Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers

Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers (born April 14, 1827, Hope Hall, Yorkshire, Eng.—died May 4, 1900, Rushmore, Wiltshire) was an archaeologist often called the “father of British archaeology,” who stressed the need for total excavation of sites, thorough stratigraphic observation and recording, and prompt and complete publication. Like Sir Flinders Petrie, Pitt-Rivers adopted a sociological approach to the study of excavated objects and emphasized the instructional value of common artifacts.

An army officer for most of his life, Pitt-Rivers retired from the military in 1882 and in the following year embarked on a series of excavations of prehistoric, Roman, and Saxon sites on his 29,000-acre estate in Wiltshire. His large-scale excavations, models of organization and painstaking care, unearthed villages, camps, cemeteries, and barrows (burial mounds) at sites such as Woodcutts, Rotherley, South Lodge, Bokerly Dyke, and Wansdyke.

His efforts resulted in one of the classics of archaeology, the richly illustrated Excavations in Cranborne Chase, 5 vol. (1887–1903), which Pitt-Rivers printed privately. He also observed a similarity between the stone implements used in Europe when certain rhinoceroses and mammoths roamed there and the implements characteristic of the dawning stages of Egyptian culture.