logo

Category:Physical Anthropology


A Gorilla Odyssey

By: Anne Tiballi

The big wooden board hanging from a shoulder strap was knocking against my side. Ka-lunk Ka-lunk. What did people think I was carrying? There was a measuring tape along the side and a moving piece of wood, but it was hard to notice those in passing. Still, by the time I arrived at the museum, […]


Stepping Out of the Lab and into History – Raquel Fleskes

By: Anne Tiballi

As an anthropological geneticist, my comfort zone very much involves being in a laboratory. There, in the quiet, I extract, amplify, and sequence DNA samples to look at kinship and ancestry in populations. The work could be seen as monotonous looking in from the outside, but in the repetition of my research I find both […]


Confronting Death at the Penn Museum

By: Molly Gleeson

After three years of working on ancient Egyptian mummies In the Artifact Lab, I’ve gotten used to being around death every day. And, in reality, all of us here at the Museum are surrounded by death – many artifacts in our collection were excavated from tombs and relate to funerary practices and provide intimate connections […]


The Krapina Neanderthals – Paul Mitchell

By: Anne Tiballi

Every year, the Penn Museum provides support to Penn undergraduates and graduate students as they deepen their understanding of the human experience outside the Museum’s walls. Follow these blog posts from our intrepid young scholars as they report on the sights and sites that they encounter throughout their travels in the field. Although Neanderthal specimens […]


Ur Project: February 2015

By: Brad Hafford

Deep Pits and Early Burials (Again) Spotlight on 31-17-403: Uruk Period Skeleton from Ur Penn Museum’s second rediscovered skeleton The documentation that led to the rediscovery of an ancient skeleton from Ur in the Penn Museum’s storerooms last year showed that two skeletons had been received in March of 1931. This month we have located […]


Special visitor in the Artifact Lab

By: Molly Gleeson

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 […]


Seek and Ye Shall Find

By: Paul Mitchell

More updates on the dig in Laikipia, Kenya, to come soon. I’m cooking up a longer post, but it needs to simmer for a while. For the moment, enjoy these beautiful molars that we’ve uncovered!


Kenya 2012: A Petit Primer on the Genetics of Lactase Persistence – The Suckling Saga 2/2

By: Paul Mitchell

(Continued from the first part of this post: “Lactation, Lips, and Other Mammalian Curiosities”) Now, consider the facts in the first part of this post about the mammalian milk bar and take a look at these orphan elephants at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi. I visited these trunky critters with Kathleen and Louise […]


Kenya 2012: Lactation, Lips, and Other Mammalian Curiosities – The Suckling Saga 1/2

By: Paul Mitchell

Below you’ll find some of the thoughts that have bubbled up in my mind while I’ve been pleasantly bumbling about Kenya. All of these things connect to the project which we’re undertaking in some way, but I hope you’ll indulge by ramblings on natural history just a smidgen, even if they seem somewhat far afield […]


Kenya 2012: Bones, Bodies, Misbehavior*

By: Paul Mitchell

Note: The internet comes and goes at Kenya in the moment. Mostly goes. As such, this post is a few days late. Pardon our tardiness. We’ll get back on schedule lickety-split. ***** I would say the weather in Nairobi is temperate. Gray clouds floated by today without dropping their contents, except for the short but […]