Out and about...

The town hall in Lewes - formerly the Star Inn where Pitt-Rivers stayed whilst excavating Mount Caburn in 1877-78.

As part of our public engagement programme, for the Excavating Pitt-Rivers project, Carlotta Gardner gave a talk to the Sussex Archaeological Society in Lewes on Saturday (8th June). It was an excellent opportunity to inform the society, with which Pitt-Rivers worked, about the project and our results from cataloguing and researching the archaeological material excavated by the General from Sussex which is held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

The Sussex Archaeological Society on top of Mount Caburn

After the Talk a group of us went on a small field trip up Mount Caburn, where Pitt-Rivers excavated in 1877-78. The weather was perfect and we were able to see for miles around. As mentioned in a previous post Pitt-Rivers spent a considerable amount of time in Sussex studying and excavating a number of 'camps'. Mount Caburn was of particular interest to Pitt-Rivers and the Museum holds approximately 3,900 objects from his excavations there. In a letter to George Rolleston he described having to walk up the mount in order to be there before 8 am to set things up. Walking from Lewes would have taken around 30-40 minutes.

The walk up Mount Caburn (from Glynde)

Overall it was a wonderful day out and the Society were incredibly friendly and welcoming. We look forward to their visit to Oxford, to look at the Sussex collections, in October.

Panoramic view from the top of Mount Caburn.

Cataloguing ceramic sherds from Mount Caburn, Sussex

The Excavating Pitt-Rivers team is now working on the material from Sussex, starting with the excavated artefacts from Mount Caburn.  Pitt-Rivers conducted a large-scale excavation at Mount Caburn - an Iron Age hillfort on the South Downs near Lewes - during the summers of 1877 and 1878. We estimate that the PRM holds c. 1,546 ceramic sherds from the excavation of this site by General Pitt-Rivers - representing one of the earliest assemblages from a modern scientific open-area excavation ever created.

The pottery has never been documented at this level of detail, so we are working bag by bag, laying out the contents and labelling each sherd with its own unique museum accession number.

The next step is to catalogue the material on the PRM database, enhancing the records with measurements, weight, object descriptions and information from old labels.

Once all the material has been catalogued, each object is photographed then bagged up individually along with the old documentation, before returning to storage.

This will be keeping us busy for the next few weeks at least!

Two objects from Kent

The Excavating Pitt-Rivers project is continuing to work through the Kent material, photographing and documenting the objects excavated by the General in the county. Here are two of the more unusual examples of the many archaeological objects excavated from Kent by General Pitt-Rivers that our team is documenting.

This unusually shaped natural flint (PRM 1884.140.1308) is covered in a black deposit.  It was excavated in 1868 from a pit located between St. Peter's and Reading Street on the Isle of Thanet.

This chalk object (PRM 1884.138.13) was excavated at Caesar’s Camp in 1878.  Pitt-Rivers described the object as a “Fragment of dish or mould, in chalk, with a hole bored from both sides; found in an oblong pit at the foot of the interior slope of Upper Rampart, June 8th (1882:464).” 

Below is an illustration of the chalk fragment, from Pitt-Rivers' report on the Caesar's Camp excavations, published in 1882.

References

Pitt-Rivers, A. H. L. F. 1882. Excavations at Caesar's Camp near Folkestone, conducted in June and July 1878. Archaeologia 47(2): 429-465.

Excavating Pitt-Rivers curatorial assistants

A card label thought to be hand-written and wax-sealed by General Pitt-Rivers. It is tied to an iron object (PRM 1884.138.46), recorded by the Excavating Pitt-Rivers curatorial team on 17 January whilst working through metal objects from the site of Caesar's Camp, Folkestone. The wax seal appears to show a griffin and a deer mounted on two crowns.

The Excavating Pitt-Rivers project is now underway, and two Curatorial Assistants have joined the team. This blog post introduces these new team members – Carlotta Gardner and Judy White – and their role in the project over the coming 12 months.

Carlotta received her BSc in Archaeology from the University of Bradford, and recently completed her MSc at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, and has previously worked at English Heritage and volunteered at the British Museum. Her background lies largely in archaeological science and she has a specific interest in archaeometallurgy.

Judy received her BA and MSc in Archaeology from the University of Southampton, specialising in osteoarchaeology.  She has since worked in a variety of collections-based curatorial, research and documentation roles at the Natural History Museum, Manchester Museum, English Heritage and Oxford University Museums.

Carlotta and Judy will be working with the primary archaeological material, enhancing database records and researching the details of excavations and sites from which General Pitt-Rivers collected artefacts. Through this work, the primary documentation – and the online digital records – for the English archaeological collections made by General Pitt-Rivers will be enhanced. The team will work through English counties exchanging information with local authority archaeologists, Historic Environment Records, and local archaeological societies. Judy and Carlotta’s collections-based work will also provide crucial new data for the project’s public archaeology programme.