Pitt Rivers and Natural History Museum

EXCURSION SHEET             PITT RIVERS MUSEUM AND      NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

THE PITT RIVERS MUSEUM

• The Pitt Rivers Museum was founded in 1884 when Lt.-General Pitt Rivers and influential figure in the development of archaeology and evolutionary anthropoly gave his collection to the University
• 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.
• Permanent displays in the Museum are ethnographic and archaeological and include the following: masks worn by actors in Japanese Noh dramas; boats, ranging from full-sized sailing craft to model canoes, tools and weapons and musical instruments.

THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

•  Professor of Medicine, Sir Henry Acland instigated the construction of The Oxford University Museum of Natural History (which took from 1855 to 1860) to bring together all the aspects of science around central display area.
• The Museum is an important centre for research and teaching, and is organised into four collections: entomology, geology, mineralogy and petrology, and zoology.
• Among the museum’s most famous features are the Oxfordshire dinosaurs, the dodo, and the swifts in the tower.