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.
By: Annie Chan
On the last day, we traveled across Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture before making our way northward into Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture. On both sides of the highway were spectacular views of velvety green hills with fir trees and fields of lavender. We passed a few roadside stores selling wild berry jams and honey in the […]
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By: Brad Hafford
Documents of the month Spotlight on archival records of the Ur excavations With special thanks to all the volunteers transcribing them Cablegrams announcing finds (PA1-11-7-1927 and PA1-12-14a-1927) Not only were thousands of ancient tablets excavated at the ancient site of Ur, but thousands of modern documents were created in the process of excavating them and […]
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By: Sophie Crawford-Brown
My name is Sophie Crawford-Brown and I am going into my second year at Penn as a PhD student in Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World. Thanks to the generous support of the Penn Museum, I was able to excavate at a fascinating site in Italy this summer. The dig team was staying in […]
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By: Stephanie Mach
The Penn Museum sometimes feels like a world away from the rest of campus. And yet the building is sandwiched between Franklin Field, HUP, and Penn Park. Is there a mental wall keeping the Museum at a distance? Or, could it be the brick and mortar wall in front of our building? Whatever the issue, […]
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By: Maria Fernanda Esteban Palma
During the last two weeks I have been talking to scholars who are interested in contemporary Muisca groups, and who have introduced me to some spiritual and political leaders of both officially recognized and non-recognized communities. But let’s start from the beginning: who are Muisca? Muisca was -or should we say is?- an indigenous “prehispanic […]
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By: Stephanie Hagan
The Roman author Pliny the Younger described the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD by likening the rising cloud of smoke to a pine tree. I didn’t understand what Pliny meant by his analogy, and I certainly couldn’t picture a volcano spewing out a coniferous Christmas tree of smoke and ash. When I arrived […]
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By: Elizabeth Potens
In addition to our work at the field school here in Northern Greece, on weekends we often travel to nearby archaeological sites. This seems to achieve the goal of familiarizing ourselves with the area and facilitates drawing connections between and recognizing the ancient relationships of these sites. Such connections were especially apparent as we toured […]
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By: Leanna Kolonauski
Stowed away in the Archives of the Penn Museum is an extremely interesting collection. Prints of bold patterned scenes, affectionate polar bears swimming in the sea, and downright unusual images make up the collection of art made by indigenous people of the Northwest Coast. This summer, as an intern in the archives, I had the […]
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By: Maria Fernanda Esteban Palma
I will be working in central Colombia (the Cundinamarca and Boyaca areas), from 22nd June to 22nd August, exploring how indigeneity is constructed and experienced in urban contexts. I will look at how spiritual practices are authenticated through their materialization in pre-hispanic archaeological artifacts and landscapes. This research will provide us important data to analyze […]
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By: Annie Chan
I was excited to see the Taklamakhan Desert again after I traveled across it by bus two years ago on the western route that runs through the heart of the desert. There are two roads that cut north-south through the desert. This time, we took the eastern route that passes through the lower reaches of […]
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