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Pitt Rivers Museum

1938.35.81.4

Raw cotton tinder, part of fire piston. [MJD (Verve) 5/9/2017]


1938.35.81.4

Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

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Collection type
Object
Description
Raw cotton tinder, part of fire piston. [MJD (Verve) 5/9/2017]
Long description
Raw cotton tinder, part of fire piston. The fire piston contains [.1] cylinder, [.2] piston, [.3] tinder pouch, [.4] tinder and [.5] grease box. [MJD (Verve) 5/9/2017]
Geographical reference
Southern Shan State
Cultural groups
Shan
Person
Field collector Henry George Ashworth Leveson
PRM source Henry Balfour
Date / Period
Date made: Before 1891
Date collected
1891
Acquisition information
Bequeathed: 1939
Materials and processes
Material Cottonwool Fibre Plant
Dimensions
Thick 6 mm approx, Width 100 mm approx, Length 102 mm approx
Object numbers
Accession number: 1938.35.81.4 Other numbers: 761 a-c
Research and responses

Card and book refer to Leveson as H E Leveson; this is undoubtedly actually H G A Leveson [SD]

Balfour does refer to an 'H.E. Leveson' in his 1907 chapter, 'The Fire-Piston', in Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Burnett Tylor, Oxford, Clarendon Press, (see, for example, pages 23 and 26), so the identity of Leveson remains unclear. [FL 14/10/2004]

HGA Leveson is listed as "Officers in the Burma Commission" under "Deputy Commissioners, 3rd Grade" in The India List and India Office List for 1905 (p. 69) [Dan Hicks 7/3/2017]

Search terms: Fire, Fire Accessory, Tinder