Indeed most still carry the original handwritten labels created for them by the museum's first curator Henry Balfour who helped arrange General Pitt Rivers's original collection in the annexe built specially for it alongside the University Museum. Being a zoology graduate of great wealth, he not only purchased widely for the museum, but, unlike General Pitt Rivers, actually travelled the world to collect items himself. He stimulated others to add to the collection too, being considered the greatest authority on the material culture of primitive people in his day. Today's visitors to the Pitt Rivers vary greatly. Some come in to idle away a few hours on a wet bank holiday, but most come in school or family groups, as the museum is rated as the most popular of all Oxford museums as far as schoolchildren are concerned.
Artists come too, seeking inspiration from the primitive carvings and crafts.
Few, however, manage to capture the true immediacy of the artefacts, or the overwhelming beauty that so many of these primitive exhibits display. Other visitors include anthropologists, writers, novelists even. Given the atmosphere generated here, it's no wonder that writer Colin Dexter eventually set one of his Inspector Morse murder mysteries in the Pitt Rivers Museum, using a dagger from the collection as the murder weapon in The Daughters of Cain, which was published in 1994. Other celebrities have been inspired by the collections too. David Attenborough, for instance.