Typological Displays in Context
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Extract from Chapman's '"Like a game of dominoes": Augustus Pitt Rivers and the typological museum idea'
(ppx-xx; all references quoted by Chapman are fully cited in the bibliography)
The general outline and tenor of Pitt Rivers' museum ideals are well known today. He was foremost the father of what has come to be known, after his own designation, as the 'typological' system of museum organisation. In general, such a system called for a grouping of ethnographical or archaeological materials according to perceived formal or functional similarities, rather than according to their place of origin, or the 'geographical system', as is more conventional among anthropological museums today. In Pitt Rivers' system, examples of 'primitive spears' would be displayed together in order that the viewer might make comparisons among different types, rather than among a more complete selection of the material culture of a single society. Similar comparisons were made within other ideal categories, such as bows and arrows, fishing implements, housing types (as represented by diagrams and models), baskets and so on. Carried to its logical conclusion, such a system was meant to present a comprehensive history of technology, one with what we would now recognize as an implicit Western European bias. Furthermore, as Pitt Rivers explained his system, it was intended to show the 'progress' or 'evolution' of technology and to instil in the viewer a proper appreciation for the uniform character of changes in the material arts and the 'gradual progress' in technology over time. There were, in Pitt Rivers' terms, no 'sudden jumps' in man's development; (Pitt Rivers, 1891: 116); 'progress' was gradual and at times barely perceptible, both within the modern world and among the more 'primitive' peoples, both modern and historic (or prehistoric). It was, he explained, 'like a game of dominoes, [in which] like fits onto like; ... all we know, is that the fundamental rule of the game is sequence' (Pitt Rivers, 1874: 435) ....
The essentially Victorian character of Pitt Rivers' vision stands out for us today. There is something both endearing and off-putting about his confidence in material progress, his aspirations for 'progress', his hopes for attaining an encyclopaedic understanding of history through the comparison of mere objects. For Pitt Rivers, objects could not lie: they were determinate, undeniable 'facts' that, when put together, conveyed a sense of truth. ...
One of the main by-products of Pitt Rivers' stay in Ireland was a harshening of his racial views. Pitt Rivers, like many others of the time, had shown an interest in races and the idea of racial development from an early period. Partly this was the result of his exposure to different peoples during his travels, partly a result of his readings, especially about the peoples who had manufactured the weapons represented in his collections. For Pitt Rivers, as with others, there was a certain amount of overlap in thinking about the nature of individual development and that of whole races. Drawing particularly upon the work of the phrenologist Charles Bray (1811 - 1884), Pitt Rivers conceived of various races as representing different stages in the development of mankind overall, or of European civilization, and also as corresponding to different phases in the maturation of an individual, from infancy, through childhood and adulthood. 'Savage races', as he observed, 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 (Pitt Rivers, 1867). This persistent equation of mental development and technological advancement was certainly not peculiar to Pitt Rivers, and in fact was a fairly common understanding among ethnologists and incipient 'psychologists' of the period, but it was to become a peculiar hallmark of his collecting ideas ... Not only were savage peoples the manufacturers of simple or primitive instruments - but it was all they were mentally capable of producing....
Pitt Rivers' response [to the question of monogenesis or polygenesis, as debated at the Ethnological and Anthropological Societies] took the form of a series of three papers presented at the Royal United Services Institution annually between 1867 and 1869. They were intended for a general audience but obviously were directed primarily at the ethnological and anthropological communities. In his papers, he presents his basic ideas on the evolution of technology. Weapons, as he explained, developed from the natural forms: antlers were converted to jabbing implements, horns to spear points and so on. Technological development corresponded generally to mental development. Drawing again upon the work of Bray, he compared 'savages' to children, more advanced peoples - 'the semi-civilized' - to adolescents. The ability of either transfer or independently develop technology was contingent upon mental abilities, as again determined by race. The ideal of 'invention' itself was suspect. Most advances were made as a result of slow, almost imperceptible improvement, revealing Pitt Rivers' fundamental adherence to a uniformitarian viewpoint, and through the transfer of technology from one race to another. Indicative of Pitt Rivers' membership in the Anthropological Society, certain races, of which the primary example was the modern European, were the beneficiaries of the progress developments of man, a circumstance in large part attributed to racially determined capabilities. ...