Pitt Rivers Museum - University of Oxford
Class Thesaurus
This is the list of classes used by the Pitt Rivers Museum in its artefact databases. Beatrice Blackwood's The Classification of Artefacts in the Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford. Occasional Papers on Technology, no. 11. 1970 explains the genesis of the class and keyword typology at the Pitt Rivers Museum and our database thesauri use a similar methodology. For each specific keyword (see next thesaurus) there is a related class, for example 'Spear' as keyword is related to 'Weapon' as class. The following lists do not give the relationship of one list to another, though in most instances the relationships should be easy to discern. The Museum uses more than one class and keyword in its databases if appropriate. A spear for example may have both Weapon and Ceremonial and Status given as its related classes. Such allocation of terms depends on the individual artefact's documentation:
Agriculture
Animalia
Animal Gear
Archery Weapon
Armour Weapon
Bag
Barkcloth
Basketry
Bead
Body Art
Box
Carving
Ceremonial
Children
Clothing
Clothing Textile
Clothing Footgear
Clothing Handgear
Clothing Headgear
Clothing Underwear
Commemoration
Cordage
Currency
Dance
Death
Divination Religion
Dwelling
Fan
Figure
Fire
Firearm Weapon
Fishing
Food
Food-gathering
Furniture Dwelling
Geology
Headhunting
Hunting
Insignia
Lighting
Lock
Marriage
Mask
Measurement
Medicine
Metallurgy
Model
Music
Narcotic
Navigation
Ornament
Photograph
Physical Anthropology
Picture
Plant
Pottery
Punishment and Torture
Religion
Reproduction
Scientific Apparatus
Signal
Specimen
Sport
Status
Technique
Textile
Theatre
Time
Toilet
Tool
Toy & Game
Trade
Transport
Vessel
Weapon
Writing
©2001 Pitt Rivers Museum - University of Oxford
The Museum acknowledges the work of MDA in converting this resource for use on the Web.
