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Hello, one of the world's most extraordinary museums can be found in a grand Victorian

building in central Oxford. The interior is a delightful clutter of glass cases filled with

a bewildering variety of objects from totem poles to musical instruments, human skulls to Egyptian

Sakophagi and weapons. This is the Pitt Rivers Museum, founded in 1884 by General

Augustus Pitt Rivers who donated more than 18,

by General Augustus Pitt Rivers, who donated more than 18,000 objects from his private collection.

Pitt Rivers was a pioneering archaeologist and anthropologist who dedicated much of his

life to the study of human technology and its development. He excavated

many ancient sites and is credited with the development of modern archaeological

techniques and he was among the first to argue for the preservation of our ancient

monuments.

With me to discuss Augustus Pitt Rivers and his work,

Adam Cooper, visiting professor of anthropology at Boston University,

Richard Bradley, professor in archaeology at the University of Reading, and Dan Hicks, University Lecturetor

of Archaeology at the Bit Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford.

Adam Cooper, Augustus Bit Rivers, it wasn't his original name, he was won in 1827 as Augustus Lane Fox.

Can you tell us a little about his early life?

Well his father was a younger son, had some sort of a state, small estate in New Yorkshire, and he died when Augustus was five.

And his mother took him to London and he sort of disappears

from the records we know very little about him in London we're not even

...