Statistical Analysis: Key Facts

a. The sizes of the two collections are very similar (as at 24.5.2010): 19606 objects (founding*)[1] and 20419 objects (second collection **), a difference of 813 objects or less than a twentieth of their overall size.
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b. Therefore, the minimum number of objects collected by Pitt-Rivers between 1850 and 1900 was 40025. In addition it is likely that there were items that were objets d'art, furniture, fine art and possibly other ethnographic and archaeological objects belonging to his homes, dating from before 1880, which are unrecorded in any surviving documentation.
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c. Both collections are dominated by items from Europe (58.2 per cent of the founding collection, 55.3 of the second).
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d. More countries are represented in the founding collection than the second collection (140 and 129 respectively).
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e. The country from which both collections get most objects is the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, at 7603 and 4360 objects respectively. This is more than 7 or 4 times the number of objects from the next largest represented countries (France and Egypt) respectively.
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f. The founding collection is dominated by archaeological items (at 54.3 per cent of objects) whereas the archaeological collections are slightly less in the second collection (47.6 per cent).
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g. European archaeological objects are very important in both collections numerically (50.4 and 31.9 per cent respectively) but most important in the founding collection.
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h. European ethnographic items are very important in the second collection (20.7 per cent).
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i. In the founding collection African, North, Middle and South American, Asian, Australian and Oceanian collections in the founding collection are dominated by objects defined as ethnographic.
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j. In the second collection, ethnographic and archaeological collections are much more evenly split.
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k. In most countries' collections in the Pitt Rivers Museum tools and weapons form by far the most numerous class of artefacts (because of the very large number of stone tools in the museum collections). However, for both collections pottery vessels and sherds are almost as imporant, and in the second collection they are more important than any other category of thing. Indeed, tools and weapons do not feature until the fifth largest class. In the founding collection, tools and weapons are more important than in the second. However, even in the second collection nearly a quarter of the collections are weaponry and tools. Ornaments and beads are important in both collections. Physical anthropological specimens were much more important to Pitt-Rivers up to 1880 (in his founding collection) than afterwards. Currency related items like coins and tokens were much more important in the second collection.
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l. In the founding collection's English provenanced items pottery, tools and weapons are the most important categories, but in the second collection currency related items, ornaments and beads, pottery and vessels are all important (as are weapons and tools).
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m. The most common location for items from the second collection was Farnham Museum, Pitt-Rivers' private museum on Cranborne Chase; the second most common was his house, Rushmore, on the same estate.
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n. More items were acquired in the 1880s and 1890s for the second collection than had been acquired between 1850 and 1879 for the founding collection. More items were acquired in the 1880s than any other decade (probably).
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o. There are three distinctive peaks in numbers of objects acquired by Pitt-Rivers for the second collection: 1882-1884, 1888-1889 and from 1897-1899.
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p. A total of 913 institutions and individuals are known, at this juncture, to have been associated with all the objects collected by Pitt-Rivers from 1827 to 1900. A total of 275 individuals and institutions are thought to be associated with the founding collection only.  A total of 40 individuals and institutions are known to have been associated with objects from both the founding collection and the Pitt-Rivers collection after 1880. A total of 598 individuals and institutions are known to have been associated with the second collection.
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AP, 3 June 2010

Notes

* Founding collection refers to Pitt-Rivers' first collection, that donated to the University of Oxford in 1884

** Second collection refers to Pitt-Rivers' collection after 1880 which remained in the family's hands after his death in 1900 and part of which was displayed at his private Farnham Museum, in Dorset.

[1] This count omits the majority of photographs in the founding collection which will be dealt with separately.