Volume 47 / Issue 2

From the Archives

By: Alex Pezzati

“Real South African at U. of P. Museum” Thus was a new “exhibit” at the Museum announced on January 28, 1911, in Press, a Philadelphia newspaper. On display was Bata Kindai Amgoza ibn LoBagola, seemingly a native of West Africa. Dressed only in a sheepskin skirt, with a large brass ring piercing his nose, LoBagola […]

From the Director

By: Richard M. Leventhal

The formal name, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, clearly connects our museum to the larger Penn community. This connection to the University also defines our mission as one of both education and research. From the Museum’s founding in 1887, our mission has been to study modern and ancient cultures and their […]

By: James R. Mathieu

Welcome to Expeditions summer issue! In the following pages you will read about the Museum’s role in the Centennial Potlatch—a celebration last autumn of Tlingit culture in Sitka, Alaska. We will also transport you to the highlands. On Lake Titicaca in the Andes, a Penn-led team of experimental archaeologists built and sailed a reed boat […]

Honorary Curator, American Section

By: Jean Adelman

On October 6, 2004, Frederica De Laguna, Honorary Curator in the Museum’s American Section and renowned anthropologist of Alaska’s native peoples, passed away at the age of 98. Freddy’s affiliation with the Penn Museum began in the early 1930s when she led five expeditions to Alaska’s Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, and Yukon Valley as […]

Zhang-Zhung, Kyunglung, and the Pre-Buddhist Sites of Far Western Tibet

By: Mark Aldenderfer and Holley Moyes

At the beginning of the 6th century AD, the rulers of the Yarlung clan on the central Tibetan plateau met with other clan chiefs in the region to commit to a secret alliance. By sacred oaths, they pledged never to quarrel or to seek personal advantage and always to support one of their number as […]

Associate Curator, Egyptian Section

By: Deborah I. Olszewski

The Museum’s Josef Wegner, Associate Curator in the Egyptian Section, has been interested in Egyptology since childhood. Growing up in New Hampshire, he was long aware of the significant Egyptian collections housed at the Museum and the opportunities for academic training in Egyptology. Wegner thus came to Penn in 1985 as an undergraduate and completed […]

By: Alexei Vranich and Paul Harmon and Chris Knutson

As much as archaeologists grumble about the scientific merit of Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki journey from Peru to Polynesia, one thing is certain: he started a trend. On the positive side, archaeologists began experimenting with a variety of ancient technologies as a means to understand the past. On the negative side, a generation of adventurers […]

By: Robert W. Preucel

The Sea Monster hat is a conical wooden hat with the sea monster crest (Gunakadeit), carved by Augustus Bean. The hat is recorded as having belonged to Anaaxoots (presumably James Jackson). Lieutenant George T. Emmons purchased it around the turn of the last century and then sold it to the Field Museum of Natural History […]

By: Robert W. Preucel and Lucy Fowler Williams

On June 2004, Harold Jacobs, the cultural resource specialist of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (CCTHITA), requested the loan of six objects from the Penn Museum for use in the Centennial Potlatch. The request was made on behalf of Andrew Gamble, the head of the Sitka Kaagwaantaan [Wolf] clan, […]

Research Notes

By: Michael D. Danti

The Penn Museum has had a long and auspicious history of involvement in the archaeology of Iran. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, however, American fieldwork in Iran has come to a standstill. This situation is gradually changing thanks especially to the efforts of Holly Pittman of Penn’s History of Art Department and the Museum’s Near East Section. […]