The Writings
From the official musketry manual to the four great volumes of the Chase — a bibliography of the man who set the discipline's course.
Pitt-Rivers wrote continuously for nearly fifty years, from the manuals of the School of Musketry to the great archaeological volumes of his last decade. His characteristic form was the lavishly illustrated report: plans, sections and colour plates set beside a text of relentless thoroughness. He published his excavations at his own expense, in editions intended less for the book trade than for the future of the science.
The four volumes of Excavations in Cranborne Chase remain the summit of his achievement — so exact that his obituarist, E. B. Tylor, wrote that a modern contractor could refurnish the tombs and forts with their contents in place. His last book, on the Benin works of art, was being bound when he died.
Read the originals free
The full scans of the Cranborne Chase volumes are on the Internet Archive, and his essays are on Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive.
Vol. I on the Internet ArchiveBibliography
A principal list of the published work.
On the Improvement of the Rifle as a Weapon for General Use
Journal of the Royal United Services Institution
On a Model Illustrating the Parabolic Theory of Projection
Journal of the Royal United Services Institution
Primitive Warfare (lecture series)
Royal United Services Institution
On the Evolution of Culture and Other Essays
The defining statement of the typological method
Excavations in Cranborne Chase, near Rushmore — 4 volumes
Privately printed; the founding texts of scientific excavation
Antique Works of Art from Benin
Privately printed; catalogued his Benin collection as he died
In the words of his contemporaries
"The carrying out of this work raised English archaeology to a new and higher level."
"He purged himself of the great fault of the older antiquaries, that of destroying in the quest of antiquities the ancient structures themselves."