‘Making the Museum’

‘Making the Museum’ (2024–2027; https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/making-museum) emerges from this context and in response to wider efforts towards decolonising museum praxis at the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) (see https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/critical-changes). The project begins with the following provocation: Lieutenant General Pitt-Rivers did not make the museum that bears his name, nor the objects within it. The real makers of the museum are the people who lived (and live) outside its walls, whose lives are captured in the photograph collections, and who made and used the objects on display. Yet, the PRM database holds only a partial record of the lives of these ‘makers’ of the museum. There are more than 324 000 objects in the museum collection but only 4.6 per cent of these objects have any associated information about the people who made them. Until now, there has been no systematic research on this maker dataset.

Surfacing the identities of makers requires markedly different research methods from those traditionally used to explore museum collections. The names of field collectors, curators and museum donors abound in the PRM database—99 per cent of object records have a named donor and 84.3 per cent have a named field collector—and these digital records are supplemented by extensive archival and published sources (e.g. Gosden et al. Reference Gosden and Larson2007). In stark contrast, biographical details about makers are rarely so well documented. The majority of the PRM's documentation was formed during historic periods where “attitudes towards ownership, recognition and consent” were radically different from the present (Kahn Reference Kahn2021: 64). From field collectors choosing not to record—or not caring to establish—the names of makers, cataloguers omitting details perceived as irrelevant and curators displaying objects as indicative of ‘cultural types’ rather than the product of individual craftsmanship; these historic and often deeply racist attitudes are embedded in fundamentally uneven levels of museum documentation.

The archaeology of museum collections

Submerged maker identities can be recovered. Our project begins by reviewing the existing information about makers held in the PRM database; identifying geographic regions or time periods in which information about makers is either unusually sparse or plentiful. These data are then used to develop case studies where focused archival and object-centred research—undertaken in close collaboration with traditional knowledge holders and practising makers—is used to unearth new stories about makers.

For example, the PRM collection includes 40 098 objects from Oceania but only 1.8 per cent of these objects have a named maker. A recent project at Royal Museums Greenwich collaborated with knowledge holders from the Te-Moananui-a-Kiwa (peoples of the Pacific Ocean) to examine toki (adzes) in their collections. Robbie Teremoana Atatoa was able to identify carved motifs unique to the Island of Mangaia and the Maurua star compass maker's mark of a ta'unga (expert) carver named Tangitoru—concretely identifying the maker of one toki (Figure 1) through material traces alone. Building on this work, we have recently begun working with Atatoa to identify the makers of similar toki in the PRM collection. Archaeologists are uniquely positioned to assist these identification efforts, using their expertise in giving voice to the past through the interpretation of material culture in situations where written records are absent or cannot be relied upon.

Figure 1.

Tane Mata Ariki te mata o Rongo, identified by Robbie Teremoana Atatoa: 85mm × 620mm × 260mm (Royal Museums Greenwich ZBA5526).

Archaeology also offers new theoretical approaches to collections-based research. Key here are the concepts of formation and assemblage. While archaeologists might be more accustomed to thinking about the formation of the archaeological record in the ground, taking this awareness and using it to examine the processes that deposit objects in museum collections and lay down stratigraphic layers of museum documentation can identify the points at which information about makers has been systematically overlooked, and inform the development of better documentation practices in the present. The concept of assemblage invites researchers to take a holistic approach to collections that are dispersed within the depositional contexts of the museum—seeking out previously unknown connections between museum objects, photographs, archival sources and museum documentation to uncover new information (Hitchcock Reference Hitchcock2021; Hodgett Reference Hodgett2022).

When applied to the PRM, these approaches reveal that the names of local people are often hidden in plain sight—for example, the pencil drawing of an unnamed woman demonstrating the use of a digging stick made by PRM curator Henry Balfour and accessioned into the PRM's photograph collection (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

/Ogen-an, sketched by Henry Balfour (Pitt Rivers Museum 1998.357.2).

Although there is nothing in the PRM database to suggest the association, the exact digging stick depicted is independently accessioned as part of the Edward John Dunn collection (Figure 3). While very little is known about Balfour's sketch, the Dunn collection has attracted the interest of multiple researchers, generating a small archive of Related Document Files (RDFs)—photocopied excerpts of published works discussing the collection. Several of these documents reproduce an instantly recognisable photograph taken by the linguist Lucy Lloyd in Cape Town in 1884 (Figure 4). Balfour's pencil drawing of the unnamed woman is clearly based on this photograph. It is in these RDF files that we find details about the woman depicted; her name is transcribed as /Xaken-an, /Ogan-an, /Ogen-an and Mikki Streep. We learn that she is a /Xam woman around 54 years old and the mother of two prisoners held at Breakwater Prison in Cape Town (RDF 2004.142).

Figure 3.

The digging stick from the Dunn Collection (Pitt Rivers Museum 2004.142.1091.1-2).

Figure 4.

Photocopied excerpt from the RDF naming /Ogen-an (Pitt Rivers Museum RDF 2004.142.1091).