Pitt-Rivers in Acton

The time Pitt-Rivers spent in London is of particular interest to the project. Not only is the material he collected of great interest, ranging from Paleolithic flint implements to medieval ceramics, it also provides a wealth of information about his collecting methods.

The Excavating Pitt-Rivers team has just started working on the stone implements that were recovered during the General’s fieldwork at Acton in 1869, 1870, 1871 and 1874. He was specifically interested in this area due to the flint implements that were being recovered and he believed they were a link between Palaeolithic and Neolithic technologies. The flint implements that we hold at the PRM were collected both by Pitt-Rivers and also acquired from workmen, excavating brick-earth, who were shown examples of the types of stone implements that might be found.

One of the many stone implements collected from Acton, High Terrace Gravel (PRM 1884.122.333).

Whilst examining and cataloguing the stone tools a section of the Acton High Terrace Gravel, drawn by Pitt-Rivers, was discovered. In this section he illustrates the geological strata and marks where he found ‘the sharp flakes’.  Along with this a number of labels were discovered that were clearly used when displaying the specimens found in the Acton area.

A section drawn, by Pitt-Rivers in 1871, of the Acton, High Terrace Gravel where he collected a number of flit implements.

The material collected has very detailed labeling and we hope to pin-point when and where Pitt-Rivers was in Acton. 

Pitt-Rivers in the Isle of Thanet

Image: Photograph (2013) and illustration (1869) of the flints excavated and collected from the Isle of Thanet (Kent, England) by General Pitt-Rivers.

The Excavating Pitt-Rivers team is currently working on the material that the General collected and excavated during his time in Kent. Whilst looking at material from the Isle of Thanet we found a number of lithics, previously unrecorded, that match illustrations in one of Lane Fox’s earliest publications (Lane-Fox 1869), as shown in the photograph above, which is reproduced alongside the 1869 illustration.

In this 1869 publication, he described his ‘examination’ of the Isle of Thanet. Pitt-Rivers explored an area stretching from ‘a mile north of Margate to Broadstairs and Ramsgate, and to a distance of a mile or two inland from those places’. The paper described his methods of identifying ancient flints:

“…there is no real difficulty in detecting the ancient from the modern flakes; dark flakes with a dull surface must be rejected as modern, those of ancient date are of a light blue colour on their fractured surfaces.” (Lane-Fox 1869: 6-7)

The paper also discussed the sourcing of raw materials and the importance of understanding this. He compared his finds of flint objects in Oxfordshire to those found on the Isle of Thanet, contrasting the lack of available flint sources in Oxfordshire with their relative abundance in Kent.

Keep an eye out in the upcoming weeks for more exciting finds from Kent, as our documentation process continues.

References
Lane-Fox, A. 1869. 'On some flint implements found associated with Roman remains in Oxfordshire and the Isle of Thanet.' Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1869-1870), 1.1: 1-12.

Pitt-Rivers in Surrey

Carlotta and Judy, from the Excavating Pitt-Rivers project team, working on the ceramic urns from Whitmore Common, Surrey.

The work on the material that General Pitt-Rivers acquired from Surrey has been completed.  We originally believed there to be 245 objects from this county but whilst working through the collections we came across many more and the total now stands at 487!

Surrey has been an interesting county to work on.  Not only because General Pitt-Rivers resided in Guildford between 1873 to 1877 whilst commanding the West Surrey Brigade Depot (Thompson 1977: 37), but also for revealing some of the diversity of his methods for obtaining objects.

Pitt-Rivers acquired some of this material from barrow-digging: he conducted excavations of a number of tumuli in Surrey. During his excavations of tumuli at Whitmore Common, he recovered five Bronze Age urns [PRM Accession Numbers 1884.35.33-37], while artefacts recovered during excavations at Merrow Down included an Anglo-Saxon knife [1884.121.11].  

Whilst these excavations were planned, others were purely accidental, and closer to an early form of rescue archaeology.  For example, the discovery of an assemblage of Iron Age pottery from St. Martha’s Hill, as indicated by the label below.

The label, probably in the General's hand, found with the urn sherds from St Martha's Hill, indicating their accidental discovery during tree planting.

However, the General's field-walking accounted for the majority of finds.  Around 300 worked flints, labelled 'surface' ('S'), derive from find-spots within walking distance of the General’s residence at Uplands in Guildford, where he lived between 1874 and 1878.

Other items from the country were not excavated by the General himself. These include the hinge of an iron flail [1884.12.30] 'dug up at Reigate' and obtained by Pitt-Rivers in 1877 from the collection of Ambrose Glover, and a Romano-British bronze figurine [1884.67.72], reportedly discovered in the River Thames at Chertsey, which is recorded as purchased from 'Williamson'.

This work on Surrey will result in the production of a report, which will be available in the next few weeks.  Next county…Kent!

References

Thompson, M.W. 1977. General Pitt-Rivers: Evolution and archaeology in the nineteenth century. Bradford-on-Avon: Moonraker Press.