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: Sarah Linn and Chris LaMack
By: Moriah McKenna, Chris LaMack, Kathleen Morrison Tea. With milk? With sugar? Probably both. When people imagine archaeological fieldwork, they likely think of shovels and trowels in the soil. But a crucial part of it – a foundational part – consists of copious amounts of tea. Often, cups of tea are brought in on a […]
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By: Sarah Linn and Cameron Findlay
The Penn Museum has over 1 million objects in its collection. How on earth can we keep track of it all? Step 1: Acquiring the Objects Processing objects is the first step in building and displaying a museum collection. Every object that is donated, purchased, or excavated has to be absorbed and recorded into the […]
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By: Sarah Linn and Olivia Wells
Food cultivation, creation, and diet are important research avenues for anthropologists as they are intertwined with the social, cultural, and economic processes of society. A primary source for learning about food history is burned, or “carbonized”, food remains often found during excavations. Archaeological scientists microscopically examine the physical characteristics of carbonized remains to determine the […]
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By: Sarah Linn and Sarah LaPorte
This year, I was granted the wonderful opportunity to be a Penn Museum Fellow, during which I was able to expand the research that I had started working on with Dr. Lynn Meskell as a Summer Intern. The project is a large-scale archival “deep-dive” that considers multiple angles for how the US government, private industries, […]
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By: Sarah Linn and Claudia Epley
What kinds of objects do you use in your everyday life? Hairpins, shoelaces, buttons, belt buckles—these are a few that come to mind. Small items associated with our dress and appearance, which most people hardly take notice of despite their role in clothing and self-presentation. Today, we construct these necessary items of cheap and lightweight […]
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By: Sarah Linn
By Braden Cordivari, Fiona Jensen-Hitch, and Linda Lin Each year, through the Student Exhibition Internship Program at the Penn Museum, a team of students develops a small exhibition in line with the Provost’s “Year of….” The 2017-18 academic year is the Year of Innovation, and the student curatorial team consists of Braden Cordivari (C’18), Fiona […]
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By: Sarah Linn
By Madeline Fried Today, Emily Dickinson is a literary figure beloved for her prolific and unique poetic writings. In her lifetime, however, she was more well known as a gardener than as a poet. She had a deep connection with nature, and she cultivated outdoor garden beds as well as exotic plants within a conservatory […]
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By: Sarah Linn
By Sheridan Small, Penn Museum Fellow 2017-2018 Although I never had a chance to meet Robert Henry Lamborn, I feel like we have become close friends. I have studied him over the past seven months through my research for my senior honors thesis in Anthropology as a Penn Museum Fellow. I have spent hours in […]
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By: Sarah Linn
This is part of a series of three blog posts by the 2015-2016 Penn Museum Fellows. The Penn Museum Fellows program is a new initiative that aims to support and promote advanced undergraduate research at the Penn Museum. As a Penn Museum Fellow I have worked with an abundance of materials in the Archives, and […]
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By: Sarah Linn
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. An archaeologist’s life […]
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