Unrolling a large watercolour of Stonehenge

images: Pitt Rivers Museum curatorial staff unrolling a large watercolour of Stonehenge for photographic documentation. This previously unknown item appears to be one of a series of visual aids made for, and used by, General Pitt-Rivers in lectures in the 1870s. Photograph by Ian Cartwright, Archaeology Imaging Unit, Institute of Archaeology, Oxford

In December 2013, the Excavating Pitt-Rivers team, in collaboration with the Institute of Archaeology and Philip Grover of the Pitt Rivers Museum, undertook a programme of photographic documentation for a selection of oversized archival material from the Pitt Rivers Museum archival collections. 

This material had been catalogued in the mid 20th century as from the collection of E.B. Tylor, and our documentation work has confirmed that a wide range of images made for use in Tylor's publications is present. However, documentary research also indicated that there may be some of General Pitt-Rivers' lecture aids amongst the items. They were accessioned by the Museum in 1944, shortly after the death of the Museum's curator Henry Balfour, and were recorded as used 'to illustrate lectures in places & at a time when lantern-slides could not be had or used'.

The process of documenting the material has led to some potentially important discoveries, including a series of seven large-format watercolours of British archaeological megalithic monuments, and a series of illustrations of firearms. Three working shots of one of these - a unique large-scale watercolour illustration of Stonehenge  - being carefully unfolded for photography by members of the museum's the curatorial team, is shown above.

Research and documentation is ongoing, but the evidence seems to indicate that these images were made for General Pitt-Rivers during the 1870s, for use by him as visual aids in  lectures (and possibly also in museum exhibits), before being transferred to the Pitt Rivers Museum. The watercolours bear some similarities to other (much smaller) images made for Pitt-Rivers by his illustrator, William Stephen Tomkin. 

These re-discovered images of archaeological monuments will be fully researched, documented and published as work continues, and updates will be posted through this blog. In the mean time, these rediscovered images are another reminder that processes of re-discovery and documentation that are akin to archaeological excavation can be undertaken within museums, as well as at more conventional archaeological sites. 

Our Ancient Monuments

Image: cover of the newly-discovered Our Ancient Monuments volume, made by General Pitt-Rivers in the 1880s

This month's issue of British Archaeology magazine (Jan-Feb 2013) has a full-page news article (on page 7) on the Excavating Pitt-Rivers project. The news article outlines our discovery of previously unknown material, among a new donation to the Pitt Rivers Museum from the Pitt-Rivers family. The details of the news item are below. The new material includes a unique album of watercolours, site plans and photographs, titled Our Ancient Monuments, which will be researched and published by the Excavating Pitt-Rivers project team. To subscribe to British Archaeology - which is published by the Council for British Archaeology - or to see the full news item on their itunes app, visit http://www.britisharchaeology.org/subscribe

Extraordinary treasures from founding archaeologist

A surprise collection has come to light, informing the work of a key 19th-century archaeologist and collector. Photos and illustrations – some loose, many in albums – notebooks, documents and letters had been carefully saved by General Augustus Pitt-Rivers (1827–1900) and his descendants.

image: news article about the Pitt-Rivers material in the Jan-Feb 2013 issue of British Archaeology magazine: to see the full news item see their itunes app - www.britisharchaeology.org/subscribe 

Anthony Pitt-Rivers, the General’s great-grandson, showed the material about a year ago to Jeremy Coote, curator and joint head of collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, and principal investigator on the museum's Rethinking Pitt-Rivers Project. In what Coote dubs “an extraordinary act of generosity”, Pitt-Rivers has now donated most of the items and temporarily loaned the rest.

The documents are still being catalogued, but their importance for understanding 19th century collecting, anthropology and archaeology is immediately clear. The donation includes 16 notebooks, dating back to 1840, that detail the General’s varied activities. Among them is Catalogue of Arms (1862), listing over 500 items from Madagascan lances to Chinese swords then in his house in Clapham, London, and most now part of the collection in Oxford.

Commonly known as “the father of scientific archaeology”, General Pitt-Rivers pioneered systematic excavation, public education and collecting on a truly grand scale. His first collection became the core of the eponymous Oxford museum, but his second, which continued to be exhibited by his family at his private museum in Dorset well into the 20th century, was dispersed from the 1950s. The newly revealed documents will throw light on these accomplishments.

Three large albums entitled Photographs of Rushmore & Environs, loaned to the museum, contain over 200 photos showing his house and estates, taken in the 1890s by his secretary Harold St George Gray (1867–1963), who became an archaeologist in his own right. They feature outdoor scenes and detailed interiors of the house and its voluminous contents. Two smaller photo albums are dedicated to archaeological excavations, one at South Lodge Camp (1893), the other at Martin Down Camp (1895–96), both on the General’s estate and well known to archaeologists today. Among loose items are previously unknown records of an excavation in Denmark in 1879.

What perhaps will most impress archaeologists, however, is a fat album of watercolours (by the artist WS Tomkin), drawings in the General’s characteristic style and photos, entitled Our Ancient Monuments.

Pitt-Rivers became the UK’s first inspector of ancient monuments in 1882. As part of this job he toured the country, visiting ancient sites and their owners. The album, compiled in the 1880s–90s, has the feel of a record and souvenir of those times, with many of the featured sites appearing in the 1882 Act’s schedule. Others, particularly in Scotland, are additional to that list.

Having completed the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers Project (funded by the Leverhulme Trust), the museum starts Excavating Pitt-Rivers this December (funded by Arts Council England, see excavatingpittrivers.blogspot.com), which will document the new items and English archaeological artefacts the General collected before 1884.