Some of the items in the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford and in Pitt-Rivers' second collection were collected in the field by him. This means that he either obtained them from the maker, or from the primary user or owner in its country of origin, or else he excavated the object (or, in Pitt-Rivers' case, caused to be excavated in an excavation directed by him).

Founding collection: 26.1 per cent of items were field collected by him (5118 objects of which 4686 were from the UK)

In other words, one quarter of the founding collection consists of items collected in the field by Pitt-Rivers, many of which are items from his excavations between 1850-1880.

Second collection: 3.5 per cent of items were field collected by him (728 objects of which 213 were from the UK)

The second collection catalogues did not contain many items from the many excavations carried out after 1880, these must have been recorded elsewhere (many are now in the collections of Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum). The founding collection documentation contains more objects from his excavations, many of which are being examined by the Excavating Pitt-Rivers project.

The percentage of items field collected by him in the second collection is much smaller than in the founding collection.

AP, 1.6.2010, penultimate paragraph amended May 2013.

Of those founding collection items he collected which are not from the UK but were thought to have been collected by Pitt-Rivers, a breakdown was taken in May 2013 to answer a question from Mike O'Hanlon and founding collection objects possibly collected by Pitt-Rivers came from the following countries:

Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Egypt
France
Germany
Hungary
Italy
Ireland
Malta
Slovakia
Sweden
Switzerland
USA [though this one is only a vague possibility]

NB: Note that the founding collection has changed since the first set of statistics were prepared * and this is therefore not comparing like with like BUT it is unlikely that the countries represented in this list have changed a great deal from those identified when the statistics were first prepared in 2009. The items are identified to this list because it is known that Pitt-Rivers visited the country and could have collected the item, or (if the item is unusually well provenanced to a date) that Pitt-Rivers is known to have been in the country at the right time. A very small minority of objects are clearly documented as having been collected by him.

AP May 2013.

*because new unaccessioned items from the founding collection are found in the museum all the time by collections management staff.