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By: Chris LaMack, Moriah McKenna, Kathleen Morrison Tea. With milk? With sugar? Probably both. When people imagine archaeological fieldwork, they likely think of shovels and trowels in the soil. But a crucial part of it – a foundational part – consists of copious amounts of tea. Often, tea is swilled around a large desk in someone’s office, before an audience seated in couches and chairs throughout the room or leaned up against the doorway. Or at least this is how it goes in India. This past summer, our team from the Paleoecology Lab and the South Asia Center at Penn spent three weeks conducti ..read more

PIK Professor Dr. Lynn Meskell, who among her appointments holds the position of Curator in the Asian and Near East Sections of the Penn Museum, recently organized a workshop on global cultural heritage at Perry World House. In the following, Meskell sets out the conference and its contribution. This year marks the 50th anniversary of UNESCO’s 1972 World Heritage Convention, perhaps now more relevant than ever with the challenges of climate change, escalating conflict, and the need to address diverse communities’ rights and responsibilities. The international workshop adopted a multi-disciplin ..read more

Food cultivation, creation, and diet are important research avenues for anthropologists as they are intertwined with the social, cultural, and economic processes of society. A primary source for learning about food history is burned, or “carbonized”, food remains often found during excavations. Archaeological scientists microscopically examine the physical characteristics of carbonized remains to determine the components of burned residues on artifacts like cooking pots and storage containers, and in open-firing contexts. These remains are then matched with organic materials located at the sit ..read more

This year, I was granted the wonderful opportunity to be a Penn Museum Fellow, during which I was able to expand the research that I had started working on with Dr. Lynn Meskell as a Summer Intern. The project is a large-scale archival “deep-dive” that considers multiple angles for how the US government, private industries, and academia came together in Froelich Rainey’s long career. Ambassador Reinhardt’s party at Tarquinia, Italy, Fall 1961. From Left: Froelich Rainey, US Ambassador Reinhardt, C. M. Lerici, with tie, in center. Penn Museum Archives. Who was Froelich Rainey? Froelich Rainey w ..read more

Archaeobotany is a subfield of archaeology that seeks to better understand human-plant interactions throughout history by studying ancient plant remains. Studying Paleolithic archaeobotanical remains (the Paleolithic spanning 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 years ago) can reveal a wealth of information about human behavior and ancient environments. We can learn about ancient human plant-foraging and processing behavior, reconstruct paleodiets, and model ancient climates and environments. The field of Paleolithic archaeobotany is a relatively new and continually developing field. However, there ..read more

Florence Shotridge (1882-1917), or Kaatxwaaxsnéi, was a Tlingit woman from Haines, Alaska, near the Chilkoot River. She, along with her husband, Louis Shotridge, worked for the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania collecting Tlingit objects and conducting ethnographic research on their own culture. Her husband, Louis Shotridge, is a well-known Tlingit ethnographer and collector, but much of his work in his early career was done in collaboration with Florence – yet she is not often mentioned in these early years of his work. My senior thesis project aims to breathe new life into Florence’s ..read more

Rats are not something that many people want to talk about. Who wants to talk about rodents that scurry around and hide stolen things within walls and floorboards? While rats may not be top of mind for most people, they are often at work in many buildings such as museums and old houses, and are leaving a great record behind that can be used to retell the story of that place. Current day photo of Nathaniel Russel House Kitchen House. (Photo: Historic Charleston Foundation) As a Penn Museum Fellow, I have been working with the animal bones that were collected and stored by rats in the walls of ..read more

Aylar Abdolahzadeh is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology. She is one of several Museum Assistants selected for the 2020-2021 academic year. The Museum Assistantship Program offers paid opportunities for University of Pennsylvania graduate students to work on unique projects within the Penn Museum. The program pairs Museum projects in need of research assistance with skilled graduate students from related fields. As a Museum Assistant, I had the opportunity to catalogue the Bisitun lithic collection with Katherine Blanchard, the Fowler/Van Santvoord Keeper of the Near Eastern Collections. Thi ..read more

Kacie Alaga is an MA student in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World program. She is one of several Museum Assistants selected for the 2020-2021 academic year. The Museum Assistantship Program offers paid opportunities for University of Pennsylvania graduate students to work on unique projects within the Penn Museum. The program pairs Museum projects in need of research assistance with skilled graduate students from related fields. Over the course of the past year I had the opportunity to work on a Museum Assistantship project with Dr. Jason Herrmann titled Digging Digital Data ..read more