Pitt-Rivers

28 Feb, 2013 930 History of the Ancient World

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian anthropologist and archaeologist Augustus Pitt-Rivers. Over many years he amassed thousands of ethnographic and archaeological objects, some of which formed the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University. Inspired by the work of Charles Darwin, Pitt-Rivers believed that human technology evolved in the same way as living organisms, and devoted much of his life to exploring this theory. He was also a pioneering archaeologist whose meticulous records of major excavations provided a model for later scholars.

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Guests

  • Adam Kuper 3 episodes
    Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Boston University
  • Richard Bradley 2 episodes
    Professor in Archaeology at the University of Reading
  • Dan Hicks No other episodes
    University Lecturer & Curator of Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford

Reading list

  • Pitt-Rivers: The Life and Archaeological Work of Lieutenant-General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers
    Mark Bowden (Cambridge University Press, 2009) Google Books →
  • The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies
    Dan Hicks and Mary Beaudry (eds) (Oxford University Press, 2010) Google Books →
  • World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum: A Characterization
    Dan Hicks and Alice Stevenson (eds) (Archaeopress, 2013) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b01qwgxx

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Auto-category: 930 (History of ancient world)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. One of the world's most extraordinary museums can be found in a grand Victorian building in central Oxford.