Latin America in the Pitt Rivers Museum
The Pitt Rivers Museum has one of the most important ethnography and archaeology collections in the world ranging from ancient artefacts to contemporary everyday objects. This scope is reflected in the material from Latin America.
The particular strengths of the archaeological collections are textiles and pottery from Peru and Peruvian mummified material. The Peruvian textiles have been studied by senior researchers from a number of museums and continue to attract interest. As they are so fragile these textiles are almost all kept in storage, so that they can be protected from light damage. As part of a drive to improve the care of the collections the Pitt Rivers Museum has recently raised money for specialist storage cabinets for the ancient Peruvian textiles to ensure that they can be preserved in the best possible conditions.
The Latin American ethnographic collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum are extensive and include many collections of great significance. In 1946 the Museum acquired a large number of textiles, textile tools and photographs collected by Mrs Elsie McDougall in Guatemala and Mexico from 1926. This collection is meticulously documented so that it is known exactly in which village most pieces were made. As a result this early modern collection has become a standard reference for dating and provenancing other Central American textiles. The collection of R.H. Thomas is also worthy of note and is particularly strong on pottery artefacts from Northern Peru, Southern Columbia and Ecuador
With its close links with anthropologists, the Museum has a number of important recent 20th century field collections from Latin America. Of particular note are collections from Guyana made by Audrey Butt (Colson) and Peter Rivière. The Museum continues to collect, including commissioning collections from its doctoral students whilst they are undertaking field research. In this way the Museum continues its tradition of developing well-documented collections of everyday material.
Compiled by Julia Nicholson, Head of Collections Management (Documentation: Americas, Asia)
