University Museum Announcements – Winter 1978

Grant Applications

Applications have been made by the University Museum for the following Federal grants.

1. National Science Foundation: Center Support for MASCA: $258,200. Submitted December 1, 1977.
2. National Endowment for the Humani­ties: Challenge Grant for Sustaining Support and Endowment: $1,500,000. Submitted December 19, 1977.
3. National Science Foundation: Plan­ning Grant for Systematic Approach to Museum Collections: $69,000. Submitted January 31, 1978 for five years.

Museum Expeditions

American Section: Dr. Robert Sharer is working at Quirigua. Biblical Archaeology Section: Dr. James Pritchard is working in Beirut on the cata­logue of pottery from his excavations at Sarepta in Lebanon.

Publication

The University of Pennsylvania Press has announced the publication of The Prehistory of Chalchuapa, El Salvador, edited by Robert J. Sharer.

Volume I. Introduction
Surface Surveys, Excavations, Monuments, and Special Deposits
Robert J. Sharer, Bruce Anderson, David W. Sedat, Payson D. Sheets, and Dana Anderson

Volume II. Artifacts and Figurines Payson D. Sheets and Bruce H. Dahlin

Volume III. Pottery and Conclusions Robert J. Sharer

When it entered modern history in the 16th century, Chalchuapa—the earliest known settlement in the southeastern Maya high­lands, equidistant between Copan and Kaminaljuyu—had already been a center of human life for nearly three millennia. Exten­sive research by archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania Museum has now recovered the past of the Mayan and Olmec peoples who flourished there. The site investi­gated and exhaustively described here in­cludes over fifty large mounds resting on plazas, house mounds and terraces, monu­mental stone sculpture, and extensive cultural deposits along the shores of nearby lakes. The theorizing by the field director of the project, Robert Sharer, further advances cultural frontiers in an archaeological context.

Dr. Sharer is the author of numerous arti­cles on Mayan ethnography and archaeology and on cultural theory. He is presently Asso­ciate Curator of the American Section of the University Museum as well as Associate Professor of Anthropology.

The price of the publication is $45.00 set (softcovers), $17.00 per volume.

Copies may be ordered from University of Pennsylvania Press, 3933 Walnut St., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104.

Museum Exhibition

An exhibition entitled “One with the Earth” sponsored by the Indian Rights Association from February 28th for approxi­mately three weeks, will be held in the Sharpe Gallery of the Museum.

Appointment

Mr. Ronald J. Goff, Secretary of the Museum, has been appointed to the Operat­ing Committee for the University of Penn­sylvania’s “Development Program for the ’80’s,” as from February 1, 1978 and will represent the views of the University Museum.