Most of Pitt-Rivers' archaeological finds before 1880 form part of the founding collection and are therefore now housed at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. However, he must have retained some objects for his own private collection because Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum have items as well, given to them in lieu of death duties in 1975 by the Pitt-Rivers family.

Find out more about Pitt-Rivers' early archaeological investigations before 1884, and work on his own estate's archaeology after 1880.

Where did he carry out archaeological fieldwork before 1884?

a. London (mostly City and West London Thames gravels)

b. Sussex hillforts like Mount Caburn, Cissbury, Highdown, etc

c. Yorkshire Wolds

d. Kent, espeically 'Caesar's Camp' at Folkestone and fieldwalking

e. Surrey: around his home in Guildford

f. Bedfordshire/ Norfolk/ Suffolk including 'Maiden Bower', 'Brandon', 'Grimes Graves' (the second and third mostly collected on the surface)

g. Wiltshire (before he inherited his estate) mostly Stonehenge

h. Abroad: most notably Egypt and France

Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford hold objects from:

All of the above sites. See here for a full list.

Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum hold objects from Pitt-Rivers pre-1880 excavations in:

Mount Caburn, Sussex

Highdown Hill, Sussex (a couple)

Yorkshire Wolds

Surrey (3 artefacts)

It is also possible that some of their London provenanced objects came to Pitt-Rivers before 1880.

AP, April 2011