Directory
Katy Blanchard
Fowler/Van Santvoord Keeper of the Near Eastern Collections, Penn Museum
Specialization • Museums
Region • Middle East
Affiliation • Penn Museum
A museum’s collections aren’t dusty items sitting in a basement, but rather materials that are constantly teaching us about the past.
Marie-Claude Boileau
Director, Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Asia • Europe • Middle East
Affiliation • Penn Museum
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I am an archaeological scientist focusing on ceramics and interested in the relation between maker and material, and in the mobility of knowledge, people and objects.
Gareth Darbyshire
Gordion Archivist and Researcher, Mediterranean Section, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Europe • Middle East
Affiliation • Penn Museum
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My work is comprehensively centred on the archaeology and history of Gordion—capital of the Iron Age kingdom of Phrygia, and one of the pre-eminent settlements of the Middle East in the first millennium BCE. My principal research interest is the character, use, and deposition of metalwork in the momentous and often troubled times of the Iron Age, Achaemenid, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, to illuminate continuities and transformations in food production, craft and building work, transport, warfare, and ritual practices.
Tessa De Alarcon
Project Conservator, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Americas • Asia • Europe • Global • Middle East • Pacific
Affiliation • Penn Museum
I am interested in improving treatment efficacy as well as the examination on of objects using multi -modal imaging, X-radiography, and microscopy.
Ivan Drpić
Associate Professor, History of Art
Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Europe • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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Drpić’s current research explores the formation of subjectivity in the premodern world through the lens of material culture.
Reyhan Durmaz
Assistant Professor, Religious Studies
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Asia • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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My research focuses on the history of Christianity and Christian-Muslim relations in late antiquity and the medieval Middle East, with an eye towards the issues surrounding religious minorities in the Middle East today.
William B. Hafford
Project Manager, Near East Languages & Civilizations, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Middle East
Affiliation • Penn Museum
A field archaeologist who has excavated in many countries around the globe, Dr. Hafford’s research focuses primarily on ancient economics; in particular, money before most people believe money ever existed.
Emily Hammer
Assistant Professor, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations & Price Lab for the Digital Humanities
Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Asia • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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I use satellite imagery analysis and the methodologies of survey and landscape archaeology to provide a regional and spatial perspective on heritage preservation and site looting in conflict zones.
Jason T. Herrmann
Lecturer, Anthropology
Teaching Specialist for Digital Archaeology Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials, Penn Museum
Ann Kuttner
Associate Professor, History of Art
Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Africa • Europe • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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I ask how ancient cultures of a global Mediterranean world ca. 350 BCE-500 CE talked, by means of images, things, structures, spaces and landscapes, both to themselves and with other groups among and beyond them (not least in conditions of empire); in today’s visually saturated environments and global contexts, that antiquity offers telling models for how art and artifice make, or challenge, identities in small worlds as in big ones.
Frank G. Matero
Professor, Architecture and Historic Preservation
Director, The Center for Architectural Conservation
Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Heritage
Region • Americas • Europe • Global • Middle East
Affiliation • Weitzman School of Design
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One definition of Preservation is it is the sum total of the ways in which the present maintains living contact with the past. To do that it must be both a physical and a social act. But we should remember it is also a ‘critical act’ in that observation, experience, reflection, and reasoning are essential to its practice.
Lynn Meskell
Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor, Anthropology, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation and Curator, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Asia • Europe • Global • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum • Weitzman School of Design
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I’ve always been drawn to social and political issues, whether in the past or indeed how the past comes to matter in the present. As famously said, the past is never dead. It’s not even past.
Naomi F. Miller
Consulting Scholar, Near East Section, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Asia • Middle East
Affiliation • Penn Museum
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As an archaeobotanist, I investigate human impact on and adaptation to the environment over millennia, up to and including the present.
Deborah I. Olszewski
Consulting Scholar, European Section, Penn Museum
Adjunct Professor, Anthropology
Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Africa • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
Humanity in a prehistoric world of hunter-gatherers and how we became who we are today.
Stephen R. Phillips
Curatorial Research Coordinator, Egyptian Section, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Africa • Europe • Middle East
Affiliation • Penn Museum
Ancient Lives Still Speak, It Behooves Us All to Listen
Holly Pittman
Bok Family Professor in the Humanities, History of Art
Curator, Near East Section, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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Lauren Ristvet
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Robert H. Dyson, Jr. Associate Curator, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Asia • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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My work in Syria, Azerbaijan and Iraq investigates how and why ancient kingdoms and empires endured or failed—and how modern empires have repurposed this legacy in surprising ways.
Theodore G. Schurr
Professor, Anthropology
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Americas • Asia • Europe • Global • Middle East • Pacific
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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Through DNA analysis, we reconstruct the origin and migration history of human populations, linking evidence from the past with present day understandings of ancestry, genealogy, and history.
Heather J. Sharkey
Professor, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Specialization • Museums • Heritage
Region • Africa • Americas • Global • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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With my students, I aim to produce public-facing scholarship that explores the history of the Penn Museum, the University of Pennsylvania, and associated scholars and resources while drawing connections to the United States, the Middle East and North Africa, and the wider world!
Josef Wegner
Professor, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Curator, Egyptian Section, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Africa • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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Surprising new archaeological discoveries made through ongoing excavations at Abydos show how archaeological research continues to transform our understanding of the society and history of Ancient Egypt.
Chantel White
Teaching Specialist, Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials, Penn Museum
Adjunct Faculty, Anthropology
Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Americas • Europe • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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My research focuses on the tiny discarded items of everyday life – bits of seeds, nut shells, and other plant materials – to reconstruct the foods and beverages that people consumed in the past, and to better understand the specialized knowledge and skillsets of those who produced daily meals.
Christopher Woods
Williams Director, Penn Museum
Avalon Professor in the Humanities
Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Museums • Heritage
Region • Asia • Middle East
Affiliation • Penn Museum
My current research centers on the origins of writing and the rise of the world’s first cities in southern Mesopotamia (Iraq); as the former director of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute and now the Penn Museum, I have been involved in large-scale conservation and cultural heritage projects, particularly in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Mantha Zarmakoupi
Morris Russell and Josephine Chidsey Williams Assistant Professor in Roman Architecture, History of Art
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Europe • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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Zarmakoupi has a multidisciplinary training in Classical Archaeology, History and Theory of Architecture, and Architecture and Engineering and brings together in her research and teaching a specialist’s knowledge of ancient architecture, classical archaeology and underwater archaeology with an interdisciplinary approach to classics and archaeology.
Richard L. Zettler
Associate Professor, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Associate Curator-in-Charge, Near East Section, Penn Museum
Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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Focused on reconstructing the ancient past of the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers; dedicated to supporting Iraqi communities impacted by conflict; and, empowering Iraqi archaeologists and heritage professionals to recover, protect and preserve the country’s rich cultural heritage.