Pitt Rivers And Boas: A Comparative Analysis

It was under the influence of two men that the fields of anthropology and ethnology began to change and transform into what they are today. Augustus Pitt Rivers and Franz Boas each had very different approaches to material culture; they had different ways of understanding objects, and this guided the ways they organized and displayed them in museums. Pitt Rivers believed material culture could be used to illustrate the evolution of humans and technology, arranging museum displays to show progression of complexity. Boas believed material culture served to inform researchers of the cultures from which they came, arranging his displays by 'tribal groupings.' Nevertheless, both approaches were innovative for their time and established influential

Pitt Rivers believed in typological display and his arrangements were heavily influenced by his understanding of anthropological objects. His primary concern was the connection of forms, grouping objects together based on how they look and function, grouping all arrowheads together for example. Within these groups, objects were arranged in order of evolutionary progression, from the simple to the complex. The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford maintains his display practices to this day, illustrating his organization. Pitt Rivers' purpose in such organization was to illustrate a chain of progress, the evolution of human manufacturing from the simple to the complex, regardless of place of origin or date of manufacture. Additionally, his displays remove objects from their context and human agency, in order to make connections and patterns easier to

He argued for organization based on tribal groupings and displays that offered objects a context to live and be understood in. For example, when Boas became assistant curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History, he redesigned the organization of objects by placing all the objects belonging to one tribe together. Additionally, he used mannequins to show viewers how something was worn or used or he placed drawings of the objects in use beside the display cases. Like Pitt Rivers, Boas wanted to take museum visitors down as path, but rather than the path of evolution, he desired to tell them a story about the lives of people in other cultures. Boas' work at the American Museum of Natural History is a prime example of his ideology, his desire to focus on objects within their context. Clearly, the organization and display practices of Pitt Rivers and Boas illustrate the different ideologies each