Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers was born to W.A. Lane-Fox and Lady Caroline on April 14, 1827 in Hope Hall, Yorkshire. In 1880, Augustus changed his name to include Pitt-Rivers once inheriting 29,000 acres of land from his uncle George Pitt. The land was untouched and had been the battleground of the West Saxons, Romans, and Britains; it was at this time that Rivers devoted himself to studying it. Rivers attended Sandhurst Military College and became commissioned Lieutenant General (in 1882). He served in the Crimean War and was at the siege of Sebastopol. Later, Augustus married and had a daughter (who eventually became the wife of John Lubbock, an Archeologist) with his wife.
Augustus conducted large scale excavations which uncovered villages, camps, cemeteries, and burial mounds. Rivers became known as the "Father of British Archaeology," for expressing the importance of thorough site excavation through stratigraphic observation and recording. His home in London soon became crowded with such items as skulls, stone implements, pottery, and other works of art. He then decided to open a public museum at Bethnal Green, which he arranged according to his evolutionary system. Once his collection became too large for Bethnal they transferred it to Oxford, where it remains today.
Among the titles he has held, included are: First Inspector of Ancient Monuments in Britain, Fellow of the Royal Society, Vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries, London, and President of the Anthropological Institute. And Between 1887 and 1898, Augustus published his discoveries in four manuscripts entitled Excavations in Cranborne Chase. Rivers was also largely in part responsible for starting the Hythe School of Musketry.
Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers died at the age of 73 on May 4, 1900 in Rushmore, Wiltshire.
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol 12, Pgs 100-101
The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Vol 9, Pg 480, 1991
Bowden, Mark. American Antiquity: "The Life and Archaeological Work of Lieutenant-General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers," No. 2 pp. 390-391, 1994
Online Classic Encyclopedia, http://www.1911ency.org/P/PI/PITT_RIVERS_AUGUSTUS_HENRY_LANE_FOX.htm, (March, 2006)
Written By: Holly Schwichtenberg, 2006