Non-field collecting (1)
The overall artefact collection of Lieutenant-General Pitt Rivers

 

The overall artefact collection of Lieutenant-General Pitt Rivers





The overall artefact collection of Lieutenant-General Pitt Rivers

The founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford, given in 1884 by Lieutenant-General Pitt Rivers, was only part of his overall collection. It is not known exactly how many objects he amassed during his lifetime of acquisition but in addition to the objects that were transferred to Oxford he also owned objects at his museum in Dorset and in his private collections at his houses in Dorset and London.

This project is specifically concerned with shields which were first displayed on Screen 2 at Bethnal Green and South Kensington Museums and later at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. These are part of the overall collection transferred to Oxford which was composed of both archaeological and ethnographic objects. Most of the objects donated to Oxford had previously been on display at the Bethnal Green Museum, and later at the South Kensington Museum.

The exact number of objects in the founding collection has been a subject of conjecture for many years. Estimates of the overall size of the founding collection have varied from 12000 to 15000 objects. As a result of the recent Leverhulme Trust-funded three-year research project into the collection it can now be confirmed that 17300 objects were definitely received at Oxford and it is possible that a further 7000 items were donated by Pitt Rivers at the same time. It may seem strange that after a three-year project specifically set up to research a collection, it is not possible accurately to count the number of objects; however, this is a result of the idiosyncrasies of the collection, and because of the way in which the project has been structured.

Today all collections are thoroughly described and counted as they are accessioned by the Museum, and each object is physically and indelibly marked with a unique accession number. The Pitt Rivers collection, however, was the founding collection of the Museum, accessioned before such procedures were in place. This has meant that the whole accessioning process has had to be done retrospectively. In addition, although documentation for each object did accompany the collection from London, it is no longer possible in all cases satisfactorily to match documentation to object. As has also been explained elsewhere, each object may have up to six primary sources of documentation. In many instances, these items of documentation do not marry happily together, thus documentation may not match documentation. Further confusion may have occurred because it took so long to unpack and re-display the objects after they had been received at Oxford (around 10 years).

The first attempt to successfully collate information about the collection took place in the 1920s, when the three accession books were written by E.S. Thomas. However this was already 40 years after the original donation; it is certain that some errors occurred. Since that date, quite a few objects have been found that are definitely part of the collection, but are not listed in the three accession books. Details of these objects have now been added into the computer records.

The figures given above for the size of the founding collection, can therefore be interpreted to mean that 17,300 objects are listed in the three accession books or have been found unlisted between the 1920s and 1998. Now that all the primary sources of information have been collated for the first time, it seems likely that a further 7,000 objects (and it could be more) might still be stored in the Museum, awaiting retrieval and retrospective listing.

Of the 17,300 accessioned items, 8,073 are ethnographic objects and 10,069 are archaeological (there is a slight overlap between the two numbers because of some double-counting). Of the 7,000 further objects thought to have come to Oxford, over three quarters are ethnographic. By far the largest proportion of the accessioned objects are from Europe. The breakdown of objects between continents is as follows:

Europe 9,930
Africa 1,624
Americas (North, Middle and South) 1,460
Asia 2,480 (including SE Asia)
Oceania (including Australia) 1,237

Of the objects from Europe, which form such a large percentage of the total, most (as one might expect) are archaeological, but there are also significant numbers of ethnographic items. The accessioned items 'collected' by Pitt Rivers himself (i.e. collected on trips abroad, or dug up) number around 5,000 (roughly a quarter of the entire accessioned collection). Of these, the vast majority come from Europe. Pitt Rivers himself seems to have made only two trips outside Europe: to Egypt in 1881 on a Cook's tour, and to Canada during his military service.


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