More than 175 years ago, a ditch in Chester County became a mass grave for 57 Irish immigrant railroad workers, thought to have died of cholera. Now, a team that includes a Penn scholar and student is digging deeper into the lives – and deaths – of these laborers. Dr. Janet Monge, curator of physical [...]
Just this week, the Penn Museum launched its Online Collections Database. This brand new resource currently encompasses over 314,000 object records and is illustrated with 46,000 images, stats that are expected to increase as the project moves forward. A keyword as well as an advanced search allow users to casually browse or specifically search for [...]
Photo Caption: “If these pots could talk…” Illustration by Ardeth Anderson Abrams Penn Museum Scholars presents Joyce White, Associate Curator for Asia and Director of the Ban Chiang Project Marie-Claude Boileau, Postdoctoral Scholar in archaeological ceramics Wednesday, September 21st 12:30 pm • Classroom #2 Pottery excavated from the UNESCO World Heritage site of Ban Chiang, Thailand [...]
Chet surveying on a river in northern Thailand. A couple of months ago, I attended an evening talk at the Penn Museum where movies of the Ban Chiang Project’s first director, Chester Gorman, were part of the speaker’s PowerPoint presentation. As I watched the grainy images of Chester (a. k. a. Chet) Gorman excavating at [...]
Dr. Harold Dibble and his excavation team at Smugglers’ Cave on the Atlantic Coast of Morocco found the skull of the “world’s oldest child.” Rigorous dating techniques have determined the age of the skull to be around 108,000 years old. Analysis of the teeth tells us that the boy died at around six years of [...]
Pot coding at the Ban Chiang Lab, Penn Museum, 2010-11. Photos by Bounheuang Bouasisengpaseuth and Sureeratana Bubpha Continued from, From Pen, Thailand to University of Penn, Part 1 Finally, we arrived at Penn! Fall 2010, twelve years later, finally I am here at Penn. I am now a participant of the Ban Chiang Project. Director, [...]
Survey at Ban Pone, Pen District, Udorn Thani Province, NE Thailand, 1999. Photo by Korokot Boonlop Let’s go to Pen! In 1999, three friends and I went to Udorn Thani Province in Northeast Thailand to participate in the Ban Chiang Cultural Tradition Project at Ban Pone, Pen District. We were all archaeological students from Silpakorn [...]
Caption: Before, during, and after photos of our “flipped lab”. It wasn’t exactly like the show “Flip This House” but it was certainly fraught with emotional ups and downs as we waited for our new ceramics lab to be completed. There were many trips down the hall to the West Wing of the Museum to [...]
A group of archaeologists working in Armenia had something to toast in the new year: they announced that they had unearthed a surprisingly advanced winemaking operation, discovered in a cave hear a remote Armenian village. The operation dates back 6,000 years-making it the earliest known site in the world for wine-making with grapes! This exciting [...]
