The University of Pennsylvania Museum awarded two honors in April 2000 in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology which took place in Philadelphia.
Robert McC. Adams, former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was awarded the UPM’s Lucy Wharton Drexel Medal for archaeological achievement. Dr. Adams is best known for his study of the origins of urbanism and his pioneering settlement surveys of the southern Mesopotamian floodplain, carried out while he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago in the 1960s through 1980s. He was Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1984 to 1994. The Drexel Medal was established by the Museum in 1889 to honor exceptional achievement in excavation or publication of archaeological work. It is given by the UPM Director in consultation with past medal recipients and archaeological curators of the Museum.
F. Clark Howell, a physical anthropologist world-renowned for his cross-disciplinary efforts to broaden the focus of the study of human origins, received the first Wilton Krogman Award for Distinguished Achievement in Biological Anthropology Dr. Howell is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley (1970-1992), where he founded and co-directs the Laboratory of Human Evolutionary Studies. Among Dr. Howell’s many contributions to the field of early human biological evolution was the discovery, during a 1969 expedition to Ethiopia, of tooth and jaw fragments demonstrating that human australopithecoid ancestors existed four million years ago, rather than two million as previously believed.
The UPM’s new award, developed to recognize scientists in the field of biological anthropology, was created to honor the memory of Dr. Wilton M. Frogman, former Professor of Physical Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania (1947-1971), and founder, in r947, of the Philadelphia Center for Research in Child Growth (now the W.M. Krogman Center for Re-search in Child Growth and Development).
Have you visited the Museum’s website lately? Recently, websiters Suzanne Clappier and Raymond Rorke were among the University of Pennsylvania employees selected by the University as “Models of Excellence.” They received the award for their work in developing the Museum’s internationally recognized website. UPM Members and other loyal followers always knew of the Museum’s wealth of information, resources, and activities; thanks to the website, now the rest of the world knows as well. The site gets more than 200,000 hits weekly from more than 68 different countries.
