Object Biography Index

Tehuelche body armour [Add.9455vol2_p398/2]

2012-08-14T07:37:22+00:00

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Peter Rivière

In Pitt-Rivers’ Second Collection there is a leather suit of body armour from the Tehuelche Indians of the Pampas region of Argentina. Its entry in the catalogue is (Add.9455vol2_p398/2). It was Lot 591 at Christie’s sale of the Londesborough Collection in July 1888. It was bought together with Lot 592, which was composed of an Indonesian wooden shield (Add.9455vol2_p395/2) and an Ethiopian shield (Add.9455vol2_p395 /3), all three items costing £2 12s 6d (£228.00/£1,110.00 in 2010 prices). [1]. The catalogue description reads:

‘Coat of leather 7 skins thick used as a defensive covering and robe of dignity by the Patagonians. Given by General Rosas to Lord Horden.’

The coat was first housed at Rushmore and in 1900 moved to Farnham Museum. It was acquired by a dealer James Economos at some point during the general dispersal of the collections from Farnham after the Second World War. Economos is a well known American dealer in tribal and other art based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1972 the National Museum of the American Indian [MAI] in Washington obtained the coat through an exchange with Economos. The MAI records show that it also received in the exchange a Crazy Horse bonnet and other objects for which it handed over 15 assorted North American Indian items. The coat is still held by MAI with the catalogue number 24/7495. The catalogue entry reads:

‘Heavy plaited coat of armor (or “robe of dignity”). Leather garment seven skins thick; painted with yellow vertical strip on beige background. Collected by General Juan Manuel Rosas in 1832-1833. Given by him to Lord Howden thence to Lord Londesborough, 1880. Ex. Coll. Pitt-Rivers Museum.’

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In the description of the coat the skins are identified as being horse hide. [2]

The Tehuelche were one the nomadic people who inhabited the Pampas and Patagonia regions of Argentina. During the 18th century their traditional way of life had been much altered by their adoption of the horse which had been introduced by the Spanish and had had a similar effect to that much better recorded for the Plains Indians of North America. In the 19th century the Tehuelche along with most of the native peoples of Southern Argentina were conquered and virtually exterminated by what are known as the two ‘Conquests of the Desert’. Remarkably little was ever recorded about the Tehuelche’s society and culture, It is known that the eastward migration of the Auracanians from the Andean district had had a strong influence by the beginning of the 19th century. It is also known that the Auracanians were using armour made from seal skins in pre-Hispanic times, and later from cowhides. [3]

The 18th century English traveller, Thomas Falkner, gives us this description of Tehuelche armour:

Their defensive arms consist of a helmet, made like a broad-brimmed hat, of a bull’s hide sewed double, and of a coat of mail; which is a wide tunic, shaped and put on like a shirt, with narrow short sleeves, made of three or four folds of the anta’s skin. It is very heavy, strong enough to resist either arrows or lances; and some say it is bullet-proof. It is made very high in the neck-part, and almost covers the eyes and nose. On foot they use likewise a large unwieldy, square target, of bulls hides. [4]

Robert Fitzroy, Captain of HMS Beagle, visited the Tehuelche in the 1820s, some 50 years after Falkner, and provides a very similar account:

Another kind of armour, worn by those who can get it is a broad-brimmed hat, or helmet, made of double bull’s hide; and a tunic, or frock, with a high collar, and short sleeves made of several hides sewed together; sometimes of anta [tapir] skin, but always of the thickest and most solid they can procure. It is very heavy, strong enough to resist arrows or lances, and to deaden the blow of a stone ball (bola perdida). [5]

Fitzroy’s account, where he states ‘worn by those who can get it’, suggests, assuming this applies to the coat as well as the hat, an explanation of the description of the object as a ‘robe of dignity’. At the least the remark implies that only those of higher status owned such objects, leaving open the possibility that it also had some ceremonial function.

Finally, although the item is described as being from Patagonia, the Southern Tehuelche who lived in that region did not have horses at the time and de Rosas’s contacts and movements seem to have been limited to the Northern or ‘Horse’ Tehuelche. Accordingly the coat might more accurately be described as from the Pampas region.

Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793-1877) was a military officer and politician. He was Governor of Buenos Aires Province 1829-32, and Governor of the Argentine Confederation 1835-52. During the latter period he ruled more or less as a dictator or caudillo in Latin-American terms. During his rule there was a state of almost constant civil war, often with the intervention of neighbouring countries and even France and Great Britain. He was finally overthrown in 1852 when he left Argentina to live the rest of his life in Hampshire, England. When still a boy de Rosas went into the interior to work on the farm of relatives and in due course started a ranch of his own which was very successful. His land abutted the territories of the Tehuelche and Ranqueles (an Auracanian group) so he organised his gauchos into a military force to combat the raids by these peoples. He did not, however, object to all the Tehuelche whom he divided into three groups, ‘friends’, ‘allies’ and ‘enemies’. Friends were allowed to settle within the Province of Buenos Aires and de Rosas accepted groups on to his own land. Allies were permitted to retain their own territories and independence, but war was made against the enemies of whom some 3,200 were killed in the first ‘Conquest of the Desert’ in 1832, in which campaign de Rosas was one of the military commanders. When, from whom and under what circumstances de Rosas obtained the coat is not known, but clearly he had many opportunities on which to do so given his frequent and variable contacts with the Tehuelche. [6]

We are able to pinpoint with greater certainty when de Rosas gave the coat to Lord Howden.

John Hobart Caradoc, the second Baron Howden (1799-1873), a soldier turned diplomatist, was appointed minister at Rio de Janeiro in 1847 with a special mission to the Argentine Confederation and the Republic of Uruguay. The diplomatic question involved related to the series of civil wars that wracked the region during de Rosas’s governorship. France had been involved for some years and Great Britain had joined her in blockading the Rio de la Plata. Baron Howden’s task was to agree a treaty bringing the conflict to an end. He was in Argentina for a few months in 1847, and it is almost certainly then, while he was negotiating with de Rosas that the latter gave him the Tehuelche coat. [7]

We have no information on how and when the coat passed into the hands of its next owner, Albert Denison, the first Baron Londesborough (1805-60). Denison was the son of Henry Conyngham and changed his name in 1849 to Denison, his mother’s maiden name, to comply with his uncle’s will by which he inherited enormous wealth. With this wealth he bought three large estates in Yorkshire including Grimston Park, near Tadcaster. This last was acquired from Lord Howden and it is worth speculating that the Tehuelche coat was included in the sale.

Londesborough was a keen antiquarian and collector. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society, he was first president of the British Archaeological Association, vice-president of the Archaeological Institute, president of the Numismatic Society, and vice-president of the British Association meetings in Hull in 1853. He was also an active field archaeologist. Among other things his collection included a wide range of high quality armour. In other words, the Tehuelche coat would have fitted perfectly with his interests. His health was not good; he died relatively young in January 1860 and was buried at Grimston, Lord Howden’s former estate. His collections were dispersed in a series of sales in 1879, 1884 and 1888. [8]

Pitt-Rivers acquired no objects from the Londesborough 1879 sale, but obtained 23 items in 1884 and a further 50 in 1888. In 1884 the items were mainly ornaments of one sort or another and mainly made from gold and silver. The 50 objects bought in 1888 are mainly arms and armour, together with a few items of horse harness. Interestingly enough Pitt-Rivers bought one other lot at this sale which had previously belonged to Lord Howden. It consisted of two flags that had been carried by Lord Howden at the funerals of George IV and William IV (Add.9455vol2_p397 /1). At 17 guineas (in 2010 £1,550/£7,530) they cost far more than the two shields and Tehuelche coat.

This Patagonian armoured coat was not the only one of which Pitt-Rivers was aware. In his first lecture on primitive warfare to the Royal United Services Institution in 1867, he refers to such a coat held in the Institution’s museum. It is very similar to the one he owned except that the stripe down its middle is decorated rather than plain.[9] Over the years the Institution disposed of its collection but it is not known what happened to this coat. The only one now known to exist in the United Kingdom is in the British Museum (catalogue number Am1831,0416.18).

Notes
1. The first figure is based on the change in the retail price index, the second on average earnings. The calculation has been made using this resource.

2. The MAI catalogue entry can be found here. It is not clear what the date 1880 in the catalogue refers to since it is not the date that it was acquired by either Londesborough or Pitt-Rivers. Further information about the objects exchanged was provided by a curator of the MAI.

3. Handbook of South American Indians, vol. 2, p.731.

4. Falkner, Thomas, A description of Patagonia [electronic resource], and the adjoining parts of South America, Hereford, 1774, p. 129

5. Fitzroy, Robert, Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle, London, 1839. Vol. 2, p. 147.

6. See Lynch, John, Caudillos in Latin America, 1800-1850, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992 and wikipedia

7. See Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [ODNB].

8. See ODNB. One cannot but be struck by the similarities in the lives of Londesborough and Pitt-Rivers; soldiers who inherited great wealth that involved changing their names and being great collectors and antiquarians.
9. Fox, A.H. Lane. 1867. 'Primitive Warfare. Part I’. Journal of the Royal United Services Institution 11, pp. 612-643. See also Plate II, Figs. 11 & 12.

September 2012; last paragraph and footnote added May 2013.

Add.9455vol3_p757 /1

2012-06-26T17:29:20+00:00

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Ian Marshman, School of Archaeology & Ancient History, University of Leicester

A Unique Roman Engraved Gem

Today this curious little artefact resides in the stores of the Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum, but it has travelled a great deal in its long life. However, it is only now been possible, because of the work of this project, that we can reconnect it with its context and understand its history. The tiny gemstone intaglio engraved with the image of a military musician playing a horn was once mounted in a Roman signet ring, and today survives set within a nineteenth century finger ring. Its story is one of empire and soldiers, but also art, music, and collecting.

The red jasper gemstone itself is many eons old, having formed within the earth long before humans were to walk upon it. Jasper is a semi-precious variety of chryptocrystalline quartz, and could have come from many possible sources. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder describes in his Natural History that the best kind of haematitis (the Latin name for the gem) came from far flung Aethiopia (at the source of the Nile), yet it was also said to be found in Arabia and (north) Africa (N.H. 37.60). The gemstone had also been mined in prehistoric Italy, but Pliny seems oblivious to this (de Pascale et al 2006). The superstitious Romans, like many societies, believed such gemstones possessed magical properties, and Pliny noted that red jasper could help the wearer perceive the plots of barbarians, aid petitions to kings, and would be beneficial if rubbed on the body during battle (N.H. 37.60). With such attractive qualities, it is perhaps no surprise that the gemstone became fashionable for signet rings in the second century AD. It was in the earlier part of this century that this particular gem was probably engraved, based on the style of cutting, which conforms to the ‘small grooves style’ (Maaskant-Kleibrink 1975). Until now this artefact’s provenance had been unknown and forgotten, but the Pitt-Rivers catalogues in Cambridge University Library record that it came from the German Rhineland near Sinzig. The river Rhine had been a major frontier for the Roman Empire and many soldiers were stationed there in order to control movement and defend against incursions. This little gem was likely lost in Germany by such a soldier, to whom it would have been both a precious exotic jewel and their personal signet.

The image engraved on the gem is very unusual. Roman signet rings rarely show scenes of everyday life and the Roman military seem to have preferred their seals to bear representations of the mythical ancient Greek heroes (Henig 1970) rather than images associated with contemporary conflict. This artefact is therefore a unique gem, showing as it does not just a soldier but a military musician or cornicen playing the huge curving horn known as the cornu. The ancient authors describe that the cornu was used to signal orders on the battlefield, and was played by a junior officer attached to the commanding officer (Vegetius De Re Millitari 2; Peddie 1996, 21-23). Other representations of men playing the cornu exist on tombstones from the Rhine frontier, where they represent something approximating a ‘portrait’ of the deceased. Trajan’s column at Rome includes representations of the cornu being played by cornicines as part of a military band playing as the emperor led a sacrifice on behalf of the army (spiral 16, panel A).

Elsewhere such musicians occur on civilian funerary monuments where they are occur during the funeral rites, and it would seem that the instrument was used to add musical gravitas to the elaborate funeral processions that marked the deaths of wealthy Romans (Landels 1999, 180). A more cheerful yet equally macabre use of the cornu is attested by a German mosaic, found at Nennig near Trier, where it is shown being played alongside the water organ as an accompaniment to the gruesome spectacles of the amphitheatre (Ginsberg-Klar 1981, 314). We can be sure that this gem shows a soldier rather than a civilian musician because he wears the short military tunic and cloak, and is shown with the round shield carried by cornicines (Bishop & Coulston 1993, 151).

The sound made by the huge instrument remains something of a mystery. Virgil describes it as a “hellish note” (Aeneid 7. 513-14 cf. Landels 1958) and it may have originated as simply a animal horn which when blown produced a droning noise, but by the second century it had developed into the elegant brass instrument shown on the gem. This had a mouthpiece which improved its tone and allowed the musician to play something like a diatonic scale (Meucci 1989, 85; Landels 1999, 204). Other Roman gemstone intaglios sometimes show a cornu being played by a crane, and this has led Henig to suggest that perhaps the instrument’s sound resembled the call of this bird (Henig 2000, 61-2). We can be sure that the cornu must have been a loud and impressive sounding instrument, for it to be used both in warfare and in the amphitheatre. We might expect that this unusual gem was worn by a cornicen, and might like the images on the tombstones have been meant as a representation of a specific individual. Perhaps commissioned personally to mark his promotion, or maybe by his messmates or superiors to commemorate a notable deed or event.

That this artefact resides in Salisbury today is itself an interesting story. The way the gem has been mounted in a supposedly gold (but tarnished) nineteenth century ring suggests that it had a life before it entered the Pitt-Rivers collection. After its discovery in Sinzig it may have been mounted by a local jeweller and passed off as a Roman gold ring to increase its value, since it is described by Pitt-Rivers’ friend Henry H. Howorth with another, now lost, as “Roman rings…and exceptionally good ones” (L760). It seems that the manufacture of the ‘gold’ ring to accompany the gem made it highly desirable as Howorth goes on to say “You must not keep these things out of consideration to me I will gladly have them if you don’t want them but I thought they filled up 2 or 3 gaps in your collection & I thought also I secured them at a reasonable price” (L760).

Sadly, we can only guess at what Pitt-Rivers thought of the rings and what gaps they were perceived to fill, but it could be suggested that not being himself a classical archaeologist, he gave credence to his friend’s inaccurate description, which also identified the gemstones as cameos, which are a totally different kind of form of engraved gemstone that have a positive (pronounced) image rather than the negative (sunken) intaglio needed for use in signet rings. The Pitt-Rivers catalogue suggest that the artefact was stored in the gold case at his home at Rushmore, again suggesting that he defined it as a Roman ‘gold’ ring rather than placing significance on the gemstone. It is not certain what the gold case was, but it seems likely from the movement of other objects that it was somewhere that Pitt-Rivers placed gold objects where they could be admired by his guests (Alison Petch pers comm.). We do not know if the gem was ever exhibited at the Farnham Museum with the rest of the collection, but it is perhaps the fact that Pitt-Rivers misunderstood the ring and did not realize the intaglios uniqueness that meant it was not sold off when the collection began to split up. That Howorth and Pitt-Rivers took an interest in this little ring, and were careful to record its provenance means we have a much better understanding of this ancient Roman gem than many in the famous collections of the major international museums.

Bibliography

Bishop, M. C. & Coulston, J. C. N., 1993. Roman Military Equipment from the Punic Wars to the fall of Rome. London: B. T. Batsford

de Pascale, A., Maggi, R., Montanari, C. & Moreno, D., 2006. Pollen, Herds, Jasper, and Copper Mines: economic and environmental changes during the 4th and 3rd millennium BC in Liguria (NW Italy). Environmental Archaeology 11(1), 115-124

Ginsberg-Kler, M. E., 1981. 'The Archaeology of Musical Instruments in Germany during the Roman Period'. World Archaeology 12(3), 313-320

Henig, M., 1970. The Veneration of Heroes in the Roman Army: the evidence of engraved gemstones. Britannia 1, 249-265

Henig, M., 2000. 'The Intaglios. 61-63 in: E. W. Sauer. Alchester, a Claudian ‘Vexilation Fortress’ near the Western Boundary of the Catevellauni. New Light on the Roman Invasion of Britain'. The Archaeological Journal 157, 1-78

Landels, J. G., 1958. 'A Hellish Note'. The Classical Quarterly, new series 8 (3/4), 219-220

Landels, J. G., 1999. Music in Ancient Greece and Rome. London: Routledge

Maaskant-Kleibrink, M., 1975. Classification of Ancient Engraved Gems: a study based on the collection in the Royal Coin Cabinet, The Hague, with a history of the collection. Leiden: Boerhaavezalen

Peddie, J., 1996. The Roman War Machine. Conshohocken: Combined Books

Three bronze sleeping soldiers Add.9455vol2_p397 /4

2012-05-17T07:50:20+00:00

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Dan Hicks, the Lecturer-Curator in Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum, whilst researching the forthcoming publication XXXX identified some information relating to a possible item from Pitt-Rivers' second collection and sent the details to this researcher to be identified further.

The information he had found was on the Archaeology Data Service here. It described a drawing in the Society of Antiquaries of London's collections (see the first image on this page). The description read:

The page has drawings of six bronze plaques: (left to right) an angel; two separate figures, one with a book; another angel; three sleeping soldiers in Norman armour; and Christ in a mandorla supported by two angels. The note in the Gentleman's Magazine (see Bibliography) refers to the bronze of the three sleeping soldiers being found in the Temple Church during 'recent' repairs. Its suggested use was as an applique to a small shrine or pyx. The English Romanesque Art catalogue (see Bibliography) dismisses the Temple Church provenance, and argues that the object represents a depiction of the Holy Sepulchre. This drawing is significant because only the three knights survive (in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow); the other plaques have disappeared. A note in pencil on the opposite page of the album (fol. 1v) refers to the sleeping soldiers in bronze as being in the collection of General Pitt Rivers in 1890. He obtained it in a Sotheby's sale 10 July 1888.

Material: paper
Technique: Drawing. Yellow and grey washes using the medium of Pen and Ink
Measurements: Height 391 mm Width 290 mm
Inscription: Handwritten on the bottom was ""A Collection of Bronze figures, of the Size of the Drawings, found in the Cabinet of the late Revd. Mr Betham Fellow of Eton College, and apprehended to be taken from a Tomb-Stone, of the age of William the Conqueror. see Ants. Journal 1941 p. 161. Gents 1833 Vol II p. 305. Similar to the above Engraved in the Gents Magazine."
Bibliography: Antiquaries Journal 21 (1941): 161. Illustrations, pl. XXXII, opp. p. 160; pl. XXXIII, between pp. 160 and 161. A note by T D Kendrick. He refers to the rediscovery of the drawing when a selection of books for wartime evacuation was being made at the Society of Antiquaries of London. English Romanesque Art, 1066-1200: Hayward Gallery, London, 5 April - 8 July 1984 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984), p. 242-3, no. 234. Illustration of this drawing (Photograph), p. 243, no. 234. Gentleman's Magazine 103 (1833): 305-6. Illustration, pl. II, opp. p. 305. T D Kendrick, 'The Temple Pyx', Antiquaries Journal 16 (1936): 51-4.
People: Rev Edward Betham, Burrell Collection, TD Kendrick, Augustus Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers.Date: (of object rather tahn drawing) mid 12th century Medieval Romanesque

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This object depicted in the drawing was supposed to be a pyx, a small round container used in the Catholic, Old Catholic and Anglican Churches to carry the consecrated Host. It was eventually traced to be Add.9455vol2_p397 /4. The catalogue of the second collection described it as:

Description of object: The Earl of Londesborough ... Lot 698 [Drawing]

Added: 698 Portion of a Pyx, bronze gilt, representing three soldiers, watching the body of our Saviour Found in the Temple Church, vide ‘Gentleman’s Magazine 1833
Added” See also Miscellanea Graphica page 20
Added: £31.10.0
Added: From the introduction to Miscellanea Graphica by T. Wright page 20 The following cut represents a portion of another Pyx (in the collection of Lord Londesborough ), which has been ascribed to the earlier part of the twelfth century. It is of brass, or bronze, thickly gilt, but without enamel. The figures represent three soldiers keeping watch over the tomb in which the body of our Saviour - suppused [sic] to be contained in the consecrated wafer - was laid. This curious object was found in the course of alterations made in the Temple Church some years ago, and was formerly in the collection of the late Mr Crofton Croker.
Price: Lot 698 £31.10.0

It is clear that the information that the Society of Antiquary's had about it was not entirely correct. The object was probably sold to Pitt-Rivers on the 10 July 1888 but it was acquired at the Christie's, London auction sale of items from the sale of Albert Denison Conyngham, first Baron Londesborough also known as Lord Londesborough's collections, held between 4 and the 11 July 1888.

Albert Denison Conyngham, first Baron Londesborough, was a politician and diplomat who served in Berlin, Vienna and Italy. He was also Liberal MP for Canterbury. He was very interested in archaeology and an art connoisseur; a fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. His famous collection of antiquities was dispersed principally in four London sales in 1879, 1884, and 1888, some 20 years after his death in 1860. These sales were very popular with other collectors, for example, John Evans also acquired some objects from this collection [Macgregor (ed) 2008: 137]

Conyngham was said to have acquired the bronze from Thomas Crofton Croker (1798-1854), an Irish antiquary born in Cork who worked at the Admiralty in London. He was particularly interested in Irish folklore. Thomas Bateman also acquired items from his collection, see here for more information.

The Temple Church is the church of the Inner and Middle Temple, two of England's four ancient societies of lawyers, the Inns of Court. Its website states:

The Church was built by the Knights Templar, the order of crusading monks founded to protect pilgrims on their way to and from Jerusalem in the 12th century. The Church is in two parts: the Round and the Chancel. The Round Church was consecrated in 1185 by the patriarch of Jerusalem. It was designed to recall the holiest place in the Crusaders' world: the circular Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It is a numinous space - and has a wonderful acoustic for singing.

The Temple Church was consecrated in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 10 February 1185 by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

The whole Temple community had moved from an earlier site in High Holborn, considered by the 1160s to be too confined. The church was the chapel serving the London headquarters of the Knights Templar, and from them it took its name. The Templars - as the knights were popularly known - were soldier monks.

After the success of the First Crusade, the order was founded in Jerusalem in a building on the site of King Solomon's temple. Their mission was to protect pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land, but in order to do this they needed men and money. For more details of the Templars and this early history of the Church, see The Round Church, 1185.

The London Temple was the Templars' headquarters in Great Britain. The Templars' churches were always built to a circular design to remind them of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, a round, domed building raised over the site of the sepulchre where Jesus was buried. At first, the Templars were liked and respected. St Bernard of Clairvaux became their patron and they gained many privileges from popes and much support from kings.

In England, King Henry II was probably present at the consecration of the church; King Henry III favoured them so much that he wished to be buried in their church. As a consequence of this wish, the choir of the church was pulled down and a far larger one built in its place, the choir which we now see. This was consecrated on Ascension Day 1240 in the presence of the king. However, after Henry died it was discovered that he had altered his will, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Read more about the history of this Church at this time here. It would seem that the sleeping soldiers bronze dates from early in the Church's history.

It would seem that the bronze is now in the care of the Burrell Collection, Glasgow. We are currently awaiting more information from the Burrell Collection about this object and what is known about it now.

AP May 2012

Three portions of mummy portraits from the Fayoum Egypt: Add. 9455vol2_p573/3

2012-05-15T09:18:47+00:00

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Ruth Allen

On 7 August 1889, General Pitt Rivers purchased from the Reverend Greville John Chester (1830-1892) for £6 a frame containing “portions of mummy portraits from the Fayoum Egypt”. These were entered on page 573 of the second volume of the catalogue of Pitt Rivers’ ‘Second’ Collection, and deposited at King John’s House. [1] No date is proffered for these portraits, and no precise find-spot recorded; no physical description is given, nor the subjects’ genders specified: only the tiny watercolour illustration loosely records their appearance (Fig. 1). These portraits, therefore, pose several questions that look both forward and backward in their biography: whom do they represent and for what function were they made; where were they found, and how and why did they come into the possession of Chester and through him to Pitt Rivers; and what became of them after 1889?

Pitt Rivers’ catalogue entry notes only that the portraits came from the Fayoum in Egypt. ‘Fayum portraits’ is a term popularly used to describe painted mummy portraits from Roman Egypt, dating from the early 1st Century to the late 3rd Century A.D., that have been found in great number – though not exclusively – in the Fayum region. As Taylor has stated, they were the “product of a fusion of two traditions, that of pharaonic Egypt and that of the Classical world”. [2] Combining the style and technique of the latter with the funerary practice and belief of the former, these portraits were made for a specifically local purpose: that of covering the head of the mummified individual represented in the portrait. [3] They were often painted on wooden panels that were inserted over the mummy wrappings, but were also painted on linen shrouds or on plaster heads. Their purpose was to serve as a record of the deceased as they had appeared in life, and as such, individual features and characteristics often appear meticulously observed.

The catalogue illustration shows three fragments of portraits each partially preserving a face against a blue-grey ground: the left-hand fragment is broken in a thin vertical rectangle with angled ends showing only a cross-section of a face with one eye, a nostril, and the edge of a mouth just apparent; the centre fragment is similar in shape, but longer and slightly wider than the first with perpendicular ends, and preserves the centre of the face with both eyes; the right-hand fragment is wider and shorter than both others, with a distinctively-shaped jagged break across the lower edge, and reveals the proper left side of a face, with one large eye, a prominent nose, hair brushed behind the head, and the corner of the right eye just preserved.

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Beyond these details, however, the catalogue does not offer much to identify these portraits further. In order to give more substance to the watercolour images both in terms of appearance and provenance, we may need to look to other catalogued mummy portraits that were excavated at this time. Most of the extant material originates from two main sites: the cemeteries at Hawara, excavated and recorded in 1887-1888 by Flinders Petrie (1853-1942); [4] and the cemeteries at er-Rubayat, unearthed by local inhabitants in 1887, with the majority of finds bought by the Austrian business man, Theodor Graf (1840-1903). [5] We know that Chester regularly wintered abroad in Egypt where he purchased material for the British Museum, the Ashmolean, and the Fitzwilliam Museum. He also regularly offered material to Pitt Rivers, as indicated in his letters to the Salisbury and Wiltshire Museum. [6] The British Museum has a painted mummy portrait of a woman from er-Rubayat, bought in 1890 also from Chester, which may help us partly to reconstruct the provenance and perhaps appearance of at least one of the Pitt Rivers pieces (Fig. 2). [7] Here we see an elderly woman, painted in tempera on wood on a grey ground and dated to the mid-second Century A.D., with greying black hair centrally-parted and brushed around her face towards the back of her head, with a bony, irregular face, and sallow and wrinkled complexion, heavy brows and large eyes with individually indicated lashes. She wears a band of terracotta wool in her hair, and a light terracotta tunic and mantle. A third portrait now in the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna shows an elderly man of striking similarity of style, colour, and subject-matter to that in the British Museum. [8] Walker and Bierbrier have attributed it to the same artist, further positing that the two portraits may represent members of the same family, perhaps husband and wife, and probably came from the same tomb. [9] This third portrait was bought in Vienna from the dealer B. Kertzmar in 1930, and is known to have been in the Graf collection. [10] It is clear that Chester was purchasing material from er-Rubayat – perhaps directly from Graf, if the British Museum and Kunsthistoriches Museum portraits are related – to be sold to the British Museum in 1890; it seems highly probable that the pieces he sold to Pitt Rivers in 1889 may also have come from er-Rubayat, perhaps even from the same source. Superficially, the composition, colour-palette, and perhaps even the details of the hair-style of the British Museum portrait are similar to those of the right-hand fragment of the Pitt Rivers trio; if we could identify the fragment more accurately, we might be able to confirm this relationship further.

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On the 10th December 1984, Sotheby’s London sold a number of items belonging to Mrs. Stella Pitt-Rivers that had formerly been in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Dorset. Included as one lot were three fragments of Fayum portraits, dated in the catalogue to circa 5-6th Century A.D., sadly not illustrated. [11] At least one of the fragments – that of a woman – is published as later being in the collection of Jack Ogden, London, before passing to the London dealer Charles Ede in 1985; it was sold again at Christie’s in New York on the 9th June 2011 for $43,750. [12] The portrait is now in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (Fig. 3). [13] The shape of the fragment and the preserved features of the portrait, together with the colour-palette, are very close to the illustration of the right-hand Pitt Rivers fragment: though we can work only from the watercolour sketch, it seems highly probable from the collection history and physical features that the two portraits are one and the same. The two other fragmentary portraits included in the frame do not match in terms of the shape of the fragment and section of face preserved, while Pitt Rivers’ catalogues record only one other Fayum portrait in his collection, this one clearly male and the panel differently shaped. [14]

The Yale/Pitt Rivers portrait is painted in the tempera technique on wood, probably oak. The dimensions of the panel are 24.5 x 9.5 x 0.4 cm, and it is broken to the left with only two-thirds of the face remaining, also with a jagged break across the bottom edge that deletes the shoulders and bust. Preserved against a blue-grey ground is the portrait of an elderly woman, her age sensitively and realistically portrayed, with wrinkled skin and greying black hair centrally parted and brushed around her face and behind her head. Her heavy eye-brows, hooked nose, large eyes with individually indicated lashes, and sallow, wizened complexion imparts a great sense of individuality; her earring, threaded with three pearls, similarly speaks of the personal whilst also perhaps alluding to her status. Close study of the clothes, hairstyles and jewellery worn by the subjects of these portraits often makes it possible to date them. Although the diagnostic features of this portrait are limited, from her hairstyle it is probable that it dates to the first half of the second Century A.D. The details are close to the British Museum portrait of similar date, while a Roman marble portrait bust of a woman formerly in the Torlonia collection in Rome has hair similarly parted and brushed to the back of the head. [15] CAT scans of complete mummies have revealed a correspondence of age and sex between mummy and image, allowing us to assume a certain level of accuracy of representation here: she appears to us as she did in life and at her death. Some have argued that these mummy portraits were commissioned during the lifetime of the subject, based on the observation that many of the subjects are very young and perhaps in some way, therefore, idealised, but the existence of portraits of elderly subjects such as this must counter that argument, encouraging us to conclude that the portraits were commissioned at death. This portrait is an expressive and sincere representation that does not lie about the age of its subject nor conceal her flaws.

In terms of execution and style, the Yale/Pitt Rivers and British Museum portraits are distinctly alike: the hair and wrinkles around the women’s mouths, between the eyes and across the brows are similarly articulated, as are the wrinkles across the neck, and the use of a thick brown line to mark the outline of the face and features. The colour palette is also similar, although the Pitt Rivers example has more depth of colour and tone. It is tempting to relate the subjects in the manner of the British Museum and Kunsthistoriches Museum examples (Sisters? Cousins?); however, it is most likely that both portraits are related by coincidence of date, subject-matter, and find-location: several painted mummy portraits from er-Rubayat show older women with the same distinctive hair-style, facial features, and similar jewellery. [16] Moreover, the mummy portraits found in the cemeteries at er-Rubayat are almost exclusively executed using the tempera technique – those found at Hawara use encaustic – which explains to some extent the similarity of colour, tone and technique between the two portraits. [17]

As with the majority of extant mummy portraits, the Yale/Pitt Rivers example does not identify its subject by name. If we assume that the other two fragments in Pitt Rivers’ frame also originated from er-Rubayat, fixing a find-spot does, at least, allow us to infer some details about all three subjects. It has long been thought that the cemetery at er-Rubayat was for the residents of Philadelphia, but it seems likely that it in fact served another settlement at Mansura. [18] We can assume that our portraits depict members of the local elite, as only a small percentage of those who could afford mummification could also commission a portrait. [19] We can also glean something of their cultural identity. The people of the Fayum were a cultural mix: descendents of the Greek mercenaries who had fought under Alexander and settled in the area, marrying local women and adopting Egyptian beliefs. Many mummy portraits reflect an interest in Greek culture: the men are often bearded, the youths suntanned, alluding to an education in the gymnasium; one famous portrait of a young woman gives her name and profession as Hermione grammatike, highlighting her status as one of the grammatikai, upholders of Greek cultural traditions within the framework of Roman rule. [20]

More than just a representation of a social demographic, however, Pitt Rivers’ framed mummy portraits – and that of the old woman as main example – represent a final poignant glimpse of a deceased life. They stand as testaments, recording the appearance of the long dead and evidencing their existence: they are defiant with their honestly observed features and quiet, sombre expressions. Where the artists and subjects aimed for immortality through the physical act of recording an appearance, the afterlife of these three portraits themselves has followed a perhaps unforeseen route. Excavated, traded, bought, sold, and displayed, the portraits have shape-shifted over time and can be considered in different guises: perhaps for Graf, Chester, and the local excavators at er-Rubayat, they represented buried treasure and a business opportunity; for Pitt Rivers, the prolific collector, further example of the technical development of mankind; [21] for Sotheby’s and Christie’s, valuable artworks; and now for Yale, the single female portrait represents an object acquired as a historical and didactic source, part of the gallery’s mission to encourage appreciation and understanding of art and its role in society. [22] Though currently not on view, the portrait has nevertheless also maintained its original function through these accrued layers of additional status: the memory of its subject persists, if anonymously. And it is thanks to Pitt Rivers’ original acquisition that this one of many “portions of mummy portraits from the Fayoum Egypt” has survived for us to think about, illustrating the personal and performative function of this art form as a means of recording, expressing, and confirming identity.

Notes
[1] Add. 9455vol2_p573/3.
[2] Taylor 1997, p. 9.
[3] Walker 1997, p. 14.
[4] See, for example, Petrie 1913
[5] For the catalogue of Graf’s collection, see F. H. Richter and F. von Ostini 1900.
[6] Letters L221 (11 June 1886), L386 (24 Aug 1887), L487 (7 May 1888), L2281 (29 May 1886), L2531 (undated).
[7] BM 1890,0921.1 (Painting 87). See also Walker and Bierbrier, p. 89, no. 79.
[8] Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum X300. See also Walker and Bierbrier, p. 88, no. 78.
[9] Walker and Bierbrier 1997, p. 90.
[10] Walker and Bierbrier 1997, p. 89.
[11] Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, London, 10 December 1984, lot 154.
[12] Anonymous sale; Christie’s, New York, 9 June 2011, lot 66.
[13] Ruth Elizabeth White Fund, 2011.102.1. See also Parlasca and Frenz 2003, Bd. 4, p. 82, no. 856, fig. 8, tav. 184.
[14] Add.9455vol2_p444/11; acquired from Flinders Petrie in 1888.
[15] See Borg 1996, no. 84,2 and 3.
[16] There are examples in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge; the St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis; and the Pushkin Museum, Moscow: for images, see Borg 1996, no. 48,2; no. 48,1; and no. 84,1.
[17] Doxiadis 1997, p. 21.
[18] Walker and Bierbrier 1997, p. 86.
[19] Bagnall 1997, p. 17.
[20] Walker 1997, p. 16.
[21] Rethinking Pitt-Rivers | Home http://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/rpr/
[22] http://artgallery.yale.edu/pages/info/director_mission.php

Bibliography
Bagnall, R. S., ‘The Fayum and its People’, in Walker, S. and Bierbrier, M. eds, Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, London, 1997, pp. 17-20.
Borg, B., Mumienporträt: Chronologie und kultureller Kontext, Mainz am Rhein, 1996.
Christie’s, Anonymous sale, New York, 9th June 2011.
Doxiadis, E., in Walker, S. and Bierbrier, M. eds, Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, London, 1997, pp. 21-22.
Flinders Petrie, W. M., The Hawara Portfolio: Paintings of the Roman Age, London, 1913.
Richter, F. H. and von Ostini, F., Catalogue of the Theodor Graf collection of unique ancient Greek portraits, 2000 years old, Vienna, 1990.
Taylor, J., ‘Before the Portraits: Burial Practice in Pharaonic Egypt’, in Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, London, 1997, pp. 9-13.
Sotheby’s, Anonymous sale, London, 10th December 1984.
Walker, S. and Bierbrier, M. eds, Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, London, 1997.
Walker, S., ‘Mummy Portraits and Roman Portraiture’, in Walker, S. and Bierbrier, M. eds, Ancient Faces: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt, London, 1997, pp. 14-16.

May 2012.

Tympanum from Cyprus

2012-05-10T08:09:42+00:00

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On 27 April 1892 at Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge auction house in London, Pitt-Rivers successfully bid for the largest item he ever bought at a sale of the Cesnola-Lawrence collection. He paid an extremely large sum for lot -- £31.10.0. Lot 625 was described as:

Fine large specimens of terra cotta of the several archaic styles which obtain in Cyprus Ancient Christian Tympanum 24 x 41 in elaborately carved designs in Byzantine style. The subjects are the life and passon of our Lord. Found in excavating for a house in Larnaca or Kittuim. Fine white marble. This and the font No 588 being genuine relics from Byzantine churches might be appropriately adapted to ecclesiastical used by a church architect

It was part of the very famous Cesnola-Lawrence collection. This collection had been acquired by Alessandro Palma di Cesnola, and given to his father-in-law, Edwin Henry Lawrence, in lieu of his financial support of Cesnola's collections. To find out more about this collection and the men associated with it, see here.

A tympanum is a 'semi-circular or triangular decorative wall surface over an entrance, bounded by a lintel and arch. It often contains sculpture or other imagery or ornaments. Most architectural styles include this element. In ancient Greek and Roman and in Christian architecture tympana usually contain religious imagery' [wikipedia]

The marble tympanum was entered into the catalogue of Pitt-Rivers' second collection on page 838 of volume 3 [Add.9455vol3_p838 /1]:

Date: 1892 Apr 27

Description of object: Bought at Sotheby’s Sale of Cypriote Antiquities of the late E.H. Lawrence Esq F.S.A. ... Lot 625 [Drawing] Lot 625 Ancient Christian Tympanum 24 x 41 inches elaborately carved designs in Byzantine style. The subjects are the Life and Passion of our Lord. Found in excavating for a house at Larnaca or Kittium. Fine white marble
Price: £31.10
Deposited at: Museum
Removed to:
Added: Room VII case 75 [in red]

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As you can see from the above catalogue entry, the object was delivered and displayed at Farnham Museum, Pitt-Rivers' private museum in Dorset.

As with most items from Pitt-Rivers' second collection, the tympanum would have stayed at the Museum until the middle of the twentieth century when it was one of the objects that was sold on the open art market. The purchaser was the Victoria and Albert Museum and the artefact now forms part of that museum's collections. [Museum number A.2-1982] It is ironic that this object has ended up in this collection as, of course, Pitt-Rivers' founding collection had been on display there for over 7 years during the 1870s and 1880s.

The object is now on display in the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, Room 8 case WN.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum describes this object as 'The Larnaca Tympanum' and says:

This small tympanum was excavated in Larnaka, Cyprus, shortly before 1882 by the noted archaeologist Cesnola. It must have stood above one of the doors into a church. However, it is far too small to have been above any of the Western doors. Scenes of this sort, combining narrative images with representations of Christ enthroned in heaven were common choices for portal imagery. The person entering the church was encouraged to think about the events of Christ's life, but also about his ever-present nature.

It is likely that the artists who carved this piece had trained in Tuscany, and they were also clearly aware of Byzantine artistic conventions.

This piece emphasises that artistic styles did not change overnight - they could co-exist in the same period. The composition of this tympanum owes something to gothic examples. But the figure style, in particular the heads of the Apostles, and the awkwardly twisting postures of the angel figures, show the continuing vitality of romanesque conventions.

Tympanum, marble, with a relief of the Ascension. The relief shows the Ascension with the twelve apostles, two archangels and the Virgin orans; other scenes show the Carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Baptism of Christ, the Annunciation, and the Maries at the Sepulchre. Height: 62.3 cm, Width: 104.7 cm including wings, Depth: 8 cm

It is not known which church this piece is from. It was first published by the archaeologist Cesnola in 1882. It came to London as part of the Lawrence Collection of Cypriot antiquities, and was sold on to the Pitt Rivers Collection in Farnham.

The Museum believes that the object was created between 1210 and 1230 AD. The tympanum was displayed at the Saladin und die Kreuzfahrer exhibition at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum, Mannheim from 15 October 2005 to 20 January 2006.

Not much is known about the object, how it was found, and why Cesnola (who was usually more concerned with acquiring older Cypriote antiquities) acquired it or why it was not sold by Lawrence until after his death (though he sold most of the remainder of his Cesnola collection before his death in a series of sales that are described here).

Adrian Boas says of this object:

Some of the finest non-figurative sculpture of the Latin East is found in Gothic churches and other buildings in Cyprus, but virtually no figurative sculpture of the quality found in the kingdom of Jerusalem has yet come to light there. From Larnaca comes a bas-relief, now in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Farnham, Dorset, [sic] which Enlart suggests may have originated in Famagusta or Paphas (Enlart 1987: 43]. It decorated either a doorway or an altar. The tympanum can be divided horizontally into two sections, the upper semicircular part containing at its centre the figure of Christ in an elliptical mandorla supported by four angels. On either side are smaller panels containing various scenes. These include, on the right, the Crucifixion and the Carrying of the Cross, and on the left the Visitation, the Baptism and a scene with an enthroned angel above two donors and two fighting soldiers. The lower rectangular register of the typanum contains the Annunciation with six apostles on either side of the Virgin Mary and, for the sake of symmetry, two representations of Gabriel. This work, a fusion of Gothic and Byzantine styles, is, in the words of Enlart, 'clumsy, heavy and incorrect' [Enlart 1987: 320] [Boas, 1999: 193]

Boas seems to have taken the description from Enlart and also says that in Enlart's opinion the work dated from the end of the fourteenth century [1987: 43] though this date has obviously been revised in more recent work. Other work describes the Visitation as the Annunciation, and say one of the scenes show the three Maries and the soldiers at the Tomb of Christ. [Hill, 2010: 1137]

Bibliographic References provided by the Victoria and Albert Museum webpage for this object:
T.S.R. Boase, 'v. The Arts in Cyprus, Ecclesiastical Art' in K.M. Setton (ed.), A History of the Crusades, Madison, 1977, vol. IV, p. 186
A. Palma di Cesnola, Salaminia (Cyprus); The History, Treasures and Antiquities of Salamis in the Island of Cyprus, London, 1882, p.108 and pl. IX
C. Enlart, L'art gothique et de la Renaissance en Chypre, Paris, 1899, vol. 1, pp. 15-16
Camille Enlart. Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus. London: Trigraph/A. G. Leventis Foundation, 1987
P. Hetherington, 'The Larnaka Tympanum and its origins: a persisting problem from 19th century Cyprus', in Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus, 2000, Nicosia, 2000, pp. 361-378
P. Williamson (ed.), European Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1996, p. 49
M. Willis, 'The Larnaca Tympanum' in Kypriakon Spoudon, May 1981, pp. 15-28

Add.9455vol1_p84 /2 Hercules

2012-01-11T15:06:48+00:00

A bronze statuette of Hercules from Pitt-Rivers’ ‘Second Collection’

Elin Bornemann, Pitt Rivers Museum

This bronze statuette of Hercules is one of a group of objects listed thus: ‘The objects below were obtained by Genl. Pitt Rivers during the months of July, Aug and Sept. in Austria 1882.’

Pitt-Rivers was on holiday in Germany and Austria and evidently took the opportunity to shop for his collection.

The description of this particular object reads: ‘Bronze statuette of Hercules found at Marienburg near Cologne Hgt 3 ¼’. It is not known when or under what circumstances the statuette was found. The fact that it was found near Cologne but obtained by Pitt-Rivers in Austria points to its having been passed through several hands, including dealers in antiques and curiosities. It was presumably from such a dealer that Pitt-Rivers bought the object. Other objects from Cologne acquired by Pitt-Rivers in Austria include a bronze horse and a wooden comb with a carved case.

The catalogue does not put an age onto the statuette of Hercules, but it will become clear from the following investigation into its subject and its place of origin that it is most probably Roman.

The first point to investigate is this:

Who is Hercules?

Hercules is the Roman name for the Greek demigod Heracles, the son of the god Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmena. Zeus gave the baby Hercules to his wife Hera to breastfeed, and this made him not quite but almost immortal. The adult Hercules was renowned for his size and strength, which was said to surpass that of all mortal men.

He is usually depicted wearing a lion skin and carrying a knobbly club.

Hercules is most famously associated with the ‘Labours of Hercules’, a series of tasks he carried out for King Eurystheus of Mycenae. One of these was to kill the Nemean lion, an invulnerable lion which terrorized the countryside around Nemea. Other famous ‘labours’ include killing the Hydra, a venomous monster with nine heads, fetching the belt of Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, cleaning the Augean stables in a single day, and stealing the cattle of Geryon, a monster with three heads and three pairs of legs who also had a two-headed dog.

The tales of these labours were well-known in antiquity and recounted by several ancient writers. As a demi-god, Hercules was worshipped in the Greek and Roman worlds.

But what was he doing in Germany?

Hercules on the Rhine

With the expansion of the Roman Empire, the Roman soldiers and settlers brought their gods with them, and they were often incorporated into a local pantheon. Hercules became one of the most important gods in the Rhine area, only Mercury and Mars were more important. He was seen as the guardian of trade, patron of roads and harbours, and protector of labourers, particularly those in quarries. He also had special significance for the legions stationed on the Rhine.

Germanic peoples worshipped him as well and possibly equated him with their god Donar. The Roman historian Tacitus mentions the special affinity of Germanic peoples for Hercules in chapter 3 of his ‘Germania’, written around 98 A.D.: ‘They (i.e. the Germans) have a tradition that Hercules also had been in their country, and him above all other heroes they extol in their songs when they advance into battle.’

Hercules also appears in the 3rd century A.D. as Hercules Magusanus, whose cult was so widespread that Postumus, emperor of the so-called ‘Gallic Empire’ (260-269), had his picture put on his coins.

Bearing this in mind, it is not surprising that statuettes of Hercules should have been found in the Rhine area. What makes Pitt-Rivers’ statuette even more interesting is that we have a very specific place of origin: Marienburg near Cologne. From the middle of the first century Marienburg was the headquarters of the Classis Germanica, the Roman Rhine Fleet.

The Roman Rhine Fleet

The Roman fleet never existed as an autonomous service, more as sea- or river-goingarm of the Roman army. Roman warships were mainly propelled by rowers, but they also had a sail. The Romans built a variety of heavier and lighter types to serve different purposes. A provincial fleet like the one on the Rhine was equipped with light vessels. Their purpose was mainly to patrol the river and to provide escorts for transports.

One type of ship used on the Rhine was called ‘liburna’. The name derives from the ancient district of Liburnia, in modern-day Croatia, whose inhabitants were renowned seafarers. The ‘liburna’ had two banks of rowers with 18 oars per side, making it a fairly fast and agile craft.

Another type of vessel used on rivers was the ‘navis actuaria’, which was smaller, with only 15 rowers per side and a shallow draught. This type was eventually superceded by the ‘navis lusoria’, with the same number of oars but a narrower build. The name translates as ‘playful ship’, referring to its maneuverability and quickness. This type of ship was used particularly along the Germanic border.

The military history of Marienburg, where Pitt-Rivers’ Hercules was found, starts in the early 1st century when units from two legions were stationed there. In the middle of the century it became the headquarters of the Roman Rhine Fleet and the only quarters of the Roman Fleet in Germany. Archaeologists have estimated that it had room for over 1000 men.

From the 1st century onwards the situation along the Rhine was fairly peaceful, so the Fleet was not engaged in military operations, but patrolled the river and guarded the border. Two hundred years later the situation had changed. There were conflicts with the Franks who repeatedly invaded Roman territory, and in 276 they destroyed the Fleet headquarters. This was not the end of Roman ships on the Rhine, but from then on the legions organised their own auxiliary fleets, without a single central station for them.

Metalwork from the Rhine

One aspect of Pitt-Rivers’ statuette of Hercules which has not been considered yet is its manufacture. It is not known where the statuette was made, but it is possible that it was made close to where it was found.

In the early days of Roman settlement on the Rhine people only had whatever metalwork they had brought with them or imported later. Subsequently the provinces developed their own arts and crafts. In those provinces on the frontier of the Roman Empire, these crafts were influenced by the peoples on the other side of the borders.

In the 2nd century a bronze industry developed in Gressenich, near Aachen, in Northrhine-Westphalia. This was made possible by the discovery of calamine, a zinc mineral which can be used to make bronze. Gressenich is about 60 km west of Cologne, and it would not be surprising to find bronze objects from Gressenich in the Cologne area. However, while it is known that bronze objects were made at Gressenich, this was not the only place of production, and it is difficult to determine where a particular item has come from. Objects were often recycled and repeatedly melted down, for example to make coins.

While objects from Gressenich could easily have made their way to Cologne, bronze objects were also made in Cologne itself. It is known that in the 1st century there was a workshop for gladius sheaths. There is also evidence for a Roman craftsman called Saciro in the Cologne area, who worked in bronze and silver.

However, while it is tempting to think that Pitt-Rivers’ Hercules statuette was made at Gressenich or Cologne, especially since it was found in the same region, this is by no means certain. It is likely that the statuette was owned by a soldier or a sailor, and the owner could have brought it with him from elsewhere in the empire when he was posted to the Rhine.

Conclusion

At first glance it seems that the statuette of Hercules cannot tell us very much. We know the character it depicts, what it is made of, where it was found and where and when Pitt-Rivers bought it, but there are no confirmed facts beyond that. However, these few pointers give the object its historical context. If you look beyond it, it opens a window on a particular period of history in a particular region. It can be the starting point for an exploration of life on the edge of the Roman Empire, its soldiers and sailors and its craftsmen, its military and religious life.

Bibliography

Roemer am Rhein. Ausstellung des Roemisch-Germanischen Museums Koeln, 16. April bis 30. Juni 1967 (Exhibition Catalogue)

Norbert Haniel, ‘Zur Rekonstruktion der Mannschaftsbaracken der Ausgrabung 1998 (Phase 5) im Flottenlager Alteburg bei Koeln-Marienburg. Gladius, Anejos 13, 2009: Limes XX. Germania, Gallia & Raetia, p. 1291-1297

Graves, Robert. 1965 Greek Gods and Heroes, New York: Dell Publishing

Websites

www.novaesium.de/artikel/classis.htm

Translation of Tacitus taken from this website:

www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/tacitus-germanygord.asp

[Note: Unfortunately this object is not illustrated in the catalogue, probably because it is one of the first objects that Pitt-Rivers purchased for his new 'second' collection]

January 2012.

Found, lost and Found again [Add.9455vol1_p19 /13]

2011-10-13T13:20:17+00:00

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Marion Uckelmann

The following narrative tells the fascinating story of a Bronze Age shield which was found in the Thames in 1864. Within in a few years it was considered to be lost, but fortunately has just been rediscovered.

The first mention of the shield is in the Gentleman’s Magazine, December 1865, where Mr A.C. Kirkmann gives a detailed description of the matter:

ANCIENT BRITISH SHIELD. Sir,—During the very low water in the Thames in the month of September, 1864, a boatman perceived in the bed of the river between Hampton and Walton a round object, the nature of which he was at first unable to discern, but using his boat-hook for some time he brought to the surface the bronze shield a drawing of which I send you. [...] The discovery of this relic adds one more to the three examples already known. Two have been found in Wales and one previously in the bed of the Thames. It is ornamented with twelve concentric circles, which, like the nineteen found on the Welsh types, may or may not have an astronomic reference. Between each circle is a number of studs, but these are larger and less numerous than those on the Welsh shields, and differ materially from the one previously found in the Thames, so that the specimen is altogether unique.

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Mr Kirkmann was a collector of prehistoric objects and his collection was well known during his lifetime. However, the shield did not belong to his collection, but to an acquaintance of Mr Kirkmann: Mr James Milner. Mr Milner is well documented on censuses etc. as living at that time in Palace Road, East Molesey, Surrey which is less than 5 km from the find spot of the shield. The next published record on the shield is a short description in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of 1867 (Tayler 1867), but this gives no clue of its whereabouts. The shield was exhibited at the National Exhibition of Works of Art, in Leeds in 1868. Mr Milner presented the shield there, probably due to his origins in Leeds and where his wealthy family still resided. This is the last time the shield is mentioned with a certain provenance and as belonging to Mr Milner.

The next references in the literature cite only Kirkmann’s description. In 1872 Augustus Wollaston Franks asked in a short note on shields, again in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries:

“It would be desirable to know what has become of the shield found in the Thames in 1864” (Franks 1872, 364).

Thereafter the shield is labelled as lost or with unknown whereabouts (Evans 1881, 352; Smith 1919, 150; Sprockhoff 1930, 14 no. 33; Coles 1962, 87 no. 4).

The above is all that was known about the shield until recently. Various bits of information were gathered together by two local historians, Paul Gossage and Steve Baker, who initiated the new search and the author, who had just finished her PhD on the European Bronze Age shields. With their combined forces it was possible to relocate the shield. The following pieces of information were put in chronological order:

In the inventory books of the private second collection of Augustus Pitt-Rivers (assembled after 1880), which can now be accessed following the database link on the right hand menu of this site, there is an entry of a shield purchased by him at the 17th May 1882 from a Mr William Wareham, London. This shield is described as

Circular Bronze Shield […] 25 inches in diameter […] found in the Thames at Halliford nr: Walton-on-Thames” (Add.9455vol1_p19 /13).

Undoubtedly this is the same shield owned before by Mr Milner. The shield became part of Pitt-Rivers’ private collection. First it was taken to the family home, Rushmore, and later displayed in the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Farnham, Dorset.

It is interesting to note that a very famous painting of Pitt-Rivers, created by Frank Holl in 1882, shows a shield lying at the feet of the General. Although it is largely idealized, the shield pictured is almost certainly the one purchased shortly before the painting was done. It was the only Bronze Age shield of this kind in his collection and is evidence for the high regard in which he held it.

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We are deeply indebted to Hannah Jeffery, the librarian of the Surrey Archaeological Society, who diligently researched her archives and was able to unearth recently an article by W. E. Phillips on Bronze Age metal objects in Surrey, which was unfortunately overlooked for a long time. She brought it to the attention of Paul Gossage, and this turned out to be the missing link in our quest that led to the Pitt-Rivers archives and the solving of the mystery.

Phillips also states that the shield was held in the Farnham Museum: “A shield dredged up from the river bank at Walton-upon-Thames is circular and approximately two feet across. Its decoration consists of concentric rings of small repoussé bosses and raised ribs (Footnote 67: Now in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Farnham, Dorset). It is of Type Yetholm and similar to one from Moel Siabod” (Phillips 1967, 8. 30) which is now in the British Museum.

This private collection stayed in the Pitt-Rivers family until the 1950s and 1960s when the objects were sold individually to different people. Around the 1960s/70s John Hunt bought some items from the Pitt-Rivers collection that had been in the former museum in Farnham; namely a bronze bucket, cauldron and shield, all of them are now on display in the Hunt Museum in Limerick, Ireland. John Hunt did not know the provenance of the shield. He assumed that the shield was connected with the bucket and cauldron bought by Pitt-Rivers in the 1890’s, being before a part of the collection of T.W.U. Robinson, and sold through Sotheby’s. The cauldron from Ballyscullion (Add.9455vol2_p651 /1) and the bucket from Cape Castle (Add.9455vol2_p650 /9) were already well documented (Evans 1881, 411 Fig. 511; 412 f. Fig. 513) and their provenance clear. Since they were both from north-east Ireland, the shield was assumed to be from the same area and hereafter labeled as from Co. Antrim (Doran 1993, 44 Taf. 38; Fernström 1995, 3–20).

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Through the reference in Phillips and the registration books of Pitt-Rivers it now became clear that this shield from “Co. Antrim” is the one that was found in 1864 in the Thames between Walton-upon-Thames and Hampton.

The shield is of circular form and measures 63.8 cm in diameter. It was hammered out of a blank into a bronze sheet, which is c. 0.5 mm thin and weighs 1484 g. It is decorated with eleven concentric rows of punched-in bosses, alternating with eleven concentric ribs, as well as an additional rib before the rolled over rim. Under the conical central shield boss a grip is fastened, with a rivet on each end. The body of the shield bears two holes where tabs were once attached, so the shield could be carried over the shoulder by a strip of leather or band or a wire. The hammering of the blank into a sheet was a time intensive and delicate work process, which included many rounds of hammering and annealing the metal (at ca. 500–700°C), which would turn brittle otherwise. In experiments it was possible to cast blanks as large as 19 cm. After each annealing the blank was quenched in water and then hammered to stretch it. This was a slow process in which the metal was stretched by 1-2 mm per round of hammering. Therefore, a number of at least 200 rounds of hammering and annealing has to be assumed; this large amount of cold working is also evidenced in metallographic analyses of some shields. (Uckelmann forthcoming).

The shield belongs to the Type Yetholm, of which 22 have been preserved, some only in fragments. Seven to eight are known from written sources but are lost today. This makes this type the largest of all Bronze Age shields, as only about 85 metal ones are known from across Europe. The Yetholm shields are all, except one from Denmark, found in the British Isles: 15 from England, nine to ten from Scotland, and two each from Wales and Ireland. They were mostly found in wet contexts, mainly in bogs with fewer in the great rivers Thames and Shannon. In closer comparison with other finds from wet and dry contexts, these shields can be interpreted as votive offerings. Since they were found on their own or in combination with other shields the dating is difficult, but can be generally placed in the Late Bronze Age (Uckelmann 2011; forthcoming). The newly discovered shield from South Cadbury (Coles et al. 1999) is the only shield that was discovered during an excavation. It was found in a trench and the pieces of ceramic and bones as well as the metal alloy suggest a date into the Penard/Wilburton phases (c. 1300–1000 BC).

The bronze shields were valuable and elaborately worked objects, and had their own meaning in the martial environment of the Bronze Age people. They were clearly used but not simply for a single purpose. During the ‘lifetime’ of the shield it went through different stages in its meaning and function. In the beginning it would be the precious product of a well-skilled and trained craftsman. In its time of active use, some of the metal shields very probably protected their bearer in combat and were also used as markers of a social position and/or as a device in ritual ceremonies. After their time of active use, their function changed and they were transferred or rather offered – most likely by the community – to another sphere (Uckelmann 2011, 198).

There they remained, in this case in the Thames, until they were found by adventurers, archaeologist, fisherman or workmen cutting peat, dredging or labouring in the fields, when they captivated the eyes of modern men. Like the shield from the Thames found between Walton-upon-Thames and Hampton, many of them were treasured by their owner, placed in exhibitions and precious collections. Even though this shield was under a wrong name for a long time, it has lost nothing of its allure and is displayed nobly in the Hunt Museum just as the previous owners Mr Milner and General Pitt Rivers had envisioned.

References

National Exhibition of Works of Art, Leeds 1868. Official catalogue, published by the executive committee. Leeds: Edward Baines and Sons 1868 [p. 185 no. 83].

Coles, J.M. 1962. 'European Bronze Age Shields'. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 28, 1962, 156–190.

Coles, J.M., P. Leach, S.C. Minnitt, R. Tabor, A.S. Wilson, 1999 'A Late Bronze Age shield from South Cadbury, Somerset, England'. Antiquity 73, 1999, 33–48.

Doran, P.F. 50 Treasures from the Hunt Collection (1993).

Evans, J. 1881. The ancient bronze implements of Great Britain and Ireland (London).

Fernström, M. 1995. The Antrim Shield. Hunt Museum, Docent Program (unpublished) 1–20.

Franks, A.W. 1872. (exhibitions and communications). Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries (London) Nov. 1872, 360–365.

Kirkmann, A.C. 1865. 'Ancient British Shield'. The Gentleman’s Magazine, December 1865

Phillips, W.E. 1967. 'Bronze Age metal objects in Surrey'. Surrey Archaeological Collections, vol. 64, 1967, 1–34.

Smith, R.A. 1919.'Circular bronze shields'. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries (London) 31, 1919, 145–151.

Sprockhoff, E. 1930 'Zur Handelsgeschichte der germanischen Bronzezeit'. Vorgeschichtliche Forschungen 7 (1930).

Tayler, W. 1867. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries 1864–1867 (June 1867), 518.

Uckelmann, M. 2011. 'The function of Bronze Age shields'. In M. Uckelmann and M. Mödlinger (eds), Warfare in Bronze Age Europe: Manufacture and use of weaponry. BAR International series 2255, 187–199. Oxford, Archaeopress

Uckelmann, M. forthcoming (2011/12). Die Schilde der Bronzezeit in Nord-, West- und Zentraleuropa. Prähistorische Bronzefunde III, 4. Stuttgart, Steiner.

We are very grateful to Marion Uckelmann for allowing us to use her photographs of the shield on the site with the courtesy of the Hunt Museum, Limerick.

October 2011.

Five Mexican Pots

2011-02-16T11:10:17+00:00

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Are We Potty? 5 Lonesome Pots Try 5Y Analysis

Introduction to 5Y analysis

* “The 5 Whys is a simple but powerful tool to use with any problem. It's a technique to help you get past the symptoms and find root causes. First form a team. Then ask each other the question "why" up to five times.” (www.the-happy-manager.com)

* “The team goal is to work backwards from the result to the cause, with each question revealing more and more… Start with a simple problem statement about what the issue is …” (www.ehow.com)

Problem Solving Team – Names, Brief Descriptions & Contact Details

* Members: Double Pot, Pot, Head, Pot, Seated Human Figure Pot.

* Identifying Characteristics: “double vase of grey pottery, neck of one representing animal’s head; vase of grey pottery with lizard on neck; reddish brown head ornamented with white; vase of reddish grey pottery with female head on front ornamented with white bands and spots; ornament of reddish grey pottery, in shape of human figure seated, with handle.”

* ID: all noted in database as “Mexican”.

* Contact: Pitt-Rivers' second collection catalogue Vol 1, page 270, at Cambridge University Library [Add.9455vol1_p270].

Team Statement of Problem

* The issue is our failure to communicate with the humans with whom we share our exile. Our émigré names demonstrate that we command little status and less understanding. Though the humans manage “Figure” and “Vessel” as well as “Pottery” as key words, two of us rate no more than “Pot”. Only one, “Head”, merits a more meaningful title. Our identifying characteristics add very little. We need to do better, if only to gain respect for our age. This, at least, the humans appreciate: they have us down as A for Archaeological, not E for Ethnographic. We may even be Pre-Columban. That’s about as far as it goes. Otherwise, in the hundred plus years since 1883, they haven’t found out anything other than our nationality. We need to change the situation, find a role for ourselves.

* As long as we are in exile, our duty is to be cultural ambassadors. We owe it to ourselves to stand up for Mexico. We could say to our hosts, to paraphrase their national bard, “Friends, there is more to our country than is known in your philosophy.” Our homeland is not only huge – a surprise to first-time visitors - but has multiple regions, ethnicities and faiths. Historically we could mention the Olmec, Maya and Aztec civilisations – all pre-Columban. Mix in five centuries of Spain and the Catholic Church and you have a recipe for staggering ethnic, cultural and religious profusion. Mexico is a fabulous mix of ancient and modern, Christian and pagan – and we Mexicans reinvent ourselves every day. Our history and culture are alive and well, despite the influence of the Yankees across the Rio Grande. Just look at customs like our Day of the Dead.

* If only we could persuade British tourists to leave their margaritas on the beach at Cancun, they’d taste excitement and adventure beyond their wildest dreams. Mexican history poses more mysterious questions than a Hollywood fantasy. For example, who were the original builders of Teotihuacan? And that’s just to mention a place within easy reach of a Mexico City hotel – a taxi will take you from the doorstep. That is if you can get a price out of the driver for which you don’t need to win the lottery.

* How can we give British visitors the urge to scrap the package holiday and venture further? We need to find a way for them to experience the revelations, to European eyes, of setting foot in the kind of places where we may well have been found: for example, the fabulous Olmec and Mayan sites of Chiapas Province or Ruta Puuc in Yucatan. If they are bored by palaces and pyramids, they can always come up to date and visit, say, Real de Catorce, the ghost town in the hills of the Sierra Madre Oriental where “The Mexican” was filmed.

* Unfortunately our hosts have no idea which region, ethnic group or culture we hail from. They don’t know who made us, what for or by what process. They don’t even seem to have a note of our dimensions. To regain our self-respect, we have to awaken their curiosity.

Why, Why, Why, Why & Why?

* Head: Just because I’m the one with a title other than Pot, my colleagues have elected me leader. I’ll start the ball rolling by playing devil’s advocate. Why do our hosts not know more about us? Dare I say it’s because they haven’t had the impetus to find out? Since the nice Pitt-Rivers people received us from Mr Ready, the British Museum’s “renovator”, in 1883, they have looked after us and respected our privacy. But as far as getting to know us is concerned, we have suffered a hundred plus years of courteous neglect. Ready or not, I have to pose our Number One Question.

* Double Pot: As a pot with above average capacity, Head has appointed me deputy. “Two heads are better than one”, he quipped. I make it three, actually, skip. I think you answered your own question when you said our hosts have not had the impetus. This laissez-faire attitude has pandered to the average Brit’s lack of interest, knowledge and understanding of the world beyond familiar boundaries. What does being old and Mexican mean to your typical Pitt Rivers punter? When mum and dad bring the kids for a wander round the museum, what would they make of us, if only we were on show? Do we represent anything of value? OK, we’re not exactly spectacular looking. There are other Mexican historical characters who’d make more of an impression. None of us is exactly Quetzalcotl, the plumed serpent. Nevertheless a small clay “vessel” can hold three kinds of value: aesthetic, practical or, how shall I put it, imaginative and symbolic. By that I’m referring to the religious and spiritual aspects of life, or, in our case, I suspect, death. Who knows what desires, hopes and dreams went with us into the graves from which we were plucked? For what else does A for Archaeological usually imply? Check the auction websites – clay votive figures, with a certificate of authenticity from some funerary site, fetch thousands. So would your average punter find us beautiful? Would they think we had been of any use in our homeland? Would they feel anything of our spiritual or ritual significance? No, no and no. Why not? This is Question Number Two.

* Seated Human Figure Pot: Thanks a bunch – just because our hosts have noticed I’m “seated” I’ve got the secretary’s job…I hope it’s not my other prominent feature. You two big-heads mustn’t look to me to get a handle on things. Hang on, let me minute what Double Pot said – it sounds important. In answer to his question, I reckon it’s because the Brits’ ideas about what is beautiful, useful and spiritual come from pottery made in places they know: parts of the world where they trace their own roots plus others where their ilk have been over the centuries. I’m talking, first, about Ancient Greece and Rome and, second, the lands which the British have plundered and/or colonised. Let’s look at what they call beautiful. If they’re honest, they will admit that Greek and Roman ceramics set their aesthetic standards. It’s true in pottery as in so many other fields. Why else do they call everything about Graeco-Roman civilization “classical”? As for what turns them on from elsewhere, the pottery of, say, China or West Africa has moulded their concept of beauty to be found in the other, the exotic. Against a single Grecian urn or Ming vase, five ancient Mexican pots just don’t match up. Why? If you ask me, it’s because the Brits neither trace their identity to, nor conquered, Mexico. So Question Number Three is why did we get collected in the first place? If we can dig down to that, we might find what will get our hosts going. This new lot sound enthusiastic. “Rethinking Pitt Rivers”, eh? Let’s give ’em a hand. Let’s go back to basics.

* Pot: We know we came from the British Museum. Sounds like the Pitt Rivers people thought they could look after us better. I wonder if it was the big cheese’s decision? PR himself, or one of his agents? We must have had something about us, or was it just for completeness’ sake – those Victorian gentlemen anthropologists liked to have comprehensive collections. So what happened? Why have we not turned that initial curiosity, concern for our well-being or, dare I say, mere lust for ownership, into further enquiries? Why have we inspired no investigations, no field trips, no documentary research? There’s Question Number Four

* Pot: I reckon they don’t know where to start. Enough of macho sob-stories! If only this, if only that…If you lot were British men, you’d be crying in your beer… I’m the only woman, so I’ll take a lead. We must accentuate the positive. To do them justice, the PR people have noticed my markings. Their database says I’m “ornamented with white bands and spots”. Now Google may be a gringo invention, but it has its uses... I’ve checked out the British Museum website, since the BM is where we lived when we were first transported to this miserable, drizzly island. The BM has modern pottery, collected by Chloe Sayer and Marcos Ortiz, with markings like mine. “Painted with white accents” says its database, about a donkey figurine from Acatlan, in the Puebla region, east of Mexico City. There’s a water jug as well. Both are burnished with a kind of glaze called “orange slip”. Given that we are a lot older, could my “reddish grey” colour, I wondered, once upon a time have been similar? Mr Secretary, you too are described as “reddish grey”. You, Boss, are “reddish brown ornamented with white”. Although it was a tenuous lead, I followed up on Acatlan pottery. I found out that there may be a connexion. The foot-turned parador, a mobile support for making pots in modern Acatlan, is very similar to the kabal of the Maya village of Mama, in Yucatan, where there is little Spanish influence. An American archaeologist suggests that the technique may be ancient. There is evidence that something similar was known and used in pre-Columban times by the Olmecs of La Venta, a place approximately halfway between Acatlan and Mama. He also complains about the lack of communication between archaeologists and ethnographers, which stands in the way of horizon-broadening work like his. Ah well! Instead of getting hung up on another piece of male moaning, I went in search of Ms Sayer’s wonderful book, “Arts and Crafts of Mexico”. She writes with respect and affection about the likes of us: “Mexican ceramics range, as they did before the Conquest, from simple elegance to profuse ornamentation…” Mexican potters, “often using the simplest of tools and relying on instinct rather than science, have one thing in common: their creations, whether functional, ceremonial or purely decorative, are all worked with loving care.” Chloe Sayer is all right with me. She illustrates her chapter on modern Mexican pottery with photographs of a number of pots not a million miles in looks from us. As well as the products of Acatlan, my eye was drawn by others: hand-modelled clay animals from the Lacandon community of Naja, in Chiapas; a duck-shaped vase from Ocotlan, Tlaxcala; an earth-coloured clay figure from Santa Maria Tetecla, Veracruz. Then I spotted a small vase from the Tzeltal village of Amatenango del Valle, in Chiapas, fired without a kiln, in traditional style, and painted with earth colours. You, my friend Pot, have a lizard on your neck. This little number has two! Look, we may be ancient, but, in our own country, it looks like, gee, we may have made a mark! Posterity has not forgotten us. Perhaps not only our Pre-Columban looks, but also the way we are made inspires potters today. So why be sad? How about that for Question Five? Let’s find reasons to be cheerful.

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* Head: Thanks, sis. It’s down to me to sum up. Looking on the bright side, our starting point can be that we’re out of sight but not out of mind, gone but not forgotten. If we went back to Mexico today, we’d be recognised. So my plan is to take pride in ourselves where we are. Let’s not be hung up on the past. Whoever brought us to Britain was at least looking outward. In 1883, when the Pitt-Rivers took us on, our appearance must have seemed very odd. European artists had not yet turned on to “Primitive Art”. Picasso, born in 1881, was a terrible two, Modigliani only a twinkle in his mother’s eye (he appeared in 1884). Gauguin was still trying to make it as a businessman – he didn’t go to Martinique till 1887. So c’mon, pucker up, let’s put on our best faces. Maybe some enterprising person will take up our case. There is one place where they might track down who we are: the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Speaking of famous artists, did you know there is a whole room devoted to Diego Rivera’s collection of pre-Columban pottery? We’d be totally at home. Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo are Mexico’s best known artists. They loved the likes of us. Their house was packed with tubby little figures. Rivera was not only a father of the modern Mexican nation, but a big fan. There’s a lovely photo, on the wall at the museum, of him surrounded by his collection. Diego identified strongly with us – maybe also because he was physically not dissimilar! We are tangible links with the pre-Christian past. Our brothers and sisters inspired Rivera and Kahlo’s paintings and politics. The best case scenario for our future, I propose, is to get sent back to the National Museum of Anthropology, if only on a visit for ID purposes. In the meantime, we have a role to play. Viva La Cultura Mexicana!

Richard Gray, February 2011.

References

Acatlan Pottery in the British Museum: 1970s donkey figurine & water jug, AN5425001 & AN172803001, collected by Chloe Sayer & Marcos Ortiz, previously exhibited at Horniman Museum, 1977-8.

Foster, George M. 1960 'Archaeological Implications of the Modern Pottery of Acatlan, Puebla, Mexico', American Antiquity (Journal of the Society for American Archaeology) 1960

Sayer, Chloe. 1990 Arts and Crafts of Mexico, London: Thames & Hudson Ch IV.

Acknowledgement: thanks to Corinna Gray MA (Intern at Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford) for her support and encouragement - anthropological, linguistic and personal; and the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project team for the opportunity to contribute.

Note:

When the pots refer to Pitt Rivers, they mean the man, Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers or his museum, the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Farnham, Dorset (they are not always clear about this, presumably no-one ever took the time to explain to them). Their current whereabouts are unknown, it is quite possible that they were sold off during the 1960s and 1970s by Stella Pitt-Rivers and could now be anywhere in the world, gracing a museum or a private collection with their presence, they may even be back in Mexico! [AP, February 2011]

The Pitt Rivers Egyptian flint knife

2010-05-11T13:14:00+00:00

Alice Stevenson, Pitt Rivers Museum

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In April 1891 General Pitt-Rivers purchased from the Reverend Greville Chester an ancient Egyptian flint knife set in a decorated ivory handle for 10 pounds. [Add.9455vol2_p727 /2] Chester (1830–1892) regularly wintered abroad in Egypt where he purchased material for the British Museum, the Ashmolean and the Fitzwilliam Museum. He also sought buyers for his other acquisitions and regularly offered material to Pitt-Rivers, as his letters in the Salisbury and Wiltshire Museum demonstrate. [1] Of the pieces the General purchased from Chester the flint knife is undoubtedly not only one of the finest pieces, but also one of the most famous ancient Egyptian objects ever to have been in Pitt-Rivers’s collection.

“...the finest examples of such work that are known from any country or age” (Petrie 1896, 50)

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The caramel-coloured flint portion of the Pitt-Rivers knife is distinctive and is of a type known in the literature as a ‘ripple-flaked knife’. At the time of the knife’s purchase its date was unknown, but in 1894 the pioneering archaeologist W.M.F. Petrie came across identical examples of unhafted flint implements in situ amongst the grave assemblages of a vast cemetery at Naqada. Petrie and Pitt-Rivers had been acquainted since at least 1877, when Petrie is known to have presented his research on British earthworks to the Royal Archaeological Institute (see Drower 1985, 25). The two men subsequently had a chance encounter in the shadow of the Great Pyramid in February 1881 (Burleigh and Clutton Brock 1982) and were certainly in correspondence until the General's death in 1900. Pitt-Rivers sent Petrie a drawing of his knife in 1895, [2] which Petrie then included in his excavation report on Naqada alongside the knives he had discovered. Such knives, along with distinctive pottery and other grave goods were so unusual, so ‘wholly un-Egyptian’ (Petrie 1896, 8), in comparison to what was then known that Petrie believed that they belonged to a ‘New Race’ who had invaded Egypt at the end of the Old Kingdom. It was Petrie’s rival, the Frenchman Jacques De Morgan, who argued that these remains did in fact belong to prehistoric times. Petrie, although dismissive of de Morgan’s scholarship and field practices, accepted this and he set about using the assemblages he discovered at Naqada to give a sequential structure to this newly identified prehistoric era. The period became known as the Predynastic (c. 4500 BC – 3100 BC) and it saw the rise of social complexity in the Egyptian Nile Valley, which culminated in the emergence of one of the world’s first territorial states.

The chronological framework Petrie created for Predynastic Egypt using pottery remains broadly correct today and the sequence is now generally referred to using phases named after the site of Naqada. Within this sequence ripple-flaked knives appear in graves corresponding to phase Naqada IIC/D (roughly 3600 to 3350 BC); they are often considered to be one of the ‘signature’ artefacts of this part of the Predynastic period.

Many of ripple-flake knives found in graves show little evidence of wear on the edges. Some, however, were ritually ‘killed’ during funerals and laid carefully in burials in two halves, such the example from Gerzeh grave 25, now in the Pitt Rivers Museum (1911.33.1). Those that were not treated in this way may have been in circulation for several generations, with some being later reworked to accommodate decorated handles. Dating those with handles is more difficult as most of the known examples were purchased on the art-market (see below), as indeed the Pitt-Rivers knife was originally. All that is known is that Chester had bought the knife from a dealer who reported its find spot to be Sheikh Hamada, near Sohag in Upper Egypt. Recently excavated pieces, however, provide possible dates around 3300 BC. Dates around 3100 BC are also likely and some may even have been accessible within temples of the Old Kingdom (Wengrow 2006, 176).

“The artistic and technical masterpieces of Man's work in flaking stone” (Knowles 1953, 105)
As noted by PRM researcher Francis Knowles, ripple-flaked flints embody great skill and labour (Kelterborn 1984; Midant-Reynes 1987). They are characterized by fine, regular, parallel fluting retouch upon one face and a smooth ground surface on the other. They were made by applying pressure to a localized area to remove small pieces of flint, thereby giving a rippled effect, rather than striking the flint with another implement. The curved edge was finely serrated and the base and distal ends were also retouched. Regardless of where they are found all are virtually identical in style. This has led flint analysts to argue that they may have been produced by a group of workshops in one area and may be the product of a few craftsmen who practised this extremely specialized skill over a period of a few generations (Holmes 1989, 338). The butts of such knives are broad and those examples with handles had to be chipped down to a narrow wedge in order to fit into their ivory holds. This suggests that the flints were only later adapted, possibly some time after their production. The aesthetic appeal of these knives emanates not only from their impressive workmanship, but also from the care taken in the selection of raw material on which they were made. Flint is widely available along the Nile between Cairo and Esna within the limestone outcrops, but caramel-golden coloured pieces were preferentially selected for the most specialist knapping (Holmes 1992, 39), perhaps because they resembled the colour of metals.

The ivory handle of the Pitt-Rivers knife itself is badly damaged, but six rows of animals depicted marching towards the flint portion of the knife with their heads held high can be seen. On the face without the boss are figures carved in relief of elephants on serpents, storks, a possible heron, lions followed by a dog, short and long-horned cattle, and what may be jackals. On the other face an ibis can be seen as well as deer, hartebeests, oryx and barabary sheep (Churcher 1984, 167–8).

To this day the Pitt-Rivers knife handle remains a rare specimen and only a few other comparable decorated ivory knife handles are known: one in the Brooklyn Museum; two in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Carnarvon and Metropolitan handles); one fragment in Berlin; one in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology; one in the Louvre (the Gebel el-Arak knife); one in the Cairo Museum (Gebel el-Tarif knife) some fragments from Hierakonpolis now in the Ashmolean (Whitehouse 2002); and more recently seven pieces have been excavated at Abydos, in a cemetery of elite individuals, in Upper Egypt (Dreyer 1999). Of these, the Brooklyn, Gebel el-Arak and the Carnarvon handles all depict a similar arrangement of animals as is seen on the Pitt-Rivers knife.

The knives with carved handles are often referred to as ceremonial objects that, together with ceremonial palettes and mace-heads, have been extensively discussed by scholars examining Egyptian state formation and the development of Egyptian representation and ideology (e.g. Asselberghs 1961; Baines 1995, 109–21l; Cialowicz 2001, 166–207; Davis 1992; Millet 1990; Wengrow 2006, 176–95). The decorative composition of the pieces has, in particular, excited debate concerning the influence of Mesopotamia on early Egypt. Henri Frankfort (1924), for instance, argued that the arrangement of animals on the knife handles was Mesopotamian in origin, whilst others (e.g. Teissier 1987, 33) have noted that the elephants on snakes motif that can be seen on the Pitt-Rivers knife handle (and also seen on the Brooklyn and Carnarvon ivories) is also derived from Mesopotamian glyptic art. The knives are, however, a distinctly Egyptian phenomenon and thus these objects demonstrate how elites along the Nile Valley creatively appropriated foreign motifs to augment the representation of indigenous elite ideology.

The Pitt-Rivers knife was purchased in 1974 by the British Museum (EA 68512 / 1974,0723.2) and can be seen today on display in the British Museum’s Early Egypt gallery (room 64). [3]

Notes:
[1] Letters L221 (June 11 1886), L386 (Aug 24. 1887), L487 (May 7 1888), L2281 (May 29 1886), L2531 (undated).
[2] A short, three-sentence letter dated 16 July 1895 from Petrie to Pitt Rivers now in the Salisbury and Wiltshire Museum (L1331) acknowledges receipt of the drawing of the knife “which gives an excellent idea of the work. I should however to make a greatly enlarged outlined drawing of the handle”.
[3] http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/f/flint_knife_with_an_ivory_hand.aspx

References
Asselberghs, H. (1961) Chaos en Beheersing: documenten uit aeneolithisch Egypte. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Baines, J. (1995) 'Origins of Egyptian Kingship'. In O’Connor, D. and Silverman, D. (eds) Ancient Egyptian Kingship, 95–156. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Burleigh, R. and Clutton-Brock, J. (1982) 'Pitt Rivers and Petrie in Egypt'. Antiquity 56, 208–9.
Churcher, C.S. (1984) 'A Zoological study of the ivory knife handle from Abu Zaidan'. In Needler, W. Predynastic and Archaic Egypt in the Brooklyn Museum. Brooklyn: The Brooklyn Museum.
Cialowicz, K.M. (2001) La naissance d’un royaume: l’Egypte dès la période predynastique à la fin de la Ière dynastie Krakow: Uniwersytet Hagiellonski Iñstytut Archaaeologii.
Davis, W.V. (1992) Masking the Blow: The Scene of Representation in Late Prehistoric Egyptian Art. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Status and Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers

2010-02-05T09:43:41+00:00

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Pitt-Rivers was born into the landed gentry, his father was a younger brother of the head of the Lane Fox family. His father died when Pitt-Rivers was a child and his widowed mother moved the family to London. Pitt-Rivers himself was the younger son of a younger son. In 1850 Pitt-Rivers would have anticipated spending his entire life working as a professional soldier.

Although a member of the upper classes at this time was more or less guarenteed an income for life, Pitt-Rivers would probably never have expected to become very wealthy or socially prominent in the normal set of events. Earlier in his life he seems to have relied on his mother to buy his Army promotions for him (for example buying his Colonel’s commission in 1867). However, he was never poor, by his own account he spent up to £300 a year on purchases for his collection in the early years. [Pitt Rivers, 1884 Address delivered at the Opening of the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester January 7 1884: 8]

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I am one of the commentators who has been guilty of talking up Pitt Rivers’ wealth post-1880 and thereby, by default if nothing else, suggesting he was not at all wealthy beforehand. This is, of course, an oversimplification. Although Pitt Rivers was infinitely more wealthy in 1881 than he had been before 1880 he had never been poor. His annual income before 1880 was never less than one thousand pounds sterling. This was 'worth' (using the comparator of average earnings, some 600,000 pounds sterling in 2008), not a small sum. Of this, according to his own account, he spent roughly a third, £300 or the equivalent of about £200,000 per annum on objects: ‘... I can ... say that my museum was formed at a time when my means of collecting were very small, and that it never cost me more than £300 a year at most.’ [Pitt Rivers, 1884a Dorchester address: 8] All things are relative, but neither his income, nor the amount he spent on artefacts before 1880, were negligible.

His great luck was to inherit a fortune and large estate from a distant relative in 1880: 'I inherited the Rivers estate in the year 1880, in accordance with the will of my great uncle, the second Lord Rivers, and by descent from my grandmother, who was his sister, and daughter of the first lord. The will was excessively binding, and provided amongst other things that I was to assume the name and arms of Pitt Rivers within a year of my inheriting the property ...' [Pitt Rivers 1887a, [Excavations in Cranborne Chase' vol I privately printed] xi-xiii quoted in Bowden:103] The will of George, 2nd Baron Rivers made in 1823 had stipulated ‘... within the space of one year next after he or they shall respectively become entitled as aforesaid ... shall sign and upon all other occasions whatsoever the surname of Pitt-Rivers either alone or in addition to his or their surname ...’. The London Gazette of 4 June 1880 announced the Royal licence authorizing [Pitt Rivers] to ‘take and use the surnames of Pitt-Rivers in addition to and after that of Fox and bear the arms of Pitt quartering ... and that his issue may take and use the surname of Pitt in addition to and after that of Fox’. [Thompson, 1977: 75] This inheritance brought him the Rivers’ country seat, Rushmore and enabled Pitt-Rivers to upgrade his London home from Earl’s Court to the Rivers’ town house at 4, Grosvenor Gardens. The country estate consisted of about 27,000 acres (according to Bowden [1991, 37] this was ‘... one of the largest held by an untitled man in the whole of Britain’, and in Pitt-Rivers’ lifetime the annual income average a little under £20,000 (the equivalent of around 2 million pounds sterling per annum in the year 2009 based on a computation of relative values based on deflated GDP at http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/). Pitt-Rivers was now a very wealthy Establishment man, with both status and enormous income. He tried to cement this pre-eminence by petitioning to also inherit the title of his great-uncle, but in this regard at least he was unsuccessful and his only title remained his Army rank, which he used for the rest of his life,being known to his staff and the country at large as 'General Pitt-Rivers'.

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His income and his spending on objects moved up a gear when he inherited the estate, the annual income and the name of Pitt Rivers (or Pitt-Rivers) in 1880. As with so many aspects of his life, it is easier to say what Pitt Rivers did after 1880 than it is before. Thompson explains that Pitt Rivers’ annual expenditure was accounted for under 26 headings, and from 1885 onwards there was an itemised item under each heading, the headings varied over the years but in 1881 included: Furniture and Objects bought; Books and maps; Scientific Expenses including subscriptions to Societies, purchase of objects, Excavations and Explorations as well as the more usual home and household expenses, stables etc. According to Thompson there was heavy spending on furniture and art section throughout the period. [Thompson, 1977: 78]

All his biographers seem to agree that Pitt Rivers did not stint himself, particularly after receiving his inheritance, but that he was not a spend-thrift:

‘Pitt-Rivers is sometimes portrayed as a reckless spend-thrift but the accounts certainly do not bear this out ... Once we examine them and find that almost invariably his receipts exceeded his outlay then it is even more apparent that he kept a close hold on expenditure. If therefore he made a major purchase he had a clear knowledge of how this would affect his annual budget.’ [Thompson, 1977: 77]

Neither was he particularly a skinflint, a role which seems to have been reserved for his wife, according to Bowden at least. [Bowden, 1991: 33]

So Pitt-Rivers after 1880 was a senior member of the Establishment with the all important large country estate and income, London town house and place in Society. Because his wealth and high position was unexpected it must have meant even more to him than if he had always expected to inherit. He certainly cherished his position, and liked to be recognized as the senior figure and high ranking officer that he was. Some of his purchases reflect this glory. He was always referred to as the 'General' in the catalogue. He displayed his coat of arms in the frontispieces of the later volumes (see illustration for an example).

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His status was also reflected in the high prestige of many of the objects he collected especially the fine art and Japanese ceramics and objets d'art. However, there were other pieces which might also reflect his attitude to his success. Take for example these two jugs which, unusually, the catalogue makes clear were made to order:

Catalogue Description of object: Bought of Martin Bros, 16 Brownlow Street London WC ... [1 of] 2 Jugs of “Martin Ware’ (made to order) with the Pitt Rivers Coat of Arms Monogram and Crest Height 9 1/2 inches [Add.9455vol3_p890 /1-2]

These were dated 3 March 1893. He was allowed, of course, to bear the arms of the Rivers under his inheritance. The catalogue also states that the jugs cost Pitt-Rivers £6, or £3000 at 2008 values (based on same calculations as above). It seems that fairly shortly after being acquired one of the jugs was broken. The other jug was either displayed (or possibly used) in the dining room at Rushmore, his country house. We will never know why Pitt-Rivers decided to get the jugs made to order but it must in part have been in order to show and demonstrate his personal and family position via the coat of arms, monogram and crest.

Some two years later in May 1895 he purchased another two jugs from the same potters:

'Pair of Martin Ware Jugs (made to order) with Pitt-Rivers Arms and Crest, initials A.P.R. and date. They have been silver-mounted at the cost of £4.10.0 by Elkington & Co., 22 Regent Street, London. [Add.9455vol3_p1030 /2-3]

The jugs themselves cost £6.6.0 in total. Again he placed the jugs in the dining room at Rushmore. He may have ordered these jugs to replace the original one that was broken?

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The Martin Brothers were pottery manufacturers in London, they have been 'considered to represent the transition from decorative Victorian ceramics to twentieth century studio pottery in England'. They produced pottery from the 1870s to the First World War, though the pottery continued until 1923 when it closed. Robert Wallace Martin began the Pottery in Fulham in 1873, the business later moved to Havelock Road in Southall. Pitt-Rivers tended to deal with a branch at Brownlow Street. The Martin Brothers specialised in stoneware pottery, specifically saltglaze stoneware. Walter Martin was the pottery wheel specialist, Edwin Martin was the design specialist and Charles Martin ran the shop.

Pitt-Rivers also purchased a great deal of contemporary pottery from William Frend de Morgan, along with large numbers of ceramic objects from Japan and China. Ceramics obviously interested him but in this regard his taste was very typical of his time.

Aside:

Pitt-Rivers seems to have developed an enthusiasm in people who happen to share the surname 'Pitt' after 1880, which may be tied in to his interest in displaying his arms and crest. He made a collection of several items connected to William Pitt and the Pitt Club, see for example Add.9455vol1_p113 /1, Add.9455vol2_p283 /2, Add.9455vol3_p906 /2 and Add.9455vol3_p1023 /3

Bibliography for this article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Brothers

http://martinwarepottery.com/

http://www.ceramicstoday.com/potw/martin_bros.htm

Bowden, Mark 1991. Pitt Rivers: The Life and Archaeological Work of Lieutenant-General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapman, William Ryan 1981. ‘Ethnology in the Museum: A.H.L.F. Pitt-Rivers (1827–1900) and the Institutional Foundations of British Anthropology’, University of Oxford: D.Phil. thesis.

Pitt Rivers, A.H.L.F. 1884 [a] Address delivered at the Opening of the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester January 7 1884. J Foster Dorchester, UK

Pitt Rivers, A.H.L.F. 1887. Excavations in Cranborne Chase near Rushmore on the borders of Dorset and Wiltshirevol I Rushmore privately printed

Thompson, M.W. 1977. General Pitt Rivers: Evolution and Archaeology in the Nineteenth Century Bradford-on-Avon: Moonraker Press.

AP, 2009, updated November 2010

Gold belt buckle from Hungary Add.9455vol3_p752 /12

2010-02-03T09:38:50+00:00

Judging the qualities of artefacts from Pitt-Rivers' Farnham collection

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It is not always possible to tell the quality of an object, even when the illustrations are as good as those in the Cambridge University Library catalogues. This subject of this webpage looks quite inconspicuous on page 752 of volume three but its history after it left the Farnham Museum has been quite prestigious.

Pitt-Rivers obtained this piece at a sale at Sotheby's in London of items which had been previously owned by Samuel Egger. Egger was an citizen of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, living in Budapest. He was a dealer, originally he specialised only in rare coins and antiquities but he later expanded his business to include mineral specimens. He seems to have been active from about 1857. By June 1891 he was dead and his collection of 'bronze axes and implements, and ornaments in gold, silver and bronze' wereput up for auction at Sotheby's in London.

The Pitt-Rivers' catalogue states that the item was sold as part of Lot 272 (specifically it was lot 272b). It was described as 'A massive gold belt buckle set with flat pieces of garnet'. It was found with two other objects at Raab (Gyor) in Hungary and Egger had believed it had belonged 'to the period of the Volkerwandering, a migration of barbarian hordes'. The other items from the same hoard were the chape of a sword scabbard, formed by a narrow edging of paste-gilt silver. An ornament at the bottom set with garnets, and some of the beads inlaid with niello. Also a piece of the mouthpiece of the same scabbard set with 3 pieces of garnet, three portions of the silver edging from the same scabbard and a chape of the second sword or dagger.Pitt-Rivers paid £26 for these items, the equivalent in 2008 money of around £12,500 if one uses average earnings asa baseline for the calculation. [1] This was obviously a sizeable sum.

Pitt-Rivers placed all these items directly into his private museum at Farnham, Dorset where they seem to have remained until the middle of the twentieth century. The item at some point seems to have been acquired by Alistair McAlpine, the well-known British collector and then by a dealer, Michael Ward of New York who owned it in 1986 when he sold it to the Metropolitan Museum of New York using funds from various donors including Rogers Fund, Alaistair B. Martin, Norbert Schimmel Foundation, Inc and Levy Hermanos Foundation. The price at this time is unknown. The artefact is part of the Medieval Art and Cloisters collection

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The Met describes the object on their on-line record at http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/05/euw/ho_1986.341.htm

"Buckle, 5th century Eastern Germanic or ByzantineGold, garnets; L. 1 3/8 in. (3.5 cm), W. 1 1/8 in. (2.8 cm) ... (1986.341) This buckle, dating from the first half of the fifth century, was discovered in Raab, Hungary. As it was found with silver-gilt and garnet sheath fittings from a battle dagger and sword (now in the British Museum), it may have come from the grave of a prominent leader. The fine workmanship and a rich combination of heavy gold and dark garnets argue that it may have been made in a central jeweler's workshop in Constantinople. Often tribal chieftains from outlying regions of Byzantium were given opulent pieces of jewelry or sword fittings by the emperor, as a sign of friendship and alliance (or as a small bribe). Kings and powerful men would also commission pieces privately from these workshops, as a tangible symbol of their wealth and connections to the powerful civilization in Constantinople, so it is entirely probable that this buckle traveled very far from its maker before being buried with its owner.'

Evans et al, 2001 describe the buckle as being 'discovered near the Danube River, east of Budapest, alongside silver-gilt-and-garnet sheath fittings from a battle dagger and sword ... probably part of the grave goods of a Germanic tribal leader, but the rich combination of gold and garnets and the buckle's fine workmanship suggest it was made by a jeweler in Constantinople. Byzantine emperors frequently gave tribal chieftains from outlying regions opulent pieces of jewelry or weapons fittings as signs of friendship and alliance (or as small bribes). Using money often obtained from the Byzantines, Germanic leaders also commissioned pieces from workshops in Constantinople, displaying them as sybols of their wealth and links with the powerful civilization in Byzantium. It is thus probable that this buckle travelled far from its maker before being buried with its owner'.
So a gold belt buckle may have been made in Istanbul in Turkey, travelled with its Germanic owner in Hungary, been buried in Gyor in Hungary (or Komarom) before being owned by a dealer in Pest, being sold, presumably after his death by Sotheby's and bought by a British general. He displayed it at an obscure private museum in Dorset where it remained for some fifty to seventy years before eventually arriving at one of the most prestigious museums in the world. It has gone from being one of a series of objects found in a hoard on an unprovenanced site to being part of one of the most gilttering collections of medieval art in the world. However the object itself, being made of one of the best lasting of all materials seems scarcely to have altered during all these changes. Its value has increased, the esteem with which it is held has increased, but the artefact itself remains immutable.

Notes

[1] This calculation was performed using a very useful site, http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/

Bibliography for this article

"Buckle [Eastern Germanic or Byzantine] (1986.341)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 ndash;. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/05/euw/ho_1986.341.htm (October 2006)

Evans, Helen C., Melanie Holcomb, and Robert Hallman. "The Arts of Byzantium." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 58, no. 4 (Spring, 2001).

Alison Petch, Researcher, Rethinking Pitt-Rivers 2010