Pitt-Rivers, General Augustus Lane-Fox

Pitt-Rivers, General Augustus Lane-Fox (1827-1900), pioneer of methodical archaeological excavation and the recording of finds who also helped to advance the study of prehistory beyond the antiquarian’s interest in unexplained objects. Many of the principles that he established still hold good today.

Pitt-Rivers was born at Hope Hall, in Yorkshire, and took up a military career, from which he retired in 1882. His observations of different types of firearm made him aware that the design of artefacts could be interpreted as evolving in a way similar to the evolution of living species, and he realized that to concentrate on a small number of unusual objects gave a distorted view of their evolutionary sequence. These ideas inspired the amassing and arrangement of his huge collection of ethnographic material, which now forms the bulk of the exhibits on display at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

In 1880 Pitt-Rivers inherited a 12,000-hectare (29,000-acre) estate at Cranborne Chase in Dorset, where for ten years he was able to conduct his own archaeological excavations, exploring such features as ancient cemeteries, barrows, and villages and publishing his findings as Excavations in Cranborne Chase (1887-1898). This fieldwork made him a figure of central importance in the establishment of archaeology as a serious discipline and excavation as a respected scientific technique. His excavation work was marked by the meticulous recording of even the most seemingly trivial finds, an appreciation of the importance of stratigraphy, and full publication of his results. Such were the standards he set that they have rarely been equalled even today. He was the first Inspector of Ancient Monuments of England and Wales and in 1869 he produced maps showing the distribution of megalithic monuments in the British Isles.