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Welcome to the Penn Museum blog. First launched in January 2009, the Museum blog now has over 800 posts covering a range of topics in the categories of Museum, Collection, Exhibitions, Research, and By Location. Here you’ll hear directly from our staff and Penn students about their work, research, experiences, and discoveries. To explore the Museum's other digital content, visit The Digital Penn Museum.


This Ain’t Loolapalooza but Penn Museum has a Music Lineup for People Who Love Music

By: Darien Sutton

PM@Penn Museum: Summer Nights kicked off its 2nd season of great summer music in the garden last Wednesday, June 22, with Turkish-American rock band Barakka. Over 200 people came out, enjoyed happy hour drinks and food, and relaxed in the Museum’s Trescher Courtyard for the live 2-set show. There’s no better (and cheaper) place than […]

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Dr. Pat’s Ancient Ales

By: Amy Ellsworth

When I first started working at the Penn Museum (back in 2006 CE), I inherited an office that had probably been used as a supply closet at one time or another. The shelves came stocked with publications about Mayan hieroglyphs, Etruscan armor, and a whole mess of those off-putting, 1-color pubs from the 80s. Among […]

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Chet Gorman, Ban Chiang’s Wild Ginger Man

By: Ardeth Abrams

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 […]

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The Ban Chiang Project

By: Josh

Ban Chiang is a village/mortuary site in northern northeast Thailand, in the province of Udon Thani. Excavated by Chet Gorman of the University of Pennsylvania Museum and Pisit Charoenwongsa of the Thai Fine Arts Department in 1974-1975, this extraordinary site was among the first to establish the existence not only of a hitherto unknown prehistoric […]

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Summer Nights Foursquare Flash Special

By: Josh

Hi! @SocialMediaJosh here writing to inform you of a great foursquare Flash Promotion the museum will be running during the PM @ Penn Museum Summer Nights series. Be one of the first ten people to check in on your smart phone and you will receive a FREE drink (with a valid ID… of course). So […]

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World’s Oldest Child Found in Morocco

By: Amy Ellsworth

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 […]

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The Morton Collection of Human Skulls at the Penn Museum

By: Amy Ellsworth

Penn Museum’s Morton Collection of 19th Century Skulls Flickr set. Read the Article Lewis JE, DeGusta D, Meyer MR, Monge JM, Mann AE, et al. (2011) The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias. PLoS Biol 9(6): e1001071. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001071 In the News Wade, Nicholas (June 13, 2011). “Scientists […]

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