author
Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers
1827–1900
A soldier turned pioneering archaeologist, he helped change excavation from treasure hunting into a careful, methodical science. His vast collections also laid the foundations for Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum.
3 Audiobooks
The Evolution of Culture, and Other Essays
by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers
On the Development and Distribution of Primitive Locks and Keys
by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers
Antique Works of Art from Benin Collected by Lieutenant-General Pitt Rivers
by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers
About the author
Born in Yorkshire in 1827, he began life as Augustus Henry Lane Fox and built a career in the British Army before becoming one of the key figures in early archaeology and ethnology. In 1880, after inheriting estates in Dorset and Wiltshire, he took the name Pitt-Rivers.
He is often remembered for insisting that archaeological sites should be excavated systematically, with close attention to layers, objects, and full publication of results. That practical, organized approach had a lasting influence on British archaeology, and his interest in how tools and objects developed over time also shaped museum display and anthropological thinking.
His collection of around 22,000 archaeological and ethnographic objects was given to the University of Oxford in 1884 and became the founding collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum. He died in 1900, but his name remains closely tied to both the museum and the modern study of the human past.