Oxford University academics used a chalice made from a human skull – potentially belonging to an enslaved Caribbean woman – at formal dinners until as recently as 2015, a new book has alleged.
The chalice, created from a sawn-off skull adorned with a silver rim and stand, was used for decades as a drinking cup in the senior common room at Worcester College, according to Professor Dan Hicks, curator of world archaeology at the university’s Pitt Rivers Museum.
It was eventually repurposed to serve chocolates instead of wine after it began to leak, said Prof Hicks.
The item’s “shameful history” is detailed in his forthcoming book Every Monument Will Fall, which explores the colonial origins of contemporary conflicts and the theft of ancestral human remains.
The ritual at Worcester College was phased out in response to mounting dismay among fellows and guests, and in 2019 the college invited Prof Hicks to investigate the chalice’s origins, he told The Guardian.
Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, who chairs a cross-party parliamentary group on Afrikan reparations, told the outlet: “It is sickening to think of Oxford dons, sitting in this bastion of privilege, itself enriched by the proceeds of centuries of colonial violence and extraction, swilling drink out of a human skull that may have belonged to an enslaved person and has been so little valued that it has been turned into an object.”
Noting that the identities of colonial victims were often erased from history as a result of racist ideas about British and white supremacy, with this forming “part of the dehumanisation and violence”, Prof Hicks said he had been unable to find any record of who the skull belonged to.
But carbon dating showed the skull was around 225 years old, and its size and circumstantial evidence suggests it came from the Caribbean and may have belonged to an enslaved woman, he said. Worcester College insists the latter suggestion “cannot be substantiated”.
Conversely, the chalice’s ownership was thoroughly documented – with alterations to the item providing an example “of how the legacies of empire persist”, Prof Hicks told The Independent.
Silver hallmarks suggest the skull was made into a chalice in the City of London in 1838, the year of Queen Victoria’s coronation and of the emancipation of enslaved people in British colonies.
It was sold at auction in 1884 by Bernhard Smith, an Oxford graduate who collected weaponry and armour. Prof Hicks believes that Smith may have been gifted the chalice by his father, who served in the Caribbean as a Royal Navy commander at the time of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire.
The chalice was purchased – for five pounds and five shillings – by the Victorian soldier and archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, who founded the Oxford museum bearing his name in 1884. The Sotheby’s auction listing showed it had a wooden stand inlaid with a Queen Victoria shilling and a Greek inscription carved into the bone. The shilling is no longer there and the broken wooden stand has been replaced with a silver one, but the inscription remains.
The chalice was finally donated to Oxford in 1946 by the archaeologist’s grandson, the eugenicist George Pitt-Rivers, in what Prof Hicks described as one of his first acts after being released from his internment during the Second World War as a Nazi sympathiser and follower of the British fascist Oswald Mosley.
The younger Pitt-Rivers inscribed his name on the chalice’s rim, echoing that of his grandfather which is carved above the entrance to the Oxford-based museum at which Dr Hicks works.
As well as seeking to “give some degree of humanity” to the woman to whom the skull belonged by piecing together her story, Prof Hicks said the overall aim of the book is to ask whether “this is anomaly, or whether there is a wider conversation we need to have about human and ancestral remains in our museums and universities”.
Prof Hicks is backing a fresh call from MPs to ban the sale of ancestral remains and prohibit their display in museums.
An Oxford University spokesperson said: “Worcester College can confirm that it is in possession of a vessel which is made from part of a human skull of unknown origin.
“The item was given to the College in 1946 by a former student, George Pitt-Rivers (1890-1966). In the 20th century, the vessel was sometimes on display with the College’s silver collection and used as tableware. The College does not hold records of how often this was the case, but it was severely limited after 2011 and the vessel was completely removed ten years ago.
“The College’s governing body sought expert scientific and legal advice to address whether the item should be retained, and if not, how it should be disposed of appropriately. DNA testing was unable to identify the geographic or ethnic origin of the skull and as such the suggestion that the skull is that of an enslaved woman from the Caribbean cannot be substantiated.
“As a result of this advice, the College resolved that the item should be stored in the college archives in a respectful manner, where access to it is permanently denied. As Dr Hicks acknowledges in his book, the College has dealt with the issue ethically and thoughtfully.”
