Artifact of the month Spotlight on field number U.8847 (museum number B17313) Bitumen Model Boat This is a model of a marsh or river boat that was found in Trial Trench G in the Royal Cemetery area of Ur. Woolley in his field card does not record the exact tomb of this example, though U.8846, [...]
One factoid about the Museum that never fails to amaze in conversation is the estimate that what’s on exhibition is less than 5% of our total collections. The usual response is, “where’s the rest of the stuff?” The answer is ‘in storage’. The Museum has a whole array of storerooms (my usual joke is that [...]
This month we have begun examining clay figurines from Ur. Our goal is to confirm museum object associations with field records. Here are two examples to show the process, challenges, and a little detail on the imagery: Artifacts of the month Spotlight on field number U.1527 (museum number B15689) and field number U.18001B? (museum number [...]
One of the responsibilities of the conservation department is to provide advice and consultation on conservation matters for colleagues, the university community and the general public. The University Community often produces some interesting queries, like the time the ICA wanted to know how to prevent pest problems when exhibiting artworks made of chocolate. Some time [...]
This month we had a week-long visit from archaeo-metallurgists from the Deutches Bergbau-Museum, the University of Franfurt am Main, and the University of Toulouse, Le Mirail. They brought with them some impressive equipment for spot analysis of many metal objects from Ur and will do more in-depth studies of the results back in their home [...]
If you ask me, there is always something interesting going on in the Artifact Lab, and yesterday was no exception. If you have been following the Artifact Lab blog, you will know that we have been working on one of the mummies in our collection, who we refer to as PUM I. PUM stands for [...]
That’s how they say “A big success” in Honduras. I learned that last week in Copan, the site where Penn Museum has been involved for over 25 years. I went to Honduras in mid February with other Museum staff members (Dr. Loa Traxler, Bob Thurlow, and Tessa de Alarcon) for two purposes: to see the [...]
I am in Copan Ruinas, Honduras along with Lynn Grant and Loa Traxler working on the final touches for a workshop on field conservation. This is my first time in Honduras and therefore in Copan. The site is certainly a marvel, but I expected it to be. The real surprise has been the CRIA (Centro [...]
Recently the Archives department had a request for footage of Morocco, which turned out to be for a film about current day and historic use of water in Rabat. Once again Watson Kintner’s beautiful Kodachrome footage (1951, etc.) has had another outing in the world, this time returned to Rabat where the filmmaker has presented [...]
Sometime in 2009, before I came to the museum, there was a major migration in both server, platform and URL of the Museums’ website. These were necessary and progressive moves in the ever changing technological landscape, however, it was not without cost. In the same way time and earth might cover over the traces of [...]
