This is a slightly altered version of the thesis I submitted in 2012 for my undergraduate degree in history. It is a piece of work which grew out of my involvement with the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project. It explores a personal interest, nonetheless I hope others may find it of interest. I feel one of the achievements of the RPR project is to discourage the view of Pitt-Rivers as an 'archaeologist', an 'anthropologist' or an 'ethnographer' and take a broader look at the enormously wide range of his interests and activities. In focusing on an aspect of Pitt-Rivers' collections that has never before been isolated and examined I hope to have made a small contribution to 'rethinking' him.

I would like to thank everyone I have worked with in the Pitt Rivers Museum and in connection with the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project, and Alison and Jeremy in particular: to both of them for giving me the opportunity to get involved in the project in the first place, and the other opportunities this has opened up, to Jeremy for supervising me and to Alison for organising a space for me to work in the museum and aid in accessing relevant sources.

I am no longer working on Pitt-Rivers * but have a continuing interest in the international exchange of objects and the role of collections and collectors in shaping scholarly perceptions.

Rachel McGoff
University College, Oxford

November 2012

East Asian Objects of a 19th-Century Collector

*Though in fact Rachel spent the year 2012-2013 completing a catalogue of Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum's Pitt-Rivers letters which she had scanned some time before.