Double counting of objects / collectors
By the nature of the way that data is handled by the Museum's collections management database (upon which all statistics are based) it is impossible to avoid double-counting of the same object several times in almost all of the statistics.
To give an example, each object can be defined as being several different types of thing, for example a hunting knife would be classified both under Hunting-related, and as a Weapon.
In addition more than one individual might be associated with a single object, for example Alexander James Montgomerie Bell and Archibald Colquhoun Bell are associated with the same selection of objects because Alexander Montgomerie Bell collected them, and Archibald Bell gave them to the Museum.
The third place in which there might be double-counting is in the place where an object is said to come from, sometimes more than one county is listed as being a possible provenance for one artefact.