Excavating Pitt-Rivers: AHRC

A Ceramic Tile from Kent

Image: a ceramic tile from Castle Hill, Folkestone, Kent, excavated by Pitt-Rivers in 1878

Here is the text for this image:

This abraded ceramic tile, of Romano-British or post-Roman date, is from Pitt-Rivers’ fieldwork at Castle Hill in Folkestone, Kent in 1878. Initially believing its earthworks (known locally as ‘Caesar’s Camp’) dated from the Roman invasions of Britain, his excavations revealed the monument in fact to be a medieval timber castle. Four different museum catalogue numbers are present, and a hand-written label describes the circumstances of discovery. The label reads: FRAGMENT OF NORMAN OR ROMAN TILE FOUND IN INTERIOR SLOP TO UPPER RAMPART WEST END BENEATH NORMAN CARVING CAESAR’S CAMP FOLKESTONE JUNE 26TH 1878 THE ONLY PIECE FOUND IN THE CAMP. Written for museum display, the label’s text retains elements of the General’s interpretive challenges in the field – singling out this possibly Romano-British find from a site that proved to be medieval in date, and describing the monument as a ‘camp’ (a term suggesting a prehistoric hillfort or Roman military camp) rather than a castle. (Pitt Rivers Museum Accession Number 1884.138.25)

A ceramic bowl from the Thames

A ceramic bowl from the Thames, from the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum

During August, we are publishing through this blog a series of new photographs taken by archaeological photographer Ian Cartwright for an online Image Gallery created with the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can read more about the gallery here, and you can see the whole gallery online here.

Here is the caption for this image:

This shell-tempered ceramic bowl has been partially reconstructed after Pitt-Rivers acquired it, and (apart from two museum catalogue numbers) it bears one single word, painted onto the outside: THAMES. Many objects from Pitt-Rivers’ collection are recorded simply with the provenance of the River Thames – which may mean an object recovered from dredging the river, may imply it was found on the Thames foreshore in London or along the banks of the river further upstream, or even may represent a purposefully vague provenance given by a dealer that usefully removes any possibility of coming from privately owned land. Whatever the case for this object, there is no doubt that today the modern text has become an integral part of this medieval artefact. (Pitt Rivers Museum Accession Number 1884.35.38)

Image/Object/Text: an AHRC Image Gallery

Image: screen grab from the new online image gallery of objects from Pitt-Rivers' English archaeological collections, hosted by AHRC

Today sees the launch of an online Image Gallery published by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), showcasing 12 new photographs of English archaeological objects from the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum. The gallery builds directly on primary documentation work undertaken as part of the Excavating Pitt-Rivers project, and funded by Arts Council England through the Designation Development Fund. Our collaboration with photographer Ian Cartwright was funded by AHRC. A summary of the project is below.

The Pitt Rivers Museum is Oxford University’s Museum of Anthropology and World Archaeology. Founded in 1884 with a donation of c. 26,500 objects by General Augustus Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers, today the Museum holds more than half a million objects. Pitt-Rivers was a key figure in the development of modern scientific archaeology, but his own archaeological collections have received little attention and less than 5% are on display in the Museum. To start to address this historic neglect, between November 2012 and December 2013 Dan Hicks ran a project, funded through a grant from the Designation Development Fund of Arts Council England (ACE), titled Excavating Pitt-Rivers. Working in the Museum stores, the project documented the English archaeological material collected by General Pitt-Rivers between c. 1865 and 1880. The project team documented some 10,696 archaeological artefacts from across England and published them on the Museum’s online database. In most cases, this is the first time that the objects have been examined since they came to Oxford in 1884.

This basic process of collections-based documentation and enhancement has made possible this new image gallery, Image/Object/Text. One unexpected outcome of the Excavating Pitt-Rivers project was been a realization that Pitt-Rivers wrote on almost every object that he excavated – and that this text was re-written and added to by other curatorial hands from the 1870s into the 20th century, sometimes creating complex layers of hand-written text and printed labels, the idea of turning archaeological objects into a kind of manuscript record is one interesting way of thinking about Pitt-Rivers’ innovations in scientific archaeology, and his direct approach to objectivity and documentation.

Inspired by this observation, for this online gallery we invited archaeological photographer Ian Cartwright to work with Museum curators to create twelve new images that explore the different kinds of text that is found on these archaeological objects, excavated by Pitt-Rivers between the 1860s and 1880s. Dan Hicks has written a series of captions, exploring how each text can be read to reveal elements of the object’s modern life-history, as well as its archaeological past. Together, the images and captions show how entangled relationships between museum artefacts and their documentation can unfold, blurring the lines between premodern archaeological objects and modern manuscripts, and transforming artefacts into unique kinds of documents.

You can read more and explore all the images on the AHRC Image Gallery Website