The MEDITERRANEAN SECTION has recently received a matching grant of $17,500 from the National Endowment for the Arts. The grant will fund planning for the renovation of existing galleries, and the design and reinstallation of “The Italic and Etruscan Worlds” and “The Roman World,” as well as an area devoted to “An Introduction to the Mediterranean World.” These new, permanent exhibitions will present the cultural life of the peoples of the Italian peninsula during the period from the 9th century BC to the 4th century AD. The Museum has one of the most significant collections of Etruscan and Roman artifacts in a museum in the United States. The collection is especially rich in pottery, small bronze figurines, coins, and sculpture (see Expedition 40, no. 3, for a recent article about some of this sculpture, from the Sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis near Rome).
DR. FREDRIK T. HIEBERT was the recipient on November 6. 1998, of one of the National Geographic Society’s Chairman’s Awards. The award is given to those scholars whose records of scientific field investigations are judged to warrant special recognition. The cash sum of $15,000 can be used by the awardees for any purpose that helps further their research interests. Dr. Hiebert is the Robert H. Dyson, Jr.. Assistant Professor of Anthropology, and Assistant Curator of the Near East Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum. He intends to use the award to begin excavations at a Bronze Age site on the Black Sea Coast—a site which may have been the southern end of a trans—Black Sea shipping lane as early as 3500 BC.
Last year DR. EZAT O. NEGAHBAN was presented with a volume of collected papers in his honor by Iran University Press. The Festschrift, entitled The Iranian World. Essays on Iranian Art and Archaeology (1998) and comprising papers in Iranian, English, German, and French, is edited by Abbas Alizadeh, Yousef Majidzadeh, and Sadegh Malek Shahmirzadi. Dr. Negahban is Visiting Curator in the Near East Section. He was for many years a professor at Tehran University, where he also held various responsible posts, including Director of the Institute of Archaeology. In addition he was the Technical Director of Archaeology (1965-78) at the Iranian Archaeological Service, in which position he was instrumental in the passing of resolutions condemning the traffic in illegal antiquities. He is perhaps best known to the Museum community as the excavator of two important sites, Haft Tepe and Marlik.
The University Museum regrets to announce the death on February 5, 1999. of JOHN LAMBERT COTTER, PH.D., Curator Emeritus of the Historical Archaeology Section. Dr. Cotter was a noted American archaeologist who began his career in the 1930s working on prehistoric sites of the American Southeast and Southwest, including the Clovis Paleoindian Type Site in New Mexico. He is perhaps best known, however, for his pioneering role in launching and promoting the field of historical archaeology. He was associated with both the National Park Service (1940-1977) and the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught in 1960 the first course ever offered in the United States in Historical Archaeology. He had received his doctorate in anthropology from Penn in 1959. Though Dr. Cotter officially retired from Penn in 1979, he maintained an active professional life that would have taxed considerably younger scholars. His life in archaeology seemed to have come full circle with the co-authoring with Anthony T. Boldurian of a restudy of Clovis artifacts. Titled Clovis Revisited, it is being published by University Museum Publications. It went to press the week before his death.