Directory

Madison Auten

Collections Coordinator, Penn Museum

Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Americas • Global
Affiliation • Penn Museum
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I am interested in Andean archaeology, the life histories of objects and body modification particularly ancient tattooing. The act of marking one’s skin permanently with designs can tell a story about an individual and their culture at specific times in history. Ancient tattooing practices have potential to inform archaeologists on topics of visual communication, status, identity, societal value, knowledge transmission, iconography, as well as therapeutic treatments and life history events.

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.

Kim Bowes

Professor, Classical Studies

Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Europe
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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The Roman 90%: I work on the economic and social lives of poor and working Romans.

Ann Blair Brownlee

Associate Curator, Mediterranean Section, Penn Museum

Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Europe
Affiliation • Penn Museum

I am interested in objects and the stories they tell.

Margaret M. Bruchac

Associate Professor, Anthropology
Coordinator of Native American and Indigenous Studies

Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Americas • Europe
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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I have long been committed to critical studies of Indigenous and colonial histories, material culture, archives, museums, and anthropological practice. My current research examines early collaborations among Indigenous informants and anthropological collectors that influenced the distribution and interpretation of cultural heritage in museums.

Julia Commander

Alice and Herbert Sachs Egyptian Collections Conservator, Penn Museum

Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Museums
Region • Global
Affiliation • Penn Museum

Julia is an archaeological objects conservator currently focusing on monumental Egyptian architecture and stone sculpture.

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.

Peter Gould

Consulting Scholar, Penn Cultural Heritage Center, Penn Museum

Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Americas • Europe
Affiliation • Penn Museum
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My specialization is in the nexus among archaeological and museum practice, organizational management and governance, economic theory, and the manner in which markets and government properly aligned can protect rather than undermine the future of heritage.

Campbell A. Grey

Associate Professor, Classical Studies

Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Europe
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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I explore the space where human populations encounter, engage with, and imagine the world around them, employing contemporary conceptualizations of risk and inequality to examine societal responses to uncertainty in the Late Roman world.

Sarah M. Guérin

Assistant Professor, History of Art

Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Africa • Europe • Global
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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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

Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Americas • Europe • Global • Middle East
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences
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Remote sensing and spatial analysis of past landscapes.

Megan C. Kassabaum

Associate Professor, Anthropology
Associate Curator, American Section, Penn Museum
Director, Center for Ancient Studies

Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Americas
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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My research focuses on pre-contact Native American mound sites in the Mississippi River Valley in order to understand the complex relationships that existed between monument construction and identity, as well as foodways and politics through archaeological excavation and analysis of the recovered materials. I have also recently begun a West Philadelphia-based community archaeology project. I am committed to local archaeology and believe that education aimed at populations who interact with archaeology sites as part of their quotidian landscape is key to their protection and to engendering respect for both past and present communities.

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.

Richard Leventhal

Professor, Anthropology
Curator, American Section, Penn Museum
Executive Director, Penn Cultural Heritage Center, Penn Museum

Specialization • Archaeology • Museums • Heritage
Region • Americas
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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By positioning communities in a leading role, the Penn Cultural Heritage Center reframes the preservation of cultural heritage within a context of social, political, and economic development. We demonstrate and disseminate our strategy through field projects, research, engagement in public policy, and public programs that emphasize the centrality of community priorities for successful outcomes.

Sarah Linn

Research Liaison, Academic Engagement, Penn Museum

Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Europe
Affiliation • Penn Museum

My research examines how material objects were used in the creation and maintenance of group identity in the Aegean Bronze Age, particularly Minoan Crete. I focus on objects of adornment and the multigenerational use of communal tombs. I am also committed to making archaeology and museums accessible to a range of audiences through engaging exhibitions and programs.

Mark Lycett

Director, South Asia Center
Adjunct Professor, Anthropology

Specialization • Archaeology
Region • Americas • Asia
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum
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My research focuses on the historical anthropology and social ecology of landscape formation, biodiversity, and power relations in South Asia. I am interested in the interplay of cultural landscapes and forest history; in the relationship between commemoration, social memory; and in the cultural construction of place in southern India. I have also written extensively on the social history and historical ecology of place and landscape in the Spanish Colonial Americas.

Lynn Makowsky

DeVries Keeper of Collections, Mediterranean Section, Penn Museum

Specialization • Archaeology • Museums
Region • Europe
Affiliation • Penn Museum
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As Keeper of the Mediterranean collections, I am in charge of caring for and providing access to approximately 30,000 object. I currently serve on several museum committees, including the Acquisitions Committee, Collections Committee, KeEMu Committee, and Scientific Testing Committee.

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.

Patrick McGovern

Scientific Director, Biomolecular Archaeology Project, Penn Museum
Adjunct Professor, Anthropology

Specialization • Archaeology • Conservation • Museums
Region • Global
Affiliation • School of Arts and Sciences • Penn Museum

Over the past two decades, Patrick McGovern has pioneered the exciting interdisciplinary field of Biomolecular Archaeology which is yielding whole new chapters concerning our human ancestry both physical and cultural, medical practice, and of course what our ancient ancestors were eating and drinking.

Jeremy McInerney