If this doesn’t help you get through Wednesday, there’s not much more that I can do.
By: Maureen Callahan
Desert Falconer
By: Maureen Callahan
Pointless but Adorable Animal Photo
By: Maureen Callahan
Marvelous Monday Archaeologist of the Week – Tatiana Proskouriakoff
By: Maureen Callahan
I don’t know much about Maya hieroglyphs, but I do know that Tatiana Proskouriakoff was, by every measure, a badass. Proskouriakoff was born in Tomsk, Siberia, the daughter of aristocrats. The family traveled to the United States in late 1915, when her father was sent to supervise the manufacture and sale of weapons to Russia. […]
Fire, Water, and the Closing of the Frontier
By: Maureen Callahan
If you ever want to make a genealogist cry (no judgment here — that could be an entertaining time), just mention the 1890 United States census. It was a victim of destiny and bureaucrats, first damaged in a fire in 1921 and later destroyed by bone-headed paper pushers in 1933. The first census to use […]
Weirdo gentlemen archaeologists and the archivists who love them
By: Maureen Callahan
There’s a qualitative difference, I’ve discovered, in researching the lives of antebellum and post-Civil War historical figures. When I read the papers of archaeologists of the late nineteenth century, I more or less understand their lives, the technologies that influence their work and the workings of their disciplines. Anything before 1860, however, leaves me lost. […]
Phun with Photochromes*
By: Maureen Callahan
Please indulge the ebullient tone in this post — the sun is shining and I just can’t contain myself. Every once in a while, we should take a moment to look at a truly beautiful image. There’s a lot to like about this image. The composition is effective, the subject compelling, colors vibrant and details […]
Cradle Boards and Having an Opinion
By: Maureen Callahan
The Ferber method, free-range kids, Dr. Spock, attachment parenting — it seems that the world has always been full of people who think that they know how to raise your kids better than you do. In this vein, and in the context of early twentieth-century progressive party-crashers and a national campaign of widespread displacement and […]
Geek-Out Book Blogging
By: Maureen Callahan
The Penn Museum Archives is the proud new owner of How to Identify Prints: A Complete Guide to Manual and Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to Inkjet by Bamber Gascoigne. What I love most about this book is that it offers the what they call “Sherlock Holmes” and what we call “Choose Your Own Adventure” approach […]
Ellen Kohler at Gordion
By: Maureen Callahan
The woman in this image, Ellen Kohler, was an Anatolian and classical archaeologist based at the Penn Museum for the majority of her career. In this photo, she is demonstrating the use of a quern stone at the site of Gordion, in central Turkey. Gordion is located fifty miles southwest of Ankara and is one […]