Excavating Pitt-Rivers: pitt-rivers

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A stone scraper from the Yorkshire Wolds

A prehistoric scraper from the Yorkshire Wolds

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 our caption for this image:

This prehistoric stone scraper, with a white patina and orange staining, dates from the Neolithic period, and its recorded provenance – “Yorkshire Wolds” – is relatively unspecific. The number written on the object indicates that the object was acquired by Pitt-Rivers by 1874, when he listed “13 Scrapers, Yorkshire Wolds” under the number ‘965’ in his personal catalogue of his collection. As well as this information, copied from earlier labels or markings by a modern curatorial hand, the number ‘10’ with an illegible word beneath are written in pencil.

But the single word “Greenwell” connects the object to a highly significant moment in the history of archaeology. Canon William Greenwell (1820-1918) was an important Victorian antiquarian, who began excavating prehistoric barrows in Yorkshire in the mid 1860s.

Pitt-Rivers would, during the 1860s and 1870s, develop the principles of modern scientific archaeological fieldwork and recording. The influences on him in this development were complex, but his experiences with Canon Greenwell were undoubtedly significant. Writing in the 1880s, Pitt-Rivers recalled that ‘My very first lessons as an excavator were derived from Canon Greenwell, during his well-known and valuable exploration in the Yorkshire Wolds, in the course of which I obtained a large amount of useful experience that has been a constant source of enjoyment and interest to me ever since’.

He joined Greenwell’s field team in North Yorkshire during April 1867, excavating at Willerby Wold and Ganton Wold, and surveying a series of earthworks recorded on the Ordnance Survey maps of the area. On 26 April 1867, under the headline ‘The Opening of the Yorkshire Tumuli’, the Hull Packet and East Riding Times listed the archaeological team led by Canon Greenwell as ‘including the Rev. Dr Farrar of Durham; Colonel A. Lane Fox, Grenadier Guards; Mr J.H. Blackhouse, of Darlington; Mr Fairless Barber, of Rastrick, Huddersfield; Mr Burgess, of Huddersfield; Mr Charles Hartley, Mr Pycock, and Mr Monkman, of Malton, and others.'

This object may have been acquired by Pitt-Rivers from Greenwell during the fieldwork, or at another time before 1874, but it represents evidence not only of the Neolithic of Yorkshire, but also of its place in the history of exchanges between Victorian antiquaries - and the beginnings of modern scientific fieldwork in archaeology.

(Pitt Rivers Museum Accession Number 1884.133.56)

A prehistoric flint knife from Yorkshire

Here is our caption for this image:

This prehistoric flint knife, with a curved edge and straight back, is probably Neolithic in date. Its recorded provenance, “Yorkshire”, is unspecific, but the faded number in black ink, ‘1337’, correlates with a manuscript source dating from 1874 in which Pitt-Rivers recorded a “triangular flint knife or arrowhead”. Since Pitt-Rivers was born in Yorkshire and returned there throughout his life, the object could have been acquired by him any time before 1874 (Pitt Rivers Museum Accession Number 1884.123.333).

A Bronze Age Axe from Worthing, West Sussex

A Bronze Age axe from Worthing, West Sussex

Here is the caption for this image:

This is a Bronze Age copper alloy palstave axe with a side loop and high stop ridges. The

cut made into the blade is the result of metallurgical sampling done in the 1950. The red dot and white writing is also modern, dating from the late 19th or early 20th-century. The meaning of the dot and the text “No. 2” is obscure, although probably relate to its display at some point in the past. But the reference to ‘Forty Acres Field near Worthing’ is more helpful.

The modern text connects this axe to a historic discovery of Bronze Age hoard of axes, placed in a ceramic urn or vessel, at this site near Worthing in West Sussex. The writing has been copied from earlier text, and the date of 1871 is a mistaken transposition for the correct date of the discovery of the hoard, recorded in the museum’s accession book, of 1877. Pitt-Rivers acquired the axe at some point between 1877 and 1882.

In 1881, John Evans noted in his survey of "The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain and Ireland" that ‘nearly thirty palstaves, mostly, I believe, of this type, were found with about twelve socketed celts…and lumps of rough metal, near Worthing, in 1877. The whole had been packed in an urn, of coarse earthenware’. In 1882, the journal Sussex Archaeological Collections reported the name of the person who discovered the hoard was E.C. Patching.

The axe also connects the axe to another object from Pitt-Rivers’ own collection – a fragment of the urn, on which the text “Fragment of pot in which 40 bronze celts were found near Worthing in 1877”. Further research into this find-spot could yield further details about the hoard and the fate of the other axes found in it. The text present on the axe is a reminder of the dangers of introduced errors with each layer of copying and re-writing in museum documentation.

(Pitt Rivers Museum Accession Number 1884.119.111)

A Romano-British leather shoe from the City of London

A Romano-British leather shoe from the City of London, from the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum

Here is the caption for this image:

This is a Romano-British leather shoe (top and bottom view) with iron hobnails. The text written onto it in red ink – “ROMAN SOLDIER CALIGA, LONDON WALL, 22 FT IN PEAT DEC 11 1866” – refers to Pitt-Rivers’ pioneering salvage recording, undertaken during the construction of during the construction of the Gooch and Cousens wool warehouse on the south side of London Wall, opposite Finsbury Circus in the City of London.

The deep excavations revealed organic materials preserved in waterlogged deposits. The Pitt Rivers Museum holds more than 250 objects recovered during this salvage archaeology, including copper alloy pins, needles and spoons; a wide range of iron objects; Romano-British and post-Roman ceramics; animal bone and bone tools; samples of wooden piles; human remains, and leather shoes such as these.

Pitt-Rivers wrongly thought the site was a ‘lake village’ that was the stronghold of Cassivellaunus – the chieftain who led defence against Julius Caesar in 54 BC. A soldier himself, General Pitt-Rivers’ recording of a Roman military boot (caliga) conveys a sense of his imaginative interest in archaeological evidence of the encounters between prehistoric and Roman populations.

(Pitt Rivers Museum Accession Number 1884.92.42).

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