Uncovering colonial legacy in a British digital archive: The Pitt Rivers Museum case

Anthropological and ethnographic cultural institutions generally hold large collections of audiovisual material connected with several European nations’ colonial past. Many of these institutions are now aware of the ethical challenge they are faced with and are currently attempting to address this ambiguous and often violent colonial past. In the case of anthropological photographs and films, the process of decolonisation has been particularly complicated, as it is also bound up with the glowing reputation of many of the founders of the discipline of anthropology itself. Within the context of the European-wide project ‘Polyvocal Interpretation of Contested Colonial Heritage (PICCH), this research proposes a framework for decolonising anthropological films held in digital archives and obtained within colonial relationships. The chapter illustrates a re-usable process of re-appropriation and re-interpretation by analysing characteristics and patterns from a sample of the anthropological films digitised in the collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, UK.