Ashmolean Museum Moccasins

Long on the list to visit was this museum of archaeology and anthropology which has a somewhat unusual piggy-back arrangement with the Oxford Museum of Natural History (OMNH). The Pitt Rivers and the OMNH are both just outside the centre of Oxford on Parks Road which is at the end of Broad Street, a gentle 10/15 minute stroll from the centre of Oxford. I mention this as there is no car parking (except for limited disabled spaces) on site so Shanks Mare or the local or tourist bus services are the way to go. Both museums are part of the University of Oxfordand like all the renowned museums in the City of the Dreaming Spires they can appear somewhat cluttered as they were primarily created for teaching and research.

With so much learning going on Oxford contains many homes to the Muses or Museums to give them their more familiar title. There is the Pitts River Museum, The Museum of Oxford, The Museum of the History of Science, The Bates Collection of Musical Instruments, The Christchurch Picture Gallery and The Oxford Museum of Natural History. Oxford's museums and collections are world renowned. They provide an important resource for scholars around the world, and welcome visits from members of the public. More than a million people visit the University’s museums and collections every year.

The Pitt Rivers Museum is located within the Oxford Museum of Natural History housed in a wonderful Victorian Cathedral to science and knowledge. The neo-Gothic building was designed by the Irish architects Thomas Newenham Deane and Benjamin Woodward who also designed the Museum Building in Trinity College, Dublin. The museum's design was directly influenced by the writings of critic John Ruskin, who involved himself by making various suggestions to Woodward during construction.

The museum consists of a large square court with a glass roof, supported by cast iron pillars, which divide the court into three aisles. Cloistered arcades run around the ground and first floor of the building, with stone columns each made from a different British stone, selected by geologist John Phillips (the Keeper of the Museum). The ornamentation of the stonework and iron pillars incorporates natural forms such as leaves and branches, combining the Pre-Raphaelite style with the scientific role of the building.

Pitt Rivers Museum holds one of the world’s finest collections of anthropology and archaeology, with objects from every continent and from throughout human history.

University Museum of Natural History houses the University's scientific collections of zoological, entomological, palaeontological and mineral specimens. With 4.5 million specimens it is the largest collection of its type outside of the national collections. The Museum itself is a Grade 1 listed building, renowned for its spectacular neo-Gothic architecture. Among its most famous features are the Oxfordshire dinosaurs, the dodo, and the swifts in the tower.

The Museum was designed as a 'cathedral to science', and home to the University's scientific collections. It represents a spectacular example of neo-Gothic architecture and has an illustrious history. It played host to the famous evolutionary debate between Huxley and Wilberforce in 1860, and is now known for many famous features - the Oxfordshire dinosaurs, the dodo, Alice, and the swifts.

In June 1860 the newly opened Oxford University Museum of Natural History hosted one of the most famous debates in scientific history. It was the ‘great debate’ between Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Thomas Huxley, the biologist and writer. They argued furiously about Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and the questions it raised about man’s place in the natural world and religious belief. Darwin himself was not well enough to attend the debate but Huxley was nicknamed ‘Darwin’s bull-dog’ for his ardent defence of Darwin’s work. Today the Museum displays a statue of Darwin and some of the crabs he collected during his voyage on the Beagle.

The Pitt Rivers Museum was founded in 1884 when Lt.-General Pitt Rivers, an influential figure in the development of archaeology and evolutionary anthropology, gave his collection to the University. His two conditions were that a museum was built to house it and that someone should be appointed to lecture in anthropology.

The Museum displays archaeological and ethnographic objects from all parts of the world. The General's founding gift contained more than 18,000 objects but there are now over half a million. Many were donated by early anthropologists and explorers. The extensive photographic and sound archives contain early records of great importance. Today the Museum is an active teaching department of the University of Oxford. It also continues to collect through donations, bequests, special purchases and through its students, in the course of their fieldwork.

Pacific island objects, including a magnificent Tahitian mourner's costume, collected during Captain Cook's Second Voyage in 1773-74; Hawaiian feather cloaks in brilliant shades of red and yellow; a wide range of hand-woven textiles and looms; a collection of ceremonial brasses and ivories from the Kingdom of Benin; a fine group of early masks worn by actors in Japanese Noh dramas; more masks from Africa, Melanesia and North America; sculpture from all over the world in wood, pottery, metal and stone; boats, ranging from full-sized sailing craft to model canoes; baskets in all possible shapes and sizes; pottery from Africa and the Americas, including many pre-Columbian pieces; costumes from North America including Inuit fur parkas, Plains skin shirts decorated with porcupine quills, painted coats from the North-eastern Woodlands and a range of decorated moccasins; magic objects including amulets and charms; jewellery and body decoration; locks and keys; tools and weapons; musical instruments.

In most ethnographic and archaeological museums the displays are arranged according to geographical or cultural areas. Here they are arranged according to type: musical instruments, weapons, masks, textiles, jewellery, and tools are all displayed in groups to show how the same problems have been solved at different times by different peoples. The cases appear to be very crowded, as a very large percentage of the collection is on view. In some instances the 'displays' are primarily visible storage, due to the museum being first and foremost a teaching and research institution and the curators are also university lecturers in either cultural anthropology or prehistoric archaeology. A number of degree courses are taught to both graduate and undergraduate studies. If you look carefully you will see that actually a great deal of information is provided about individual objects. The small labels, many of them hand printed by the first Curator, are very revealing.

Today, the head and foot of a Dodo displayed at the museum are the most complete remains of a single dodo anywhere in the world. Many museums have complete Dodo skeletons, but these are composed of the bones of several individuals. The museum also displays a 1651 painting of a Dodo by Flemish artist, Jan Savery. Charles Dodgson, better known by his pen-name Lewis Carroll, was a regular visitor to the museum, and Savery's painting is likely to have influenced the character of the Dodo in Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The Pitt Rivers museum was closed for almost a year recently for major renovations reopening on 1st May 2009. In this work, the 1960s exhibition gallery was dismantled, restoring the original view through to the Museum’s totem pole. Original display cases were returned to their original place at the front of the Museum. The space upstairs vacated by these cases provides additional space for the Clore Duffield Education Centre where many educational events are run for children including visiting school parties. A new entrance platform allows visitors to enter on the same level as the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and improves access for wheelchair users and parents with pushchairs. The entrance platform provides re-located shop and reception areas. An environmental control system has also been installed.

Now visitors to the reopened museum are issued with little wind-up electric torches, for this great anthropological collection of artifacts resembles, in a way, a mine of treasures in a series of shady galleries, with a central cavern where the tin edgings of ancient handwritten labels wink under the artificial light. Visitors here are self-directed, not led by the nanny's hand of explanatory panels. They can make their own connections, open endless scallop-handled drawers tucked beneath display cases, trace the stories they choose in the crowds of objects.

The Pitt Rivers is a museum unlike any other in the quality, density and variety of the items on display. It is worth spending time here for it provokes in its visitors young and old a deep wonder, at the variety and underlying common humanity of cultural solutions to everyday problems: music-making, sewing, hunting, fire-making, sitting, sawing, locking, and healing. For the great key to the Pitt Rivers is its thematic arrangement and this enables you to see similar objects from (say) Africa, Asia, Native Americans and the Middle East and marvel at both the variety and convergence in human cultures and solutions to the challenges of living. Each exhibit, in this Noah's Ark of all the Earth's artefacts, is a wormhole out of the museum and into the lives of the culture that made it. Follow the connections and you will be able to make out what makes human beings tick. It is a fascinating journey and the genius of the Pitt Rivers and Natural History Museums is it will be uniquely YOUR journey.

Oxford still casts its spell and seems a unique place in this world. A busy town, a wealthy town whose house prices match London, a working town where the tradition of motor car manufacture pioneered by Morris Garages (MG) is kept alive at the Mini Plant at Cowley. But it is a City with a different demographic, where you can wander through the world’s biggest university bookshop, wander among its 39 Colleges and its Halls with associated libraries, laboratories and playing fields. It is an International City with students, staff, researchers and tourists from across the globe. A cultured city where you can go to six museums or at least 10 classical concerts on any given day.

Make sure on your visit you head slightly out of the centre to visit the unique treasure casket which is the Pitt Rivers Museum. Otherwise, you will not have seen Oxford!