Archaelogy or Ethnography Founding Collection

The Pitt Rivers Museum divides its collections into rough groups of archaeology, ethnography or a mixture (sometimes, as in this case called Other).

Number of items defined as archaeological in founding collection: 10,637

Number of items defined as ethnographic: 7,909

Number of items defined as other: 1060

Percentage of items defined as archaeological in founding collection: 54.3

Percentage of items defined as ethnographic: 40.3

Percentage of items defined as other: 5.4

Note that missing from this table, except in the global row, are those items without continent.

The table makes clear the dominance of European archaeology in the founding collection; one in every two objects is an archaeological object (mostly a stone tool or a pottery sherd) from Europe. In fact, this is really the dominance of UK (and, more specifically, English) archaeology in the collection. There are a total of 7,131 archaeological objects from the UK and Republic of Ireland, 36.3 per cent of the total founding collection (or, to put it another way, one in every three objects is an archaeological object from the UK or Republic of Ireland). 6,112 archaeological objects come from England in the founding collection, that is 31.1 per cent of the total.

It is clear that European archaeology in the founding collection also dominates the overall European collections; all the other object collections from other continents are dominated by Ethnography.

AP, 26 May 2010