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 […]

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By: Ainslie Harrison

So we are almost at the end of our IMLS survey of Pachacamac textiles and ceramics. As mentioned in previous blog posts, this one-year grant covers a detailed condition assessment, photography, and rehousing of the archeological textiles and ceramics from Max Uhle’s 1896 excavation at Pachacamac, Peru.  We have gotten a lot done over the last 10 […]

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By: Fran Baas

Time is quickly passing, but we are making great strides and accomplishments in the IMLS grant-funded Pachacamac Survey Project!  This one-year grant covers a detailed condition assessment, photography and rehousing of the archeological textiles and ceramics affiliated with Max Uhle’s 1896 excavation in Pachacamac, Peru.  All these steps (and a few more) are going on […]

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By: Fran Baas

Last Friday, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter proclaimed March “Fiber Art Month” during the opening ceremony of FiberPhiladelphia 2012!  In honor of that proclamation, I wanted to post a few photographs of some inspiring ancient Peruvian textiles I’ve seen during my IMLS-funded condition assessment survey. With simple tools, every process of textile manufacture was by hand. The thoughtful […]

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By: Tessa de Alarcon

  One of the projects that we’re working on in the conservation lab right now is preparations for the Maya 2012: Lords of Time exhibition (opening on May 5th!). We’re currently examining and treating Guatemalan face masks. A common problem that many of these masks have is flaking paint.             […]

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By: Fran Baas

As I mentioned in my staff introduction, I am working at the University Of Pennsylvania Museum Of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum) on a IMLS funded post-graduate conservation fellowship.  During this one year fellowship, my responsibilities include conducting a conservation assessment of approximately 2900 archeological textiles from Max Uhle’s excavation at Pachacamac, Peru.  The overarching […]

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By: Ainslie Harrison

During the Pachacamac project Fran Baas and myself will move, survey, photograph, and rehouse 2800 textiles and 1000 pots (stay tuned for more about the survey process!). In order to complete this immense amount of work, we will be relying on our team of wonderful interns, volunteers, and work studies. While they come from different […]

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By: Nina Owczarek

The Conservation Department now has a portable x-ray fluorescence analyzer (or pXRF) courtesy of the 1956 Otto Haas Charitable Trust.  This is great news for the lab, since now we can answer frequently asked questions without having to consider destructive testing.  As stewards of our world’s material culture, this is a great new advantage! XRF […]

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By: Stephen Lang

Working in a museum can sometimes seem like an exercise in eternal patience.  You seem to always be planting the seed of something that will only come to fruition weeks, months, or even years from now.  One such project has been my dream of having the Chinese paintings in our collection (some of which have […]

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By: Stephen Lang

Well, I’m back after a nice little trip to the west coast.  I will be providing some links to topics of interest I found enlightening while at AAM.  Hopefully this will shed some light on the current state of museums as well as some perspective on what keepers deal with on a daily, monthly, and […]

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