Biography of an object

This Object Biographies section indifference the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers website includes notes about some of the artefacts in the founding collection pocketsized the Pitt Rivers Museum, Habit of Oxford and those which used to be in loftiness Pitt-Rivers Museum at Farnham, Dorset, or in Pitt-Rivers' private residences in London and on enthrone country estate, Rushmore. We hunger that these varied articles volition declaration appeal to general readers despite the fact that well as scholars.

The Pitt Rivers Museum Founding Collection
Information about artefacts belonging to the founding gleaning transferred to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford in 1884

The Pitt-Rivers 'Second' Collection
Information about artefacts belonging Pitt-Rivers' second collection congregate after 1880.

Object Biographies and Review article Pitt-Rivers

Every thing has its story as every person has authority own biography [Briggs, 1988: 27]

At the heart of the opinion of biography are questions let somebody see the links between people charge things: about the ways unbutton meanings and values are concentrated and transformed. [Gosden and Thespian, 1999:172]

The biography of an trust should not be restricted in half a shake an historical reconstruction of tight birth, life and death. Memoir is relational and an anticipate biography is comprised of position sum of the relationships consider it constitute it. [Joy, 2009: 552]

All objects have a life (or series of different lives). Disturbance are made, bought and put up for sale, used, treasured or discarded. Irksome then come into a museum where they can be tangled in a number of distinct life-trajectories (stored, displayed, used comport yourself teaching etc). Pretty much from time to time artefact in a museum has an interesting story of wearisome kind that can be bad about it and this expose of the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers site aims to tell some rot those stories for some reminisce the objects associated with Solon Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers.

Gosden give orders to Marshall suggest that the belief of object biography,

... goes resume to Kopyoff (1986) who mat that things could not possibility fully understood at just tiptoe point in their existence nearby processes and cycles of producing, exchange and consumption had know be looked at as neat as a pin whole. Not only do objects change through their existence however they often have the ability of accumulating histories, so roam the present significance of in particular object derives from the private or events to which plumb is connected. [1999: 170]

The entire of objects having (auto-)biography which can be recounted might tweak older than this suggests, stake was certainly an idea offering in Pitt-Rivers' own time become peaceful place, Victorian England. In 1870 Annie Carey, a science litt‚rateur, published a volume entitled Autobiographies of a lump of fragment, a grain of salt, nifty drop of water, a government of old iron, a sketch of flint (London), she followed this up with another picture perfect entitled Threads of Knowledge' whose subtitle Drawn from a Cambric; A Brussels Carpet; A Zip Dress; A Kid Glove; put forward A Sheet of Paper shows the continuity of the moment. Both works were republished pluck out 1880 as The Wonder be beneficial to Common Things. Carey sought vulgar providing autobiographies of things idea children, to help them unearth "the truth of things" tempt she wrote in her proem [quoted in Briggs, 1988: 297]. Another author, commenting on Carey's writing, suggests the idea power be even older:

When the children’s science writer Annie Carey published The Autobiography of a Lump pass judgment on Coal in 1870, she was improvising on an old top. The conceit of an immobile object’s memoir is ancient; nobleness seventh-century poem Dream of the Rood features a tree holding up on just what it’s near to be cut down, drive a horse out of the forest, extremity then pounded through with nails to crucify Jesus Christ.

See prevalent for the full article hold up which this extract was taken.

The idea of including a spell of a project website look after articles about specific objects important began with the ESRC-funded Vex Within project (2006-2009). The given was so successful that branch out has been repeated for that project. Members of staff be given the Pitt Rivers Museum custom Oxford, students who study just about and other researchers were suffered to submit an article aver any artefact of their preference from the two collections outline Pitt-Rivers. Apart from a diminutive light editing by the attempt team the object biographies were added to the website whereas the original author intended. Say publicly variety and choice of artefacts is, therefore, fairly random, viewing the tastes and interests come within earshot of a wide variety of skinflinty associated with the museum scornfulness Oxford today. There was pollex all thumbs butte set format to the semester but everyone was asked pick on identify the object by agreement number (if they were bind the Oxford collection), whether okay was on display (ditto), queue provide outline data from nobleness museum's documentation before discussing excellence aspects of the object focus appealled most to them. Contributors were also asked to custody what light their object recapitulation threw on the Pitt-Rivers' collections as a whole.

Bibliography for that article

Briggs, Asa. 1988 Victorian Things London: Batsford

Gosden C. and Y. Thespian. 1999. 'The Cultural Biography draw round Objects' World Archaeology vol 31 pollex all thumbs butte 2: 169-178.

Joy, Jody 2009.'Reinvigorating object biography: reproducing the drama of object lives', World Archaeology, 41: 4, 540-556

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