On the Cover: The two-person submersible, Carolyn, assists in the lifting of amphorae at the site of Tektas Burnu..
Photo by Courtney Platt.
By: Aubrey Baadsgaard
Some 4,600 years ago processions of royal courtiers—including soldiers, musicians, ladies-in-waiting, ox- cart and chariot drivers, and animal grooms—accompanied their king or queen to the afterlife. Descending a ramp into an earthen pit at the biblical site popularly known as Ur of the Chaldees, they were put to death by drinking poison from small, clay cups. […]
By: Gareth Darbyshire
Keith Devries, Associate Curator Emeritus in the Mediterranean Section, passed away at the age of 69 on July 16, 2006, after a long strugglw with cancer. I got to know Keith while working in central Turkey at Gordion—the long-deserted capital of the Iron Age kingdom of Phrygia—and, more recently, here in the Museum’s Gordion Archives. […]
By: Deborah I. Olszewski
A fascination with the human condition and the problems that society attempts to solve is the driving force behind the research and teaching of Barry L. Eichler, Associate Curator-in-Charge of the Babylonian Section at Penn Museum. His close readings of ancient texts on Middle Eastern clay tablets provide insights into issues of societal control, law, and […]
By: Holly Pittman
For more than a century a core mission of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has been to foster research that leads to new understandings about human culture. For much of the 20th century this research took the form of expeditions to all parts of the globe which brought back both data […]
By: Janet Chrzan
If you were to think of a place you have visited, especially a well-known tourist destination like San Francisco or New Orleans, what immediately comes to mind? Is it a famous view like the Golden Gate Bridge or a major event like Hurricane Katrina? Or is it the local food, such as sourdough bread, seafood, […]
By: George F. Bass
It all began nearly half a century ago at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In 1959, the Director of the Museum, Froelich Rainey, and the Curator of the Mediterranean Section, Rodney Young, asked me if I would be willing to learn to dive in order to excavate a Late Bronze Age […]
By: Daniel A. Meyer and Jason Roe
During the last Ice Age the glaciers in west-central Alberta reached their maximum extent about 20,000 years ago, forming a barrier along the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountain foothills south into Montana. After the glaciers retreated, plants re-colonized the valley floors and alpine areas 11,000–10,000 years ago, creating a generally hospitable environment for human […]
By: Daniel A. Meyer and Jason Roe
Canada’s rocky mountains and the foothills of the Eastern Slopes are, archaeologically speaking, among the least-known areas in North America. While many tourists are familiar with Banff, Jasper, and Waterton Lakes National Parks, few know about this region’s past human occupation. Despite its natural beauty, most find it difficult to imagine that Canada’s First Nations […]
By: James R. Mathieu
Anthropology is a very broad field, encompassing the subfields of archaeology, biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. In this summer issue of Expedition we are pleased to present feature articles incorporating each of these sub-disciplines. We begin in Indonesian Borneo, where a cultural anthropologist explores the nature of families and their place in the […]
By: Matt Tomlinson
Reverse Anthropology: Indigenous Analysis of Social and Environmental Relations in New Guinea by Stuart Kirsch (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). 296 pp., 24 illus, paper, $21.95, ISBN 0-804-75342-3, cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-804-75341-5. This is an ethnography of rare moral force. Stuart Kirsch works with the Yonggom, a people who face daunting dilemmas from both […]