Pitt Rivers Museum

The Pitt Rivers Museum: A Different Type Of History

The Pitt Rivers Museum is one of the most popular museums in Oxfordshire at the moment, but in terms of its countrywide and indeed worldwide fame it is highly undervalued. People tend to choose the conventional over the unique and interesting, and the Pitt Rivers Museum can hardly be accused of being anything else! It is the perfect place to visit if you want to inject a little culture into your trip to Oxford, and that s saying something considering culture is everywhere you look in this wonderful city!

Located on the campus of Oxford University and accessed via the Museum of Natural History, the Pitt Rivers Museum is a little something different that will enhance every single visit to Oxford. It has a huge collection of anthropological and archaeological artefacts, all organised logically in a very innovative way. Not by date, era or country, but rather by the way that all of them are, or were, used. This makes an awful lot of sense really because it allows people to compare the artefacts and get an idea as to just how far we have come!

The artefacts are from all over the world, with the initial collection being donated by General Augustus Pitt Rivers in 1884. He donated 20,000 artefacts but the collection has now grown to over 500,000 pieces thanks to missionaries, travellers, academics and anybody else in a similar line of work. The choice of pieces to look at really is huge and there are hundreds of exhibitions displayed throughout the year. As such, you can take your time and enjoy the information and new discoveries that the Pitt Rivers Museum has to offer. It is open all year round so you could just pop in when you get a chance. However, I must warn you that you will be in there for hours if you do!