PRESS RELEASE: 9 October 2012
Pitt Rivers Museum wins Arts Council England funding for ‘Excavating Pitt-Rivers’ Project
The Victorian archaeologist General Pitt-Rivers is world-famous for his development of
modern scientific archaeology, but the earliest archaeological collections that he made
have never been studied. The Pitt Rivers Museum, where these artefacts are held, has
been awarded £76,654 by Arts Council England’s Designation Development Fund to
document this important early material.
The collections come from more than 50 prehistoric, Roman and medieval sites across
the UK: from excavations at a medieval castle in Kent, from Bronze Age barrows in
Yorkshire, from Iron Age hill-forts in Sussex, and even from early ‘rescue’ archaeology
at Roman sites in central London. As well as documenting the collections, the
‘Excavating Pitt-Rivers’ project’s public archaeology programme will collaborate with
local archaeologists in the regions from which the collections were excavated.
Dan Hicks, who will lead the project, said:
“General Pitt-Rivers created the first archaeological collection of national scope to be
made through scientific excavation. By documenting this iconic collection, and
exchanging knowledge with local archaeologists, the project explores how these
artefacts connect the Pitt Rivers Museum with sites, landscapes and communities
across the country.”
The project will also draw upon the recent gift from the Pitt-Rivers family to the
Museum of important unpublished manuscripts.
Jeremy Coote, joint head of collections at the Museum, said:
“We are immensely grateful to the Designation Development Fund, successive awards
from which have transformed public engagement with the Museum’s collections over
the past decade”.
END
Image available on request
Press Contact: Kate Webber, Marketing & Press
Officer
[log in to unmask], 01865 613017
........................................
Dr Dan Hicks MIfA, FSA
University Lecturer & Curator of Archaeology
Pitt Rivers Museum/School of Archaeology
University of Oxford
http://oxford.academia.edu/DanHicks
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