Oxford: The Pitt Rivers Museum

    Curiouser and Curiouser

 

'Lay it where Childhood's dreams are twisted

In memory's mystic band,

Like pilgrim's withered wreath of flowers

Plucked in a far off land'

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol 

Lower Gallery, Pitt Rivers Museum

Augustus Pitt Rivers was an eminent Victorian who through his own curiosity managed to amass a huge collection of ethnographical items from all over the world. However, this was not the only legacy he left. He developed the idea of typology - the classification of artefacts in a chronological sequence, showing their development over time. Pitt Rivers joined the Ethnological Society of London as early as 1861, he was an influential figure in the development of archaeology and anthropology. He gifted his collection of 20,000 objects on condition that a museum be built to house them. 

A blowfish lantern from Japan

One of the interesting features of the museum is the way the objects are displayed. They are grouped according to how they were made or used, rather than by their origin or age. A walk around the labyrinth that is the Pitt Rivers museum takes you on a trip around the world of the past, giving you a greater understanding of the present and how evolution has a natural pace of it's own, which unfortunately is being challenged by modern technology.

This vast archive of human knowledge and expertise celebrates the diversity of the human spirit as expressed by material culture.

A selection of ancient rings from England

  

  Artefacts from the Kogi Indians in Colombia, South America

A selection of ancient snow shoes from Asia, Japan and Holland

Mysterious prehistoric mammal all wrapped up during 
restoration work in the Pitt Rivers Museum of Natural History

Ancient loom weaving techniques

'Eskimo' or Inuit costumes from Eclipse Sound, 
Northern Baffinland, Nunavut, Canada

Cowrie shell currency strings were once worn as body ornaments which, 
because of their desirability and relative standard size, were also 
used as a form of currency for trade and exchange in Asia and Africa

A human shrunken trophy head: Naga Tribe, Nagaland, North East India

Basket Weaving, Madagascar

'The Evolution of the Playing Card'

Prehistoric flint arrowheads silver mounted as amulets, Italy

'FIJIAN necklace of carved and polished pieces of sperm-whale tooth, 
given by King Thakombau to the Rev. James Calvert about 1874'

Ice skates from Iceland and Norway