ENGLAND: THE OTHER WITHIN

Pitt Rivers and archaeology in England

Alison Petch,
Researcher 'The Other Within' project

Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers (1827-1900) is probably best known these days as an archaeologist. He has been considered by some authors to be a founding father of British archaeology. It was certainly one of the longest lasting interest in his life, he seems to have begun digging whilst in Ireland during the early 1860s and the interest continued until his death in 1900. In addition to carrying out his own excavations, principally in the British Isles, he had the honour of being the first Inspector of Ancient Monuments. His archaeological journal papers are rich in detail and lively in style.

He carried out many excavations in England. These are covered in more detail in the following pages:

London

Sussex

Yorkshire

Oxfordshire

Kent

Norfolk / Suffolk

Wiltshire

Devon

Gloucestershire

Bedfordshire

Somerset

Surrey

These are listed in chronological order, that is by the order in which he first engaged with archaeological work in the county. Each of these pages list the archaeological finds from the excavations in the founding collection. Please note, however, that this is likely to be the minimum from each excavation as there are other artefacts in the founding collection from the same places which are not dated, and do not indicate Pitt Rivers collected them and have therefore not been included (but he might have collected them).

There were two main kinds of archaeological objects in his collection, both in the founding collection and in his private collection. They were:
1. Objects he had excavated ‘himself’
2. Objects he purchased from dealers and sale rooms from an early date
It is for his own archaeological fieldwork that he is best known and possibly for those items he excavated himself also. However he did amass a sizeable collection of objects that he had purchased and these included some important collections and pieces with a sizeable collection of Cypriot material (mainly excavated by Cesnola).

Cranborne Chase from 1880

His most famous archaeological work was carried out on his own estate in the south west on Cranborne Chase between Wiltshire and Dorset. All of these excavations took place after 1880 and with one exception (Rotherley, see above), there are no finds from these excavations in the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum. However, they are the culmination of twenty years of archaeological work beforehand:

Having retired from active service on account of ill-health, and being incapable of strong physical exercise, I determined to devote the remaining portion of my life chiefly to an examination of the antiquities on my own property’. [Pitt Rivers: Excavations in Cranborne Chase vol I p.xii quoted in Thompson, 1977: 91]

He employed between 8 and 30 men on his estate excavationsm using his agricultural labourers during the winter slack season. [Thompson, 1977: 92] In the later 1890s he employed an assistant to supervise the work and he only made visits (which suggests he supervised more carefully earlier). He also had a team of skilled assistants (from one to five usually), many of whom went on to work in other museums. The assistants helped in surveying, directed excavations in Pitt Rivers’ absence, and were draughtsmen and illustrators and model-makers. [Thompson, 1977: 93-5] An impression of his work on his own estate can be gained from one of his assistants:

In spite of poor health the General sometimes ordered a carriage to be ready at 7 a.m. to take him to excavations proceeding in the home Park [at Rushmore]. In those days I rode a ‘penny-farthing’—soon to be superseded by an early safety bicycle. The day’s work in the field, when the site was a few miles from our base, began at 8 a.m. and finished at 6 p.m. Labour was only 2/6 a day; at the last excavation at Iwerne Courtney (otherwise Shroton) in 1897, when the General was able to attend only twice a week, I (with one draughtsman) had 28 labourers and 3 boys to guide. This was the last of the Pitt-Rivers field-work. (Gray, contribution to ‘Anthropology at Oxford’ 1953: 4]

The excavations on his own estate were augmented by plans which were sometimes coloured, and models either of wood or wire and plaster with contours and details painted on. Copies of the volumes were placed in Farnham Museum with the models and plans [Thompson, 1977: 98-9] They were also published in lavish privately-printed volumes: Pitt Rivers comments of the Cranborne Chase volumes:

... [they] are not intended for casual readers. The record of an excavation takes about five times as long as the actual digging’.’ [Pitt Rivers, Excavations at Cranborne Chase, vol iv 27]
... Much of what is recorded may never prove of further use, but even in the case of such matter, superfluous precision may be regarded as a fault on the right side where the arrangement is such as to facilitate reference and enable a selection to be made.’ [Pitt Rivers, Excavations at Cranborne Chase, vol ii p. xiii]

Pitt-Rivers thought that all English landowners had a responsibility to archaeologically examine their estates:

Would that other country gentlemen coud be induced to follow the example set by this model landowner. In the preface to the second volume of his excavations, after detailing the elaborate plans upon which his investigations were conducted, General Pitt-Rivers says: "The expense in conducting explorations upon this system is considerable, but the wealth available in the country for the purpose is still ample, if only it could be turned into this channel. The number of country gentlemen of means who are at a loss for intelligent occupation, beyond hunting and sporting, must be considerable; and now that a paternal government has made a present of their game to their tenants, and bids fair to deprive them of the part that some of them have hitherto taken, most advantageously to the public, in the management of local affairs, it may not, perhaps, be one of the least useful results of these volumes if they should be the means of directing attention to a new field of activity, for which the owners of land are, beyond all others, favourably situated. It is hardly necessary to insist upon the large amount of evidence of early times that lies buried in the soil upon nearly every large property, which is constantly being destroyed through the operations of agriculture, and which scientific anthropologists have seldom the opportunity or the means of examining. To render this evidence available for anthropological generalization is well-worth the attention of the owners of property, who may thus render great service to an important branch of science, provided always that it is done properly, for to meddle with and destroy antiquities without recording the results carefully, would be a work as mischievous as the converse of it would be useful." [le Schonix, 1894: 166-7]

Thompson claims that it is in the reporting of archaeological excavations that the influence of Pitt Rivers was most permanent. [Thompson, 1977: 109] To find out more about a new research project examining the collections of Pitt-Rivers after 1880 go here.

Archaeological excavations undertaken by Pitt Rivers

Here is a list of most of the archaeological excavations and surveys carried out by Pitt Rivers during his life throughout the British Isles and Europe. Excavations and surveys in England are boldened.

Dates	Archaeological excavations undertaken by Pitt Rivers
1862 - 1866	Archaeological work whilst based at Cork, Ireland
1865	Roovesmore Fort, Ireland surveyed
1866	London Wall
1866-1867	Sussex hillforts survey
1867	Yorkshire Wolds, with Greenwell, April and October
1867	Cissbury excavations, Sussex, September
1868	Cissbury excavations, Sussex, January
1868	Fieldwalking in Oxfordshire, April and Thanet, Kent, September
1868	Holyhead Ty Mawr
1868	Norfolk/ Suffolk Grimes Graves, August 1868
1868-1869	Callow Hill, Oxon. April 1868, January 1869
1869	Acton, Thames gravel deposits
1869	Penrhyn, Bangor, North Wales 2 cairns
1869	Stonehenge fieldwalking
1869?	Hopes Nose, Torbay?
1869	Field walking Glos. August
1870	Maiden Bower, Bedfordshire, January
1870	Dorchester Dykes, Oxfordshire
1871	?Somerset, Worlebury, April
1872	Dyke Road, Black Burgh, Brighton tumulus,
1875	Sussex hillforts
1875	Cissbury excavations, Sussex, April, June-September
1876	Seaford, Sussex
1876	?Barton Cliff Lymington Hampshire
1874 - 1877	Guildford, Surrey barrows, Postford Farm etc.
1877	Mount Caburn & Ranscombe, Lewes, Sussex September-October
1877	Sigwell, Somerset with Rolleston
1877	Mount Caburn, Lewes, Sussex
1877	Hampton Court Canoe
1878	Mount Caburn & Ranscombe, Lewes, Sussex, July
1878	Caesar’s Camp, Folkestone, Kent, June-July
1878	Brittany, France surveying
1879	Danewirke or Dannewerke, Denmark with Rolleston
1879	Dane’s Dyke, Yorkshire
1879	Brittany, France surveying
1880 - 1884	Barrow-digging, Rushmore [1880 with Rolleston]
1881	Cook’s tour of Egypt, Nile Valley stone tool finds
1881 - 1882	Winkelbury Camp / Barrow-digging on own estate
1881 - 1882	Carranty Rack, Park House, Shiftway Coppice and Sunk fence, Rushmore Park on own estate
1883 - 1890	Inspector of Monuments
1884 - 1885	Woodcuts excavations on own estate
1886 - 1887	Rotherley excavations on own estate
1888	Bokerly Dyke on own estate
1889	Bokerly Dyke and Woodyates on own estate
1889	Kings John House, Tollard Royal, own estate
1889 - 1891	Wansdyke on own estate
1890 - ?1900	Honorary Inspector of Monuments
1891 - 1893	No excavations at Cranborne Chase due to ill-health
1893	South Lodge Camp on own estate
1893	Handley Hill entrenchment on own estate
1893	Barrows 23 and 24, own estate
1893 - 1894	Wor barrow on own estate
1893 - 1894	Handley Down barrows on own estate
1894	Barrows 26 and 27 on own estate
1894	Nursery gardens, Rushmore on own estate
1895	Barrows 28 and 29 on own estate
1895 - 1896	Martin Down camp on own estate
1897	Iwerne excavations on own estate

The contents of this table are based on the chronological table at the back of Thompson’s biography and Chapter 5 of Bowden.

To find out more about Pitt Rivers' interest in technologies and materials, see here. To find out more about Pitt Rivers' life, collections and museums see here.

Further reading

Bowden, M. 1984 [reprinted 1990] General Pitt Rivers” the father of scientific archaeology Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum
Bowden, M. 1991. Pitt Rivers - The life and archaeological work of Lt. General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers DCL FRS FSA. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Gray, H. St. G. 1953 [no title] in Anthropology at Oxford: the proceedings of the five-hundredth meeting of the Oxford University Anthropological Society ... February 25th, 1953.
le Schonix, Roach 1894. 'Notes on Archaeology in Provincial Museums: The Museums at Farnham, Dorset, and at King John's House, Tollard Royal',The Antiquary 30, 166-71
Thompson, M.W. 1976 Catalogue of the correspondence and papers of Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt -Rivers (1827-1900) Royal Commission on Historical MSS List 76/75
Thompson, M.W. 1977. General Pitt Rivers: Evolution and Archaeology in the Nineteenth Century. Moonraker Press, Bradford-on-Avon UK

To find out more about Pitt Rivers and his collections go to here.