FALL 2023 | VOL. 65, NO. 2
THE MAGAZINE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
PASSPORTS
TO THE PAST A century ago, the New Deal’s support for ceramic labs brought the world to the Penn Museum
CELEBRATE YOUR MOMENTS
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CATERING BY
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CONTENTS FALL 2023 | VOLUME 65, NUMBER 2
1 4 Dispatches from the Field By C. Brian Rose, Lucy Fowler Williams, Jason Herrmann, Katherine Moore, Michael Danti, Richard Zettler & Josef W. Wegner
16 Documenting Damage to Ukraine’s Heritage By Vasyl Rozhko
20
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From Clay Tablets to Text Messages By Jane Sancinito
28 Hopeful Science in Bleak Times
By Vaughn Ortner & Marie-Claude Boileau
38
Beyond the Galleries An interview with Laura Hortz Stanton
50 An Etruscan Stone Speaks By P. Gregory Warden
DEPARTMENTS 2
From the Editor
3
From the Williams Director
60
In the Labs
62
Academic Engagement
64 Learning and Community Engagement 66
Membership Matters
68
Welcome News
PENN MUSEUM 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6324 Tel: 215.898.4000 | www.penn.museum The Penn Museum respectfully acknowledges that it is situated on Lenapehoking, the ancestral and spiritual homeland of the Unami Lenape. Hours Tuesday–Sunday: 10:00 am–5:00 pm. Closed Mondays and major holidays.
Guidelines for Visiting The Museum prioritizes a safe and enjoyable experience for all. Learn more about our guidelines for visiting, including booking timed tickets, at www.penn.museum/plan-your-visit.
Admission Penn Museum Members: Free; PennCard holders (Penn faculty, staff, and students): Free; Active US military personnel with ID: Free; K-12 teachers with school ID: Free Adults: $18.00; Seniors $16.00; Children (6-17) and students with ID: $13.00; Children 5 and under: Free. Museum Library Call 215.898.4021 for information.
Above: Penn Museum summer interns Layla Fistos and Faruq Adger, from the 2023 cohort, pictured in the Mainwaring Wing; photo by Sarah Linn. On the Cover: Created in the 1930s, this cabinet of ceramic thin sections lives on the ground floor of the Penn Museum, inside the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials; photo by Quinn Russell Brown.
Fall 2023
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FROM THE EDITOR
Making Memories in a Museum BEFORE MY WIFE AND I RELOCATED to Philadelphia in the summer of 2021, we followed in the footsteps of many of our “boomerang generation” peers: We moved in with my mother-in-law to save money. I had known Thongsoune Luangrath for almost a decade, but during this six-month spell as roommates, I truly got to know her as Mom. Forty years earlier, Mom had come to the U.S. as a refugee from war-torn Laos. Now she was a retired factory worker, savoring her much-earned freedom. For lunch she cooked food from her country, like papaya salad and eggrolls, and at night she nestled onto her couch to watch Thai movies. As the last issue of Expedition went to print, the phone rang in the worst way: Mom had a heart attack. We flew home and spent five days by her side in the ICU.
EDITOR
Quinn Russell Brown PUBLISHER
Amanda Mitchell-Boyask ARCHIVES AND IMAGE EDITOR
Alessandro Pezzati GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
Colleen Connolly Christina Jones COPY EDITOR
Page Selinsky, Ph.D.
On the fifth day, we said goodbye. Soon we were sitting on the floor of Mom’s living room, praying alongside four Buddhist monks as they blessed her home. With sacred chants, they sent her belongings to be with her spirit in the next realm. Mom had all sorts of handmade Lao and Thai crafts, from wood carvings to golden prayer bowls, and these treasured objects surrounded us as we prayed. There’s no easy path back to work after a personal tragedy, but it turns out the Penn Museum had a couple of surprises for me. First, Marie-Claude Boileau wrote a story about Laos for this issue (In the Labs, p. 60), which felt like a lovely nod to Mom’s ancestors. And then one day as I walked through the Museum’s Spotlight Gallery, located next to the Sphinx, I saw something familiar: a Southeast Asian fishing trap (Welcome News, p. 70). As a child, Mom had seen these traps stationed in the Mekong River, the same river she floated down when she escaped Laos in 1980. In her house in the American suburbs, she had small toy versions of these fish traps on keychains. The bold promise of this Museum is that it can connect you to the past. You can take an impersonal journey through 10,000 years of human history, and at times you may even find a more direct link to the culture of your distant relatives. For me, on that walk through the Spotlight Gallery, the Penn Museum became a place to make a new memory with someone I had lost. I had been so excited to show Mom the Asia Gallery on her next visit to
ACADEMIC ADVISORY BOARD
Marie-Claude Boileau, Ph.D. Richard Leventhal, Ph.D. Simon Martin, Ph.D. Kathleen Morrison, Ph.D. Lauren Ristvet, Ph.D. C. Brian Rose, Ph.D. Page Selinsky, Ph.D. Stephen J. Tinney, Ph.D. Jennifer Houser Wegner, Ph.D. Lucy Fowler Williams, Ph.D. CONTRIBUTORS
Jessica Bicknell Marie-Claude Boileau, Ph.D. Jennifer Brehm Kris Forrest Sarah Linn, Ph.D. Anne Tiballi, Ph.D. Jo Tiongson-Perez PHOTOGRAPHY
Jennifer Chiappardi Colleen Connolly Francine Sarin (unless noted otherwise) INSTITUTIONAL OUTREACH MANAGER
Thomas Delfi
Philadelphia. She never got to see it, and that stings. But each day I come to work I will carry her with me, and as I walk through these halls, I know they have more to teach me about her. I hope our Museum’s bold promise holds true for you on your next visit: With objects from myriad cultures across three floors of galleries, may you make new memories and special connections of your own.
QUINN RUSSELL BROWN, EDITOR
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© The Penn Museum, 2023 Expedition® (ISSN 0014-4738) is published three times a year by the Penn Museum. Editorial inquiries should be addressed to expedition@pennmuseum.org. Inquiries regarding delivery of Expedition should be directed to membership@pennmuseum. org. Unless otherwise noted, all images are courtesy of the Penn Museum.
FROM THE WILLIAMS DIRECTOR
A Season of Insight Dear Friends, Though the summer may be a quiet period for many within the academy, most of you know that this the Museum’s busy season for fieldwork, with Museumaffiliated researchers around the world working on projects that will yield new insights about human history. This summer it was my pleasure to visit the Museum’s Gordion Project in Türkiye, where Museum-affiliated scholars have been working since 1950. It was a thrill, as always, to visit this site of over four thousand years of human habitation; I even had a chance to stand on the spot where we believe Alexander the Great cut the famous Gordian Knot. As is the case with all Museum research sites, Penn students and international collaborators play an important role at Gordion; it was my pleasure to spend time with Penn undergraduates, who shared my excitement at the new material we were unearthing, and with our Turkish collaborators from the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, who are essential partners in the project. I’m also pleased to report that, after a long application process, Gordion’s status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site has been approved—a designation that will undoubtedly bring added and welldeserved attention to this remarkable excavation. The research we do here at the Museum stretches beyond the field sites themselves; it’s a network of collaboration, connecting the field to the Museum and the Museum to other institutions and scholars. This issue of Expedition demonstrates our central place in a vast nexus of scholarly work—a fact that Laura Hortz Stanton makes clear in her article on how the collections are used by researchers around the world (p. 38). In this issue, you’ll get a window into this research network, offering you insights from Italy about the decipherment of an Etruscan stele that will transform our understanding of that ancient civilization (p. 50) as well as a glimpse into the history of Museum research conducted during the Great Depression, under the auspices of the WPA (p. 28)—featuring extensive work by women, in a time when the field was still overwhelmingly male, as well as showing the historical roots of our Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) laboratories. On a lighter note, you’ll enjoy a small paean dedicated to the
humble receipt, including its ancient roots in Sumerian tablets (p. 20)—the sort of unexpected connection between past and present that I know Penn Museum Members appreciate. Naturally, we also have updates on some of our recent events here at the Museum, like our annual Leadership Dinner, as well as upcoming opportunities for exclusive, Members-only events throughout the fall. Having seen our fieldwork firsthand, I returned to the Museum for the fall semester with a renewed appreciation for all the work this institution does. When the public imagines a museum, they often think of a static place: objects in glass cases, silent hallways. Nothing could be further from the truth. This issue of Expedition demonstrates that our Museum is a dynamic hub for research, education, and insight, involving scholars, students, and visitors from around the world. Thank you for your support of the Museum and its mission, and for being part of a community dedicated to advancing understanding of our common human story. Warm regards,
CHRISTOPHER WOODS, PH.D. WILLIAMS DIRECTOR
Fall 2023
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SUMMER 2023 FIELD NOTES
DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD
GORDION (ANCIENT PHRYGIA / MODERN TÜRKIYE)
By C. Brian Rose
T
he 2023 season at Gordion was one of the team’s most successful summers. Excavation again focused on the southern side of the Citadel Mound, where we have been uncovering the Phrygian citadel’s South Gate and an adjacent palatial complex with mosaic floors (the “Mosaic Building”). At the South Gate, which appears to have been in use for nearly 1,300 years, excavation finally located the 9th century BCE gatehouse for which we have long been searching. The approach road leading to the gatehouse is nearly 100 meters long, far longer and defensively more sophisticated than any other citadel gate known from the 1st millennium BCE. From the Mosaic Building, the most spectacular find was an ivory and gold sphinx dating to the early 6th century BCE. This probably adorned the top of a chair or throne, which is not surprising, since the Mosaic Building most likely served as the residence for Gordion’s rulers at that time. Remote sensing (magnetometry) conducted to the east of the Citadel Mound, in the Eastern Outer Town area, revealed a previously undefined fortified residential district more than seven hectares (17 acres) in size. It seems likely that it was first built in the 8th century BCE, at the strategically important Sangarios (Sakarya) River crossing. The team also continued the Cultural Heritage Education Program, directed by Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann, for young people resident in the Gordion area. Architectural conservation was just as active as excavation, with a continued focus on three different areas: the citadel’s East Gate, Megaron 3, and one of the units of the Terrace Building, which was used for food and textile production on a massive scale. The 4
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View of the citadel’s South Gate: The sloping approach road runs across the middle of the picture, bordered by the citadel fortification wall behind it and, in the foreground, a monumental stepped terrace wall; photo by C. Brian Rose.
megaron and Terrace Building had been destroyed in a great fire ca. 800 BCE, and in the case of the former building, conservation entailed the construction of a new stone wall following the original plan, to protect and more clearly define the fragile surviving masonry. A new tourist path with stainless steel fencing was also installed, as were 34 security cameras throughout the site. The latter project was made possible by
The most spectacular find from the Mosaic Building: an ivory and gold sphinx dating to the early 6th century BCE, which likely decorated the top of a chair or throne. Despite its imposing posture, this sphinx measures only 3.1 inches in length and 2.7 inches in height; photo by Ahmet Remzi Erdoğan of the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara.
the generosity of Ankara’s Museum of Anatolian Civilizations and the American Embassy in Ankara. We also had the opportunity to conserve and study the finds from the 8th century BCE tumulus (T-52) that we excavated in 2019 in partnership with the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. Buried inside the tomb chamber were over 3,000 amber beads imported from the Baltic, constituting one of the largest assemblages of amber known from the ancient world. The most frequently discussed subject during the summer was the pending vote regarding Gordion’s inscription on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site List. The vote was supposed to happen last year, but the UNESCO meeting was postponed due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Finally, on September 18 in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, Gordion officially received UNESCO World Heritage Site status, the first active field project conducted under the auspices of the Penn Museum to earn the distinction. This year witnessed the publication of our comprehensive, Turkish-language guidebook to
the site, and the appearance of two new magisterial volumes: one on the ivories of Gordion, by Phoebe Sheftel; the other on the cremation tumuli, or burial mounds, of 7th and 6th century BCE date, by Ellen Kohler and Elspeth Dusinberre. For supporting all of these activities, the team is greatly indebted to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Ankara’s Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, the Penn Museum, and the Friends of Gordion, especially Charles K. Williams II, the Areté Foundation, the Merops Foundation, Matthew Storm and Natalia Arias Storm, Paul Williams and Leslie Berger, Alix and Keith Morgan, Nina Robinson Vitow, and Robert and Joan Rothberg.
C. BRIAN ROSE is Ferry Curator-inCharge, Mediterranean Section, and James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology.
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SUMMER 2023 FIELD NOTES
DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD
NEW MEXICO, U.S.
By Lucy Fowler Williams
I
n New Mexico this summer, Dr. Lucy Fowler Williams launched a new co-authored book project with Pueblo artists Isabel Gonzales of Jemez (Walatowa) and Shawn Tafoya of Santa Clara/Pojoaque, and Phil Karshis, a photographer and former director of the Poeh Cultural Center. The
book, currently referred to as “Pueblo Embroidery: A Continuing Prayer in Colored Yarn,” will document the beautiful garments being made today across over 20 Pueblo communities to better recognize and share this often overlooked art form. Topics will explore the history and longevity of Pueblo embroidery and design, the variety of traditional textile forms, embroidery techniques, meaningful stories and experiences of artists dedicated to this special work, and new trends that draw inspiration from Pueblo cloth. Shawn Tafoya had the following review of the summer’s project: “I am so privileged and thankful to my Pueblo ancestors who gifted me with insight into this most sacred and valued work that is used continuously in our ceremonies and dances. In individual and group settings I continue to teach students ensuring that Pueblo embroidery persists well into the future!”
LUCY FOWLER WILLIAMS is Associate Curator-in-Charge and Sabloff Senior Keeper, American Section.
Above: Pueblo embroidery in action in a class at the Poeh Center and Museum, Pojoaque, New Mexico. Right: Detail of embroidered dance kilts made by Shawn Tafoya (Pojoaque/Santa Clara Pueblos); photo by Shawn Tafoya.
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Isabel Gonzales (Jemez/ San Ildefonso Pueblos) holds one of her embroidered dance garments, an often overlooked art form; photo by Phil Karshis.
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SUMMER 2023 FIELD NOTES
Anthropology Ph.D. candidate Eric Hubbard, right, looks on while Olivia Lee activates the GPS base station in Motya, a small island off the western coast of Italy; photo by Jason Herrmann.
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Project members from the University of Palermo and University of Pennsylvania making their first trip to the site; photo by Jason Herrmann.
DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD
MOTYA, ITALY
By Jason Herrmann
I
returned to Motya, Sicily, this summer to continue geophysical survey of the island site. This work is part of ongoing research that integrates geophysical and surface surveys with test excavations to document the development of urban space as ancient Motya grew from a Phoenician colony in the 7th century BCE to become a major center in the central Mediterranean at its height in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. This year, I was joined by Eric Hubbard (Anthropology Ph.D. student) and Olivia Lee (Classics & English undergraduate) who helped to carry out a magnetic gradiometry survey over the approximately eight hectares that remained to be mapped on the site. The Penn team also worked closely with our partners from the University of Palermo, directed by Dr. Paola
Sconzo, to record archaeological layers that were uncovered through excavation in three dimensions using survey-grade GPS receivers and photogrammetry using hand-held cameras and drones. These 3D models are not only a crucial record for archaeologists, but a powerful tool for interpretation after fieldwork by archaeologists and the public. Three-dimensional representations of a ceramic kiln excavated this summer were analyzed and interpreted by Olivia Lee as part of her Price Lab Mellon Summer research Fellowship in Digital Humanities.
JASON HERRMANN is the Kowalski Family Teaching Specialist for Digital Archaeology in CAAM.
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SUMMER 2023 FIELD NOTES
DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD
GEORGIA
By Jason Herrmann
I
joined a team from Cranfield University and the Georgia National Museum where we conducted a geophysical survey of Dmanisis Gora, a hilltop site enclosed by three walls that was occupied during the Bronze and Iron Ages (Dr. Nathaniel Erb-Satullo and Dimitri Jachvliani, directors). The Penn team, which included Anthropology Ph.D. students Eric Hubbard and Chris LaMack, used magnetic gradiometry to document the dense collection of structures within the fortified citadel as well as to explore the relatively open ground surrounded by the second and third enclosure walls outside. The team also surveyed a section of the citadel and two possible kurgans (burial mounds) using ground-penetrating radar.
Chris LaMack collects ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data. Above: LaMack and Eric Hubbard during the initial site reconnaissance; photos by Jason Herrmann.
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DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD
PERU
By Katherine Moore
A
s the Mainwaring Teaching Specialist for Zooarchaeology, I started the summer in my laboratory in CAAM followed up with more lab work in Peru. Every week of fieldwork requires weeks of detailed laboratory analysis on excavated material, much of which will not leave the host country. The work focused on animal bones that had been excavated in 2010, 2015, and 2018 from cave sites in the Andes mountains, preparing them to be delivered to Peruvian Ministry of Culture collection storage. In my hotel room in Arequipa, I set up a temporary lab with microscope, digital scale, photo studio, and computer, recording more than 30 pieces of information for each of tens of thousands of specimens. These bones tell the story of hunting, foraging, changing climates and craft traditions over a period of almost 12,000 years. Looking to their next project, our team visited the department of Huanuco
Above: Penn Museum’s in central Peru, planning potential Katherine Moore, second fieldwork at another cave site in from right, meets with collaboration with local residents community leaders in and site stewards. the village of Lauricocha in July 2023; photo by In the photo, you can see us Victoria Schwarz. meeting with community leaders in the village of Lauricocha in July. Team partners from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, the Center for the Study of Early Americans, and Penn met with community leaders and site stewards to discuss community participation in future fieldwork.
KATHERINE MOORE is the Mainwaring Teaching Specialist and Practice Professor and Undergraduate Chair in the Department of Anthropology.
Fall 2023
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SUMMER 2023 FIELD NOTES
DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD
NIMRUD (ANCIENT ASSYRIA / MODERN IRAQ)
By Michael Danti and Richard Zettler
I
n 2022–2023, the Penn Museum and Penn’s Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Civilizations (MELC) initiated a new archaeological research project and a series of cultural heritage restorations at the ancient NeoAssyrian capital city of Nimrud (ancient Kalhu, the biblical Calah) in northern Iraq. The same team is also working at the later Neo-Assyrian capital city of Nineveh
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with an Iraqi team, where they recently uncovered Assyrian reliefs of King Sennacherib (ruled 705–681 BCE) in one of the city’s gates (the Mashqi Gate or “Gate of the Watering Places”). These projects and many others are driving a renewal of research on the ancient cultures of northern Iraq and a new era in communitybased cultural heritage preservation and protection. While archaeologists since Austen Henry Layard (1817–1894 CE), who famously worked at Nimrud and Nineveh in the mid-19th century, have revealed the vast palaces and temples of Nimrud’s citadel, much remains to be learned about this imperial capital. Many of the challenges stem from the poor methods of early archaeologists, compared to modern standards, and a lack of thorough documentation. The Penn team has already achieved a new understanding of the city by re-excavating the trenches of previous archaeologists, quickly resolving research questions that have lingered for decades. Penn researchers are also working with the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage and the local community to restore standing architecture deliberately attacked by the so-called Islamic State group (ISIS) and investigating areas that ISIS looted in search of antiquities for sale on the illicit art market. Excavations in the city’s religious precinct, heavily Showing horses led by damaged by ISIS, have revealed a grooms, these bronze monumental gateway in a temple gate bands with constructed by the capital’s founder, embossed decoration are from the Ishtar King Assurnasirpal II (ruled 883–859 Temple at Nimrud, BCE), complete with inscriptions during the reign of king and decorated bronze bands that Assurnasirpal II; photo once graced the wooden doors of the by Michael Danti.
A room in the palace of king Adad-nerari III showing a unique type of stone column base and a large stone jar (an alabastron); photo by Michael Danti.
gate. The gateway links the temple of the warrior-god Ninurta, parts of which were excavated by Layard, to the adjacent temple of the goddess Ishtar, or more precisely an astral aspect of this goddess of love and war, Ishtar Sharrat Niphi (“Queen of the Rising [Venus]”). Both temples perished in a conflagration in 614–12 BCE, when Nimrud and other Assyrian cities were sacked by a coalition of Babylonians and Medes, ending an empire that many scholars credit as being the world’s first. The fire preserved large numbers of artifacts in the ruins of the temple, and Iraqi and Penn archaeologists have uncovered other evidence of the assault, including a deliberately defaced stone stele in the gateway depicting an Assyrian monarch, probably Assurnasirpal II, and a god or goddess, probably Ninurta. Fragments of the stone stele, hacked to pieces, lay strewn across the floor of the building. One small fragment provides a rare depiction of the goddess Ishtar Sharrat Niphi.
Work in the fall of 2022 and spring of 2023 has also revealed large parts of the palace of the Assyrian King Adad-nerari III (ruled 811–783 BCE), including several royal inscriptions and stone column bases of a style previously unattested in Neo-Assyrian architecture. This palace may have served as a new residence for this king or, perhaps, it may have been a gift to his famous and powerful mother, Queen Shammuramat, the semilegendary Semiramis of later times.
MICHAEL DANTI is the Program Director of Penn’s Iraq Heritage Stabilization Program and a Penn Museum Consulting Scholar. RICHARD ZETTLER is Associate Curator-in-Charge, Near Eastern Section, and Associate Professor of Mesopotamian Archaeology.
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SUMMER 2023 FIELD NOTES
DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD
ABYDOS (EGYPT)
By Josef W. Wegner
View of the summer 2023 excavations in the Middle Kingdom town site at South Abydos; photo by Josef W. Wegner.
F
rom June through August 2023, the Penn Museum’s Egyptian Section excavated at South Abydos, Egypt. The season included work in multiple areas of the mortuary complex and associated town site of the 12th Dynasty pharaoh Senwosret III. In the royal necropolis of Anubis-Mountain we continued our investigations of the tomb enclosure of Senwosret III. This enclosure—a huge T-shaped structure that contains the entrance to the subterranean tomb of the king—includes many stillenigmatic features, including two large dummy mastabas that have been partially excavated in past seasons. This summer, the team completed the excavation of the larger of the mastabas. In the process we exposed new evidence on the close relationship of
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these structures with the initial building phase of the Senwosret III tomb and possibly another—still undiscovered—subterranean structure within the tomb enclosure. Also at the Anubis-Mountain royal necropolis, this summer we completed the final outfitting on the new visitor building for the tomb of King Seneb-Kay—a royal tomb that was discovered and excavated by the Penn Museum from 2013-14. This new building is part of the site management plan for South Abydos and will allow the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities to open the SenebKay tomb to visitors in 2024. A major focus of the 2023 season was excavation in the Middle Kingdom town site of Wah-Sut, a settlement established alongside the mortuary complex
On-site discussion of justexcavated pottery vessels by 2023 team members; photo by Josef W. Wegner.
of King Senwosret III and occupied between ca. 1850 and 1500 BCE. The team focused on town excavations and included Nicholas Picardo, Ayman Damarany, Penn Museum staff member McKay Burdette, and Penn Ph.D. students Rolland Long and Danielle Zwang. This work completed the substantial exposure of two adjoining elite residences of the late Middle Kingdom. The well-preserved architecture in this area provides new insights into an urban site of the 2nd Millennium BCE. The work is part of a program to complete the full documentation of the surviving remains of the town of Senwosret III at South Abydos. Connected with the town site research, additional work focused on analysis of finds from cemetery areas that we have excavated since 2021 in the vicinity of the Wah-Sut town site. A series of large New Kingdom tombs excavated in recent seasons are once richlyequipped tombs of the early 18th Dynasty. Although
they were badly looted by ancient tomb robbers, many of these tombs provide crucial new evidence on the ancient population of South Abydos. Among these tombs was the unique discovery in 2022 of a mass grave that includes the burials of more than 200 people. This context is an unparalleled opportunity to understand life in Abydos during one moment in time. Detailed osteological analysis of the skeletal remains was begun by Penn Museum staff members Page Selinsky and Stacey Espenlaub and is part of the ongoing efforts to complete the scientific analysis of these remains.
JOSEF W. WEGNER is Curator, Egyptian Section, and Professor of Egyptology and Egyptian Archaeology.
Fall 2023
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HeMo field expedition to the Savior and Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa.
Documenting Damage to Ukraine’s Heritage A DEDICATED TEAM LEADS EFFORTS TO RECORD RUSSIA’S ATTACKS ON CULTURE By Vasyl Rozhko
RUSSIA’S INVASION OF UKRAINE on February 24, 2022, initiated a war about the history, culture, and identity of the Ukrainian people. At stake is the question of whether the country will be its own autonomous nation. The nation’s heritage professionals have sought to understand the scope of the losses, even while they work to preserve Ukrainian culture for the future. The Heritage Emergency Response Initiative (HERI) formed just days after the 2022 invasion. The organization’s aim was to respond to the destruction of heritage during the war, as well as to prepare for postwar recovery. Under the leadership of the two nongovernmental organizations that support the Tustan State Historical and Cultural Reserve and the Maidan Museum, HERI assembled an eager team of volunteers from across the country’s cultural heritage sector. These professionals were all hoping to do something to safeguard Ukraine’s culture and cultural workers. HERI provided that opportunity. At first, HERI was involved in everything: mapping the losses, building a response network, helping museums and museum workers, providing materials and equipment for museums given by international donors, assisting in collections evacuations, and establishing
partnerships with international organizations in the field of cultural heritage. However, it soon became clear that some specialization was needed. Documenting heritage involves producing written documentation, taking photographs, and creating 3D models. The amount of data required to record damage quickly becomes overwhelming. No readymade database in Ukraine exists that can manage this amount of information. Following working meetings with UNESCO and the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, the need for a robust data infrastructure that could combine data on Ukrainian heritage with current international standards became clear. The idea of the Ukrainian Heritage Monitoring Lab (HeMo) was born. To date, HeMo has examined 720 heritage sites during 45 field trips to Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kyiv. Every site is extensively documented with photographs and a guide developed originally to record the damage by ISIS to the Mosul Cultural Museum in Iraq. These data have been processed and entered in a geographic information system database linked back to the specific monument. Gradually, HeMo’s efforts have gone beyond damaged buildings to include information
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DOCUMENTING DAMAGE TO UKRAINE’S HERITAGE
HeMo field expedition at the Museum of Local History in Okhtyrka.
about museum collections. Russia’s forces have stolen many museum artifacts during the war, and digitizing museum registers so that they are available to cultural professionals around the world is one hope the country has in recovering stolen cultural objects. HeMo’s results are published as open data at www.heritage.in.ua. HeMo is revolutionary in that it is a civil society effort that promotes open access to cultural heritage information. In a post-Soviet country such as Ukraine, considerable cultural data remain inaccessible. Defeating Russia is not only about what happens on the battlefield; it is also about defeating a mentality of strong state control inherent to the Soviet and Russian cultural sector. By promoting the open access to culture, HeMo is also promoting the full democratization—and accountability— of the cultural sector to Ukrainian society. HeMo’s work requires strong coordination across the team inside Ukraine, but partnerships with international organizations are vital, as well. The organization’s efforts have been supported financially by the Cultural 18
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Emergency Response, Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, and World Monuments Fund. The Penn Cultural Heritage Center at the Penn Museum has been an important collaborator in the initiative, providing regular technical advice and guidance as well as moral support. Over the past several months, the Penn Cultural Heritage Center has also sponsored a series of workshops that have helped HeMo and other key cultural leaders plan for the future of heritage in Ukraine. Why is it important to document Russia’s attacks on culture right now, during the war? There are three reasons. The first is pragmatic: There is an urgent need during a conflict to identify priorities and needs for emergency stabilization, to help channel international aid and donor goodwill, and to provide the first vital assessments for eventual reconstruction. The lesson from recent conflicts is that this work is logistically challenging because it requires the coordination of multiple teams and a significant investment in data architecture. HeMo has learned from these experiences
Above: The Regional Art Museum named after G. Galagan in Chernihiv. Right: The Shchors Cinema House in Chernihiv.
by specifically cultivating strong teams and investing in the information architecture required to maintain cultural data. Second, Ukrainians, like most of the world, hope that there will be legal accountability for this invasion and the targeting of civilians and Ukrainian culture. It is an established principle of international humanitarian law that cultural heritage sites may not be ordinarily targeted. But the exact circumstances and damage to a museum or historic structure must be carefully documented to provide adequate evidence for any accountability mechanism. HeMo’s work provides exactly this information for the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office and for the international legal community. Finally, documenting cultural damage is the first step toward remembrance and memorialization. There are thousands of military and civilian dead in Ukraine from this war. Many groups have calculated the human toll, but HeMo has documented its mounting cultural losses. In a country where evidence of violence against its citizens has long been suppressed by the Soviet Union and denied or downplayed by Russia, remembrance is an act of resistance. Even now, the HeMo teams are thinking through methods for translating the records of damaged heritage sites into means of commemoration in Ukraine’s cityscapes. In Kharkiv, a prototype plaque is in development for installation on targeted historic buildings.
This war, imposed by Russia, has highlighted the stakes of heritage in Ukrainian society. As a result, there is now more attention to the careful management of culture. Not only is it necessary to survive the war; it is necessary to rethink the country’s inherited governance systems from the Soviet era—and to make the country’s endangered heritage open not only for Ukrainians, but for the whole world. Vasyl Rozhko is the founder of the Ukrainian Heritage Monitoring Lab, co-founder and coordinator of the Heritage Emergency Response Initiative, the head of Tustan NGO, and a former head of the Museum Department in Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture. All images in this article are courtesy of Zoriana Pogranychna, of the Ukrainian Heritage Monitoring Lab (HeMo).
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y r o t s i H f e i r B A s t p i e c e R of to i n i c n Sa e n a J : 23 Author 0 2 / 6 0 / 0 1 : Date 2 6 2 2 : t un o c d r Wo
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A receipt records the exchange of goods or services for money or another form of payment. In their current form, receipts are humble and commonplace, but their history stretches back to Mesopotamia and through all the ups and downs of global commerce since the invention of writing itself. As historical sources, receipts present a unique view of the past, including the sometimes complex relationships between buyers, sellers, and governments in the course of daily life. Today, as receipts shapeshift to fit the digital age, we can reflect on their history as we consider their role in the future.
Above: A tablet from ancient Nippur (Southern Iraq), excavated by the Penn Museum from 1888 to 1900, which records the sale of date palms from the late 3rd millennium BCE; PM N800.
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MODERN ANNOYANCE, ANCIENT ORIGINS
About once a month, I clear out the junk that has accumulated in my bag. Among the spare keys, lip balms, and loose change, I inevitably pull out a wadded-up mess of receipts; they are, unquestionably, my least favorite thing to find. Each one is a testament to a time when I forgot to refuse a receipt, and the redundancy of their existence annoys me almost as much as the knowledge that the heat-sensitive paper cannot be recycled and is covered in potentially carcinogenic chemicals. I am getting better at remembering to say no, but, until I master that skill, I can at least take some comfort in the knowledge that receipts are slowly becoming a relic of the predigital era. Before I know it, they may well be replaced entirely by texts or emails or simply by the account provided in my bank statement. Still, as a historian, my happiness about the slow extinction of receipts is not uncomplicated—they are, or at least were useful...right? Asking someone to “show the receipts” or professing that one “had receipts” has become a regularized way that the internet demands or offers proof, especially proof of facts that others wished to conceal. Receipts have long been considered trustworthy: They are documentation and an opportunity to fact check, which is a valuable thing in the online age. More literally, though, receipts are the way that customers and businesses verify past transactions. You sometimes still need a receipt to return goods, and I have lived my life with a certain amount of gratitude that receipts exist to do the math of my grocery shopping for me. Their physical form, especially crumpled up in a pocket or the bottom of a purse, may be annoying, but the good intentions of a receipt are hard to argue with. Furthermore, the long and thin strips that irk me, the ones arranged in columns with goods on the left and prices on the right, are actually a fairly modern invention. The 1980s saw the final integration of credit and debit card information into a single receipt (and finally moved us all away from card imprinters and copy paper), and it was only in the early 20th century that cash registers were invented that could produce their own receipts. Before that time, receipts already 22
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A tablet from ancient Nippur (Southern Iraq), excavated by Penn Museum from 1888 to 1900, which records the sale of date palms from the late 3rd millennium. To aid scholars in their reading and translation of cuneiform, which wraps around the surface, the tablet has been photographed from six angles; PM N677.
had a long, complicated, and diverse history—much of which is well-recorded in the collection of the Penn Museum and reveals how, time and again, humans have needed this low-tech technology, this most humble form of documentation, to make human contact and human transactions fair and legible.
THE OLDEST RECEIPTS ON RECORD
Legibility itself owes a debt to receipts. Beginning in Mesopotamia, the very earliest writing we have comes in the form of receipts, and it is likely that writing was invented to facilitate this kind of recordkeeping. Buyers in particular needed to keep track of their purchases, of how much they had spent in the past, so they could be better informed for the next transaction. While sellers knew what they were charging on a day-to-day basis, customers needed a way to record the quantities and costs of goods that they only sporadically needed. They had to monitor prices to see if they were going up or down. Few, if any, would have needed a reminder of the price of daily commodities like bread, but specialty orders and imported goods from far away? In those cases, it was good to have the information written down somewhere. The Penn Museum’s collection holds several of these earliest receipts, written by buyers and recording everything from luxuries to bulk orders. An interesting case in the collection, a clay tablet (N800) from Nippur in southern Iraq, shows that receipts were quickly used to offer documentation of complicated financial transactions. The tablet (shown on opposite page), which was excavated by the Museum from 1888 to 1900, is a well-preserved receipt from a sale of date palms from the late 3rd millennium BCE. Date palms were popular trees throughout the region for their sweet fruit and abundant shade. Because the text mentions the 15 trees but says nothing about the land on which they grew, it is likely that they were being grown on sacred land. The trees could change hands and be bought and sold like any other product, but the land continued to belong to the god. There are several receipts, including a second one (N677, shown at left) involving the same buyer and seller, that seem to hint that residents of Nippur were allowed to work this land and derive profit from it, but were not permitted to own it. The receipt preserves, amid its simple list of parties and witnesses, a record of this complex legal action—all through the sale of a bunch of trees. Even if they are brief, such documents are generally more complicated than what we typically refer to as receipts today, if we restrict them to documents issued by sellers to provide buyers with a record of sale. In
antiquity, however, customers generally created these documents themselves and their format varied widely based on what seemed useful to them. At times, they even look more like contracts than receipts, but they always preserve some kind of exchange of goods or services for a valuable commodity, first gold and silver by weight and then, later on, coins.
TAX RECEIPTS: FROM PAPYRUS TO BROKEN POTTERY
It was not until bureaucratic systems became more advanced in ancient Egypt that officials determined it would be helpful for the government to issue receipts for tax payments. For the first time, “customers” did not bear the onus of recording their expenses but could passively expect the information to be accurately recorded and provided to them. There were so many taxes in Egypt that the receipts for them varied greatly in quality. Some were carefully crafted, official documents written on fine papyrus, while others were profoundly casual records scribbled on whatever was handy, including, at times, broken pieces of pottery. Somewhere between those extremes are the receipts found in the Fayyūm in Egypt. These were issued to transporters who paid tolls to import and export goods
An early example (1300–1400 CE) of the system of debit and credit columns in the Arabic-speaking world, with goods listed on the right and values to the left; PM E16658.
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to the region and have been recovered in ancient garbage dumps where, much like my own receipts, they were discarded as no longer necessary. One such document (E2768), records the tax paid on seven donkey’s worth of bitter vetch, a type of bean often used as animal feed in the 2nd or 3rd century CE. The receipt is in better shape than many from the period but was clearly written in haste with many abbreviations and even a couple of misspellings. It was evidently good enough for the transporter and the official (it is unknown whether the former could even read) but it suggests that receipts were casual parts of daily life in this period and no longer documents that needed to be carefully preserved or archived. Since they would only be used for a short time, it was acceptable for the texts to be irregular and imperfect, as long as the key details of product and value were accurate.
PRECURSORS OF THE MODERN RECEIPT: DEBIT AND CREDIT COLUMNS
It is not until the medieval period that receipts began to be more standardized. Double-entry bookkeeping, though often credited to the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli (1447–1517 CE), was first introduced among Muslim scholars, and especially Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (ca. 780–ca. 850 CE). The system led to the adoption of debit and credit columns, a format of receipts that is still in use today with minimal modifications. The verso side of a papyrus receipt (previous page, PM 16658) in the Penn Museum’s Egyptian Collection shows an early example of the system in use in the Arabic-speaking world, with goods listed on the right and values to the left.
FROM RECEIPTS TO PAPER MONEY
At a similar time as accounting and a new format for receipts was catching on in Europe and Central Asia, merchants in Song Dynasty China (960–1279 CE) were realizing the great potential that receipts had to streamline business. Because many Chinese merchants sold goods over long distances, they were beginning to find the weight of their bronze coinage onerous. Steadily, they developed a system whereby they could 24
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Above: Found in Fayyūm, Egypt: A record of tax paid on seven donkeys’ worth of bitter vetch, a type of bean often used as animal feed in the 2nd or 3rd century CE; PM E2768. Right: An example of receipt-money from the Qing Dynasty (1636–1912), which was issued by independent banks called qianzhuang. The combination of stamps and handwritten notation suggests that this receipt was used multiple times; PM 29-127-4710.
deposit money with trusted colleagues and take a receipt for that money and use it as proof of payment elsewhere, essentially using a receipt as an I.O.U. In time, a handful of merchants were officially authorized to act as banks by the government and later, in the 11th century, the government itself took over the production of these promissory notes, transforming receipts into the world’s first paper money. Marco Polo (ca. 1254–1324), on his travels to the East, was deeply impressed with the system and brought the idea back to Europe. Even after the state issued paper money, receiptmoney continued to be used in China in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1636–1912) dynasties, issued by independent banks called qianzhuang. Each bank used different marks to establish the value of the receipt, leading to notes with unique designs, like the one shown at left. The combination of stamps and handwritten notation suggests that this receipt was used multiple times, perhaps even changing value as it went, recording different transactions and using the inherent flexibility
WHEN A RECEIPT BECOMES A
CANVAS
A work of “receipt art” by Avis Charley, a contemporary Native American (Spirit Lake Dakota/Diné) artist; courtesy of the artist.
In addition to ethnographic documents, receipts and bills have found their way into museums by way of artists. There are a number of receipts in London’s Tate Modern as art pieces, as well as works painted on receipts or objects that use receipts as decoration. The author particularly enjoys the work of Avis Charley (Spirit Lake Dakota/Diné), a Native American painter and ledger artist born in Los Angeles. Charley’s work provides a way to think about Indigenous Americans in this context, since the history of receipts often excludes these cultures.
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of this kind of receipt to serve a variety of purposes. Across the globe over the course of the early modern period, receipts became more and more common, whether used as de facto currency or not. The printing press and invention of moveable type meant that governments and merchants alike could order receipt forms that came pre-printed with names and other basic information. By the 18th century, some of these could be rather elaborate, as we can see in a receipt for the salary paid to a soldier in the Continental Army curated by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (shown at right). The receipt comes pre-printed with spaces for the amount, date, and name, but also with an elaborate border that both promotes the Connecticut Line and makes it more difficult for anyone to print a false receipt or claim that they had not
Above: This oil painting from around 1530 shows a merchant, possibly named Jan Snoek, at his ledger book. The Netherlandish artist Jan Gossaert lived ca. 1478–1532. National Gallery of Art 1967.4.1, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. Right: A cash register, built 1904 in Ohio, from the brand Pokladna, a Polish word meaning “safe box” or “cash box” in Czech; photo Wikimedia Commons.
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been given what they were due. As with early American money, there was a great deal of concern in this era about the potential counterfeiting of receipts as the chaos of the revolutionary period encouraged many to attempt to profit from the unstable political and military circumstances.
FROM CASH REGISTERS TO DIGITAL SYSTEMS
The invention of the cash register, and subsequent addition of receipt-printers to that machine, brought about a Wild West of receipts in the early 20th century. Some merchants still wrote receipts by hand, while others continued to use pre-printed receipt books. Most chose to record sales in columns, as had been common since the late Middle Ages, but some opted to write out receipts in full sentences. In contrast to all this variety, cash registers produced reliable and predictable arithmetic and receipts, qualities that quickly increased their popularity and gradually led them to dominate the market. It is only in recent years, with the advent of new digital payment technologies that allow one party to pay another directly, that registers have slowly lost some of the ground they gained. With the advent of digital banking, card and bank statements are now more accessible than ever before, and, as a result, receipts are increasingly going digital or being neglected entirely. With the same or similar information available elsewhere, there are relatively
The printing press made possible this 18th-century receipt for wages paid to a soldier in the Colonial Continental Army. The receipt comes pre-printed with spaces for the amount, date, and name; courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, African American History and Culture, Object 2011.155.313.
few contexts where a paper receipt is the most efficient way to document a sale, and for online shopping, especially, printing often represents a step backwards, technologically speaking. These new digital systems are convenient, produce less waste, and generally make transactions more efficient for businesses. Yet, as we witness receipt technology shift yet again, from paper to bytes of data just as surely as it was once transformed from tablets to papyri, we can expect users will experience both new benefits and new challenges. As we are beginning to see, the accessibility of digital receipts is generally accompanied by less privacy. Not only do businesses track purchases to better target us with advertisements, many also require logins and access to personal information in order to send us our digital receipts. In the era of hacking, malware, and spam messages, providing an email or phone number to vendors poses a potential risk to your data in a way that the anonymity of
a printed receipt never did. Every stage in the history of receipts reflects the evolution of economic transactions and human contact. From the basics of recordkeeping in Mesopotamia through the invention of paper money to the digital commerce revolution, receipts have always changed form to meet the needs of the contemporary moment. Even as we feel that we need them less, we nevertheless have preserved their content and even their form in our digital replacements. I will be happy to shed the clutter of their current form, but happier still to monitor the next stages in the long evolution of the receipt. Jane Sancinito, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She received her doctorate in 2018 from the Ancient History Graduate Group at Penn. She is a numismatist with a special interest in the circulation of coins in Roman Syria.
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During the 1930s, millions of Americans struggled to sustain themselves economically due to the manifold challenges of the Great Depression. The Emergency Relief Appropriations Act of 1935 was passed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create consistent government jobs that put unemployed Americans back to work. Of all such ventures, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was among the most impactful due to its hearty budget and many years in operation. The WPA provided many cash-strapped American families with an income, in addition to equipping workers with skills and contributing to national infrastructure, at a time when unemployment reached nearly one-fourth of the population. The WPA also reached into the arts and academic fields. At museums, and at the Penn Museum in particular, a number of WPA projects ranging from artifact analysis to bibliographic work and mural painting were carried out by workers who were paid by the WPA. Projects involving science were provided opportunities to deploy laboratory methods on a large scale, leading to a legacy of research that extended far beyond the end of this Depressionera program, and the Museum’s ceramics laboratories serve as a prominent example. Left: A ceramic plate from the site of Sitio Conte in modern Panama; PM 40-15-201. Above: A clay fragment of a prehistoric bowl, traced to the San Juan Culture Area in the U.S. state of Colorado; PM 23198.
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1931–1934: A CHANGING NATION AND A CHANGING FIELD OF ARCHAEOLOGY In addition to representing cultures from across the globe and traditions from across time, the collections of the Penn Museum also reflect the history of the institution itself, encompassing decades of excavation, research, curation, and public interaction. One particularly remarkable collection lives neither in the galleries nor in storage, but rather within the Museum’s Ceramics Laboratory, part of the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM). It consists of an old wooden cabinet with 18 drawers labeled “A” through “R,” a hefty and weathered piece of furniture that would fit nicely in a library during the first half of the 20th century. This cabinet, along with its associated archival documents, is what remains of the Works Progress Administration’s ceramics laboratories, which housed a special series of artifact research projects at the
Penn Museum (then called the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania) between 1935 and 1942. Inside the drawers are hundreds of small glass microscope slides, each containing an ultra-thin slice of pottery. With the United States in the midst of trying times, it was no small feat that American archaeologists were able to realize achievements that would come to shape the discipline as a whole. By the 1930s, archaeological science had yet to become well established as an approach to understanding the human past. However, scholars already held an appreciation for the study of technological development in the archaeological record, as evidenced by their interest in artifact typology characteristics across different periods, including object shape, decoration, and marks of workmanship visible to the naked eye. During the first years of the Depression, a handful of researchers had begun to consider the potential of scientific laboratory methods for use in the analysis of ancient technology and in dating. One such individual was Anna Osler Shepard, a Santa Fe-based archaeologist who introduced the scientific analysis of ceramic technology to her discipline. Shepard’s innovative approach included chemical and mineralogical analysis, firing experiments, and especially petrographic study (the microscopic examination of thin sections of rock), which had yet to spread far from the geosciences since its inception in the 1820s. The application of this technique to archaeological ceramics allowed her to examine the optical properties of the fired clay fabric in addition to the presence of inclusions such as temper, hinting at the ancient potter’s technological knowledge, available resources, and geographic location. From the very beginning, Shepard proved that her methods deserved a complementary place alongside the more traditional archaeological means of data collection, due to their exceptional abilities to expand upon and refine these results. A cabinet of WPA thin sections holds a total of 2,547 ceramic samples, representing material from the Americas, Europe, and Western Asia (Near East), with the oldest from Neolithic Europe ca. 6,200 BCE; photo by Marie-Claude Boileau.
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Meanwhile, at the Penn Museum, another ambitious archaeologist, Mary Butler Lewis, was also studying the ancient pottery craft. Records from her doctoral research suggest that Butler Lewis became interested in the benefits of laboratory analysis in the early 1930s, and as a result she saw the potential for a strong professional relationship with Anna Shepard. The Museum’s Archives hold several letters written back and forth between the two pioneering female archaeologists within which the burgeoning methods of ceramic analysis were expanded upon. In 1933, two years after Shepard had begun her ceramic analysis and three years prior to her methods being published for the first time, Butler Lewis inquired about the petrographic techniques. She received a reply from Shepard including instructions on the use of polarized light and thin sections to view ceramics through the microscope, as well as an offer to visit Philadelphia to further discuss these techniques. Over the next year, the two researchers shared insights and study materials as they worked together in the development of this new science of archaeological pottery. In an October 1934 letter, Butler Lewis reveals plans for a dedicated laboratory at the Museum for the technological analysis of ceramics, despite the ongoing economic depression. Whether they knew it or not at the time, Mary Butler Lewis and Anna Osler Shepard had built the foundation necessary for the revolutionary WPA laboratory projects, which began soon after.
1935–1942: THE WPA CERAMICS LABORATORIES AND THEIR INFLUENCE Beginning in 1935, a new group of researchers at the Museum picked up the project of ceramic technological analysis where it was started by the two pioneering women and took this research to new heights. Such a feat was made possible in no small part by the labor power and funding of the WPA. The new group was led by three Museum archaeologists, with Vladimir Fewkes overseeing the day-to-day operations of the ceramics laboratories and writing weekly progress reports, while Donald Horton and Joseph Berman served as project heads who coordinated the overall research and publishing goals of the laboratories. The stated mission of the WPA ceramics laboratories was to illuminate the
Whether they knew it or not at the time, Mary Butler Lewis and Anna Shepard had built the foundation necessary for the REVOLUTIONARY WPA laboratory projects, which began soon after.
Anna Osler Shepard introduced scientific techniques to the analysis of ceramic artifacts, laying the groundwork for archaeologists to answer a wider range of questions than ever before using collections of archaeological pottery.
stages taken by pottery-making techniques in pursuit of a better understanding of a society’s technical development. Lab leadership viewed scientific analysis as a critical new facet towards this accomplishment, as techniques such as petrography had been proven to “furnish absolute identification of the localities of manufacture,” according to 1937 archival project documents. The Archives also contain blueprints for one of the WPA ceramics laboratories (p. 34, known as Project 19421), providing insights into how these spaces functioned. For instance, the project consisted of seven departments, each with its own duties and outputs. In addition, it seems that the laboratories employed
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a relatively large group of about 28 individuals, with positions ranging from carpenters who constructed the workspaces to chemists and laboratory assistants who performed experiments and collected data, as well as librarians and typists who organized bibliographic information and carried out the WPA’s secretarial work. The documents describe a scope and scale to these WPA projects that was unprecedented at the time, leading the revolutionary archaeological science being employed at the Penn Museum to gain publicity at an ever-increasing rate within the academic community. Throughout the mid- to late 1930s, archaeologists from across the United States visited the WPA laboratories at the Museum, sometimes offering their support in the form of loaned or donated contributions of ceramic materials and written words of high praise. In September 1937, an ambitious doctoral student at the University of Michigan named Frederick Matson arrived in Philadelphia to meet Donald Horton and observe the WPA laboratories. He later wrote: “We had a long discussion about the possibility of making archaeological ceramic technological studies more visible and more desirable in the U.S. archaeological community.” Following his conversation with Matson, Horton
A set of undated archival photos show Mary Butler Lewis and her colleagues on site during archaeological projects in Guatemala; photos from the Penn Museum Archives.
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reached out to Anna Shepard and recruited Vladimir Fewkes for participation in a group discussion on the terminology and standards for the new techniques of ceramic technological analysis. These four archaeologists became the organizing committee of the Ceramic Technology Conference of 1938, which included a group of 12 handpicked participants from a range of institutions. Despite its small size, this event served to establish a community of scholars interested in the possibilities held by the scientific analysis of ceramic artifacts.
Mary BUTLER Lewis During the early to mid-1930s, archaeologist Mary Butler Lewis was in the process of completing her Ph.D. dissertation on the Maya ceramics of Piedras Negras in Guatemala. In 1936, she became the first woman to receive this distinction from the University of Pennsylvania Department of Anthropology. Her work on ceramic technology at the Penn Museum was a driving force behind the establishment of the WPA ceramics laboratories. After being awarded her Ph.D., Butler Lewis returned to a largely field-based career in archaeology, both in Guatemala and in the American northeast.
Anna OSLER Shepard In 1931, while she was working as a research
associate at the Laboratory of Anthropology at Santa Fe, young archaeologist Anna Osler Shepard was invited to perform an experimental technological analysis on pottery from excavations at Pecos, a site located just southeast of the city. From Shepard’s writings at the time: “The immediate purposes of a ceramic technological investigation are to identify materials and locate their sources, to study the indications or workmanship, and to describe properties by reference to exact, impersonal standards.” This methodology had an immediate impact on the field, as it revealed that thousands of ceramic vessels had been imported into the Pecos Valley, rather than manufactured locally, which other archeologists had claimed. Thus, Shepard had proven her scientific methods to be worthy of a place in the archaeologist’s repertoire.
Top image: Mary Butler Lewis working as director of the Hudson Valley archaeological project; photo from Penn Museum. Archives Left: A photo of Anna Shepard used on the cover of her biography, The Ceramic Legacy of Anna O. Shepard; photo courtesy of University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.
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Following the conference, several participating institutions, including the Museum of Northern Arizona, the University Museums of the University of Michigan, and the Bryn Mawr College Department of Geology, remained in contact with the leadership of the WPA ceramics laboratories at the Penn Museum, thus building these laboratories into a sort of early nexus for research in archaeological science. Additionally, as the
Blueprint included in the archival
WPA projects progressed and their influence continued to spread, academic interest and support began to arrive from an expanding network of individuals beyond the original conference participants. When the ceramics laboratories were up for renewal in 1940, they received an outpouring of support in the form of letters from prominent archaeologists. The interdisciplinary and interinstitutional collaboration of a large network of professionals made way for ceramic analysis, and especially ceramic petrography, to become common practice in archaeology. The 1941 weekly progress reports written by Fewkes make clear that the environment of these laboratories was one in which workers were encouraged to expand their own personal skills and collaborate frequently with others in different departments to solve problems. However, around this time, the difficulty of finding enough research to justify the maintenance of such a large workforce was also becoming evident, as the United States prepared to face its next epochdefining challenge, entering World War II. As a result, all WPA-sponsored projects at the Museum ended in 1942, and President Roosevelt discontinued the WPA overall shortly after.
materials of the WPA ceramics laboratories. This is the general plan, describing the laboratory departments, their duties, and their outputs.
The mobilization of scientific analysis at the Museum and the material collection it produced OPENED A NEW CHAPTER in archaeological knowledge, one in which the modern discipline currently resides. 34
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1943–2009: THE LEGACY OF THE WPA CERAMICS LABORATORIES Despite the closing of the WPA laboratories, their impact on archaeological science is traceable. The mobilization of scientific analysis at the Museum and the material collection it produced opened a new chapter in archaeological knowledge, one in which the modern discipline currently resides. The person who best represents the opening of this next chapter is Frederick Matson, who had served on the organizing committee for the 1938 conference before
continuing to develop the science of archaeological ceramics throughout his 25-year tenure as Penn State’s first Professor of Archaeology. During this time, Matson worked with a variety of artifact collections and continued to build on the intellectual foundation laid by the WPA projects with his research. In fact, several archival letters from both the Penn Museum and Penn State’s Matson Museum of Anthropology show that he borrowed part or all of the WPA thin-section collection for decades. This correspondence indicates that the WPA thin sections served as longtime reference material
for Matson and his department, while also reinforcing the growing network of institutions with interests in the science of archaeology. While none of Matson’s contributions to the field can be understated, his work on ceramic technology, highlighted by the landmark 1965 publication of Ceramics and Man, remains a key text in the history of archaeological ceramics, and the legacy of the WPA projects resonates within this work. As the practices of conducting archaeology in the laboratory spread across the nation under the continuous influence of scholars such as Matson and Shepard, large-scale archaeological science experienced a slow period at the Penn Museum. This period came to an end in 1961, when Museum Director Froelich Rainey, who championed an international shift in Museum priorities from collection to research, established the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA). Within the new laboratories, archaeological science was conducted in a variety of ways, ranging from the development of remote sensing equipment to the employment of specialists in fields such as physics and botany to analyze archaeological materials. However, the Center’s most profound work took
Top Left: A pottery fragment from Marajo Island off the coast of Brazil, with two faces visible; PM SA2291. Left: A cross section of a ceramic sherd from Brazil after it was sampled by the WPA for thin sectioning. Above: The thin sections of the WPA collection remain in use by CAAM as teaching aids and as the subjects of student research. Microphotographs reveal elements of the ceramic fabric visible under the petrographic microscope; photos by MarieClaude Boileau.
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place under Associate Director Elizabeth Katherine Ralph, who made significant contributions to the emerging technique of radiocarbon dating, using the dendrochronological (tree-ring dating) studies of Dr. Henry Michael to achieve breakthroughs in the accurate calibration of carbon-14 dating. Alongside such monumental work, MASCA also furthered the objectives of the WPA ceramics laboratories by continuing the study of ceramic technology of the Museum’s archaeological collections to shed more light upon the development of the potter’s craft at sites across
the world, such as that of Ban Chiang on Thailand’s Khorat Plateau (1980s) and those of Hasanlu Tepe and Dinkha Tepe in the Solduz Valley of northwestern Iran (1990s). Through these projects, the methods of Anna Shepard were blended with technologies newer to the field of archaeology like scanning electron microscopy and radiography (X-ray). Overall, the work of MASCA on ceramic technology built on the legacy of the WPA projects by achieving integration of archaeology and laboratory science, made possible through the culture of research fostered by Rainey and Ralph.
FROM AN UNLIKELY ORIGIN IN TIMES OF HARDSHIP, THE WPA CERAMICS LABORATORIES CAPTURED THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BURGEONING SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO ARTIFACT ANALYSIS… FOREVER CHANGING THE WAYS IN WHICH ARCHAEOLOGISTS SEEK ANSWERS ABOUT THE PAST.
Microphotograph of a WPA ceramic thin section from Cumaruara, Brazil. Indigenous potters added tiny pieces of freshwater tree sponges to their clay to strengthen it. The needle-like shapes in this image are sponge spicules; photo by Marie-Claude Boileau.
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2010–PRESENT: CAAM AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE AT THE PENN MUSEUM TODAY The latest chapter in the history of archaeological science at the Penn Museum began shortly after the closing of MASCA and involved, once again, the analysis of archaeological ceramics. In early 2011, the Museum successfully opened the Ceramics Laboratory as a proof of concept for laboratory spaces dedicated to teaching Penn students. A few years later, in 2014, and in partnership with the School of Arts and Sciences, the Penn Museum established CAAM as a hub for archaeological sciences with a full curriculum of undergraduate and graduate courses, a team of teaching specialists, new labs, programs, and a classroom, all dedicated to learning and researching in archaeological sciences. As part of CAAM, the Ceramics Laboratory’s research represents over 10,000 years of human engagement with the mineral world. Ceramic data is used for the reconstruction of the production technology, distribution, and use of ceramics with the aim of understanding the behavior of the people who made, traded, and used these objects. At the heart of the resources available in the Ceramics Lab is the WPA thin section collection, which is used in teaching for such courses as “Material World in Archaeological Science” and “Petrography of Cultural Materials.” From an unlikely origin in times of hardship, the WPA ceramics laboratories captured the importance of the burgeoning scientific approach to artifact analysis and elevated it to a position of profound influence within the discipline, forever changing the ways in which archaeologists seek answers about the past. This unique collaboration between the Penn Museum and the WPA allowed for the deployment of archaeological laboratory methods on a large enough scale to convince the scholarly community of their merits, a prominent role that deserves recognition. The productive archaeology laboratories of the presentday Penn Museum and those elsewhere can be traced, in part, back to those WPA projects and the scholarly community they helped to foster.
Mary Butler Lewis, at the far right, with colleagues on a dig in Guatemala; photo from the Penn Museum Archives.
Vaughn Ortner graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Anthropology, Concentration in Archaeology, and Minor in Archaeological Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2023. He currently works as a freelance field technician for cultural resource management firms. Marie-Claude Boileau, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials and Teaching Specialist for Ceramics. FOR FURTHER READING Visit the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials website at penn.museum/sites/caam. Bishop, R.L., and F.W. Lange. 1991. The Ceramic Legacy of Anna O. Shepard. Denver: University Press of Colorado. Kidder, A.V., and A.O. Shepard. 1937. The Pottery of Pecos, Volume II. New Haven: Yale University Press Matson, F. 1965. Ceramics and Man. New York: WennerGren Foundation.
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BEYOND the GALLERIES A conversation with Laura Hortz Stanton, our Director of Collections, about keeping track of a million objects and setting the Museum up “for the next 100 years.”
Julia Commander works on her specialty—the treatment of monumental Egyptian stone—at the Conservation Lab Annex, the temporary off-site conservation lab for large-scale architectural objects being prepared for installation in the Ancient Egypt and Nubia Galleries. Commander is the Penn Museum's Alice and Herbert Sachs Conservator of Egyptian Collections. Fall 2023
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When you walk through the doors of the Penn Museum, you will encounter 10,000 years of human history across three floors and more than a dozen galleries and exhibitions. But you will see only one percent of our total collection, which has more than a million objects ranging from textiles and pottery to statues and steles. To better make sense of the magnificent but at times overwhelming holdings, Director of Collections Laura Hortz Stanton set out to document the data behind how and why objects move around the Museum, how they are loaned and acquired, and how research and conservation takes place. This meant tracking with hard data the way that people interact with the collections and how objects differ based on their age, materials, and provenance. Expedition talked with Hortz Stanton about this mighty undertaking, with a special focus on how access to the collection—which has always distinguished the Penn Museum in the field—will continue to expand on-site, off-site, and through digital platforms.
You recently shared a presentation with Penn Museum colleagues on key collections metrics from January to June of 2023. There were a lot of extraordinary numbers in there, but one that stood out was the number of objects moved by collections staff in that six-month period: 34,902. What does that tell us about who is using the collections and why? Laura Hortz Stanton: One of the extraordinary things about the collections is how they're used and accessed all the time. When people generally think about museum collections it’s in the context of exhibitions and public programming. Those are really important ways that that collections are made accessible, but they're frequently used in other ways. I often think about the work of museum collections management as an anthill— in that what you see above the surface is only a small portion of the work that it takes to steward and manage a museum collection. I’m glad to have the opportunity to chat with you about this work and to represent the team of people—Keepers, Registrars, Conservators, and Special Projects staff—who are dedicated to caring for the Museum’s collections. 40
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The collections team recently started to compile metrics as a way to quantify the work of collections management. Objects are relocated throughout the Museum building for various reasons, including for conservation, research, or improved storage. For tracking purposes each time an object moves it’s documented in our database. We have researchers who come in from all over the world to access the collections. Our keepers work closely with those researchers to determine what collections they need to access. Once an object list is compiled in collaboration with the Keeper the objects are moved to one of our research spaces so they can be reviewed, photographed, and documented by the vising researcher. Objects may also move because they are going to be reviewed or treated by the Museum’s conservators. Collections materials will often travel from their storage location to our conservation lab to prepare them for upcoming exhibits or loans, to ensure that they are stable and can be used during a class, to receive a specialty housing, or to review and document any observed changes in condition. Condition documentation and preventive conservation are
Dwaune D. Latimer, Friendly Keeper of Collections, African Section, presents objects to Penn Museum Members at a November event; photo by Eddie Marenco.
important parts of the strategy in caring for the collections long-term. The preventive conservation and documentation of the collection is a constant work in progress and the collection team is always working on projects to provide better storage conditions for the objects. On any given day staff members might be improving storage boxes and containers to better support objects, or reconfiguring shelves for safer access to materials, so we can reduce handling. Photographs of the collection are uploaded to the management database, which is the tool we use to track and document the collection. We’re
regularly doing research to expand the information in the database, which in turn helps with discoverability of the collection by the public via our online collection database on the Museum’s web site. Storage space is at a premium here at the Museum and collections have to move around the building in order to maximize available room in the storage rooms. A particular challenge is the storage of oversize materials, and we have many of those objects in the collection. In fact, a large percentage of the nearly 35,000 objects moved in the first half of the year were part of a storage reorganization project.
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Former Head of Conservation Lynn Grant (left) works alongside Katy Blanchard, the Fowler/Van Santvoord Keeper, Near East Collections, to install the funerary headdress and jewelry of Queen Puabi of Ur in the Middle East Galleries in 2018. The orange Puabi-themed T-shirts marked the special occasion.
COLLECTIONS Fast FACTS These figures, tracked from January to July 2023, provide a glimpse into the wide work that Penn Museum’s staff does with the collection.
2,118 253 2,458 42
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Objects accessed by 254 researchers Objects in conservation Treatment hours of the 248 objects
178 34 49,228
Number of countries represented in the collections Gallery locations and 65 storage rooms sq. ft. of Museum collections space
When an object isn’t on display—and most objects are not—how do we store them to make sure they’re safe? An essential part of the work of collections staff is ensuring that the collections are stored in a way that aids in their long-term preservation. We're always looking at how we can improve storage, both on an object-level and on a macro level. Our staff use their experience and expertise to evaluate objects and make decisions on how those items could benefit from improved storage. Sometimes that involves placing the object in a prefabricated box, tray, or bag and sometimes it requires the custom construction of a storage mount to ensure the object is fully supported. But we are also always looking for actions that could have a large-scale impact on the entire collection. When we think about collections care on the macro level one of the first things we try to impact is the environment— temperature and relative humidity—within our storage rooms. The Museum has a range of storage rooms, some of which are designed to maintain ideal conditions and other rooms that are challenging from an environmental management perspective. The Mainwaring Wing is our newest storage space and where we store organic materials that require the tightest environmental controls. The Museum is so lucky to have this wing of the building, which for the last 20 years has served as an amazing space to safely store the collections and provide better access to anyone who wants or needs to use the collection. The Museum is constantly working to improve our storage spaces. We're currently embarking on a comprehensive inventory of our biological anthropology collections and investing in improved storage rooms for the collection. In addition, the extraordinary Ancient Egypt and Nubia project, which includes a full renovation of the Coxe (Egyptian) Wing, will not only see the installation of new exhibitions in the gallery spaces, but we'll also be creating new storage rooms for the portions of the Egyptian collections not on display. The new storage space will be state-of-the-art and
Senior Registrar Anne Brancati performs a condition report on a statue from Khafajah, Iraq (PM 37-15-28). A condition report is done before and after an object goes on loan.
include compact shelving and research spaces that will transform how that collection is accessed. Even with all the work that we are doing to improve our current space, we know, that there’s still a great deal of work to be done in other storage areas to bring them to the level that we would like them to be. Everyone at the Museum takes our roles as collections stewards very seriously. We are always monitoring our environment, doing what we can to mitigate known issues within existing storage spaces, and making incremental improvements where we can. The historic structure that we are situated within is fabulous, but it can also create preservation challenges that sometimes call for creative problem solving. A million objects is a big number. Do we actually have enough space for all of them? We are nearing or at our maximum capacity for storage in our existing space. Over the next year we'll be conducting a study of our current storage spaces, doing a comprehensive evaluation of conditions, which will involve planning for future needs including what is needed to store our current collection to an even higher standard, and what’s necessary to accommodate the potential for collections growth. A component of this study will be exploring and thinking through what the collections will need for the next 100 years. I want to use
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this opportunity to explore what state-ofthe art collection storage, preservation, and research center might look like in the context of our Museum. We don’t want to warehouse the collection. We want to continue to activate objects in new, meaningful ways while being a model for excellence in preservation, conservation, collection management, and collection care. This planning period is a wonderful opportunity for our extraordinary collections team to come together and explore options that might be available to us—either within the museum or in an alternate storage location. In that sense, we could think about the collections resource facilities— on-site and off-site—almost on a parallel to the Penn Libraries, with objects as primary sources rather than texts. Absolutely. Every object has an embedded story, and our job in collections is to help bring those stories to life through research, and resource sharing and by providing an environment where other people feel welcome to do that work with us. Collaborating on the research and care of the collection is exceptionally exciting since students, scholars, and community members often bring new insight and perspectives that we might not bring to the collection on our own. You've just had your first anniversary as Director of Collections at the Penn Museum. You're a preservation professional, and you are familiar with the Penn Museum collections through many collaborative projects between the collections staff at the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts, where you were previously the executive director. What have been the most surprising things that you've learned about the Penn Museum collection so far? 44
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Senior Project Manager Bob Thurlow performs a condition report and installs a Tlingit “Undersea Grizzly Bear” Helmet (PM NA5739) at the Arthur Ross Gallery on the University of Pennsylvania campus. Senior Registrar Anne Brancati is pictured at left.
As I continue to learn about the collection, I am constantly amazed by all the information we have to share about these objects and I’m always impressed by the expertise of my colleagues and their willingness to share what they know. But I’m equally excited by how much opportunity there is to learn more information about the collections. In a way, I feel like the objects in the Museum are just holding onto their stories and waiting for us to ask the right question, welcome in another scholar, or create new space so that they can tell us their secrets. Personally, that’s what’s wonderful
TAKING CARE of the COLLECTION HOW DO YOU TAKE CARE OF A MILLION OBJECTS? It helps to have an all-star team of conservators. At the Penn Museum, these conservation professionals work in the galleries, in storage, and in the conservation lab to ensure objects remain safe and accessible. “Our staff are in the galleries every week, looking at things, cleaning objects and cases, and monitoring for pests,” said Molly Gleeson, Head Conservator. As for what happens to an object when it’s on display in a gallery, that depends on whether it’s protected by a glass case. Conservation professionals breathe a little easier when those transparent shields go up between visitors and the objects. “It won’t surprise you to hear that Museum visitors like to touch things,” Gleeson said. “Inevitably that happens, by accident or on purpose.” (Please, don’t touch things on purpose.) Then there’s the dust and grime. “We have a big, historic building with lots of foot traffic, so dust happens,” Gleeson said. “In the past, Philadelphia had a lot of pollution, and we can see evidence of this industrial history on objects that have been on display for 100 years, and even on objects in storage.” Gleeson and her coworkers examine these objects before they go on display, and also look after objects that are never exhibited. They perform scientific testing and documentation, whether that be photographing an object or simply looking at it and entering information into the collections database. In the past the field was known as “restoration,”
Neck Amphora, PM MS5467
and while restoration is still part of the work, the term “conservation” reflects both the interventive work on objects and the non-invasive preventative work. Like any nine-to-five, there’s meetings and paperwork, but the action comes during “benchwork.” That’s when you actively interact with an object in the lab. This work might involve cleaning, removing old and failing repairs, or assembling broken object fragments. At the Penn Museum, the goal of conservation is usually not to return an object to how it looked when it was first made. Artifacts from archaeological contexts and those collected by anthropologists and ethnographers may have evidence of use and burial context. Our Museum conservators are trying to preserve multiple layers of information, because each layer has a story to tell. The timeline of a conservation project can vary. “We can process many objects in one day, maybe they just need to be examined or lightly tested to see if there is surface grime,” said Gleeson. “Other objects might take a couple days or weeks, some can even take years. Some of these projects involve complex analysis and interpretation to determine treatment protocols.” While the work may take years, it is often impossible to appreciate without seeing the process or the beforeand-after treatment photographs. But when any new gallery opens, you can be certain that hundreds and sometimes thousands of hours of work have gone into the conservation of the objects you see.
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WHAT is a REGISTRAR? Statue, Portrait of Agrippina the Elder, PM MS213
FOR MANY PEOPLE, THE WORD REGISTRAR TAKES THEM BACK TO THEIR COLLEGE DAYS. The registrar gets you registered for classes and is your guide for getting you setup in your academic career at institution. “We’re basically doing the same thing, but for objects,” said Anne Brancati, Senior Registrar. “We’re getting them processed, assigning them numbers, initiating their care at the Museum.” The Registrar’s Office was established in 1929. Before that, each curatorial section processed their own objects. If we look at MS213, a Roman portrait statue from 38-54 CE that is currently on display in the Mediterranean Section, we can see that it was accessioned before 1929, because it is catalogued “MS.” (It was a gift of John H. Harrison from 1895.) But if we look at Portrait of a Navaho Woman: Hosteen Yashi Bitsoe (Daughter of Little Man), in the American Section, we see the object number 55-37-6. That means it was accessioned in 1955, that it was part of the 37th group of objects to come into the collection that year, and that it was the sixth object in that group. These days the object records go into a database system affectionally known as “EMu,” for electronic museum. Acquisitions are different now than they used to be. “We like to say that we are passively colleting instead of actively collecting,” Brancati said. “Nowadays, 95% of the new acquisitions are donations. We still participate in excavations around the world, but those objects 46
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primarily stay in their countries of origins.” Even if a potential donor decides to gift the Museum an object, that’s just the beginning of the process. Brancati chairs the Acquisitions Committee, which meets twice a year to review prospective donations. The Museum must vet the provenance of the object—tracking whose hands it has passed through since leaving its home country—and Curators and Keepers weigh in on whether the object would fill a gap in the collection. Archaeological material is a rare accession these days. “We very formally abide by the 1970 UNESCO Convention, which helps prevent the illicit import, export, and transfer of cultural property. We make sure any archaeological material has documentation to show that it came into the country pre-1970.” As a cross-department office, the Registrar team oversees the coordination of these complicated and potentially controversial matters. The Museum founded the office in 1929 for this reason: It needed a centralized hub for processing the collection. Brancati’s team of four also coordinates loans to and from other institutions, handles insurance coverage, and assists with the installation and deinstallation of objects at the Museum. An unexpected aspect of the job: pest control. “We oversee all the little glue boards you see in the Museum, which trap bugs. We monitor that closely because we have a lot of wood, fur, and feathers in the collection—stuff that bugs like to eat.”
to me about the Museum and our jobs as collections staff—our work in learning about and caring for these objects will never really end and that we have the privilege of being an access point for others. I know that my colleagues share that same interest in the collection and I love when they take the time to share with me interesting tidbits from their research or pass along information from others that have come to work with the collection. The environment of openness, learning, and growth is what drew me to want to be a part of the team at the Penn Museum. As you look across the curatorial sections, are there cross-sectional initiatives that you could see that could help us learn about the collections in a different way? This is something I’ve been discussing with the keepers, registrars, and conservators since I came to the Museum. There are multiple ways that we can look at the collection. Of course, one method of viewing the
collection is geography or culture, but I’m also interested in what we can learn by looking at the collections from a materials perspective. What are the connections we might be able to make when we look, for example, at pottery or textiles from across the curatorial sections? Looking at collections in this way can also give us new perspectives on optimizing storage space and allow us to create specialized storage environments that meet the needs of particular types of objects. Because I worked with paper-based collections before coming to the Museum, I was drawn to our paper collections as one example of this materials-based approach. There are paper materials, including manuscript materials, that span nearly all our curatorial sections and I think we have opportunities to improve stewardship of those items by looking at them holistically rather than developing strategies for their care in each curatorial section. Of course, the Museum’s team of conservators are our materials experts. The conservation team evaluates, documents, and treats objects in every curatorial section and has wonderful
Conservator Alexis North examines a stele with ancient Mayan inscriptions ahead of deinstallation, treatment, and then reinstallation in the new Mexico and Central America Gallery, opened in 2019.
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perspectives on this topic because they get a view of the collection from both the individual item level and the big-picture perspective because of their preventive conservation work. In another interview, this might have been the first question asked, but it fits here as one of our final questions: How does an object come to the Penn Museum? We currently do what’s called passive collecting. It’s very rare that we pursue additions to the collection; rather, potential donors will approach the Museum and offer their objects for the collection. The work of collections acquisitions is managed by the Registrar’s Office and they work closely with the donor to ensure that the potential donation has clear title and provenance. At the same time, our registrars are working with the curatorial section to determine if the offered items fill a gap in the collections or meet any particular curatorial need, and they are also working with
conservators to see if there are condition issues that are of concern. After that initial research is complete the potential donation is discussed at a meeting of the Museum’s Acquisitions Committee to ensure that the object meets all of our acquisitions guidelines and there aren’t barriers to our long-term stewardship of the materials. We're very careful about how we grow because of those space issues that I mentioned before and we want to make sure that if the collection grows that it’s in meaningful and impactful ways. Is there anything that you would like to answer that we haven't asked? I mentioned researchers a handful of times, but there are a lot of other ways that this collection gets used. We have an active lending program: Objects in the collection don't just stay inside our Museum walls, but we often lend them to other cultural institutions. The reach of the collection is far and wide, and our objects are loaned to museums around the world.
CARVING New HISTORIES Researchers, keepers, and curators are not the only ones who access and study our collection. Artists working in traditional crafts, such as weavers and carvers, can learn directly from our artifacts to connect to their cultures and study the stunning technical feats of artists from eras past. One example of this is the story of two Indigenous wood carvers who reached out to the Museum in May 2023. Jaalen and Gwaai Edenshaw (Haida, British Columbia) came to the Museum to get a close look at a Haida carved bentwood cedar chest, and incorporated these insights into their own contemporary art practice. 48
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Jaalen Edenshaw, left, with Gwaai Edenshow, two Haida carvers from British Columbia who came to the Penn Museum to research wood carving techniques from past eras.
Bob Thurlow, right, drives a forklift as he lifts up the reproduction of the UrNammu Stela (PM EP-2007-1-1) onto a truck for shipment. This object doesn’t appear in the Museum’s online collections database since it’s a reproduction, but it is currently on display in the Middle East Galleries (Gallery 32).
While it may seem relatively simple on the surface, the work that goes into lending objects is substantial. An object loan involves collaboration with the borrowing institution, which can sometimes take several months, if not years. Once the list of objects for loan is confirmed they are evaluated by conservation and then mounts are designed and created by the Museum’s mountmaker, Jason Ressler. When the object is ready to travel to the borrower it’s then carefully packed and crated and travels with a museum courier who ensures the safe transportation, documentation, and installation at the borrowing institution. And then when it’s time for the objects to return to the Penn Museum much of that process happens in reverse! Clearly, there are so many people hours that go into the coordination and execution of that work, but we are committed to sharing the collections. It's vitally important that people who can't come to Philadelphia or
to the University of Pennsylvania get the opportunity to see to see the collection. I also want to point out that people come to use the collections for so many different reasons. It’s not always a student writing a paper or someone pursuing their Ph.D. or doing curatorial research that access the collection. We strive to create a welcoming environment where community members know that this collection is accessible and available to them. Building those connections and relationships is an important part of our work. The deep personal connections that descendant communities have to the collections is special. Community members might visit us because they want to see firsthand something that one of their ancestors made or they are learning a traditional artform themselves, and for me, this is some of the most important and meaningful work that we can facilitate at the Museum.
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AN
More than two decades of excavation at the Etruscan archaeological site of Poggio Colla culminated in the monumental discovery of the Vicchio Stele—arguably the oldest legal and religious document ever found in Europe. BY P. GREGORY WARDEN
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The verdant hills of central Italy, once home to the Etruscan people, still hold many secrets to that ancient civilization that fell to the Romans more than
t was the end of the season, the 21st and final season of excavation at Poggio Colla. We were coming into the last week of excavation at an Etruscan sanctuary in northern Tuscany, where a wealth of information had surfaced in the preceding two decades of excavation. It was now 2015, and the goal of our final season was to collect more data about one of the site’s more important unanswered questions: the nature of a monumental temple that had been constructed at the site around 500 BCE. My co-director, Michael Thomas from the University of Texas at Dallas, was particularly interested in that structure and its massive remains (huge foundation blocks and up to five sandstone bases) that were only partially preserved and whose particular shape and size remained elusive. Since we had a large crew of excavators that summer, we planned to open up some large trenches that might reveal more information about the temple. The results were good: We found more evidence, particularly about the large podium in front of the temple, where regular courses of well-dressed stones provided us a better sense of the structure. One peculiarity intrigued us. A single stone differed from the rest. It was rounded at one end, carefully finished, and clearly expertly crafted. I thought it was a discard of some sort, a stone never intended as a foundation block. We needed a closer look, but it was covered by a rough rubble-and-earth wall of a later date. To study the mysterious
block, we would need to remove the wall, which was discovered by was not ideal, but after archaeologists in 2015. some debate we decided For Etruscan scholars, the stone holds a to carefully document unique collection the wall before removing of legal and sacred it. This peculiar stone ideas, but many of them cannot yet be was worth it. It turned translated. out to be a momentous decision, one that opened an entirely new chapter in the life of the sanctuary, a decision that produced remarkable new information about the Etruscans, their language, and even the early stages of state formation in Iron Age Italy. The Vicchio Stele in situ where it
2,000 years ago.
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Once we removed the earth wall, we had much better access to the unusual stone in the temple foundation. Thomas and team member Phil Perkins noticed some unusual incisions on the stone’s beveled edges. They sprayed the dusty stone surfaces with water, and Etruscan letters appeared. Etruscan inscriptions are rare things, and a longer inscription is a cause for
celebration. Suddenly, almost magically, the stone began to speak as a whole series of letters appeared along its edges. Because of its fragility—it was made of very brittle sandstone—they proceeded carefully, but it was clear that we had a very long inscription, something like 70 to 100 letters. The strange stone was a stele, an upright marker, and it was immediately clear that we had on our hands a monument of tremendous importance. It was one of those rare moments in archaeology when you know you are witness to a landmark moment, to a find of spectacular importance. It turned out that the discovery of this peculiar stone in 2015, and the difficult decision to fully uncover it, added a whole new chapter to our understanding of the site and of early Etruscan religion and language.
They sprayed the dusty stone surfaces with water, and Etruscan letters appeared. Suddenly, almost magically, the stone began to speak as a whole series of letters appeared along its edges.
The artisans’ quarter where ceramics were produced for the sanctuary Poggio Colla in central Italy, about an hour’s drive from Florence.
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The Story of the Site The context of the stele is important for its interpretation and understanding. Along with the Liber Linteus, an Etruscan linen book that was later used as a mummy wrapping, and the Capua Tile, an Etruscan religious calendar, the stele is one of the three longest religious texts found to date. It is also the oldest, at least 6th century as opposed to the 5th-century tile and the 3rd-century linen book. More importantly, it is the only one from a carefully and extensively documented archaeological site. We found the stele at the Etruscan archaeological site of Poggio Colla, an hour drive northeast of Florence. Dr. Francesco Nicosia led the first excavations from 1968 to 1972. Nicosia understood the importance of Poggio Colla and, after becoming the Superintendent of Antiquities for Tuscany, halted further excavation there. I met with him in the fall of 1994. I grew up near the town of Vicchio and was interested in the Etruscan period in the Mugello. I was especially interested in that area because of its location, at the edge of the Apennine Mountain range, and its proximity to other cultures. I asked Dr. Nicosia for advice, hoping that he might point me toward excavation of a minor site, but much to my surprise he enthusiastically recommended that I apply for a permit for Poggio Colla itself. His only request was that we commit to a long-term project because of the site’s size and complexity. I was lucky to have the support of my home institution, Southern Methodist University, as well as the Penn Museum, where I have been a Consulting Scholar since 1989. We began excavation of the site in 1995 and set up the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project (MVAP). Our excavations revealed a widespread settlement from the 7th to 2nd century BCE. Poggio Colla is strategically located on a high plateau that dominates the broad Mugello basin and the Sieve River valley, thus controlling key trade routes between Etruria and the other peoples of northern Italy, such as the Gauls, Ligurians, and Veneti. In particular, we documented the growth of the site from an early religious center to
Poggio Colla Florence
ETRURIA
Adriatic Sea
IT AL Y Rome
Tyrrhenian Sea
a fortified stronghold in its latest phase. The history of the site is one of transformation, of remarkable changes in physical appearance, and of changes that are marked by an unprecedented series of ritual contexts. We have evidence of at least three distinct building phases of the sanctuary, as well as a pre-monumental phase. Based on the numismatic as well as ceramic and historical evidence, we have posited that this final phase of the sanctuary was most likely destroyed by the Romans around 188 BCE. Surveys have shown that areas of habitation were vast and may have covered several square kilometers, including the nearby hills of Monte Sassi and La Romanesca. Salvage excavation has given us a sense of what surrounded the sanctuary on its high hilltop, providing evidence of quarries, rural habitation, and ceramic workshops on the slopes surrounding the fortified hilltop. The Northwest Slope revealed a 7th-century BCE stone quarry and extensive ceramic production areas of similar date. In a nearby field, about
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800 meters to the northeast of the sanctuary, plowing turned up masses of ceramics, including large quantities of local fine wares of the Hellenistic period (4th–3rd centuries BCE). Later came the discovery of a wellpreserved hearth and an artisan’s quarter with at least three pottery kilns. These areas turned up evidence from different dates, contributing to the level of production necessary to support a major sanctuary like Poggio Colla.
The Ritual Context: How the Space Became Sacred The history of the site is one of transformation, of changes in its physical appearance that are marked by a series of ritual contexts. There are at least a dozen contexts that may be included under the rubric of
either votive or ritual activity at the site and that seem to have marked important or sometimes even traumatic moments of transformation. Many of these are connected to the dedication of new buildings or to the destruction of others. Others are more likely connected to the sacred nature of the site, to its landscape and its materiality. There is evidence of human activity at Poggio Colla as far back as the Neolithic, and although we cannot be certain of when ritual activity began to take place here—when the area became “sacred”— we suspect that it has to do with the natural setting. Certainly, by the Bronze Age, there were megalithic structures in this area, megaliths that could still be seen in the 19th century. Traces of them remain to this day. By the 8th or 7th centuries BCE, ritual activity at the sanctuary was focused on a large fissure at the
Revealing Ritual Activity of Women in Etruria The unprecedented evidence for ritual at a sanctuary that flourished through most of Etruscan history was tantalizing, but just as interesting was the fact that some of this evidence documented ritual activity by women. Three members of our research team, all faculty members at Franklin and Marshall College, have documented female activity at the sanctuary. Textile objects from votive contexts at Poggio Colla were published by Gretchen Meyers. Ann Steiner has shown that specific ceramic shapes found at the site had gender connotations. Alexis Castor has published a remarkable series of gold jewelry that attest to a particular moment of female devotion at the site. Added to this, the fissure provides evidence of a chthonic (underground and thus linked to the underworld) cult that is often associated with a female divinity, and one of the most remarkable finds from the site is a scene of childbirth, possibly sacred childbirth, on a 7th or 6th-century BCE sherd of bucchero (a characteristic Etruscan black ware). This remarkable piece of pottery is stamped twice with a small scene of a woman in the act of giving birth while holding on to two plants or trees. The object, at the time the earliest scene of childbirth from Europe, was published by another team member, Phil Perkins, in 2012. 54
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Pottery stamped with a depiction of childbirth (above) and gold earrings (left) found at the site suggest female ritual activity at the site, likely in leadership roles.
western end of the plateau, the area where temples were eventually built. The fissure leads to an underground void or chamber that runs underneath later walls of the monumental complexes. This fissure is clearly natural, and the underground “chamber” has yet to be excavated. Sometime after an early temple was destroyed or dismantled, a large, molded block of sandstone, part of the temple itself, was placed there, clearly intended to ritually “seal” the fissure. The block was deliberately broken and also neatly turned upside down (upside-downness or “reversal” is a standard ritual action at Poggio Colla). Next to it: a fine gold ring and long strands of gold wire that were probably part of an elaborate elite textile. Evidence has led us to argue elsewhere that the materiality of the temples was connected to specific ritual actions, suggesting that the temple was treated as a living thing, an entity that enacts ritual through its lifetime but that needs rituals to mark both its birth and death.
Meeting the Stele Once we knew that we had found a stele, we immediately notified the archaeological authorities. Reaching Poggio Colla is not simple, since it cannot be directly accessed by vehicles. To get to the top of the hill, which is wooded, you have to drive over some difficult terrain and then hike by foot for 15 minutes. An expert team came to meet us, navigating the steep and slippery trail, and when they reached the heavy stele they wrapped it up and lifted it out of the trench, carefully moving it to a waiting vehicle. We watched, documented the process, trying to stay calm, and controlling the obvious anxiety. The stele was taken to the Centro di Restauro in Florence, where it was cleaned in 2015 and 2016. Now fully cleaned, the Vicchio Stele made its first public viewing at the Rovati Museum in Milan and will soon go on display in the regional archaeological museum in Dicomano, near Vicchio. The Vicchio Stele features a very long series of inscriptions, seemingly the longest Etruscan lapidary inscription to date. It is made of a type of sandstone that is fine grained but easily degraded, thus offering difficulties for the reading of long sequences of letters. A good part of the text may therefore be lost, but the entire text could reach 200 letters in length. The stele is
a palimpsest: It was inscribed and re- In a lab at the Centro di Restauro in Florence, inscribed (written over) four times, the Vicchio Stele twice on the edges and twice on the reclines safely in the face. Only one of the inscriptions can care of professional conservators who be read with any certainty. The rest cleaned and treated it. of the texts offer serious difficulties because they contain many hapax legomena, words that have never been encountered before. The one legible inscription could be translated as: “Of Tinia (or for Tinia) in the (place) of Uni two (objects) were dedicated.” The mention of Tinia and Uni, two Etruscan gods, show that the texts are sacred in nature and date at least to the late 6th century, and the longer texts include words like eskaka, a which can be roughly translated as “dedicate.” There is a possibility that Uni is the titular divinity of at least one part of the sanctuary. This was a spectacular revelation that showed that we had been right in our guesswork. The stele is an extraordinary and unique monument, particularly because it is not from a funerary context and because it has a securely dated archaeological context. One explanation is that it is a lex
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AN ETRUSCAN STONE SPEAKS
A team of local experts arrived on the scene and carefully lifted the Vicchio Stele out of the trench it was found in. It was carefully taken through a steep and slippery trail to a vehicle that awaited to drive it to a lab.
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The author P. Gregory Warden (right) examines the stele with Michael Thomas (left) and Adriano Maggiani (center). Warden grew up in central Italy and has dedicated his career to researching Etruscan culture and history.
The stele is an extraordinary and unique monument, particularly because it is not from a funerary context…One explanation is that it is a lex sacra, or a lex arae, the sacred law of the sanctuary. If so, it is arguably the earliest law code from Europe, dating to well before codified law in Rome or Greece. sacra, or a lex arae, the sacred law of the sanctuary. If so, it is arguably the earliest law code from Europe, dating to well before codified law in Rome or Greece. An upright stone marker, or stele, is common in northern Etruria and always found in funerary contexts. Very often they are decorated, but inscriptions are rare. The Vicchio Stele is very similar to a series of funerary markers, the so-called pietre fiesolane or Fiesole Stones, found throughout this region. Many of these markers are decorated on their faces and have images of humans marked as elites, both women and men (much of the evidence from Poggio Colla documents ritual activity by women). In the funerary realm, it seems that the image was more important than the word, for posterity at least.
The Vicchio Stele is different in that it was made for and displayed in a sanctuary, and the word—the message or the law—is paramount. It is meant to be read and to act as a living document. We found the stele in a secondary context, in the foundations of a temple constructed around 500–480 BCE. The stele was displayed and reinscribed over a period of time and can date no later than 500 BCE. It would have been displayed in the sanctuary in its premonumental phase, a symbol of authority as powerful as the temple that replaced it. After the Vicchio Stele was carefully cleaned, it was documented with photogrammetry and then scanned. A digital model has been produced by Maurizio Forte and
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AN ETRUSCAN STONE SPEAKS
High-resolution photography and 3D scans provide a closeup look at the ancient strokes of Etruscan writing, marks that represent sacred and legal customs—marks that prescribe and proscribe through example. This digitized stele comes from Maurizio Forte at Duke University.
his team at the DIG@Lab (for a digital knowledge of the past) at Duke University. Adriano Maggiani and Enrico Benelli are studying the inscriptions to be published in the future. Phil Perkins and I are planning further publication with them. There are many questions that remain to be answered, other than the obvious ones about what the inscriptions actually say. Other questions include: How and by whom would it have been read? What does it tell us about literacy and authority? Etruscan writing was rare at this date, and we suspect that literacy was restricted to the elites. The actual words, fortunately for us, are delineated by pairs of dots that look like a modern colon. Without these we would have a veritable alphabet soup. The system suggests that people reading the texts back then needed help, although perhaps not as much as we do today. The long inscriptions on the side are actually pseudo-boustrophedon, a Greek term that means “as the ox turns.” Thus, one line goes in one direction and another reverses course, much as an ox plows a field. The lines on the sides would have to be read vertically, and many of the earliest sacred inscriptions are indeed written vertically, perhaps imitating the arrangement of words on a scroll. We might also ask why the stele 58
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was inscribed four times. At one point part of it was erased and reinscribed. It may have served as a kind of living archive of religious actions at the sanctuary. It is clear that the eventual deposition of the stele—its burial from which we excavated it—marked a moment of real importance in the life of the sanctuary and the connected community. It was an act with political consequences and religious significance. When the stele was displayed in the sanctuary in the 6th century, the hilltop would have been covered by oval huts, and worship would have centered around the fissure. It is not unreasonable to surmise that the stele stood somewhere in the vicinity of the fissure, thus placed not far from where it eventually came to be deposited at the end of the 6th century. Even in its earliest phase, the site of Poggio Colla seems to have been important, a place of deep cultural interaction that connected the Etruscans with their neighbors to the north. The larger area was a place of intense regional interaction. Rather than being a barrier, the mountains may have connected various regions and peoples, and Poggio Colla, given its strategic location and proximity to major urban centers, would have been at the center of a rich multiethnic landscape.
Still, it’s unclear why the Vicchio Stele would be at this sanctuary at the northern edge of Etruria. The answer may be that it is precisely at a liminal site like Poggio Colla, a place frequented by diverse populations, that religious authority and elite power need to be clearly and specifically articulated and displayed. If these inscriptions do indeed document religious practice, if they prescribe and proscribe through example, if they are indeed a lex sacra or lex arae, then they may have been set into stone here because Poggio Colla is indeed a place of ethnic diversity. It was a place where authority was not to be taken for granted. Here we are talking about two intertwined kinds of authority. In the Etruscan theocratic landscape where secular and religious authority were often interchangeable, the stele is a testament to the authority of divinity interpreted through human authority, as expressed in writing at a time when the written word would have served as
In September of 2023, the Vicchio Stele went on display for the first time (in at least 2,000 years) in central Italy, at the regional museum in Dicomano. Earlier in 2023, it was displayed at the Fondazione Luigi Rovati museum in Milan; photo by Pierluigi Giroldini.
both text and image. The Vicchio Stele is as powerful a symbol as the imposing temple that arose in its place in the next century, a temple whose own authority rested on the actual physical support of that peculiar stone that promises to unlock a new understanding of the Etruscan belief system and language. P. Gregory Warden is the inaugural Mark A. Roglán Director of the Custard Institute for Spanish Art and Culture at Southern Methodist University. He previously served for 10 years as President and Professor of Archaeology at Franklin University, Switzerland, and he has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Bowdoin College. In a past life, he helped design the Penn Museum’s Etruscan Gallery. Unless otherwise noted, all photos are courtesy of P. Greg Warden and the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project. FOR FURTHER READING Aterini, A., A. Nocentini, and P.G Warden. 2017. Digital Technologies for the Documentation, Analysis, and Dissemination of the Etruscan ‘Stele di Vicchio.’ In New Activities for Cultural Heritage, edited by M. Ceccarelli et al.: 158–165. Springer, New York. Meyers, G.E. 2013. Women and the Production of Ceremonial Textiles: A Reevaluation of Ceramic Textile Tools in Etrusco-Italic Sanctuaries. American Journal of Archaeology 117: 247–274. Perkins, P. 2012. The Bucchero Childbirth Stamp on a Late Orientalizing Period Shard from Poggio Colla. Etruscan Studies 15(2): 146–201. Warden, P.G. 2009. Remains of the Ritual at the Sanctuary of Poggio Colla. In Votives, Places, Rituals in Etruscan Religion. Studies in Honor of Jean MacIntosh Turfa, edited by M. Gleba and H. Becker: 121–127. Religion in the Graeco-Roman World (RGRW), Leiden. Warden, P.G., and A. Maggiani. 2020. Authority and Display in Sixth-Century Etruria: the Vicchio Stele. In Roman Law Before the Twelve Tables: An Interdisciplinary Approach, edited by S. Bell & P. Du Plessis: 41–54. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
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IN THE LABS
Southeast Asian Ceramics Under The Lens BY MARIE-CLAUDE BOILEAU
ONE OF THE EXCITING NEW PROJECTS happening in the Ceramic Laboratory of the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) focuses on Southeast Asian ceramics. I am researching how earthenware (low-fire ceramics) were produced over a period of nearly 7,000 years, and how they were exchanged and used across the tributaries flowing into the Mekong River in the Luang Prabang province in north central Laos. Human-environment interactions in a riverscape—a river and its floodplain—are shaped by a flow of materials, people, and objects. For potting communities specifically, rivers and their banks provide raw material resources essential to the craft and natural corridors to transport and exchange commodities. From 2001 to 2018, the Middle Mekong Archaeological Project (MMAP), led by Dr. Joyce White, recovered several prehistoric and historic earthenware ceramics from test excavations at four cave sites and from surveys of other sites in the Luang Prabang province. This rich ceramic dataset of more than 3,000 fragments provides a foundational collection from which scientific analyses can begin to piece together the economic and technological dimensions of past societies of this region. In August 2022, I joined the MMAP team in Luang Prabang for a short study season to conduct macroscopic analysis of the sherds (ceramic fragments) and a few complete pots. To understand the stylistic variability across sites and periods, observations 60
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of inclusions, texture, color, surface treatment, Marie-Claude Boileau. decoration, and overall shape were documented; and sherds representing the main stylistic groups were photographed. These groups exhibit interesting stylistic variations in surface treatments, from surfaces completely covered in elaborate decoration—incised, combed, smoothed, or burnished—with or without cord marking impressions. At the end of the study season, I was able to sample sherds from each main stylistic group for microscopic analysis, hoping to address questions of provenance and manufacturing technology. Back in the Ceramics Laboratory, I have been studying the mineralogical composition and microstructure of these samples under the microscope using a technique called petrographic analysis. Rocks and minerals in a ceramic thin section reflect the geological source of the raw materials and their identification is used Studying earthenware sherds in Luang Prabang, Laos; photo by
Above: The Nam Khan River in Luang Prabang; photo by Marie-Claude Boileau. Earthenware sherd decorated with appliqué bands, combed lines and impressed dots; photo by Souliya Bounxaythip. Tray of MMAP earthenware thin sections in the Ceramics Lab. A thin section is a very thin slice of ceramic mounted on a glass slide; photo by Marie-Claude Boileau.
to investigate location of production and regional exchange. Additionally, observations of the clay groundmass and porosity inform on clay preparation, forming, and firing practices, and provide insights on potters’ technological skills and knowledge. The next stage in the project will involve a December 2023 study season to continue the macroscopic study and select additional samples for analysis. Penn students in the course “Petrography of Cultural Materials” will have a chance to work on this new material in Spring 2024. Results will be integrated to environmental and socioeconomic contexts to explore natural-cultural entanglements across time and space in the Luang Prabang province. This research offers a longue durée perspective to ceramic traditions in a dynamic riverscape.
Dr. Marie-Claude Boileau is the Director of CAAM and Teaching Specialist for Ceramic Analysis. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In addition to the Penn Museum, this research is supported by the American Philosophical Society and the Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology. I am grateful to the Lao Department of Heritage, Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism for granting permission to undertake the analysis of the earthenware included in this research, and to Dr. Joyce White, Consulting Scholar in the Penn Museum’s Asia Section and Executive Director of the Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology, for inviting me to work on this material. I would also like to thank the members of the 2022 MMAP team: Souliya Bounxaythip, Naho Shimizu, Norseng Sayvongduoane, and Kongkeo Phachomphonh. FOR FURTHER READING Hamilton, E. 2010. Penn Museum in Laos. Expedition 52(2): 6–7.
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ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT
How Do You Fix a Broken Pipeline? BY ANNE TIBALLI
MUSEUMS ARE INCREASINGLY FOCUSED ON Students from the Summer 2023 Summer DIVERSITY—of collections, audiences, experiences, Internship Program pose and staff. As part of the University of Pennsylvania, in front of the Sphinx. the Penn Museum is also concerned about the diversity of the students we serve and about encouraging these students to consider devoting their studies and their careers to museum-related fields. One of the most important ways that we can contribute to a more diverse future for museums is through our Summer Internship Program, which is open to undergraduate and graduate students from any college or university. This program places students in departments and projects across the Penn Museum, and brings them together for weekly discussion sessions, presentations, and field trips. Since 2021, the Summer Internship Program has been primarily focused on providing paid opportunities for students from backgrounds that have been traditionally underrepresented in the museum field. Two important datasets frame our understanding of the purpose of the Summer Internship Program. One comes from surveys on diversity among staff at art museums, compiled over the past eight years by the Mellon Foundation, which found that while there has been a moderate increase in people of color across all museum roles, these institutions The second source of data comes from higher remain disproportionately staffed and led by white education, and points to the increasing importance of people. Collections roles—including curators, registrars, an internship for deciding on a major, exploring careers, collections managers, and conservation—continue to be and ensuring employment after graduation. Studies of the least diverse segment of museum staff, with only 33% first-generation and low-income students show that people of color in the 2022 survey. These roles are also internships are even more important for career readiness the ones most closely associated with the intellectual than among more privileged students. Students are and educational mission of museums, which points to a taking internships earlier—often between freshman and specific need for students to “see themselves” in a future sophomore year, before they have declared a major—and museum career while they have access to the coursework leveraging these experiences into other opportunities as and training that higher education provides. upperclassmen. 62
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What does this all mean? The pipeline that carries diverse candidates from college to a museum career is broken, and students of color often discount a future in museums and related disciplines before they graduate. To ensure a future where museum staff and leadership are as diverse as the audiences we seek to serve, museums must offer paid internships that explicitly reach out to younger, more diverse students. To that end, the Penn Museum has refocused our Summer Internship program to provide a living wage, travel assistance, professional placements, and museological training to a smaller number of highly dedicated, diverse students from colleges and universities across the country. As the number of applications to the program has skyrocketed (from 29 in 2014 to 302 in 2023), we have reduced the number of interns that we accept (from 26 in 2015 to 12 in 2023) to ensure that each is supported fully. We make sure that our program is advertised at Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) and at Tribal Colleges & Universities (TCUs)
and have worked with supervisors to identify promising students from groups underrepresented in museum fields. While still a work in progress, this new strategy led to our most diverse intern cohort ever, with one-third of our applicants (87/303) identifying as non-white. Anne Tiballi, Ph.D., is the Director of Academic Engagement. FOR FURTHER READING Sweeney, L. and J. Dressel. 2022. Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey 2022: Documenting Change in Museum Strategy and Operations. Ithaka S+R. The Impact of Undergraduate Internships on Post-Graduate Outcomes for Liberal Arts, 2016. National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), Bethlehem, PA. Salvadge, A. 2019. The Impact of Internships and Study Abroad on Career Readiness of First-Generation Students. NACE Journal.
INSIDE THE 2023 SUMMER INTERNSHIP PROGRAM
In addition to working on their own project, interns participated BY BREYASIA SCOTT in a weekly Museum Practice Program of lectures by Museum staff and curators about the Penn Our 2023 nine-week Summer Museum’s various departments, Internship Program concluded collections, exhibitions, programs, August 2 with a full day of and methodologies. The cohort also presentations by our 12 collegeenjoyed a collections storage and Qi Liu looks at an object from the Barnes Collection on level and recent graduate interns. gallery tour led by DeVries Keeper an intern fieldtrip; photo by Breyasia Scott. Hosted across 12 different of Collections, Mediterranean departments and curatorial sections, interns worked Section, Lynn Makowsky, and a series of field trips to on a variety of interesting projects. For example, one other Philadelphia museums. The field trips, which this worked in the Asian Section cataloguing objects in the year included the Barnes Foundation and the African Thai ethnographic collection; another in Marketing American Museum of Philadelphia, offered interns the & Communications implementing virtual reality chance to see how different institutions operate using simulations using videos from Penn classes; a third different methodological and theoretical ways of looking worked in Learning Programs creating material for at art, history, and museums. our Cartifacts program relating to our new Eastern Mediterranean Gallery. This summer, three Penn Breyasia Scott, C20, is the Student Engagement students were joined students from across the U.S.— Coordinator, and a past participant of the Summer from UCLA to Boston University. Internship Program she now runs.
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LEARNING AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Activating Youth Voices BY JENNIFER BREHM A COLLABORATIVE PROGRAM at the Penn Museum this summer activated teen voices in sharing their food stories and creating an exhibition all their own. The program, Your Food Story: Storytelling through the Photography of Community Landscapes, invited 12 students from William L. Sayre High School in West Philadelphia to consider the food heritage stories in the Museum’s newest exhibition, Ancient Food & Flavor, and share their ideas about food through public guided tours and a photography display of their own research. The six-week program, running from June to July of 2023 and funded through a generous grant from the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, was a collaboration with the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative at Penn’s
Netter Center for Community Partnerships and TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image. It was initiated by Museum staff from various departments, who approached Netter Center colleagues about better connecting high school students with the Museum’s programs and exhibitions. Netter Center staff run a summer program at Sayre High where students tend a school garden and cook nutritious recipes with the produce. The teams decided to combine the garden program with a Penn Museum research project to encourage students to share their cultural heritage around food. Ancient Food & Flavor provides insights into how people ate and lived in the past based on research
Above: Top row: Tia Jackson-Truitt (Penn Museum), Alex Livingston, Angel Livingston, Wydia Weston, Ophus Richardson, Michael Drayton, Saamar Darden, Ulyssa Lawrence. Middle row: Donna Robinson, Maris Alteri (Netter Center), Kobe Livingston, George Janssen (Netter Center), Jennifer Brehm (Penn Museum), Danielle Morris (TILT). Front: Tyshawn Love
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“As a young photographer in the vibrant world of food photography, my journey is a delicious blend of passion and inspiration. Through my lens, I aim to capture the artistry of food, its intricate details, and its power to evoke emotions. Every image I create I hope is a symphony of flavors, colors, and textures, enticing the senses and celebrating the culinary wonders that surround us.” —Donna Robinson, Sayre High student
conducted by the Museum’s Center for Analysis of Archaeology Materials (CAAM). The Sayre students each picked an ingredient for their own study that had a personal connection to their lived experience— including mushrooms, potatoes, and ginger—and researched the history of the ingredients. They studied how these foods grew in their Sayre school garden, did some observational drawings of plant growth, and made recipes using the ingredients. They also met researchers from CAAM and interviewed community members about their chosen foods. During the Museum’s Garden Jams music program running Wednesday evenings in July, the Sayre students offered guided tours within the Ancient Food & Flavor exhibition. Over 40 guests listened as students shared how insights from their own research connected food heritage stories to those in the exhibition. The experience of sharing their research with the public created an opportunity for deeper reflection that many students did not anticipate. “The first time I had mushrooms was having a pizza with my father,” said student Ophus Richardson. “He is not with us anymore, but this project reminded me of him. I liked learning more about mushrooms and being able to cook with them.” To create the photography display, the Sayre students worked with artists from TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image to learn the basics of photography and visual documentation of their experiences. Students were asked to think about the camera as an empirical tool for observation and recordkeeping as part of their research, and then share that in the display. Shifting from the camera phones they use all the time to a digital camera took an intentional effort, which some students found challenging.
“In this past month, photography has become a big part of what I do and has shown me that photos are just ways to stop time for fleeting moments you want to remember,” said student Ulyssa Lawrence. “I don't like taking photos, especially not of myself, but I'm glad that I did. I wish to remember my time here, the people I spent it with and most importantly how I felt during this summer. All I want you to see when you look at my photos is a 15-yearold girl who enjoyed her summer." Your Food Story is part of an expansion of the Penn Museum’s programming focus. For the past nine years, the Museum has offered Unpacking the Past, which invites sixth and seventh graders in the School District of Philadelphia to engage with the collection through a free, multi-visit field trip experience. Unpacking the Past piques students’ interest in the collection, museums, archaeology, and anthropology. Programs like this encourage us to find more ways to be of ongoing service to these students and their communities, including opening doors for them to pursue study in archaeology or anthropology. As a center of Penn, the Museum can be a connector for K–12 students visiting the collection on field trips to learn more about undergraduate fields of study, including those offered by the CAAM. As our Penn Museum staff create an action plan aligned with our new strategic vision, connecting Philadelphia teens to Penn resources will be a key component. Sharing teen voices through programs like this one will continue to be an important way for the Penn Museum to be that resource. Jennifer Brehm is the Merle-Smith Director of Learning and Community Engagement at the Penn Museum.
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MEMBERSHIP MATTERS
Member Spotlight: Ashley Paston ASHLEY PASTON, a 2016 graduate of the Wharton School, is a member of the Penn Museum’s Young Alumni Council. She is a Partner at Meritech Capital, focused on growth stage venture investments. Prior to Meritech, Paston held positions at Bain Capital Ventures and McKinsey & Company. Expedition had a chance to talk with her about her involvement with the Penn Museum. How did you first become acquainted with the Penn Museum? I first visited the Museum as a freshman after seeing a flyer on Locust walk for the Maya 2012: Lords of Time exhibition. That show initially exposed me to the encyclopedic nature of Penn’s collection. As well as being excited to learn that many of the items in the exhibit were discovered by Penn’s own archeologists, I found the curation to be phenomenal. The curatorial team’s decisions made you think more deeply about Mayan culture, learn about their number system and beliefs, and ultimately question if the Maya actually believed the world would end. Additionally, timing the exhibit to overlap with the “Maya Apocalypse” in December of 2012 was an inspired decision. Recasting these important artifacts through the lens of a 2012 cultural moment gave the show imbued significance that has stuck with me to this day. You are one of our newest members. Why is Penn Museum membership important to you? I strongly believe in the democratization and accessibility of art and history. The fact that Penn students access the Museum for free is the perfect complement 66
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to the Penn experience. The objects stored within the Museum are breathtaking; so much is art as much as it is artifact. A place so local to the student experience holding treasures from hundreds of years ago is such a special notion. Most importantly, returning to the Penn Museum brings up fond memories of my time at Penn. I not only took classes in the Museum, but also used the Museum as a study place, a meetup location with friends, and a welcome escape from coursework. Membership is important to me because it offers a medium to connect with the Museum while simultaneously enabling these experiences for current students. Being on the other side of the country, what are some ways you plan on using your membership? Just because I’m in California doesn’t mean I won’t be back to see the exhibits! Beyond visiting the Museum, I am excited to leverage my membership to gain access to museums local to me. A fun fact is that the Friends & Family membership offers general admission to over 1,000 museums across North America. So, due to my membership, I am excited to spend more time at my home city of San Francisco’s Institute of Contemporary Art and Museum of Craft and Design. I also love keeping up to date with happenings at the Museum through Expedition, the Museum’s magazine! Do you have a favorite Penn Museum memory? Though a recent one, it would have to be my first Young Alumni Council board meeting last summer. Returning to Penn’s campus so many years later gave me a new appreciation for the campus and Museum alike. Even more so, prior to the board meeting, members were offered a tour of the Museum’s Egypt galleries. This was an exciting refresher of all of the sculptures and works of art, but simultaneously bittersweet as I know it will probably be the last time I saw the collection for a while given the Egypt galleries closed this fall to prepare for renovation. I have a lot of fond memories of these galleries and I will miss them, but I am also excited for the renovations and updates!
Celebrating Leadership THURSDAY, JUNE 8, Penn Museum Visionaries and Loren Eiseley Circle Members on and beyond the Board of Advisors, Director’s Council, Community Advisory Group, and Young Alumni Council joined together for the annual Leadership Dinner program. As guests mingled they were welcomed by new Provost John Jackson over cocktails in the Sphinx Gallery, then heard from Williams Director Chris Woods about the new Strategic Vision for the Museum, in which our pillars of research, stewardship, and education are realized in immersive, inclusive experiences for everyone who walks in our doors. Director Woods introduced Egyptian Section Offsite Collections Manager Kevin Cahail and Head of Conservation Molly Gleeson to speak about the first stages of the most important test of this process—our soon-to-be renovated Egypt and Nubia Galleries, which will connect to every aspect of our mission. Following the presentation, guests enjoyed the chance to see some of the monumental artifacts that will be on
Provost John Jackson (right) with Rev. Dr. Malcolm Byrd, the pastor at Hopes Beacon Baptist Church and founder of Forum Philly. Rev. Byrd is a member of the Community Advisor Group; photo by Eddy Marenco.
display in these new galleries up-close, and to talk to curators and conservators about the research and conservation process, before dinner in the upper Egyptian Gallery.
Recenter Yourself at the Museum Photo by Eddy Marenco
RUNNING FIRST WEDNESDAYS from November 1, 2023 through March 6, 2024, Mind & Mood Recharge is a new after-hours wellness program powered by Penn Medicine. Designed to boost well-being and mental health, the program offers yoga, meditation, and other therapeutic activities at the Museum from 5:00–8:00 pm. General admission tickets apply to the public while Penn Medicine staff and patients as well as Penn Museum Members can attend free of charge. Exclusive perks await Members, including special access to objects relating to health and wellness from the Museum’s collections typically not on display, and discussion with curators and keepers on these objects’ significance in the history of healing and the human understanding of health. Join us for these monthly celebrations of the enduring link between mind and body!
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WELCOME NEWS
A rendering shows what lies ahead for one of the Penn Museum’s most popular sections: The Coxe (Egyptian) Wing will feature architecture from the Coronation Chapel and throne room of pharaoh Merenptah, son of Ramses II; rendering by Haley Sharpe Design.
Planning for a Palace THE NOVEMBER CLOSURE of the Museum’s Upper Level Egypt Galleries for a long-awaited renovation was the thrilling start of a new chapter. The Penn Museum now embarks on a landmark construction project: the renovation of the nearly 100-year-old Coxe (Egyptian) Wing and the installation of two floors of galleries and state-of-the-art collections storage and research spaces. The construction phase will take 18–24 months and completely revamp one of the Museum’s most popular wings. Among the ambitious features: the installation of architectural elements of the Coronation Chapel and throne room of the pharaoh Merenptah, son of the influential Rameses II, in the 68
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soaring, 59-foot-high upper gallery. “Unveiling the Ancient Egypt and Nubia galleries will be a feat of major significance and a point of cultural pride for the Greater Philadelphia region and beyond,” said Williams Director Chris Woods. “Nowhere else outside of Egypt will visitors be able to walk through soaring architectural elements of an ancient Egyptian palace. It is worth the wait.” The year 2026 will mark a century since the opening of the Coxe Wing. An article in the 1926 issue of The Museum Journal—the publication that later became Expedition—details the opening of the Eckley Brinton Coxe Junior Egyptian Wing. The 12-room wing was
designed with the same eye for complementary architecture that our new project embodies. From the 1926 article: “The dignity and worth of these exhibits are not thrown away on the architecture of their housing, which meets them on their own level and joins with them in a common service of refinement.” Coxe was the Museum’s president from 1910 to his death in 1916, and he left the Museum $500,000 to go toward Egyptian research (that’s about $14 million in today’s dollar). Following completion of the construction phase, the Museum hopes—pending additional funding—to install and open the new Main Level Galleries, anchored by a 4,500-year-old limestone tomb chapel, for the centenary of the Coxe Wing in 2026. The project is advanced by the work of many departments and staff along the way. “It’s a once-ina-lifetime project to be part of,” said Molly Gleeson, Head of Conservation. Thanks to our creative curators and exhibitions team as well as our extensive collection, you will still be able to experience Egypt throughout the Museum. The Sphinx will greet you in the Main Entrance, and you can head upstairs to see the special exhibition Ancient Egypt: From Discovery to Display. Egyptian artifacts can also be found in the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery and the Africa Galleries. Meanwhile, you can learn more about the Museum’s Egyptian research, scholarship, and excavations in the next issue of Expedition, which will be a special issue on Abydos, the place known as the burial site of Egypt’s first pharaohs. The issue will be a tribute to David O’Connor, former Curator of the Museum’s Egyptian Section who in 1967 spearheaded the Penn-Yale expedition to Abydos. The guest editor of the issue will be Josef W. Wegner, Curator, Egyptian Section, and current director of Penn’s ongoing excavations at the site. The start of construction on the Coxe Wing is a milestone, but it’s just the beginning: Fundraising continues for the installation phase of the galleries and storerooms. For information about the Founding Donor Circle for the Ancient Egypt and Nubia Galleries, please contact Jon Heisler at heislerj@upenn.edu.
A New Policy for the Caretaking of Human Remains IN SEPTEMBER 2023, the Penn Museum released a comprehensive Human Remains Policy, providing a rigorous basis for the ethical treatment of human remains in the Penn Museum in a way that centers human dignity and considers consent of the deceased and the wishes of descendent communities. The Policy includes the care, research, teaching, and display of human remains held in the Museum. “Prioritizing human dignity and the wishes of descendant communities are the governing principles behind this essential institution-wide update to the Penn Museum’s Human Remains Policy,” said Williams Director Chris Woods. “Confronting our institutional history tied to colonial collection practices requires continuous examination and assessment of our policies. It is our moral, ethical, and social responsibility.” Penn Museum visitors will notice some changes at the Museum, which will no longer display uncovered human remains. Signage noting the presence of covered human remains or images of human remains will be at the entrance to each gallery empowering visitors to make their own viewing decisions. The release of the Policy came at a time when many cultural institutions are thinking in a new way about human remains, and garnered media attention not only locally, including in the Philadelphia Inquirer and WHYY, but also in influential national publications such as ARTNews and ArtForum. Director of Collections Laura Hortz Stanton was interviewed on CBS Morning News in November, along with representatives from the Smithsonian Institute, Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and New York’s American Museum of Natural History. “We are listening and paying attention to the wishes of descendent communities. That’s the whole core of why we do this,” said Hortz Stanton.
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A Spotlight on Southeast Asia LOCATED NEXT TO THE SPHINX behind the Museum’s Main Entrance, the Spotlight Gallery is a quiet, reflective room dedicated to a single object from history. When a visitor steps into this small but mighty alcove, they are transported to a specific time and place, and encouraged to narrow their focus in a building that can otherwise feel like an expansive and seemingly never-ending journey through the past. Starting in October, the Spotlight Gallery features a handmade fishing trap from the Thai village of Ban Pu Lu, near the renowned archaeological site of Ban Chiang. Intricately woven from plant fiber, this trap is technically a cage, but its aesthetic beauty gives it the appearance of a house with a front door. This particular trap was made in the 20th century, but it represents the kind of technology that has been available for centuries in Southeast Asia. During the rice harvest season, when waterways recede, villagers in the Mekong River Basin set these
fish traps to catch carp. The traps are loaded with rice bran to lure in fish, and then submerged in the gentle river currents in the early morning. The traps can be staked in place with a pole to mark their locations. Later in the day, the traps are emptied through an opening at the top. This technology, while ancient, is incredibly sophisticated. Thin bamboo sticks line the gateway at the base of the trap. The sticks are flexibly attached so that they quiver in the water’s flow—a motion that is known to attract fish. The sharp points prevent fish from swimming back out of the entrance. To accurately place the traps in the river, fishers must be familiar with fluctuating tides and currents, and understand different fish behaviors. As a graduate student living near the archaeological site in Ban Chiang (Thailand) from 1979 to 1981, Joyce White purchased this particular trap from a local villager on behalf of the Penn Museum. White is now a Consulting Scholar at the Museum and leads the Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology. As imported materials like plastics become more common, and younger generations seek to make a living beyond subsistence farming, these in-depth forms of ecological knowledge are disappearing. Through its research and collections, the Penn Museum aims to support the preservation of this timetested local knowledge.
This bamboo fishing trap (PM 82-7-200) was made in the 20th century, but it represents centuries of sophisticated knowledge from Thai and Lao fishermen; photo by Quinn Russell Brown.
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Students Shine at CAAM End-of-Year Showcase THE CENTER for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM) celebrated the close of the 2022-23 academic year with its inaugural End-of-Year Student Showcase. Penn undergraduate and graduate students presented posters on research conducted as part of CAAM courses, fieldwork, and laboratory-based research. Students spent the afternoon presenting their projects—largely in the disciplines of material analysis and digital archaeology—to fellow students, Museum staff, and faculty. These projects engaged with Penn Museum collections and archives, experimental work, and active archaeological projects taking place in the local Philadelphia area and across the globe. The showcase highlighted students who developed research as part of the CAAM Minor and Graduate Certificate in Archaeological Science, and who were supported by the Penn Museum Assistantship and Fellowship programs.
Top: Brigitte Keslinke and Janessa Reeves, graduate students in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Program, standing in front of Janessa’s poster on Roman glass analysis; photo by Marie-Claude Boileau. Above: Anthropology graduate student Chris LaMack (left) discusses his poster on the analysis of artifacts from the historical greenhouse at The Woodlands with Naomi Miller (Penn Museum Consulting Scholar), Chantel White (CAAM Teaching Specialist for Archaeobotany), and Tom Tartaron (CAAM Executive Director); photo by Eric Hubbard.
Penn Curator Honored Abroad NORWAY’S UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN has conferred an Honorary Doctorate upon Lynn Meskell, Penn Museum Curator, Near East and Asia Sections. The honor recognizes Meskell’s contribution to research ethics, global cultural heritage, materiality, feminist, and post-colonial theory. These areas of scholarship have become increasingly relevant to the management of natural and cultural heritage, the treatment of Indigenous people, and the field of human rights. Meskell is also a Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor in the Department of Anthropology and
the Weitzman School of Design. She is a frequent contributor to Expedition who was most recently interviewed in the issue 65-1 article “Cultural Heritage Crisis,” about her visit to NATO to present on the protection of historic places in times of conflict. This is not her first honor in academia: She holds honorary professorships at the United Kingdom’s University of Oxford and University of Liverpool, India’s Shiv Nadar University, and South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand.
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Kolb Society Elects New Junior Fellows THIS PAST SPRING, the Kolb Society elected four graduate students as their latest cohort of Junior Fellows. The Kolb Society of Fellows—made up of Junior Fellow graduate students, graduated Fellows, and Senior Fellows, professors at Penn—was organized as a means to select nominated candidates for Kolb fellowships and to provide academic guidance and a congenial intellectual atmosphere for the recipients of the fellowships in academic fields related to the Penn Museum. This October at the Kolb Society fall colloquium and dinner, the newly elected Junior Fellows were formally introduced to the assembled fellows of the society. Matthew Capps, who is a fourth-year Anthropology student, focuses his dissertation research on everyday life in the Natchez Bluffs region of the Lower Mississippi Valley. He considers how ideas of home and belonging to a community are tied to material and landscape-scale spatial relationships. He is currently a Board Member of the Penn Museum Graduate Advisory Council, a Penn Museum Graduate Guide, and a curatorial assistant for the Penn Museum’s Native North American Exhibition. Hakimah Abdul-Fattah, a fourth-year student in the Anthropology Department, is examining the practices of heritage-making in Senegal, seeking to understand the relationship between the place-based memorialization of particular pasts and the experiences people have of those places today. She is also pursuing graduate certificates in Africana Studies and Experimental Ethnography and is an active member of the Anthropology Department’s Critical Museum Studies Working Group and Penn Cultural Heritage Center. David Mulder, a fourth-year student in the History of Art Department, is investigating notions of wildness, domesticity, and animality in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, with a particular focus on the motif of the animal combat in glyptic art for his dissertation. He has participated in the legacy publication project and the renewed excavations at the site of Tell al-Hiba (ancient Lagash), Iraq, and has been involved in research and text writing 72
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The newest Junior Fellows of the Kolb Society: Matthew Capps, Hakimah Abdul-Fattah, David Mulder, and Charles Ro; photo by Amie Schroeder.
for the renovated Eastern Mediterranean gallery at the Penn Museum, including an article in the accompanying issue of Expedition magazine. Charles Ro is in his fourth year in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Graduate Group. His research interests focus on the Roman conception of color reflected in polychromatic art and its materiality (in both archaeometric and art historical senses), especially pertaining to the political and ecological connotations of pigments drawn from across the Mediterranean. He has excavated in Pompeii, Italy, with the Pompeian Residential Architecture: Environmental, Digital, Interdisciplinary Archive (PRAEDIA) Project and in Kalavasos-Maroni, Cyprus, with the Kalavasos and Maroni Built Environments (KAMBE) Project. Congratulations to our three newest Kolb Fellow Ph.D.s who successfully defended their dissertations this year: Benjamin Abbott, “Forging the Anchor: Antiochus I and the Creation of the Seleucid Empire” Reed Goodman, “Tides of Change: A Geoarchaeological Study of City and State Formation in Lower Mesopotamia” Julia Simons, “Tuberculosis in the Greco-Roman World”
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