WCP6074

Letter (WCP6074.7024)

[1]1

From the Assistant CURATOR, PITT RIVERS MUSEUM

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

15. January 1948.

Dear Mr. Wallace,

Mr. Penniman2 has shown me your interesting letter of 12 January, giving information about the objects which you are kindly giving us. I noted with interest the details you gave, and especially the local story of arrowhead chipping, by means of heating and touching with a wet feather. Sir Francis Knowles3, whom I consulted, tells me that this story reached him from several sources, when he was out there many years ago. But it seems very difficult to obtain a first hand account of the method.

[2]

Your parcel arrived safely today, and has been unpacked. The objects are being entered, and your notes on them are most useful. What magnificent work in obsidian4, they contrived to produce! In some ways, I feel, the best stone-technique ever mastered.

Once again, please accept our warm thanks for your gifts, so well documented, and also for the off-print describing the obsidian tools —

With best wishes | Yours sincerely | J. S. P. Bradford. [signature]

This relates to the arrow points, scrapers &c which I collected in Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico &c 1898-1900

W[illiam]. G[reenell]. W[allace].5

1
The page is numbered [WP16/2/51] in pencil in the top RH corner.
2
Penniman, Thomas Kenneth (1895-1977) American-born naturalised British anthropologist. He was Director (or Curator as it was then known) of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford 1939-1963.
3
Knowles, Francis Howe Seymour, 5th Baronet (1886-1953) English anthropologist. At the Pitt Rivers Museum he studied methods used by Stone Age peoples in making their tools and weapons and developed skills in the manufacture of stone tools for experimental archaeology. His book The Stone-Worker’s Progress (1953) summarized this research.
4
Glass-like mineral produced when lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimum crystal growth. It is hard and brittle, fracturing with very sharp edges, which were used in the past in cutting and piercing tools.
5
Annotation in ink in the hand of the recipient, written across the top margin of the page.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP6074.7024)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2018-08-15]

Please cite as “WCP6074,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP6074