Category:Research

By: Naomi Miller

The Penn Museum project at Gordion has been working to preserve the site and over 100 related burial mounds (“tumuli”) that constitute an amazing historical landscape. Agricultural and suburban development are destroying the rural character of the region at a rapid rate, and an immediate threat to the archaeological remains is caused by plowing and irrigating of many […]

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!

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

By: Amy Ellsworth

More than 175 years ago, a ditch in Chester County became a mass grave for 57 Irish immigrant railroad workers, thought to have died of cholera. Now, a team that includes a Penn scholar and student is digging deeper into the lives – and deaths – of these laborers. Dr. Janet Monge, curator of physical […]

By: Gabrielle Niu

Just this week, the Penn Museum launched its Online Collections Database. This brand new resource currently encompasses over 314,000 object records and is illustrated with 46,000 images, stats that are expected to increase as the project moves forward. A keyword as well as an advanced search allow users to casually browse or specifically search for […]

By: Ardeth Abrams

Photo Caption: “If these pots could talk…” Illustration by Ardeth Anderson Abrams  Penn Museum Scholars presents  Joyce White, Associate Curator for Asia and Director of the Ban Chiang Project Marie-Claude Boileau, Postdoctoral Scholar in archaeological ceramics    Wednesday, September 21st 12:30 pm • Classroom #2  Pottery excavated from the UNESCO World Heritage site of Ban Chiang, Thailand […]

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 […]

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 […]