General Pitt Rivers' Collection
Bowden describes how 'one of [Pitt Rivers] most striking characteristics ... was his compulsion to collect and to order everything he collected, studying the objects in meticulous detail' [Bowden, 1991:9]. Pitt Rivers started to acquire objects after 1851. Although he collected some items whilst 'in the field', the vast majority of objects in his collection probably came from dealers (for example, Boban of Paris), auction houses (for example, Sotheby's) and from fellow members of the Anthropological Institute (such as E. H. Man, John Petherick, Sir Richard Burton and Sir Edward Belcher). His intellectual interest in collecting archaeological and ethnographic objects came out of his early professional interests in the development of firearms which he outlined in a lecture delivered in 1858 ('The improvement of the rifle as a weapon for general use', Journal of the United Service Institution 2 [1858]: 453 - 488; Chapman, 1981:36; Bowden, 1991:47). As Tylor describes it, 'In order to follow ... [the evolution of design in firearms] he collected series of weapons ... the method of development series extending itself as appropriate generally to implements, appliances and products of human life, such as boats, looms, dress, musical instruments, magical and religious symbols, artistic decoration and writing, the collection reached the dimension of a museum.' (Tylor, DNB entry: 1141). At first he kept his collection in his house where it must have filled a substantial proportion of the available space, Tylor describes how 'he collected weapons until they lined the walls of his London house from cellar to attic' (Chapman, 1987:31).
It is difficult to estimate the overall size of Pitt Rivers' entire collection. Some 20,000 objects were donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1884 but there was also a sizeable collection of artefacts displayed at his personal museum in Farnham, and in his houses in London and Dorset. Although Pitt Rivers' interest in collecting began with ethnographic and archaeological objects it was later concentrated almost entirely on antiquarian matters and his own archaeological activities. He always believed in the collection of everyday objects as well as 'works of art'. In fact the vast majority of his collection can be so described. His collecting compulsion seems to have affected most aspects of his life. Gray points out the little known fact that Pitt Rivers was a Fellow of the Zoological Society and kept a sizeable menagerie in his park at Rushmore (Gray, 1905:xxxi).
It is generally believed that Pitt Rivers himself did very little 'field' collecting but, in fact, he did obtain objects whilst on active service, during on a military tour of Europe, in Malta and the Crimea. Later in life he seems to have collected objects during trips abroad (for example during an archaeological surveying journey in Brittany). Chapman suggests that Pitt Rivers 'preferred to purchase individual pieces rather than complete collections in order to acquire only those pieces he felt contributed to his overall scheme' (Chapman, 1981:41). This is somewhat contradicted by the presence of large numbers of objects from single collectors such as E.H. Man (Andaman and Nicobar Islands) and John Petherick (Southern Sudan) and the Cypriot archaeological pottery excavated by Cesnola. There are, for example, roughly 500 objects from E.H. Man; probably the largest number of objects collected by an individual within the Pitt Rivers collection. E.B. Tylor said of this part of the collection:
We have already far too much Andaman and Nicobar things. ... there was in Pitt Rivers one whole gallery full of scarcely anything else. They quite swamped the rest. Now, I hope to reduce their effect by distributing them but even then there are too many ... I don't know whether Mr Man is prepared for the distribution of his present things ... he would probably insist on the others being left together. He is the sort of man who might send us four or five entire Nicobar villages with all the inhabitants inside. (PRM, Tylor papers: Man 3)
Bowden has argued that Pitt Rivers was much influenced by Charles Darwin's Origin of Species published in 1859:
... [it was] after reading this that he began seriously to classify his collection and to develop the theory which was to come into full fruition with his lecture On the Evolution of Culture, delivered in 1875. He saw the development of material cultures as being analogous to the evolution of natural forms which Darwin had described. (Bowden, 1991: 48)
Chapman suggests
... it was not surprising that the publication of Darwin's Origin in 1859 had an immediate impact on Pitt Rivers. Like many of his Stanley relatives, he seems to have followed the controversy surrounding its publication, and to identified himself closely with the Darwin camp, ... [he] attended a number of popular lectures on Darwin during the 1860s, and clearly saw his own work as generally parallel; from that period on he portrayed his collecting efforts as equivalent to those of naturalists, and to Darwin's work in particular. Just as natural history collections conveyed an order and evolution of the natural world, so his collection showed a parallel evolution within the realm of human technology. He later had a tendency to say that Darwin's work was simply confirmation of his own 'principle of continuity'. (Chapman, 1985: 20)
Pitt Rivers himself stated that;
The knowledge of the facts of evolution, and of the processes of gradual development, is the one great knowledge that we have to inculcate, whether in natural history or in the arts and institutions of mankind; and this knowledge can be taught by museums, provided they are arranged in such a manner that those who run may read. (PR, 1891:116; quoted in Chapman, 1991:137)
Chapman has drawn attention to the racist elements in Pitt Rivers' views: '[He believed that the] various races [represented] ... different stages in the development of mankind overall ... and also [corresponded] ... to the different phases in the maturation of an individual from infancy through childhood and adulthood ... 'Savage races' were representative of humanity in its infancy much as 'savage' weapons represented those produced at an early stage in the history of human technological development' (Bowden, 1991:143). Other sources might suggest that Pitt Rivers held more mellow views on such matters. In a letter to Tylor in 1898, Pitt Rivers wrote:
I have been making a very good collection of the Benin bronze castings. The best I believe out of the B[ritish] M[useum]. They are extremely interesting as shewing a phase of art of which there is no actual record. I cannot quite make out whether the ... [lost wax] process came from Portugal. It does not follow that because European figures are occasionally represented that it all came from Europe. Most of the forms are indigenous ... (extract from letter from PR to Tylor, PRM Archives, P11, 7.8.1898)
Much more work would have to be undertaken before a fully rounded picture of the impact of his views on what he collected and on his writings can be achieved. I believe that, in common with the vast majority of his contemporaries, Pitt Rivers held views which would now be considered racist but despite this he amassed a collection which celebrates the diversity and richness of people's imagination and creativity from all around the world. The whole discussion of Pitt Rivers' supposed racism is anachronistic.
Pitt Rivers belief in the evolution of design and technology was reflected in the way he believed objects should be displayed:
The objects are arranged in sequence with a view to show ... the successive ideas by which the minds of men in a primitive condition of culture have progressed in the development of their arts from the simple to the complex, and from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. ... Human ideas as represented by the various products of human industry, are capable of classification into genera, species and varieties in the same manner as the products of the vegetable and animal kingdoms ... If, therefore, we can obtain a sufficient number of objects to represent the succession of ideas, it will be found that they are capable of being arranged in museums upon a similar plan. (PR, 1874: xi - xii)
Pitt Rivers himself believed that a 'systematically arranged museum', (presumably one that followed his arrangement), could itself be used as a research tool for examining particular types of objects. In the published catalogue of part of the displays at Bethnal Green Museum, he states:
Whether the curved or the straight form [of a particular type of Fijian club] is the earlier is doubtful, probably the latter, but the ridge at the end, if intended to cleave the skull of the adversary would be adapted for this purpose only in the curved form. It is probable that this ridge will be found to belong to some earlier form of the weapon not here represented; the origin of this form must therefore for the present remain undecided. Many of these points could no doubt be elucidated on the spot by any one who had previously made himself acquainted with the missing links of evidence in a systematically arranged museum. (PR, 1874:71)
Each object was documented by Pitt Rivers although in general, he appears to have accepted the view of the donor, dealer or sale room about the object's provenance and use. The documentation was often of the most basic kind, containing little more than a country of origin (in the worst cases, only the continent), and an indication of use; for example, 'Knob-headed club, Africa'. Where more information has been provided by Pitt Rivers it is mostly confined to a description of the physical appearance of the object, as in 'Flat club of hard wood, slightly curved, believed to be from Central India'. Visitors to the museum at Oxford might find some objects from the Pitt Rivers collection with long handwritten labels. These often date from the days of Pitt Rivers' ownership (or from the early days after the donation) but most often comprise a short description of the object followed by a more general description of the type of object or decoration.
An example of this type of information, provided by Pitt Rivers for the benefit of the general public, is as follows,
Marquesan club ornamented with two forms of fret, the rectangular and the semicircular. The former of which is probably derived from Peru, the latter a local variation.
Today anthropologists value most highly those facts and artefacts which are collected by named individuals in the field, supported by detailed information. It cannot be said that Pitt Rivers' collection met this latter-day requirement as he infrequently collected in the field, very often purchased at second or even third-hand through dealers, and seldom obtained very good first-hand information about the use of the object in the original locale. Many objects in the Pitt Rivers Museum from his collection have minimal information attached to them, often lacking detailed provenance, the name of the people who made them or the use that was made of them originally. This data is crucial to the study of these objects in the present day. The research project will collate all the information that is available about each artefact but it will only be as each piece is examined by experts that full documentation can belatedly be attached. A few parts of Pitt Rivers' collection were better documented, for example that collected by Man in the Andamans and Nicobars and those objects included in Pitt Rivers' own published catalogue.
Like many of his contemporaries Pitt Rivers used objects for comparative purposes. Chapman has pointed out how 'in drawing such parallels or contrasts, it was suggested that such exotic examples were not merely representations of ancient weapons but that they were in some sense survivals of older forms (Chapman, 1981:44). Indeed Chapman has argued that, for Pitt Rivers and other Victorians, any value placed on ethnographic objects did not necessarily relate to their exoticness but to 'the light that they could shed on the rise of European civilization and technology' (Chapman, 1981:48). Pitt Rivers believed that objects could not deceive, '... artefacts cannot intentionally mislead us'; they could be used to extend history back to more remote times (Chapman, 1991:149 quoting from 'Primitive Warfare').
This section has not, so far, have not really given sufficient attention to what became the most important part of Pitt Rivers life - archaeology. He purchased archaeological items from dealers and sale rooms from an early date but also carried out many excavations of his own, principally in Ireland during his service there in the 1860s, and then in England (London, Yorkshire, Sussex and on his own estates in Dorset). He directed the work, the selection of site, the way in which it was dug etc but he, of course, never actually engaged in the hard labour of archaeology, preferring to supervise his labourers in this task. In later life, when he could afford to do so, he documented his archaeological work fully, causing detailed site plans to be prepared and wooden models to be made. Many of the tools of his archaeological trade can be seen in the Salisbury Museum's large Pitt Rivers' display together with a selection of the wooden models of the sites that he caused to be made.
Pitt Rivers gained a reputation for his archaeological work and this, together with the fact that he himself was now a large scale landowner, may have led him to be appointed as the first Inspector of Ancient Monuments from January 1883. In this capacity he travelled widely in England and Scotland surveying monuments for listing suitability. 'Inclusion on the list meant that the owner was prevented from undertaking any works which would damage or destroy the monument ...' (Bowden, 1991:95).
Some of Pitt Rivers' most detailed archaeological work took place after 1880 on his own estate in Cranborne Chase in Dorset. These were later published privately by him in four lavish volumes (Excavations in Cranbourne Chase 1887 [vol1], 1888 [vol 2], 1892 [vol 3] and 1898 [vol 4]). This area has since been re-excavated by a team of archaeologists and published (Barret, 1991). This affords a interesting opportunity for present day archaeologists to re-examine Pitt Rivers' excavations and methods and compare them to those of contemporary professionals. In this later publication by Barrett, the intellectual framework which underpinned the earlier Cranborne Chase excavations is considered:
We must appreciate that the General's excavation and recording methods became steadily more detailed as he grew accustomed to working on a large scale. His later publications contain a growing amount of information ... the same applies to the annotation on the labels accompanying his finds .... At the same time, Pitt Rivers had his biases, and it is important to appreciate what they were. His excavation methods were guided by two ideas which can be traced to his anthropological reading ... First he was convinced that prehistoric buildings would have taken a similar form to those familiar to him from the ethnographic record .... The second point concerns the General's conception of sequence. Later scholars have found it difficult to understand why he never worked out the phasing of his settlement sites leaving his successors to carry out the work ... In fact one of the General's original reasons for undertaking excavation was to further his studies in the evolution of material culture, an interest which had guided the formation of his ethnographic collection and which continued to dominate his priorities in the field. (Barrett, 1991:13)
For further details about his archaeological work I suggest that you consult his own publications on the Cranborne Chase excavations and Thompson and Bowden's biographies.
One final aspect of Pitt Rivers' treatment of the objects in his collection should be mentioned - his lectures and papers published in journals (notably the Journal of the Anthropological Institute). Between 1867 and 1869 he gave a series of lectures (later published in the aforenamed journal) on 'Primitive Warfare', and these were followed by a large number of lectures and papers devoted to subjects allied to the objects he had collected. The long bibliographies in Bowden and Chapman give greater details about these papers.
Find out more about Pitt Rivers overall collection
The text above is taken from Petch 1998 (see bibliography)