Pitt Rivers Museum - University of Oxford

Given the difficulties consequent on relocating the collections twice in the year, this was to
be expected. The total number of recorded research enquiries dealt with by Museum staff was
2,079. Of these, 941 were received by email, 554 by phone or in person, and 584 by post or
fax. These figures represent a slight decrease in comparison to the previous year (when the
total was 2,268).
Research visitors frequently provide important information on the Museum’s
collections, either during their visits or in later reports and publications, copies of which they
are required to supply for the Museum’s Balfour Library. From time to time the Museum is
also able to accommodate requests for samples for analysis. This year the Museum was able
to accede to a request from Robin Torrence (Principal Research Scientist at the Australian
Museum, Sydney) to provide an obsidian stemmed tool (PRM 1938.36.1154), collected for
the Museum by Beatrice Blackwood in Papua New Guinea in August 1937, for Raman
spectroscopic analysis by Elizabeth Carter (Professional Officer in Vibrational/Electronic
Spectroscopy at the University of Sydney) at the Analytical Centre at the University of
Bradford. This non-destructive technique allows the analyst to ‘characterize’ the material and
thus, it is hoped, to identify its geological source and thus provide clues to related social
interactions.
Teaching and Examining
The Museum’s research and scholarship shapes and influences the teaching that members of
staff carry out as part of their University duties. Museum staff continue to teach on the
University’s undergraduate degrees in Archaeology and Anthropology, Geography, Human
Sciences, and History of Art and Visual Culture; on the M.Sc. and M.Phil. degrees in
Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography; and variously for M.Sc., M.Phil. and
D.Phil. students reading Social Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, History of Art and
Visual Culture, Archaeology, Music, and African Studies. During the year, Museum staff
gave 110 University lectures and 220 seminars and tutorials. Details of the teaching and
examining carried out by members of staff are given in Annex D: Staff Activities.
In addition, during the year, Museum staff produced thirty-four scholarly publications
(six based on the Museum and its collections), twenty other publications (all of which were
based on the Museum and its collections), attended twenty-five conferences and numerous
workshops and training days, delivered sixteen conference papers, received 217 visiting
researchers and academics, and dealt with numerous collections-related enquiries.
Balfour Library
For the Library the year was dominated by the reorganization required following the move
into the new extension in November. Core books and works on general subjects are now sited
on the ground floor, with periodicals and area studies books located in open-access stacks on
the first floor. In Eric Edwards’s absence due to ill health, the Library was greatly helped in
this reorganization by temporary assistance from Alan Davis and John Todd.
PADMAC
The PADMAC Unit (for the study of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic artefacts from deposits
mapped as clay-with-flints in the UK, and of Palaeolithic artefacts and associated deposits in
a Middle Eastern (Arabian) context) continued to be located at 60 Banbury Road until the end
of the year when responsibility for it was transferred to the Institute of Archaeology.
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