Pitt Rivers Museum

A fascinating museum housing one of the world’s finest collections of anthropology and archaeology

The Pitt Rivers Museum is a museum within a museum. Tucked behind Oxford’s Museum of Natural History, and dimly lit to protect its plethora of treasures is The Pitt Rivers Museum, housing objects revealing humankind’s extraordinary problem-solving and craft skills throughout human history across every continent.

Originating from an anthropological collection donated by Augustus Pitt-Rivers in 1884, the museum has expanded to over 300,000 objects mainly donated from anthropologists, scholars and travellers.  From the first donation by Pitt-Rivers, objects were organised within type, chronologically: musical instruments, weapons, masks, textiles, jewellery, and tools were all displayed to show how the same problems have been solved at different times by different peoples.  This chronological arrangement and organisation of objects, heavily influenced by Charles Darwin is still a strategy utilised by many museums today.

Visitors to the Pitt Rivers Museum get to see the collections packed within large display cases, and due to the extent of objects, exhibitions are changing frequently. The Museum continues to collect through donations, bequests, special purchases and through its students, in the course of their fieldwork, so no two visits are likely to be the same.

Anthropology & Archaeology – What’s On at Pitt Rivers Museum

There is a busy programme of exhibitions, special events, talks, tours and also the opportunity to get involved with a schedule of Need, Make and Use workshops. Visit the What’s On pages at the official website here