001) */+
Curators Chris Gosden * (also University Lecturer)
Clare Harris * (also University Lecturer)
Hélène La Rue * (also University Lecturer / Curator, Bate Collection)
Peter Mitchell * (also University Lecturer)
Laura Peers * (also University Lecturer)
DCF Project Team Alison Petch (Project Manager and Registrar) +
Oliver Douglas (Junior Cataloguer; from January 2001) +
Sandra Dudley (Senior Cataloguer; to March 2001) */+
Claire Freeman (Junior Cataloguer) +
Gwyneira Issac (Junior Cataloguer) */+
Meghan O’Brien (Junior Cataloguer) */+
Jennifer Peck (Junior Cataloguer / Project Assistant) +
Màiri Robertson (Junior Cataloguer) +
Alexandria Stamp (Museum Technician; from August 2000) +
Claire Warrior (Senior Cataloguer) */+
HLAF Project Team Andrew McLellan (Education & Outreach; from January 2001) +
Ann Nicol (Audience Development Research; from January 2001) */+
Honorary Director Derek Roe (Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre)
ICT Officer Haas Ezzet
Library Mark Dickerson (Balfour Librarian)
Ahmed Abd al Rahman (from January 2001) +/*
Ines Asceric (from January 2001) +/*
Marketing Kate White (Marketing and Visitor Services Officer)
Shirley Careford (Shop Manager)
Sally Druce (Shop Supervisor; from October 2000) +
Photography Malcolm Osman
Researchers Chantal Knowles (to November 2000) +
Katharine Scott (ARC Limited) +
Julie Scott-Jackson (Company Services Associates) +
Alison Brown (AHRB)+
Security Staff Emma Buchanan +
Paul Fitzpatrick (to September 2000) +
Colin Joyce +
George Kwaider (from March 2000) +
Neil Owen (to August 2000) +
Daphne Palmer (to October 2000) +
Peter Stimpson +
Amy Pliszka (from October 2000) +
Edward Sandle (from July 2001) +
Roger Taylor (to January 2001)
Benjamin Wilkes */+
Brian Winkfield
Technical Services Bob Rivers (Head of Technical Services)
Edward Bruce (Display Technician; from July 2001) +
John Simmons (Museum Technician)
John Todd (Museum Technician)
Adrian Vizor (Museum Technician)
Annex D
Staff Activities (including Teaching and Examining)
Jeremy Coote continued his researches into the history of the Museum’s early collections, especially those from the Pacific. He attended the ‘Human Image’ conference at the British Museum in January. In March, he gave a talk at the Oxford University Computing Service about the new Forster Collection web site in the series ‘Digital Projects in Oxford’, organized by Oxtalent and the Humanities Computing Unit. In April he attended ‘Beyond the Museum: Working with Collections in the Digital Age’, a one-day symposium organized by the mda and Oxford University’s Humanities Computing Unit. Also in April, he chaired several sessions of ‘Transformations’, the Museum Ethnographers Group’s annual conference. In June he attended a Designation Challenge Fund one-day seminar at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on project evaluation. In September he attended the seminar on ‘Ethics’ organized by the Museums Association and the Museum Ethnographers Group. He continued as an Associate Editor of JASO: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford. For the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), he gave tutorials in Archaeology & Anthropology, co-supervised two doctoral students, and served as an assessor for others.
Marina de Alarcón attended the symposium on ‘Conservation of Antique Arms and Armour’ at the Wallace Collection in February. In September she attended the seminar on ‘Ethics’ organized by the Museums Association and the Museum Ethnographers Group. She assisted Julia Nicholson with practical lectures to visiting groups from the Costume Society and the Japan Society.
Sally Druce attended the AGM of the Museums Trading Association in December.
Elizabeth Edwards gave invited papers at various conferences and meetings, including the Theoretical Archaeologists Group’s meeting in Oxford; the Economic and Social Research Council’s ‘Visual Evidence’ seminar, also in Oxford; ‘Locating Memory’, at the University of Lancaster; and ‘Sieivagovat’ at the Saami Museum, Inari, Finland. She also attended the ‘Art of the British Empire’ conference at Tate Britain, the seminar on ‘Ethics’ organized by the Museums Association and the Museum Ethnographers Group, the Museum Ethnographers Group annual conference, and ‘The Photographically Illustrated Book’ seminar at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. She gave seminars at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, and at the British Museum. She undertook research on nineteenth-century registers at the Musée de l’Homme (Laboratoire d’Anthropologie), Paris, and made an exhibition research trip to Brazil. She was on the international consultative board for the prospective new Dutch Colonialism gallery at the Tropen Museum, Amsterdam. She gave gallery talks for ‘The Open City’ at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford and a talk on ‘Looking at Historical Photographs’ at the Pitt Rivers Museum during Museums and Galleries Month. She continued to serve on the editorial boards of History of Photography and Visual Anthropology Review, and was appointed to the editorial board of the Oxford Companion to the Photograph. She continued to serve on the Photographic Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute and was appointed to the academic evaluation panel of the Research Support Libraries Programme Mission Archives project at the School of Oriental and African Studies. For the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), she gave lectures and tutorials in Visual Anthropology and Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. She co-supervised six doctoral students (mostly for ISCA, but also for Modern History), served as an assessor for a number of others, and supervised an undergraduate dissertation in Archaeology & Anthropology. She also served as external advisor for three doctoral students at other universities.
Chris Gosden organized the Theoretical Archaeology Group’s annual conference in Oxford in December. He was a member of the ‘Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology’ Panel of the Arts and Humanities Research Board. He worked as one of four curators for ‘The Phantom Museum’ a forthcoming exhibition about Sir Henry Wellcome’s collections, which is to be held at the British Museum in 2003. He is the British editor for a new periodical, Journal of Social Archaeology (published by Sage), and continues to sit on the editorial boards of World Archaeology, Archaeology in Oceania, and Ethnograpisch–Archäologishe Zeitschrift. During sabbatical leave in Michaelmas Term 2000 he was Visiting Fellow at the Department of Anthropology, Australian Museum, Sydney. During July he excavated (with Gary Lock) at the Romano-British site of Frilford, south Oxfordshire. He gave lectures and tutorials in ‘People, Environment, and Culture’, ‘Material Culture, Art, and Society’, ‘The Nature of Archaeological Enquiry’; and ‘Material Culture in Melanesia’ and supervised some fourteen graduate students. He was Chair of the Standing Committee for Archaeology & Anthropology in Hilary Term and Chair of Examiners for the Final Honours School in Archaeology & Anthropology. During Trinity Term 2001 he was Acting Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum. He acted as an external examiner in the Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton and at New College, University of Southampton.
Clare Harris visited Dharamsala (the Tibetan capital-in-exile) and Nepal in the summer of 2000 gathering material for her next book. She continued her research on collections of Tibetan material in the United Kingdom with visits to the British Museum, the British Library, the Royal Asiatic Society, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Liverpool Museum, and the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. She also continued her work on enhancing the documentation of the records for the Museum’s Tibetan and Himalayan object and photographic collections. She gave a gallery talk about the Museum’s Tibetan collections during Museums and Galleries Month 2001, set up and introduced a special talk by the Tibetan author Jamyang Norbu for the Friends of the Museum, and gave talks and tours of the Asian collections at the Museum for a number of visiting researchers. During a sabbatical term, she gave lectures at Ann Arbor, Boston University, Harvard University, Swarthmore College, and Columbia University. She was chair and discussant at the conference on ‘The Politics of Authenticity in Modern India’ organized by the Centre for South Asian Studies in Paris. She delivered a paper at the International Association of Ladakh Studies conference on ‘The Missionary Turns Ethnographer: Walter Asboe’s Collecting Strategies in Ladakh’. She served as a reviewer for the Journal of Material Culture and the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. For the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology’, she gave undergraduate and graduate tutorials and lectures in ‘People, Environment, and Culture’, ‘Material Culture, Art, and Aesthetics’ and ‘Introduction to the Pitt Rivers Museum’ and co-ordinated the seminar series ‘Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography’ during Michaelmas Term. Following a sabbatical during Hilary, she gave revision classes during Trinity for all postgraduates and additional classes for Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography postgraduates. She supervised three doctoral students, as well as a visiting D.Phil. student from Belarus on a one-year Chevening scholarship to Oxford. She was examiner for the undergraduate paper in Visual Anthropology and examined a D.Phil. thesis as well as serving as assessor for a number of others.
Hélène La Rue was as hard pressed as ever dividing her time between the Bate Collection and the Pitt Rivers. Highlights of the year included a gamelan study weekend and a very successful event at the Balfour Galleries with the Laurentian Handbell Ringers. She continued to be involved with the Pitt Stop activities for children in the Museum and events such as the Japanese evening in Museums and Galleries Month. She also continued to be Chairman of the Musical Collections Forum and a music advisor for Southern Arts. She continued to lecture for the Music Faculty. One of her ISCA students, Tina Stoeklin, completed her D.Phil., as did another of her students at the Music Faculty. She also examined two doctoral theses for ISCA.
Peter Mitchell organized both the sixth Archaeology & Anthropology Open Day and the second Sutton Trust Summer School for Archaeology & Anthropology. He gave an invited lecture to the Society of Antiquaries of London and presentations at the Pan African Congress on Prehistory and Related Disciplines in Bamako, Mali and at an International Workshop on Cultural Resource Management in Africa in London. Several papers were written or revised for publication. He continued to serve as Secretary for the James A. Swan Fund and to serve on the Council of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and on the editorial boards of World Archaeology and African Archaeological Review. He lectured for the undergraduate degree in Archaeology & Anthropology, tutored for his own College (St Hugh’s) and others, supervised graduate students, and co-ordinated the Honour Moderations course ‘Introduction to World Archaeology’. He served as Chairman of Examiners for the M.St. degrees in Anthropological Archaeology, European Archaeology, and World Archaeology and the M. Phil. in European Archaelogy. He also served as an Examiner for the Final Honour School in Archaeology & Anthropology. He served as Tutor for Admissions at St Hugh’s College.
Julia Nicholson presented a paper on the exhibition Transformations: The Art of Recycling at the Museum Ethnographers Group annual conference. She gave a paper on the Asian costume collections at the Museum at the annual symposium of the Costume Society and organized a visit to the Museum for the conference delegates, which included a series of ‘behind the scenes’ sessions. With Marina de Alarcón she co-hosted a visit from the Japan Society, including a talk and guided tour, in March. She worked on a number of collaborative outreach activities associated with the Transformations exhibition, in particular the ‘Transformations Triangle’ art project with The Cherwell School and Frideswide Middle School culminating in a small display in the Museum. She also organized a short residency in the Museum for fashion designer Jessica Ogden. With Marina de Alarcón she worked with the Ainu Foundation, Japan and the National Museums of Scotland on the preparation of a forthcoming loan of Ainu artefacts. Preparatory work on a loan of Naga material to venues in the United States of America was undertaken with Vibha Joshi, consultant for the exhibition.
Michael O’Hanlon was invited by the Swiss Ethnological Association to present a paper in Basel in December, and by the German Museums Association to lecture in Hamburg in May. He attended the opening of the new National Museum of Australia in Canberra in March, where he was able to consult colleagues while acting as courier for the display of material from the Pitt Rivers Museum commissioned by the National Museum. He gave talks about the Museum to many visiting groups. He continued to serve as a Trustee for the Green Centre in Brighton and on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Journal of Material Culture, and Ethnos. He co-ordinated the ‘People, Environment, and Culture’ lecture series in Michaelmas, and lectured in it, as well as in ‘Material Culture, Art, and Society’ and ‘Fieldwork Methods’. He also taught half of a course on ‘Debates and Themes in Anthropology’ and co-taught an option on Melanesian material culture. He supervised four doctoral students and one M.Phil. student, and served as internal examiner for a D.Phil. and as external examiner for a D.Sc. degree at Cambridge.
Robert Pearce visited Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and its stores, attended a presentation by Resource at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, participated in a seminar on ‘Fur, Feather, and Skin’ organized by the Conservators of Ethnographic Artefacts at the Museum of London in December, and visited the new galleries and conservation laboratories at the Horniman Museum in June.
Laura Peers continued her research on the E. M. Hopkins collection of early nineteenth-century material from North America in preparation for a small special exhibition and a published catalogue. She continued work on the Museum’s prospective new introductory display and began work on preparing new contextualizing information for the display of human remains in the Museum. In September, she gave two lectures to the Minnesota Historical Society. In December, she gave a presentation to a seminar on repatriation organized by the Institute for Art and Law in London. In January, she gave lectures at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology and at Professor Ruth Phillips’s graduate seminar on museum anthropology. She attended the Arctic Clothing Conference in March; gave presentations to the annual conferences of the Museum Ethnographers Group and the Association of Social Anthropologists in April; and attended the UNESCO conference, ‘Museums, Indigenous Peoples, and New Technologies’ in May. She spoke to the Friends of the Museum. She also hosted a number of research visitors working on North American collections, including three tribal visitors, and curators from the Canadian Museum of Civilization, McCord Museum, Newberry Library, and Royal Ontario Museum. She gave introductory tours of the Museum for prospective Human Sciences students and for distance-learning students on the Museum Studies programme at the University of Leicester. She continued as an executive committee member of the Museum Ethnographers Group and the Bead Study Trust. She acted as a consultant for the Economic Botany Collection at Kew Gardens on the preliminary identification of Canadian First Nations materials. For the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, she gave undergraduate and graduate tutorials and lectures in ‘People, Environment, and Culture’, ‘Material Culture, Art, and Aesthetics’ and ‘Introduction to the Pitt Rivers Museum’ and co-ordinated the seminar series ‘Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography’ during Hilary Term. She taught the option on ‘Museum Ethnography’. She co-ordinated and examined the Ethnography option for Geography undergraduates, supervised Archaeology & Anthropology undergraduate long essays, and examined for Moderations in the same degree. She supervised three doctoral students, one of whom, Alison Brown, successfully completed her thesis during the year. She continued to co-ordinate the HONOR internships which arrange for Archaeology & Anthropology and Human Science undergraduates to work on Native American reservations.
Alison Petch transcribed and annotated the letters, held by the Museum in its manuscript collections, from Paddy Cahil and Joe Cooper, two residents of the Northern Territory, Australia, to Walter Baldwin Spencer. This work will form the basis of a future publication with Professor John Mulvaney. In April, she attended and spoke at the Museum Ethnographers Group’s annual conference and was co-opted on to the Group’s committee. In June she attended a Designation Challenge Fund one-day seminar at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on project evaluation. In September she attended the seminar on ‘Ethics’ organized by the Museums Association and the Museum Ethnographers Group.
Heather Richardson attended a seminar at the Textile Conservation Centre, University of Southampton and participated in the Oxford Conservators Group visit to Oxford University Herbaria. As Treasurer of the Ethnography Section of the United Kingdom Institute for Conservation, she organized and attended a workshop and seminar on ‘Conservation of Ethnographic Paint Surfaces’ at De Montfort University, Lincoln in July.
Derek Roe again spent much of his research time assisting Professor J. Desmond Clark with the final stages of preparing for publication the third volume of his study of Kalambo Falls, dealing with the complete proofs of this 800-page monograph twice during the year. The work, which has been in preparation for nearly 30 years, was finally completed for publication in the next reporting period. He also wrote a number of articles and completed the first draft of a book about his experiences in working with the late Dr Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge. He continued to cooperate with Professor Michael Walker of Murcia University in research on the earlier Palaeolithic of Southern Spain, and in December he was an invited speaker at an international conference on Early Iberian prehistory in Murcia, held in honour of Professor Phillip Tobias. He continued his work on the identification of stone artefacts gathered by those working in a number of local field projects in the Upper Thames Valley. The major two-year project, financed by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, in which he has been co-principal investigator with Professor Clive Gamble of Southampton University, to study 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, was extended into the first few months of the year under review. Reports are being prepared. He continued as University Lecturer in Prehistoric Archaeology (with the title of Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology) and as Honorary Director of the Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre. He gave a course of lectures on Palaeolithic Archaeology in Michaelmas Term, jointly with Dr Paul Pettitt, for first-year students taking Honour Moderations in Archaeology & Anthropology. He gave his usual three-term course of lectures and practical classes for graduate students taking the M.St. in World Archaeology. He was examiner in Trinity Term for Honour Moderations in Archaeology & Anthropology and for the M.Sc. degree in Archaeology. He also examined a doctoral thesis for the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris.
Lorraine Rostant attended a Resource presentation at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in September, the Museum Ethnographers Group conference in April, the seminar and workshop on ‘Conservation of Ethnographic Paint Surfaces’ at De Montford University, Lincoln in July, and the ‘Carpet Structure’ seminar held at the Ashmolean Museum. She visited the new galleries and conservation laboratories at the Horniman Museum and participated in the Oxford Conservators Group visit to Oxford University Herbaria.
Julie Scott-Jackson worked on preparing her next publication: ‘The Palaeolithic Landscape of the Marlborough Downs, Wiltshire, and Gazetteer of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Artefacts Found in Relation to Deposits Mapped as Clay-with-flints on Chalk Downlands of Southern England’. She worked on developing specific models and methodologies for the investigation and excavation of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic high-level sites on deposits mapped as clay-with-flints. As leader of the Unit for the study of Palaeolithic Artefacts and Associated Deposits Mapped as Clay-with-flint (PADMAC), she has been building the PADMAC network, which now includes associates at both Reading University and Southampton University, advising local archaeological groups on Lower and Middle Palaeolithic field methodology, supervising a D.Phil. student, and advising M.St. students. Amongst the work carried out during the year was a detailed excavation at Dickett’s Field and post-excavation analysis of sediments and artefacts and site investigations at Marlborough Downs. She secured long-term external funding for the PADMAC Unit, which will enable the funding of two D.Phil. students, one post-doctoral researcher, and one Senior Research Fellow.
Birgitte Speake participated in a number of visits, seminars, and meetings during the year: the Oxford Conservators Group visit to the Bodleian Library; a seminar on Ethics organized by the Museums Association and the Museums Ethnographers Group; a visit to the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to see its documentation systems and stores; a seminar on the care of photographs at Corpus Christi College; a seminar on lighting systems organized by Resource; a seminar on ‘Fur, Feather and Skin’ organized by the Conservators of Ethnographic Artefacts at the Museum of London; a seminar on ‘Carpet Structure’ at the Ashmolean Museum; the Conservators Group meeting on ‘Collection Care and Preservation in Conservation’ in February; a seminar on the ‘Conservation of Antique Arms and Armour’ at the Wallace Collection, also in February; a presentation by the Leather Conservation Centre Northampton at The Worshipful Leather Makers Hall; the conference ‘Annuraaq: Arctic Clothing from Igloolik’ at the British Museum in March; the Museum Ethnographers Group’s annual conference in Oxford in April; the Oxford Conservators Group visit to Oxford University Herbaria; and the Programme for Internship for the M.Sc. in Conservation for Archaeology and Museums at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London in July.
Kate White contributed, as a member of the Ethics Guidelines Sub-Committee of the Museum Ethnographers Group, to a submission to the new draft code of Ethics circulated by the Museums Association and attended the seminar on Ethics organized by the Museums Association and the Museum Ethnographers Group, in September. She also attended: the AGM of the Museums and Galleries Disability Group in October; ‘Whose Project is it Anyway?’, the AGM of the Visitor Studies Group, in November; ‘Competing with the Best: Museum Marketing in 2001’, the Campaign for Museums conference, in January; and ‘Beyond the Museum: Working with Collections in the Digital Age’, a one-day symposium organized by the mda and Oxford University’s Humanities Computing Unit, in April
Annex E
Staff Publications
Jeremy Coote (with Chantal Knowles, Nicolette Meister, and Alison Petch), ‘Computerizing the Forster (“Cook”), Arawe, and Founding Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum’, Pacific Arts, nos 19/20 (July 1999), pp. 48–80. [Omitted from previous report.]
Jeremy Coote, ‘The Collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford [§6 of ‘Appendix 2.1. Paviland Cave: The Curatorial and Scientific History of the Museum Collections’]’, in Paviland Cave and the ‘Red Lady’: A Definitive Report, by Stephen Aldhouse-Green, Bristol: Western Academic & Specialist Press for the SCARAB Research Centre of the University of Wales College, Newport and the Friends of the National Museum of Wales (2000), pp. 269–70.
Jeremy Coote, ‘From Landscape to Seascape: A Curator’s View of Voices’, in Mamoru Abe’s Voices, Oxford: The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford (undated [2001]), unpaginated [pp. 10–13].
Jeremy Coote (with Peter Gathercole and Nicolette Meister), ‘PRMS Cook 1: The Forster Collection of Ethnographic Material from Cook’s 2nd Pacific Voyage (1776)—Catalogue of Ethnological Specimens from the South Seas, donated by Reinhold Forster and George Forster / “Curiosities Sent to Oxford”: The Forster Collection of Ethnographic Material from Captain Cook’s Second Pacific Voyage’, in Manuscript Catalogues of the Early Museum Collections, 1683–1886 (Part I) (BAR International Series 907), by Arthur MacGregor, with Melanie Mendonça and Julia White, Oxford: Archaeopress, in association with the Ashmolean Museum (2000), pp. 249–52.
Jeremy Coote, ‘A Storehouse of Knowledge and Mystery: Part One’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 34 (October 2000), pp. 1–2.
Jeremy Coote, ‘A Storehouse of Knowledge and Mystery: Part Two’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 35 (January 2001), p. 5.
Jeremy Coote, ‘Around the World Again: Putting the Forster Collection on the Web’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 36 (April 2001), pp. 6–7.
Jeremy Coote, The Forster Collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. [Online web pages and databases accessible at <http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/forster/>.]
Mark Dickerson, ‘The Balfour Library’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 34 (October 2000), p. 8.
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘“The Joachim Schmid Collection at the Pitt Rivers”: An Artist’s Intervention’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 34 (October 2000), p. 4.
Elizabeth Edwards,‘Surveying Culture: Photography, Collecting and Material Culture in British New Guinea, 1898’, in Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s (Methodology and History in Anthropology, Volume 6), edited by Michael O’Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch, Oxford: Berghahn (2000), pp. 103–26.
Elizabeth Edwards, Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology and Museums (Materializing Culture), Oxford: Berg (2001).
Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Disjunctions and Dichotomies’, in Lost Homelands, edited by Annette Hurtig, Kamloops, British Columbia: Kamloops Art Gallery (2000), pp. 44–9.
Chris Gosden (with Chantal Knowles), Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change, Oxford: Berg (2001).
Chris Gosden, ‘On His Todd: Material Culture and Colonialism’ in Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s (Methodology and History in Anthropology, Volume 6), edited by Michael O’Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch, Oxford: Berghahn (2000), pp. 227–50.
Chris Gosden, ‘Varieties of Colonial Experience: Material Culture and Colonialism in West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea’, in Australian Archaeologist: Collected Papers in Honour of Jim Allen, edited by Atholl Anderson and Tim Murray, Canberra: Coombs Academic Publishing, Australian National University (2000), pp. 161–70.
Chris Gosden, ‘Postcolonial Archaeology: Issues of Culture, Identity, and Knowledge’, in Archaeological Theory Today, edited by Ian Hodder, Cambridge: Polity Press (2001), pp. 241–61.
Chris Gosden (with Gary Lock), ‘The Hillforts of the Ridgeway Project: Excavations at Alfred’s Castle 2000’, South Midlands Archaeology, no. 31 (2001), pp. 80–89.
Chris Gosden (with Chantal Knowles and Heide Lienert), ‘German Collectors in South-West New Britain, 1884–1914’, Pacific Arts, nos. 21/22, (2001), pp. 39–52.
Clare Harris, ‘The Politics and Personhood of Tibetan Buddhist Icons’, Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment, edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Thomas, Oxford: Berg (2001), pp. 181–99.
Clare Harris, ‘Robert Powell’s Images of Ladakh: Objects of Contemplation and Education’, in Robert Powell: Himalayan Drawings, edited by Michael Oppitz , Zürich: Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich (2001), pp. 53–60.
Chantal Knowles, ‘A Short Trip to New Britain’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 34 (October 2000), p. 9.
Chantal Knowles (with Chris Gosden), Collecting Colonialism: Material Culture and Colonial Change, Oxford: Berg (2001).
Chantal Knowles, ‘Reverse Trajectories: Beatrice Blackwood as Collector and Anthropologist’, in Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s (Methodology and History in Anthropology, Volume 6), edited by Michael O’Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch, Oxford: Berghahn (2000), pp. 251–71.
Chantal Knowles (with Chris Gosden and Heide Lienert), ‘German Collectors in South-West New Britain, 1884–1914’, Pacific Arts, nos. 21/22, (2001), pp. 39–52.
Hélène La Rue, ‘The Ethnomusicologist in the Wilderness’, in Anthropologists in a Wider World: Essays on Field Research (Methodology and History in Anthropology, Volume 7), edited by Paul Dresch, Wendy James, and David Parkin editors, Berghahn (2000), pp. 205–27.
Hélène La Rue, Bate Collection of Musical Instruments. [Online database accessible through the Performing Arts Data Service web site: <http://www.pads.ahds.ac.uk:81/batemain.html>.]
Hélène La Rue (with others), Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford Musical Instruments Collections Database. [Online database accessible through the Performing Arts Data Service web site: <http://www.pads.ahds.ac.uk:81/batepittriver>.]
Peter Mitchell, ‘The Organization of Later Stone Age Lithic Technology in the Caledon Valley, Southern Africa’, African Archaeological Review, Vol. XVII, no. 3 (September 2000), pp. 141–76.
Peter Mitchell, ‘The Quaternary Archaeological Record in Southern Africa’, in The Cenozoic of Southern Africa (Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophysics, no. 40), edited by T. C. Partridge and R. R. Maud, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2000), pp. 357–70.
Peter Mitchell, Review of Cultural Diversity among Twentieth Century Foragers: An African Perspective, by Susan Kent (Cambridge, 1996), African Archaeological Review, Vol. XVII, no. 3 (September 2000), pp. 177–81.
Peter Mitchell, ‘Plio-Pleistocene Climate Change and Human Evolution [review of African Biogeography: Climate Change, & Human Evolution, edited by Timothy G. Bromage and Friedemann Schrenk (Oxford, 1999)]’, Journal of Biogeography, Vol. XXVII, no. 3 (May 2000), p. 783.
Peter Mitchell, ‘Archaeology and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project’, in Dams and Cultural Heritage Management: Final Report, August 2000 (Working Paper Submitted to the WCD by Steven A. Brandt ... and Fekri Hassan ...), Cape Town: World Commission on Dams Secretariat (2000), pp. 37–9. [Publication downloadable as a PDF file from the web site of the World Commission on Dams: <http://www.dams.org/kbase/thematic/>.]
Peter Mitchell, Review of An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000BC to AD400, by Christopher Ehret (Oxford, 1998), Africa, Vol. LXX, no. 1 (2000), pp. 170–72.
Peter Mitchell, Review of Beyond Chiefdoms: Pathways to Complexity in Africa (New Directions in Archaeology), edited by Susan Keech McIntosh (Cambridge, 1999), Antiquity, Vol. LXXV (no. 288), (June 2001), pp. 444–6.
Peter Mitchell (editor), The Archaeology of Slavery (Special Issue of World Archaeology, Vol. XXXIII, no. 1, June 2001).
Michael O’Hanlon (co-editor with Robert L. Welsch), Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s (Methodology and History in Anthropology, Volume 6), Oxford: Berghahn (2000).
Michael O’Hanlon, ‘Introduction’, in Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s (Methodology and History in Anthropology, Volume 6), edited by Michael O’Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch, Oxford: Berghahn (2000), pp. 1–34.
Michael O’Hanlon (with Robert L. Welsch), ‘Preface’, in Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s (Methodology and History in Anthropology, Volume 6), edited by Michael O’Hanlon and Robert L. Welsch, Oxford: Berghahn (2000), pp. 17–18.
Michael O’Hanlon, ‘A View from Afar: Memories of New Guinea Highland Warfare’, in Anthropologists in a Wider World: Essays on Field Research (Methodology and History in
Anthropology, Volume 7), edited by Paul Dresch, Wendy James, and David Parkin, Oxford: Berghahn (2000), pp. 45–67.
Michael O’Hanlon, Review of Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia (Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania Monograph, no. 17), by David Akin and Joel Robbins (Pittsburgh, 1999), The Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs, Vol. XIII, no. 2 (Fall 2001), pp. 580–82.
Michael O’Hanlon, Review of Malinowski’s Kiriwina: Fieldwork Photography 1915–1918, by Michael W. Young (Chicago, 1998), in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. VII, no 3 (September 2001), pp 597–8.
Laura Peers, ‘“Many Tender Ties”: The Shifting Contexts and Meanings of the S BLACK Bag’, in World Archaeology, Vol. XXXI, no. 2 (October 1999), pp. 288–302. [Omitted from previous report.]
Laura Peers, ‘New Introductory Display Comes to the Museum’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 34 (October 2000), p. 3.
Alison Petch, ‘Augustus Henry and the Oxford Connection’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 36 (April 2001), p. 3.
Alison Petch, ‘Pitt Rivers’ Other Life’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 37 (July 2001), p. 3.
Alison Petch (with Arthur MacGregor), ‘AMS25 Anthropological Catalogue (1886): List of Anthropological Objects Transferred from the Ashmolean to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1886 (compiled 1884) / List of Anthropological Objects Transferred from the Ashmolean to the Pitt Rivers Museum’, in Manuscript Catalogues of the Early Museum Collections, 1683–1886 (Part I) (BAR International Series 907), by Arthur MacGregor, with Melanie Mendonça and Julia White, Oxford: Archaeopress, in association with the Ashmolean Museum (2000), pp. 255–413.
Alison Petch (with John Mulvaney and Howard Morphy), From the Frontier: Outback Letters to Baldwin Spencer, St Leonards, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin (2000).
Alison Petch (with John Mulvaney and Howard Morphy), My Dear Spencer: The Letters of F. J. Gillen to Baldwin Spencer (paperback edition), Melbourne: Hyland House (2001).
Heather Richardson, Review of ‘Arctic Clothing of North America: Alaska, Canada, Greenland’ (a conference held at the British Museum from 28 to 30 March 2001), ICOM Ethnographic Conservation Newsletter, no. 21 (June 2001), pp. 9–10.
Kate Scott (with Christine Buckingham), ‘Preliminary Report on the Excavation of Late Middle Pleistocene Deposits at Latton, Near Cirencester, Gloucestershire’, Quaternary Newsletter, no. 94 (June 2001), pp 24–9 .
Julie Scott Jackson, ‘Lower and Middle Palaeolithic [§1 of Part 2 ‘Resource Assessment]’ in Archaeological Research Agenda for the Avebury World Heritage Site, Salisbury: Trust for Wessex Archaeology on behalf of English Heritage and the Avebury Archaeological & Historical Research Group (2001), pp. 5–6.
Julie Scott Jackson, ‘Lower and Middle Palaeolithic [§1 of Part 3 ‘Research Agenda’]’ in Archaeological Research Agenda for the Avebury World Heritage Site, Salisbury: Trust for Wessex Archaeology on behalf of English Heritage and the Avebury Archaeological & Historical Research Group (2001), p. 38.
Julie Scott Jackson, ‘Lower and Middle Palaeolithic [§1 of Part 4 ‘Research Strategies’]’ in Archaeological Research Agenda for the Avebury World Heritage Site, Salisbury: Trust for Wessex Archaeology on behalf of English Heritage and the Avebury Archaeological & Historical Research Group (2001), p. 62.
Claire Warrior, Review of Klaya-ho-alth: Collections from the Northwest Coast of North America in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, by Jane Burkinshaw (Exeter, 1999), Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 13 (March 2001), pp. 106–107.
Kate White, ‘Christmas Shopping in the Museum’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum Newsletter, no. 34 (October 2000), p. 4.
Kate White, ‘Museum Shops and Ethical Trade’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 13 (March 2001), pp. 37–47
Annex F
Museum Seminars in Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography
13 October: Nick Saunders (UCL), ‘Trench Art: Material Memories of the Great War’.
20 October: Mohini Chandra (Royal College of Art, London), ‘Travels in a New World’.
27 October: Jonathan Webber (University of Oxford), ‘The Auschwitz Museum Site: The Challenges of Applied Research’.
3 November: Stephen Quirke (UCL), ‘Framing the Innocent: Objects in an “Egyptian Museum”’.
10 November: Nigel Rigby (National Maritime Museum, London), ‘Representing Empire at the National Maritime Museum’.
17 November: Gonkar Gyatso (London), ‘Contemporary Painting in Tibetan Society’.
24 November: Alison Petch (PRM), ‘Fielding Enquiries: “Old Baldie” and “The Pontiff” in the Field (also known as Spencer and Gillen)’.
1 December: Sandra Dudley (University of East Anglia / University of Oxford), ‘The Material Culture of Displacement: Karenni Refugees in Thailand’.
19 January: Chris Morton (PRM), ‘Building and Recycling in Northern Botswana’.
26 January: Sharne Thomas (Institute of Art and Law), ‘An Overview of the Institute of Art and Law’.
2 February: Chris Gosden (PRM). ‘Archaeology and Colonialism: New Approaches’.
9 February: Josh Bell (PRM). ‘Objects of Distinction: Photographic Elicitation and Oral Histories of Social Transformation in the Papuan Gulf of Papua New Guinea’.
16 February: Lissant Bolton (British Museum), ‘Marginally Material: the Stuff of Status in North Vanuatu’.
23 February: Sean Kingston (Berghahn), ‘Attention to Form in New Ireland: Masking and Effigies in Melanesia’.
2 March: Helen Coxall (Museum Language Consultant / University of Westminster), ‘Speaking Other Voices: New Perspectives on Old Collections’.
9 March: Annie Coombes (UCL), ‘After Apartheid: Making History in a Democratic South Africa’.
27 April: Cornelia Mallebrein (University of Tübingen), ‘Some Thoughts About Collecting Tribal Art: Cultural Change or Preservation? The Case of the Kondh Bronzes of Orissa’.
4 May: Stephanie Moser (University of Southampton), ‘The Community Archaeology Project, Quesir, Egypt: Outreach and Local Knowledge’.
11 May: Kavita Singh (New Delhi), ‘The Jewel and the Crown: The Politics of Display of Indian Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1935–51’.
18 May: Alison Brown (PRM), ‘The Redisplay Project in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge’
Annex G
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.
This year fifteen applications were received and ten grants, totalling £12,936, were awarded. The average grant was £1,294. In addition, part of the Fund has continued to be used to support research on the southern African collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum itself. External grants were awarded to: Mr E. Eastwood, of Palaeoart Field Services, University of Witwatersrand, to research the rock art of the Makgabeng Plateau, South Africa; Dr S. Hall, of the University of Cape Town, to research the rock art of the Koue Bokkeveld, South Africa; Mr J. Hobart, of the University of Oxford, to carry out post-excavation analysis of finds from Pitsaneng Shelter, Lesotho; Dr A. Jerardino, of the University of Cape Town, to carry out post-excavation analysis of finds from hunter–gatherer sites in the Western Cape, South Africa; Dr A. Mazel, of the South African Cultural History Museum, to carry out analysis of faunal assemblages from hunter–gatherer sites in the Thukela Basin, South Africa; Mr S. Ouzman, of the National Museum, Bloemfontein, to carry out landscape studies of southern African rock engravings; Dr K. Sadr, of the University of Botswana, to carry out archaeological research into early pastoralism in southern Africa; Ms B. van Dornum to carry out archaeological research into the archaeology of the Shashe–Limpopo Basin, South Africa; Dr P. Vinnicombe, of the University of Witwatersrand, to catalogue tracings of rock art from Lesotho and the KwaZulu–Natal Drakensberg; and to Mr C. Wingfield, of the University of Oxford, to study Bushman beadwork from the Kalahari.
Annex H
Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum
Report by Liz Yardley, Honorary Secretary
The Friends continued to support the Museum with a wide range of events, lectures, and activities. A new addition to the calendar was the very successful study day ‘Africa, Ifriquia!’ held at Rhodes House in aid of the Kenneth Kirkwood Memorial Fund, which provides money for research and study trips by students and staff not otherwise covered by University funding. William Beinart (Rhodes Professor of Race Relations, University of Oxford) introduced the day and acted as chairman. The speakers were: Professor John Sutton, ‘Farming the Fields of Africa: A Thousand-Year Perspective’; Ibrahim El-Salahi, the leading Sudanese artist of his generation, ‘Renewal and Transformation: Reconciliations by a Contemporary Artist of the Acquired and Traditional’; Dr Innocent Pikirayi, Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Zimbabwe and Visiting Commonwealth Fellow, Pitt Rivers Museum, ‘Zimbabwe Culture Pottery in The Pitt Rivers Museum’; and Dr Ian Fowler, Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University and the University of Reading, ‘Death, Democracy, and Cadet Revolt in Twentieth-Century Cameroon’. Ahmed Abd al Rahman and friends provided a charming musical interlude, and an excellent lunch was provided by Marks and Spencer and Al Shami’s Lebanese restaurant. Delegates also enjoyed a rare opportunity to view an exhibition of Ibrahim El-Salahi’s work, before joining Dr Innocent Pikirayi in the concluding discussion on the theme ‘Globalization Negates Cultural Diversity and Uniqueness and is a Major Threat to Humanity’. The Friends are grateful to the speakers for their time, the attending delegates, and the providers of the lunch. A profit of £625 was made, enabling the Fund to offer its first bursary to Gilbert Oteyo for research and collecting among the Luo of Western Kenya. A most generous donation to the Fund of £3000 was also made by an individual Friend who wishes to remain anonymous.
The Friends’ annual public Beatrice Blackwood Lecture was given by Professor Tim Ingold, of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, whose title was ‘Culture on the Ground: The World Perceived Through the Feet’. The Friends are grateful to the Administrator of the Inorganic Chemistry Department for allowing the use of the lecture theatre free of charge, and to Dr and Mrs O’Hanlon for hosting the supper that followed.
Once again there was an excellent lecture programme through the year. In October, Clare Harris of the Museum gave a most thought-provoking talk on modern Tibetan art, ‘In The Image of Tibet: Tibetan Visual Culture in Exile’. This was followed in November by ‘Around the World in 80 Braids’ by Rod Owen, author and lecturer, and an additional special lecture by Jamyang Norbu, author, freedom-fighter and former director of the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, ‘Fiction, Fantasy and Freedom, Or Why on Earth a Tibetan Freedom Fighter is Writing Sherlock Holmes Stories’. In the New Year, Justin Phipps, a minority rights lawyer, spoke on ‘Forest Peoples of Siberia: From Dependency to Self Determination’; Laura Peers of the Museum spoke on ‘Of Research and Relationships: First Nation Countries, Customs, and Collections at the Pitt Rivers’; Elena Kingdon, Friend, spoke on ‘Jogging Memories: Characters I Met in Northern Queensland’; Janet Starkey, of the University of Durham, spoke on ‘Sheikhs, Swords and Daggers’; and, Diana Young, anthropologist at University College London spoke on ‘The Life and Death of Cars’. The year concluded with a visit to John Leach’s Pottery at Muchelney.
The Christmas Party made a welcome return to the main museum, where a large number of Friends and guests were entertained by the Oxford Waits, performing their unique arrangements of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century music. Other activities included participation in the ‘One-to-One with the Friends’ week during Museums and Galleries’ Month. Friends, with the help of Andy McLellan and Marina de Alarcón, produced a trail ‘Culture on the Ground: The Museum Perceived through the Feet’ to complement the Beatrice Blackwood Lecture; and in the process discovered some surprising foot-related objects on display. A weekend programme of children’s activities, including henna tattooing and foot-printing, attracted over 900 visitors.
The Annual General Meeting was held in June. After five inspired years as programme co-ordinator, Shahin Bekhradnia resigned, and was replaced by Megan Price. Shahin remains on the Council as special events organizer. The Treasurer reported that the Friends had been successful in obtaining a grant of £5000 from the Millennium Festival Fund’s ‘Awards for All’ scheme towards the upgrading of the Museum’s audio-guide system. Membership Secretary, Anne Phythian-Adams, reported that membership stood at a total of 400, including 182 joint, 152 ordinary, and 66 concession members. Membership subscriptions were raised for the first time since the Friends were founded in 1984: the new rates being £15 for ordinary members, £20 for joint members, and £10 for concessions. The Young Friends organization, which was set up a few years ago, was absorbed into the main organization. It was also reported that the Newsletter, edited by Deborah Manley, continues to be well received and that it was again short-listed for the ‘Liveliest Newsletter’ award of the British Association of Friends of Museums. The AGM concluded with a short talk by Andy McLellan and Ann Nicol on their education and audience development work and an opportunity to view the ever-increasing handling collection, to which several individual Friends had donated a variety of fascinating objects.
Annex I
Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre
Report by Professor Derek Roe, Honorary Director
Dr Roe continued as Honorary Director of the Centre, the future organization of which was under discussion during the year, as a result of the recent introduction of ‘Divisionalization’. The Centre’s affiliation and financial provision within the new structure should become clearer next year. Meanwhile, it has simply continued to minister as best it can to the needs of graduate students studying earlier Prehistory.
The interests of the current research students include Britain, Iberia, and the Far East (China and Japan in particular). The experimental flint-knapping area (adjacent to 64 Banbury Road) had rather more use this year than previously, and we are grateful to the Pitt Rivers Museum for financing the provision of a fresh load of East Anglian flint. The best news of the year has certainly been the long-needed upgrading of the seriously out-of-date computing facilities. During a visit in August 2000, Mr Francis Baden-Powell, the benefactor who so generously made possible the setting up of the Centre in 1975, suggested an approach to the Mercer’s Company, which produced a grant of £5000. Additional money provided by the Museum and the School of Archaeology enabled the purchase of almost the entire shopping list of desperately needed items in time for the start of Hilary Term.
The usual seminar series was held at the Centre, this time during Hilary and Trinity terms, with a total of eight speakers, thanks to a grant of £280 from the School of Archaeology. We thank Dr Paul Pettitt for undertaking the principal organization of this. The number of overseas visitors to the Centre this year showed a marked reduction, which simply reflects the shortage of funds for academic travel over much of the world, though groups of scholars or individuals reached us from Vietnam, India, Israel, Spain, Gibraltar, Switzerland, and the USA. We also had the privilege of entertaining the distinguished members of the School of Archaeology’s new External Advisory Committee, on their first visit to Oxford, in May 2001.
The PADMAC Unit at the Centre, directed by Dr Julie Scott-Jackson, has gone from strength to strength (see Dr Scott-Jackson’s entry in Annex D: Staff Activities). Amongst the postdoctoral members of our community, Dr Bill Waldren spent much of the year in Mallorca on fieldwork and the preparation for an International Conference on the Archaeology of the Islands. Dr Katharine Scott worked on the publication of her many years’ field work at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, and more recently at Latton, Gloucestershire (on which a preliminary report was published this year); she also found time to direct productive rescue work at another Upper Thames gravel pit site, this time at Thrupp (Oxfordshire). During the summer of 2001, she was able to join an excavation in South Africa directed by Professor Richard Klein, at the site of Duinefontein. Dr Marcos Llobera worked throughout the year on the applications of Geographical Information Science techniques to the archaeological and anthropological study of landscape. He gave a number of invited presentations of his research during the year, at Leiden University, University College London, Harvard University, and Pennsylvania State University. Dr Pamela Wace gained a Distinction in her Diploma in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Her portfolio of work was entitled ‘Archaeology as Higher Education: Experiment and Reflection in Teaching, Learning and New Technologies’. Dr Jordi Hernandez Gasch this year completed the series of extended visits he has been making to Oxford as a visiting postdoctoral researcher, and we wish him well on his return to Spain. The doctoral thesis of Mr Hyeong Woo Lee, submitted at the end of last year, was successfully examined at the beginning of this one, and was subsequently published in monograph form.
PLEASE NOTE: AFTER THIS DATE CERTAIN SECTIONS HAVE BEEN OMITTED FROM THE ANNUAL REPORTS FOR BREVITY PARTICULARLY THE LIST OF STAFF IN POST FOR THAT YEAR AND THE ANNUAL REPEATED DESCRITION OF THE MUSEUM
