Expedition Magazine Volume 65 No. 1, Summer 2023

THE FIRST CITIES OF SUMER

After three decades, a dig in southern Iraq reopens— and revolutionizes the story of Mesopotamia

Ancient Food Flavor &

Now ON VIEW

Go an a gastronomical journey through food and plant remains— from 600-year-old potatoes to 6,000-yearold strawberries!

SUMMER 2023 | VOLUME 65, NUMBER 1

1 4 A Trip to Troy with Homer

By C. Brian Rose and Sheila Murnaghan

6 Zooming in on Asian Textiles

By Katy Rosenthal

10 Kara Tepe: A Conversation Across Time

By Katherine Blanchard and Michael Campeggi

14 In Search of an Archaeology That Uplifts

By Robert J. Vigar

18 Greetings from Lagash

Back to Lagash

By Holly Pittman

It’s Five O’Clock, Sumer

By David Mulder

A New Story of Sumer's First Cities

By Reed Goodman

Partners in Search of the Past

By Zaid Alrawi

38

Cultural Heritage Crisis

A conversation with Lynn Meskell

DEPARTMENTS

2  From the Editor

3  From the Williams Director

44  In the Labs

46  Academic Engagement

48 Learning and Community Engagement

50  Welcome News

54  Membership Matters

56  Remembering Robert Ousterhout

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Above: Student curators Anna Hoppel, Sydney Kahn, and Qi Liu watch as Conservator Julie Lawson removes charred residue from a ceramic sherd for carbon-14 dating; photo by Megan Kassabaum.

On the Cover: The sun rises over the land that was once ancient Sumer. This reopened dig site in southern Iraq had been off limits to researchers for the past 30 years.

New Word, Ancient World

WHEN I BECAME THE EDITOR OF EXPEDITION in April 2023, I spent a few days thumbing through decades of back issues in the magazine archives. Story after story, I found myself stumbling over the same word: sherd. There were sherds from Mesopotamia, from Turkey, from Guatemala. Sherds come from all corners of the earth, but what on earth are sherds?

To an archaeologist, sherd is a foundational word—one that has no replacement. But like many of you, I’m not an archaeologist, or an anthropologist, and I have no expertise in ancient history. I’m here because I'm a writer and editor who has worked with hundreds of academics and researchers to tell their stories to the general public, most recently as an editor of University of Washington Magazine in Seattle. I’ve also been a journalist for 10 years, freelancing for publications such as WIRED, The Wall Street Journal, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Thanks to Penn Museum’s YouTube channel, I quickly learned the definition of sherd from one of our curators, Megan Kassabaum: “It’s a broken piece of pottery found at an archaeological site.” Like its more common cousin, “shard,” it’s a piece that has broken off from a larger object, as fragile things tend to do over thousands of years. Ancient cups, bowls, and containers often come to us as scattered sherds. Buried in centuries of sediment, they are ceramic echoes of lost civilizations.

To learn more about this, I went to see Katherine Blanchard, the Fowler/Van Santfoord Keeper of the Near East Section (p. 10). Blanchard spends her days surrounded by shelves upon shelves of ancient clay. “A sherd is a fragment of everyday life,” she told me. “It’s a beautiful and hidden fragment, and you can tell so much from a single piece.” Sherds have what Blanchard calls “extra secrets” that whole objects don’t have. Those broken edges let us peek inside the object: We can see the material it’s made from, if the clay is local or imported, and if it's been fired or left outside to dry. A sherd can also be used to mark and measure time, based on the style it was made in. For these reasons, sherds represent the process of history: They come to us in pieces, which we can arrange to tell different stories. We know that there will always be more pieces, that our stories will always have missing chapters.

This issue’s cover story is about the Museum’s return to southern Iraq (p. 18). You will read about Holly Pittman’s trailblazing effort to reopen a historic dig site. While our team will continue to lead this excavation, these days the sherds they find, like almost everything else, will remain in the host country. What our people will bring back are the stories, and you will always be able to find them in this magazine.

EDITOR

Quinn Russell Brown

PUBLISHER

Amanda Mitchell-Boyask

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Emily Holtzheimer

ARCHIVES AND IMAGE EDITOR

Alessandro Pezzati

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Colleen Connolly

Christina Jones

COPY EDITOR

Page Selinsky, Ph.D.

ACADEMIC ADVISORY BOARD

Marie-Claude Boileau, Ph.D.

Richard Leventhal, Ph.D.

Simon Martin, Ph.D.

Janet Monge, Ph.D.

Kathleen Morrison, Ph.D.

Lauren Ristvet, Ph.D.

C. Brian Rose, Ph.D.

Page Selinsky, Ph.D.

Stephen J. Tinney, Ph.D.

Jennifer Houser Wegner, Ph.D.

Lucy Fowler Williams, Ph.D.

CONTRIBUTORS

Jessica Bicknell

Marie-Claude Boileau, Ph.D.

Jennifer Brehm

Kris Forrest

Sarah Linn, Ph.D.

Jo Tiongson-Perez

Alessandro Pezzati

PHOTOGRAPHY

Jennifer Chiappardi

Colleen Connolly

Francine Sarin

(unless noted otherwise)

INSTITUTIONAL OUTREACH MANAGER

Thomas Delfi

QUINN

RUSSELL BROWN, EDITOR

© The Penn Museum, 2023 Expedition® (ISSN 0014-4738) is published three times a year by the Penn Museum. Editorial inquiries should be addressed to expedition@pennmuseum.org. Inquiries regarding delivery of Expedition should be directed to membership@pennmuseum. org. Unless otherwise noted, all images are courtesy of the Penn Museum.

Research and Reflection

Dear Friends,

Our last issue of Expedition was a grand celebration of our new Eastern Mediterranean Gallery: an immersive, innovative look at an ancient cultural crossroads that gave rise to developments that still shape our contemporary world, from three of the world’s widespread monotheistic religions to the alphabet. I was pleased to speak with many of you during the gallery's opening weekend, which reminded me that our Museum members really are a community; you support our work, and we gather together to enjoy the fruits of our labor in celebrations like this one.

Of course, these celebrations (and the galleries they celebrate) would be impossible without the cutting-edge research of Museum curators and affiliated scholars. Looking over the articles collected here, I’m impressed as always by the depth of research on display, and the deep reflection our scholar-curators demonstrate around their discoveries. This issue of Expedition is full of fresh insights from the field, including a fascinating article on recent excavations in Lagash, where researchers have uncovered a 5,000-year-old tavern that may revolutionize our understanding of the social order in Ancient Mesopotamia. This project has received attention in both the national and international press, demonstrating that our Museum, building on its long and robust tradition of fieldwork, remains at the forefront of the discipline.

This is true not only in the world of field archaeology, but in the larger realm of cultural heritage preservation. As the world grows more interconnected and complex, efforts to preserve global heritage have moved beyond the care and upkeep of monuments and other massive sites and towards a more nuanced, locally oriented approach—and our Museum-affiliated scholars are in the vanguard of this movement, as well. This issue features an interview with our own Lynn Meskell about the way cultural heritage preservation fits into geopolitical clashes and international conflict, and how heritage preservation is a part of mediating the effects of war, terrorism, and other forms of political violence (p. 38). Today’s heritage preservation projects also have a community focus. As Robert J. Vigar explains in this issue, collaborating with local communities is crucial to the long-term success of

any project seeking to preserve cultural heritage (p. 14).

The Museum’s community focus is evident closer to home, as well, in our recent success with community partnerships. Tia Jackson-Truitt, our Chief Diversity Officer, and Jennifer Brehm, our Merle-Smith Director of Learning and Community Engagement, recently secured a prestigious program grant from the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation for Your Food Story, a program in which Sayre High School students will make connections between their local food culture and the ancient culinary customs on display in our new exhibition Ancient Food & Flavor. In addition, the Museum was recently selected for the first Culture and Arts Access award from the Mexican Cultural Center, in honor of our community-focused programming, like our annual CultureFest! Día de los Muertos program (p. 51).

Both globally and in the city we call home, the Penn Museum continues to involve communities in the excavation, preservation, and celebration of our common heritage. Thank you for being part of this ongoing investigation into our shared human story.

Warm regards,

CHRISTOPHER WOODS, PH.D. WILLIAMS DIRECTOR

Christopher Woods (third from left) at the Mexican Cultural Center’s first awards lunch with (left to right) Chief Diversity Officer Tia Jackson-Truitt; Family and Camp Coordinator Marilee Oldstone-Moore; Associate Director of Public Programs Tena Thomason; MCC Board President Araceli Guenther; Merle-Smith Director of Learning & Community Engagement Jennifer Brehm; and Ivette Compean and Virginia Rivera Hernández of the Mexican Cultural Center.

A Trip to Troy with Homer

BY C. BRIAN ROSE AND SHEILA MURNAGHAN

Photos by C. Brian Rose

The Spring 2023 interdisciplinary seminar “Troy and Homer,” co-taught by C. Brian Rose and Sheila Murnaghan, focused on the city of Troy both as an archaeological site and as the setting of the Trojan War. The class considered Homer’s Iliad together with the topography of the site of Troy in order to address a series of interrelated questions regarding literature, history, and archaeology.

Participating students were able to visit the citadel mound of Troy along with other important sites in the surrounding area and in Istanbul. Seventeen graduate students took part, 16 from Penn (Graduate Groups in Classical Studies, Ancient History, and the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World) and one from Bryn Mawr (Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology).

The trip to Troy during spring break in March of 2023 was made possible by generous gifts from Charles K. Williams II and Alix and Keith Morgan, as well as support from Penn’s Departments of Classical Studies and the History of Art. The Lauder Institute also awarded a Faculty Course Development Grant for the project.

LED BY DRS. MURNAGHAN AND ROSE and including playwright Ellen McLaughlin (New York) and Dr. Andrew Stone, former staff psychiatrist and director of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinical Team at the VA Medical Center in Philadelphia, our trip was a great success. Dr. Stone participated in the seminar throughout the semester and provided a very valuable perspective on combat trauma in both antiquity and the contemporary world, juxtaposing the experiences of Homeric warriors with those of veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ellen McLaughlin is an awardwinning playwright whose plays include Ajax in Iraq, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, The Trojan Women, Helen, The Persians, and Oedipus. She directed all of us in a reading of her play The Trojan Women, which was staged in the Roman Odeion at Troy; reflecting the play’s universal themes of exile and displacement after war, the cast delivered their lines in ten different languages.

We arrived in the city on Friday, March 3, and spent the following day touring Istanbul: the Hippodrome, Hagia Sophia, the Archaeological Museum, and the underground cisterns of Justinian. On Sunday, March 5, we traveled by van to Çanakkale, where we stayed for five nights. The hotel was very close to the colossal wooden horse used in the 2004 Warner Brothers film Troy with Brad Pitt, which is on long-term loan to Çanakkale. We spent all day Monday, March 6, at the site of Troy, where there were six oral reports by the students. On Tuesday we traveled to the tomb of Achilles and the sites of Alexandria Troas, the Smintheion (Temple of Apollo), and Assos (Temple of Athena), with another three oral reports. On Wednesday, March 8, we spent the morning at the Troy Museum, where the final eight reports were given.

Our performance of The Trojan Women was staged from 3:00–4:00 pm that day at Troy, followed by a lecture concerning archaeological surveys on the Gallipoli peninsula, delivered by Reyhan Körpe, professor of ancient history at Çanakkale University. The current director of the Troy Excavations, Rüstem Aslan, also attended, and gave the students a tour of Carl Blegen’s Excavation House at Troy earlier that day. On Thursday, March 9, we visited the Gallipoli memorials, during which we discussed the poetry written by British soldiers during and after the

campaign, in which they compared themselves to Homeric warriors.

On Friday, March 10, we returned to Istanbul, traveling across the new Dardanelles bridge, constructed almost 2,500 years after Xerxes built his pontoon bridge in the same location. The trip home provided plenty of opportunities to review all that we had seen and learned during the week.

C. Brian Rose is the Ferry Curator-in-Charge of the Mediterranean Section at the Penn Museum and the James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Classical Studies and the Graduate Group in Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World. He was head of Post-Bronze Age excavations at Troy for 25 years beginning in 1988. Sheila (Bridget) Murnaghan is the Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek, Department Chair and Faculty Co-Director, PostBaccalaureate Program in the Department of Classical Studies.

Above: The group at the Temple of Athena at Assos and in Hagia Sofia. Opposite: The group at a Trojan citadel.

Zooming in on Asian Textiles

BY KATY ROSENTHAL

THE PENN MUSEUM has recently made a huge investment in its collection of textiles held in the Asian Section, photographing thousands of examples and making them available online. Much of the collection was accessioned before the establishment of the Penn Museum’s Registrar’s Office in 1929, and nearly all the rest before our current documentation standards had been developed. Photographs are crucial for bridging gaps in data because they allow the collection to be searched visually. In documenting the Asian section, care has been taken to capture details and multiple views of the textiles in order to approximate the experience of in-person viewing. While handling objects in person is ideal, the benefits of high-quality photographs are clear, especially for providing digital access to researchers who might not otherwise be able to see them up close. The scope of the collection makes it all the more important that such a documentation effort aids international access in particular.

I came to the Penn Museum just after the completion of this photography project as a graduate student

in History of Art at Bryn Mawr College. Working in the collection three days a week over the course of Summer 2022 was intended to complement the writing of my M.A. thesis, which focused on embroidered silk garments worn by the Parsi community in India beginning in the nineteenth century. My goals were three-part: to enhance my thesis research with material evidence, to increase my familiarity with a wide range of textiles from South Asia, and to bolster the data of the newly photographed pieces with any information I could provide. As my background is in textile production and design, I proceeded with an emphasis on identifying the techniques used in making them.

Equipped with a digital microscope, a loupe with a measuring scale, and a stack of books featuring photographed catalogs, I began to tackle the imposing list of object entries. Many of the textiles were collected in related groups, such as fine wool or pashmina choga (robes) from Kashmir. I pulled objects from collection storage group by group, recording what I discovered about their weave structure and the techniques of their

Satin hanging panel, China; C487.

embellishments. Sifting through published material, I aimed to identify relevant comparanda to cross-check the information in the Penn Museum’s entries. When I found inconsistencies, I reevaluated the existing data and made suggestions for updates, and when more robust information was published on the comparison material, I took notes on what applied to the objects in question. As I came across non-English terms associated with the material, I took care to include them. Keeping track of my citations was of the utmost importance to the process, as the ability to audit the sources of information will assist others who come after me in the evaluation and reevaluation of the information moving forward.

During this process I captured many magnified photographs which will accompany my notes on weave structures, material compositions, and embellishment techniques, hopefully providing clarity for those researching the technical aspects of textiles. One such series of captures yielded evidence for my own research on embroidered silk garments worn by the Parsi community. The embroideries resulted from Parsi involvement in trade conducted with China under the expansion of British imperialism, and the silk ground fabrics for the embroideries were predominantly produced in China. Pulling objects from across materials in the Asian Section, I compared four items with silk satin ground fabrics from the late 19th or early 20th centuries: a bandhani odhni (tie-dyed shawl) from Saurashtra in Gujarat, India; an ezar (pair of trousers) embroidered for the Muslim community in the Banni region of northern Kutch in Gujarat; a

jhabla (tunic) embroidered for the Parsi community in Gujarat, likely in Surat; and an embroidered hanging from Qing-dynasty China. My analysis of the eightend satin weave structures revealed that they were all indistinguishable at the observable level. Additionally, the ‘hand’ of the textiles—which can only be evaluated in person and includes factors such as sheen and drape—were all alike. This finding substantiates past research that suggested that silk satins from China were the inspiration for a satin fabric created by weavers in Gujarat referred to as gaji. The popularity of gaji silk satins for fine garments embroidered in midnineteenth to early twentieth century Kutch attests to the influence of Parsi merchants importing Chinese silks into western India during this period.

Above: The three late-nineteenth and early twentieth century silk satin fabrics under magnification; photos by the author. Above right: An embroidered jhabla (tunic), likely from Surat, Gujurat, India; 43-12-100. Right: Embroidered ezar (trousers) from Kutch, Gujarat, India; A616.

ZOOMING IN ON ASIAN TEXTILES

My work on the collection has only scratched the surface. Other areas in need of research, including inscription translation and iconographic analysis, will benefit from the expertise of future scholars. As Penn Museum Keeper Stephen Lang told me, the Asian Section also seeks further information on its sizable collection of textiles from beyond South Asia, including many from China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Those working in the section are eager to hear from voices in the international field and always encourage visits from researchers. The primary goal of the photography project was to increase the accessibility and usefulness of these materials, including the accuracy of information, and suggestions for improvement are welcome.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I am grateful to Sylvia Houghteling, Assistant Professor of History of Art at Bryn Mawr College, for arranging this opportunity; to Stephen Lang (Lyons Keeper of Collections, Asian Section) for providing support for this project and generously opening the collection to me; and to Adam Smith (Associate Curator, Asian Section) and Dwaune Latimer (Friendly Keeper of Collections, African Section) for their assistance in accessing it.

FOR FURTHER READING

Since some of my main sources were Victoria and Albert Museum publications, much of the comparanda material I compiled is provided through their website (www.vam.ac.uk).

Askari, N., and L. Arthur. 1999. Uncut Cloth: Saris, Shawls and Sashes. London: Merrell Holberton. Cohen, S., et al. 2012. Kashmir Shawls: The TAPI Collection. Mumbai: Shoestring Publisher in association with Garden Silk Mills Limited. Crill, R. 2015. The Fabric of India. London: V&A Publishing.

Crill, R., et al. 2021. Indian Textiles: 1,000 Years of

Art and Design. Washington, D.C.: The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum; London: Hali Publications Limited.

Fotheringham, A. 2019. The Indian Textile Sourcebook: Patterns and Techniques. London: Thames & Hudson and V&A Publishing.

Gillow, J., and N. Barnard. 1991. Traditional Indian Textiles. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.

Hatanaka, K. 1996. Textile Arts of India. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.

Linton, L. 1995. The Sari. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.

Murphy, V., and R. Crill. 1991. Tie-dyed Textiles of India. London: Victoria and Albert Museum.

Shah, S., and R. Crill. 2022. The Shoemaker’s Stitch: Mochi Embroideries of Gujarat in the TAPI Collection. New Delhi: Niyogi Books.

Shah, S., and T. Vatsal. 2010. Peonies & Pagodas: Embroidered Parsi Textiles: TAPI Collction. Surat: Garden Silk Mills.

Vogelsang-Eastwood, G., and W. Vogelsang. 2021. Encyclopedia of Embroidery from Central Asia, the Iranian Plateau and the Indian Subcontinent. London: Bloomsbury.

Katy Rosenthal is a third-year Ph.D. student in History of Art at Bryn Mawr College.

A bandhani odhni (tie-dyed shawl) from Saurashtra, Gujarat, India; 43-12-56. Detail: the bandhani odhni fabric under magnification.

DEMONSTRATING EMBROIDERY TECHNIQUES ON MANDARIN SQUARES

Making Workshops are hosted by the Museum’s Academic Engagement Department to encourage Penn undergraduate and graduate students to become more familiar with the objects in the collection by using their tactile senses. Because of her background in textile production and design, Katy Rosenthal was invited to host a workshop on the embroidery techniques used in the Museum’s collection of ornately embroidered Mandarin squares. Mandarin squares are embroidered badges of rank, sewn onto the outer coats of Chinese statesmen, military officials, and their wives from the 15th to 20th centuries CE. The Museum’s collection includes more than 150 Mandarin squares collected by Brigadier-General J.S. Letcher during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), when he was stationed in Beijing.

At the beginning of the workshop, Penn Museum Keeper Stephen Lang gave a talk explaining the intricate and labor-intensive embroidery techniques used in the squares, illustrated by magnified detail images. Students then had the opportunity to examine a rich array of squares laid out on the table. Using a projector attached to a loupe to enable students to see her work, Katy Rosenthal then demonstrated simpler embroidery techniques to create a floral design, and coached and encouraged students as they created designs of their own using thread, cloth, and embroidery hoops.

Above right: Magnified detail of a Mandarin square. Right: Katy Rosenthal helps a student embroider a floral design; photo by Sarah Linn.

Kara Tepe: A Conversation Across Time

BY KATHERINE BLANCHARD AND MICHAEL CAMPEGGI

THE STRENGTH OF THE PENN MUSEUM’S NEAR EAST COLLECTION lies in the vast number of objects that come from the Museum’s own excavations. Each of these excavations was documented, and these archival records live at the Museum to this day. When requests come in to see unpublished material or little-known documents, the Penn Museum Archives can step in and help solve a mystery, connecting current and past research and creating space for a conversation across time.

A study of one recent case shows a look behind the archival curtain. Researcher Michael Campeggi requested to see materials from Kara Tepe (Black Hill) in Iraq, a site the Museum excavated in the 1930s. During those years the Museum was excavating in northern Iraq at Tepe Gawra (Great Mound), a site

about 18 miles northeast of Mosul, led by E.A. Speiser and C. Bache. These missions are now well-known for uncovering the uninterrupted record of late prehistoric and protohistoric occupation. These communities ranged from the Halaf (6th millennium BCE) to the Late Chalcolithic (4th millennium BCE), which today still stand as a landmark reference point for this time and place in human history.

While the excavations at Tepe Gawra are wellpublished, very little is known about the team’s activity at the nearby site of Kara Tepe. In fact, Kara Tepe is only briefly mentioned—in a single sentence—in the 1950 Gawra report: “…excavations were carried out for five days at a neighboring mound, called Kara Tepe, where

In the field: Prior to excavation, Penn Museum team members scale the hill of Kara Tepe.

remains of the so-called Tell Halaf period were discovered.” Elsewhere, the site is also mentioned by Ismail Hijara in his 1997 work on the Halaf period in Northern Mesopotamia.

The interest in Kara Tepe, and notably the materials the Museum has about it, has taken shape in the Ph.D. research project of Michael Campeggi, which explores the cultural changes between the Halaf (6th millennium BCE) and the Ubaid (6th–5th millennia BCE) periods in the Eastern Tigris region in Northern Mesopotamia, with a special focus on the site of Helawa in the Erbil Plain. Archaeological finds in 20th century point to the Halaf and Ubaid horizons in the Mosul area at sites such as Nineveh, Tell Arpachiyah and Tepe Gawra. This is shown through architectural remains—such as the typical Halaf circular structures (referred to as “tholoi”) and tripartite Ubaid buildings—along with painted ceramics and other small finds. How does this connect back to the archive? Putting fresh eyes on unpublished material from Kara Tepe could reveal new data on the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in a key area of Northern Mesopotamia.

Campeggi then contacted Katherine Blanchard, the Keeper of Near Eastern Collections, to inquire about the pieces. Blanchard went through storage to identify and photograph more than 60 items from Kara Tepe, the majority of which were painted Halaf ceramic sherds, with naturalistic and geometric decorations, as well as Ubaid sherds. The next step was for Campeggi to visit Blanchard and the Museum in person, where they could explore the Archives to search for documentation related to the excavation. There wasn’t much to go on, just a single sentence about the 1935–1936 season at Gawra, as well as a handful of sherds labeled with field numbers. And, of course, the name of the site. Because miracles happen in the Penn Museum Archives, access was granted to two maps. One was in German, detailing a site named Kara Tepe—but in Iran, not Iraq. (There is more material from that Iranian site, from the 1960s excavations in the area by Dr. Robert Dyson.) The other map was an oversized plan of a site with circular features (possibly Halaf) labeled Kara Tepe and dated February 19, 1935. Immediately the discovery was clear: This was the site plan for the 1930s Iraq excavation.

Top left: Field photo of six sherds found at Kara Tepe in the 1930s. Right: A now-and-then comparison of the same sherd from a shallow bowl, the top photographed in 2023 by Penn Museum’s Katherine Blanchard and the bottom photographed in the field in 1935.

“Because miracles happen in the Penn Museum Archives...”

KARA TEPE: A CONVERSATION ACROSS TIME

A search through images associated with the excavators of Gawra turned up ethnographic images depicting the landscape, workmen in the trench at Kara Tepe, and even puppies. And within the Archival documentation of the excavation of Tepe Gawra, there was the permit to excavate a sounding (in square plots, each measuring five by five meters) at Kara Tepe to see what the site held. A second visit to Archives even located the field register for those few days.

Also unearthed: letters written by Charles Bache describing the potential of the site, telling how he “…lunched, and prowled the surface, and picked

up dozens and dozens of fine painted pot-sherds” on the mound, which he immediately related back to those from the ongoing Gawra excavations close by.

At the close of the excavations, all the materials, except for the ones in the Penn collection, were sent to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. That said, four sherds from Kara Tepe can currently be seen at the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza, Italy. These objects went to Italy in the 1950s on an exchange from Baghdad, so there are potentially more sub-collections from the site, in other locations around the world, that are not yet known.

As more excavations and field projects open up in northern Iraq, and researchers request to see parallel materials to those of the newer excavations, this project highlights 64 pieces from Kara Tepe, Iraq, which are now visible on the Penn Database and available for active research. This is in addition to the more than 4,000 objects from Gawra, of course, in the Near East Section of the Museum. The collection here is relatively small, but it remains an incredibly rich resource to the field.

Left: The original request for the permit to dig at Kara Tepe, addressed to the Director of Antiquities at the Iraq Museum, written by Charles Bache. Right: See what Bache saw when he opened the envelop and received the permit.

Companions on site: A postcard-worthy field photo of local puppies in Iraq.

Katherine Blanchard is the Fowler/Van Santvoord Keeper of the Near Eastern Collection. She received her A.B. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College and her M.A. in Art History from Southern Methodist University. She has worked as a field archaeologist and registrar at Museum sites in Italy, Syria, and Israel, and she has the honor of working with researchers from all over the world on a daily basis. Michael Campeggi is a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Milan, Italy. He received his B.A. and M.A. in Archaeology at the Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, and has participated in excavations in Italy, Turkey (Karkemish, Kültepe), Iraq (Qadissiyah, Nineveh), and Iraqi Kurdistan (Tell Helawa).

FOR FURTHER READING

Bache, C. 1935. The Joint Assyrian Expedition: Letters from Mr. Bache. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 58, 1+5-9.

Hijara, I. 1997. The Halaf Period in Northern Mesopotamia. London: NABU. Gut, R. 1995. Das präistorische Ninive: zur relative

Chronologie der frühen Perioden Nordmesopotamiens. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.

Mallowan, M.E.L., and J.C. Rose. 1933. Excavations at Tall Arpachiyah. Iraq 2/1, i-xv+1-178.

Peyronel, L., C. Minniti, D. Moscone, Y. Naime, Y. Oselini, R. Perego, and A. Vacca. 2019. The Italian Archaeological Expedition in the Erbil Plain, Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Preliminary Report on the 2016-2018 Excavations at Helawa. Mesopotamia 54, 1-104.

Rothman, M. 2002. Tepe Gawra: The Evolution of a Small, Prehistoric Center in Northern Iraq. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Speiser, A. 1935. Excavations at Tepe Gawra 1.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Tobler, A. 1950. Excavations at Tepe Gawra 2

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Torcia Rigillo, M. 1999. Le ceramiche del Vicino Oriente Antico. Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza. Faenza: Edit Faenza.

The people who did the dig: Workmen on site at Kara Tepe in the 1930s, a small but mighty crew on a seven-day dig.

In Search of an Archaeology That Uplifts

BY ROBERT J. VIGAR

THE FAN WHIRRED OVERHEAD, dispersing plumes of voluminous cigarette smoke around the small, dim room in the recesses of the Nubia Museum in Aswan. There were five of us crammed into this room. My research collaborator Yasmin and I were interviewing Mohamed, a retired engineer from the nearby island of Elephantine. We were accompanied by two museum staff members. It was late February 2020, and I was researching the relationship between archaeological sites and local communities in Aswan, trying to understand the value of archaeology to the local inhabitants.

The island of Elephantine, where Mohamed* had lived for most of his life, is home to several archaeological sites. Excavations have been ongoing for over 50 years, primarily through the German Archaeological Institute and the Swiss Institute, which maintain a dig house on the island. Given the long-term nature of excavations, and the extensive area that comprises the archaeological zone across the southern third of the island, I was keen to understand what the local population understood about the site, and what benefits they realized from its longstanding presence. Mohamed’s answer was succinct and troubling: “There is no benefit.”

For my Ph.D. research I conducted 39 interviews with local community members and archaeologists at sites around Aswan in southern Egypt, of which the island of Elephantine is a part. Mohamed’s opinion–that archaeology in the area presented little to no benefit to the local communities–was a relatively common response. This contrasted with the responses from archaeologists, the majority of whom were foreign. Several archaeologists I spoke with articulated part of their responsibility when working in Egypt was to help local communities, and that

*First names of interviewees in this article have been changed to protect their anonymity.

the primary mechanism through which they can do this is financially. “Archaeology can be a driver of economic development for local people,” stated Christopher, an excavation director at one of the archaeological sites around Aswan, in our interview in late 2020.

The naturalization of this logic, that archaeology can provide materially for local communities, is

Above: Over 500 ancient Egyptian inscriptions have been documented on the Sehel Island, dating from the Predynastic (ca. 3200 BCE) to the Ptolemaic Period (ca. 300–30 BCE). In the foreground, more recent 20th-century graffiti can be seen. The practice was common among wealthy European travelers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and resulted in the defacement of many Egyptian monuments; photo by Robert J. Vigar.

abundant within the discourse of international funding organizations in Egypt. For example, USAID’s website states: “Egypt’s antiquities are both a part of its cultural heritage and an opportunity to create jobs and raise incomes. Since the mid-1990s, USAID has provided over $100 million in assistance to conserve monuments and masterpieces spanning from Pharaonic times to the late Ottoman period.” Indeed, their funding is often predicated upon this notion that investment in Egyptian cultural heritage will stimulate economic activity. In my interview with David, a former associate director of conservation at one of the major foreign institutions in Egypt, he argued that funding agencies were well within their rights to ensure financial support for archaeology, and that conservation was contingent upon not only academic output but also economic benefits. The exact mechanism through which this economic uplift is meant to occur is not immediately clear.

Lucía, who had worked for several years with Christopher’s archaeological excavations in Aswan when we spoke in January 2021, was unequivocal in her belief that archaeology was helpful for the local population in Aswan. When asked if it is beneficial, she responded: “Yes, definitely yes. In so many ways.” She went on to detail the ad hoc medical provision the team provides, the projects the team has funded in the village (such as a new school building), and the inflated rate of pay local men receive for working as laborers on the excavations. “They wouldn’t get as much in their usual jobs per week as they do working with the archaeologists.”

Despite these apparently altruistic provisions made by the archaeological teams, many admitted to not having much time to fully engage with the local community or to have the necessary relationships to assess their impact with this group. Christopher, the long-term archaeo -

logical site director, lamented that there is little time to develop a program of engagement and that “most of the local people have no idea what we are doing.”

Alienation, either through lack of engagement or through actively dissuading participation in archaeological endeavors, was a key theme which emerged from my interviews with local people. Fatima and Shireen, two women I met outside of the archaeological site on Sehel Island in

Top: In West Aswan, the author follows an interviewee through the verdant area of cultivation between the village and the Nile River. Nubian communities settled this area after being forcibly displaced by the construction of the first Aswan Dam, c. 1902; photo by Robert J. Vigar. Left: The author in the shaded courtyard of a Nubian house in Gharb Aswan, awaiting the arrival of an interviewee. The handprints on the wall are referred to as takhmees ( ) and are applied during the celebrations of Eid el Adha. They are said to provide protection from malign spirits.

IN SEARCH OF AN ARCHAEOLOGY THAT UPLIFTS

December 2021, attested to this. “We have no idea about the site, about the antiquities,” said Fatima. She and Shireen were selling handcrafted pieces to the few tourists who visited the site. This was the only form of economic activity the site generated for the local people, and both Fatima and Shireen confessed that outside of a brief window during the winter when tourists were more numerous, they made very little money from their efforts.

Shireen agreed with Fatima that the local community was not informed about the ‘authorized’ history of the site, what the many ancient Egyptian inscriptions meant, or why the site was important enough to erect 10-foottall concrete and steel walls around its perimeter. (Publisher's note: Such walls around an active archaeological site are often mandated by the Ministry of Antiquities as part of site management requirements.) Despite this, Shireen went on to detail how the archaeological site figures within the cultural geography of the island. Foreign archaeologists and tourists occasionally visit the site, but it is mostly void of life. The site, Shireen detailed, is a spectral space, where temporality is unstable and treacherous spirits live. “When the guard leaves at night, we see a light on the mountain [within the enclosed archaeological site], and for hours we hear strange noises. The people of the village say that Jinns (invisible creatures) guard the site from looters.” The archaeological site, to Shireen, was a malign place, which had promised much to the village (in terms of tourists and economic development) but delivered very little.

Alienation from archaeological sites in Aswan is conditioned by a contentious history. Many of the communities which live near or among archaeological sites in Aswan identify as Nubian. Traditionally Nubia occupied a territory from Dongola in the south to Aswan in the north, however, through the construction of two dams on the Nile River, over two-thirds of Nubian land was flooded between 1902 and 1964. This necessitated the forced migration of Nubian people from their land, and destruction of their

lifeways and cultural resources. During this devastating period for Nubian people, archaeologists proliferated across the landscape, excavating and documenting the archaeological sites and monuments of ancient Nubia before they were inundated by the same rising waters that destroyed modern Nubia. The juxtaposition of international organizations deploying vast resources to ‘save’ the monuments of ancient Nubia while being seemingly oblivious to the plight of current Nubian people has not been forgotten and continues to condition Nubian peoples’ responses to archaeological work. Hajji Abdelrahman, a Nubian man in his seventies whose family was forcibly removed from the village of Kalabsha in the mid-20th century, reflected upon this painful situation in an interview conducted in December 2021: “The world came to save the monuments of Nubia, but they did not make a single attempt to save the people of Nubia.”

What solutions might archaeologists use to address these historical and ongoing issues of alienation and failed economic development? Solutions are difficult, especially when the problem lies with the very practice of archaeological work in Egypt. It is undoubtedly the

Modern chalk drawings on rocks on Sehel Island. The images of sail boats ( ), date palms, and Nile River birds (likely herons or egrets) invoke daily life in Old Nubia. Prior to the forced migration of Nubians from their homes in Old Nubia, the Nile River structured Nubian lifeways. Today, while some Nubian men continue to operate sail boats for tourists, many Nubian communities have become dislocated from the Nile; photo by Robert J. Vigar.

case that archaeological fieldwork in Egypt can be a form of scientific colonialism, whereby Western notions of hard data predominate, hierarchies are structured around Euro-American educational qualifications, and the work of producing knowledge about Egypt takes place primarily outside of Egypt, in the corridors of Western universities. Centering this kind of practice has led, in many ways, to the continued omission and inability to engage with local communities. The model of community research and engagement the Penn Cultural Heritage Center could provide is a potential scaffolding for addressing these issues. Decentering of power in archaeological decision-making is a key aspect of this research model. Rather than Western archaeologists coming to a community and dictating the research agenda, we can encourage local communities to create or co-create the research agendas within their own spaces. This model requires Western archaeologists to ‘let go’ of their academic privilege and to reposition themselves in relation to local community concerns. I have proposed

this model to some archaeologists working in Egypt and Sudan, but none have taken it up. Negotiating local politics, labor regimes, and bureacracy are potential impediments, however, such issues exist in most spaces where archaeology takes place and has not hindered the development of more equitable forms of research than those which predominate in Egypt today.

Decentering scientific colonialism also shifts the type of past you are seeking to represent, and in so doing it opens opportunities to explore subaltern or unauthorized histories. To do so in Aswan would create a radically different archaeological research program, one that integrates rather than alienates the local communities.

Robert J. Vigar is a doctoral student in Penn’s Department of Anthropology and a graduate affiliate of the Penn Cultural Heritage Center. His research explores the history and politics of archaeology in Egypt, with a particular focus on the cultural, economic, and political impacts of archaeological practice on local communities.

Looking north from inside the archaeological area on Sehel Island. The contemporary Nubian village can be seen to the northwest of the archaeological area. The village is cut off from the southern parts of the island by these security walls. Women from the local community, including Fatima and Shireen, wait outside the walls and attempt to sell their handicrafts to the few tourists who pass by this secluded island; photo by Robert J. Vigar.

Reopening a dig site in southern Iraq after a 30-year hiatus, Penn Museum researchers made two stunning discoveries in the Sumerian city of Lagash: a 5,000-year-old tavern that served up dinner and drinks, and a sediment core that holds answers to ecological secrets for 20,000 years of history. The Lagash Archaeological Project analyzes their results with cutting-edge technology such as UAV drone photography, magnetometry, and geoscience, revealing the complex interplay between culture, society, and the environment. Along the way, the team works closely with the local community to improve their everyday lives and connect them to the stories of the people who came before them.

BACK TO .

BY HOLLY PITTMAN

CITIES FIRST APPEARED, the Bible tells us, in southern Mesopotamia. Beyond such received knowledge, archaeologists and anthropologists have thought long and hard about why, how, and when this profound change in social organization took place in what was a verdant but precarious environment. Early explorations focused on the large sites of Nippur, Ur, Uruk, Telloh (Girsu), and Eridu watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Investigations focused almost exclusively on monumental structures, finding evidence for the origins of writing, monumental architecture, narrative visual arts, and organized religion. Work continued during the middle of the 20th century, by both Iraqi and international archaeologists, exploring ancient Lagash, known as Tell al Hiba, as well as sites

like Fara (ancient Shurupak), and Larsa. The primary focus continued to emphasize monumental architecture, cuneiform tablets, and spectacular works of art, as well as burial grounds including the Royal Tombs of Ur, which stunned the world with unexpected treasures. Until now little attention was given to investigate why this radical transformation in social organization happened at this particular place and time. Indeed, until the 21st century, with new methods and technologies, it was not possible to do much more than speculate and hypothesize.

The first scientific exploration of Lagash was sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, led by Donald P. Hansen and Vaughn Crawford. Early finds included

Meet some of the team on the Lagash Archaeological Project in Fall 2022. From left to right: Abdulhalek Jassim, Haydar Saad, Zaid Alrawi, Holly Pittman, Ali Tahir, Reed Goodman. Illustrated on the opposite page: A boatman navigates the marshlands of ancient Sumer.

three temples and a royal administrative complex. I joined Hansen for my first excavation in Iraq in 1990, shortly after I came to the Museum and the University. During that season, we continued excavations of a monumental complex dated to the early part of the Early Dynastic period. This work was cut short by political events which cascaded into almost three decades of political instability and security challenges in Iraq.

In 2018, Penn Museum got the green light to return to southern Iraq after I secured a five-year permit to resume archaeological work at Lagash. Together with the University of Cambridge, and now with the University of Pisa, the Lagash Archaeological Project has had four productive seasons of work. Building on the results of the earlier campaigns, I decided to dedicate the new work to the exploration of how the “other half” lived in the cities of ancient Sumer, looking for evidence of craft industries as well as domestic and public spaces frequented by the everyday citizens of this enormous city in ancient Mesopotamia.

The land that was once Lagash is now known as Tell al Hiba, in the Dhi Qar province of southern Iraq. It is more than 125 miles north of the city of Basra at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, but in the third millennium BCE, it was close to the mouth of the Gulf, with marshes full of fish, birds, and reeds on one side and fertile alluvial soil to the west for productive agriculture. It

also had ready access by boat to trade with resource rich communities of the Iranian plateau. Our work has shown that until the middle of the fourth millennium BCE, this region was essentially underwater, in a rapidly evolving landscape—first marine, then estuary, then delta environments—to the riverine alluvium at the turn of the third millennium. The earliest settlement was likely small and religiously significant, settled in the midst of marshes, although this is still just an unexplored hypothesis. By the beginning of the Early Dynastic period, around 2900 BCE, we know that Lagash was a large city with distinct walled neighborhoods. Lagash grew and evolved into a center of industry and agricultural wealth.

We know from texts found at Telloh that Lagash was the largest of the three cities that made up the city state also called Lagash (like an ancient version of New York, New York). The cities were strung from north to south along the “Going to Nigin” canal, which ended at the port of Guabba as it entered the Gulf. To the west of the canal were rich agricultural fields: the breadbasket of Sumer at the end of the third millennium. Every city in Sumer had its own divine resident, and every citizen— from the most powerful ruler and priest to the workers in the fields—had to care for and feed this deity. The warrior god Ningirsu, for example, was the resident god of Girsu, the religious and political capital of the city state of Lagash.

The Lagash Archaeological Project relies on a variety of methods to investigate the ways that people lived in the ancient city. The most powerful tool is remotesensing technology, including drone photography and fluxgate magnetometry, particularly useful for a large site like Lagash, which was spared the heavy overburden of later occupation that could obscure the periods we’re most interested in. When it rains, the features beneath the surface soil of the mound dry at differential rates, and as a result, features like walls and streets pop out as different colors and textures to be captured through UAV photography. This technology is augmented and enhanced at Lagash by using magnetometry, which detects naturally occurring

Cape Gelidonya

el-Amarna

Baghdad

Lagash Basra

Tigris

Euphrates

The archaeological mound that was once the city of Lagash is now known as Tell al Hiba, in the Dhi Qar province of southern Iraq. Situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—the word “Mesopotamia” means “between two rivers”—it is 125 miles north of the city of Basra at the current mouth of the Persian Gulf.

magnet signals of features beneath the soil. This technique allows us to “see” walls, kilns, streets, pits, open courtyards, and water features as different shapes and colors in the magnetogram. Beginning the work in 2019, we have expanded over the two seasons in 2022 to cover a large area in the southeastern sector of the city. With an expanded capacity, over the next series of campaigns we will prioritize acquiring such images over much of the site. This will allow us to identify monumental structures, as well as to characterize the built environment of different neighborhoods of the vast city: craft production zones, waterways and harbors, houses, streets, and public eateries.

Looking forward, we designed a research agenda that takes advantage of technologies and methods that weren’t available 40 years ago. Specifically, our plan is to test a hypothesis recently put forward by Prof. Monica L. Smith at the University of California Los Angeles. Smith posits that pristine urban settlement required the presence of a robust “middle class,” defined in this case as actors or communities that have economic agency who contribute to the complex economic fabric of an urban settlement. We will test this through magnetometry, as well as survey and test pits, on three or four neighborhoods across the large site. In each one we will open horizontal excavation of comparable contexts, from domestic housing to open-air public installations such as public eateries, streets, and craft production areas. Through this systematic sampling, we will determine similarities or differences and evaluate where they seem to be located on a continuum between the non-elite and elite sectors, based on what we know

through earlier excavations. We will also factor in evidence such as texts and monuments. After three decades away from Lagash, we are seeing how new data and new technology can tell new stories, and how rich an interdisciplinary venture can be, combining the tools of archaeology and anthropology as well as art history, geophysics, agricultural sciences, and beyond.

Holly Pittman is a Curator in the Near East Section and the Bok Family Professor in the Humanities in the History of Art Department. In addition to Iraq, she has excavated in Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, and Iran.

The Lagash Archaeological Project introduced new technology to a dig site last excavated long before smart phones and laptops. Top: a magnetogram of Area H collected in 2019 and 2022. Bottom: Paul Zimmerman operates a rolling magnetometry device, which captures features beneath the surface through magnetic signals that help the team anticipate what excavation will reveal.

We can see many throughlines from the 3rd millennium BCE to today, including watermanagement strategies, use of marsh resources, and mud-brick architecture. The lush greenery seen here in the garden next to the dighouse dispels stereotypes of the Middle East as a barren desert. In this quiet early morning scene, water buffalo graze under a warm sky and the drooping power lines of modern Iraq. The low ancient mound lies in the far-off, hazy distance, beyond soccer fields and the pale silhouette of a treeline.

BY DAVID MULDER

WHAT DOES IT TAKE to reconstruct a bustling metropolis from 5,000 years ago? A great deal of fieldwork, collaboration, and imagination, not to mention a fair bit of luck. With all of those factors in tow, Penn Museum’s Lagash Archaeological Project made a discovery that opens up a portal to the past, allowing us to envision a normal day in the life of an ancient Sumerian.

Unlike some mounds that tower steeply over their surroundings, Tell al-Hiba (the modern name for Lagash) is low and sprawling. Set against the marshes and irrigated farmland that surround it, the site now looks dry and barren. The ground is salty and cracking where it has not been disturbed by shoes, tires, and the paws of stray dogs.

There are few landmarks by which to orient oneself on the mound—spoil heaps of the old excavations, the shining green dome of a modern shrine—but Lagash of the third millennium BCE would have been navigable by a network of lanes and broad thoroughfares running to or from the city gates in the great outer wall. Within the fortified perimeter, thinner walls partitioned the city into distinct neighborhoods. One such wall revealed itself to the excavation team after a day of particularly hard rains that paused digging. Since the groundwater evaporates at different rates based on the quality of the underlying mudbrick architecture, the line of the wall became starkly visible from the surface. The team had actually been crossing over this feature every morning while walking from the parked trucks to the trenches,

not realizing we might have been retracing the steps of ancient commuters coming in and out of the city’s southeastern sector.

The surface of the area demarcated by this wall is littered with pottery sherds and pieces of slag, the byproducts of kilns and furnaces used for making ceramic and metal artifacts. It seems that in the Early Dynastic III period, around 2500–2350 BCE, this part of the city was an industrial zone for craft specialists. In two of the trenches dug last season, we found large round or oblong kilns that were filled with ashes, slag, and potsherds.

Another trench produced the corner of what seems to be another workshop building, bordering on a street and a narrow alley. In one room of this building was a basin of pure red clay full of the shells of freshwater mollusks— evidently the raw material for pottery, being soaked and refined here before it was shaped and fired in the kilns down the road.

Seen from above thanks to drone photography, the team excavates a 5,000-year-old tavern that was likely frequented by everyday folks looking to fill up on food and drink. A solid-footed goblet and conical bowl they would have used for a meal of fish and onions with beer are illustrated below.

IT'S FIVE O'CLOCK, SUMER

But before this area was taken over by industrial production, the architectural remains suggest another story: It had a more residential character. We discovered a small portion of what must once have been a sizeable house not far from the pottery workshops. This house was well furnished with a plastered bench, platform, and storage facilities, including a vat sunk into the floor to keep foodstuffs cool. About 20 domed roundels of clay, just small enough to be cupped in the palm of one hand, were found on the floor of the central room. Pressed

over the mouths of storage jars, these would have acted as airtight stoppers (like ancient Tupperware, more or less). We also uncovered stone tools, beads, and clay tokens of the sort normally used in accounting. Although they speak to a different kind of labor from what we see in the kilns and workshops nearby, these artifacts are testaments to the daily work of managing and provisioning a substantial household.

Surely the inhabitants of the neighborhood would have tired of making and storing their own food from

Hundreds of bowls—still full of fish and other animal bones—fallen on to the floor of what must have been the main larder indicate a varied and hearty diet. Most of these vessels were tipped upsidedown and jumbled together in a heap, right where they had fallen nearly 5,000 years ago when the shelves collapsed.

time to time. Luckily for them, dining out appears to have been an option in ancient Lagash. Near the edge of the neighborhood, almost abutting the wall, was a public eatery with a well-stocked pantry, a huge oven, and even a sort of cooler cut into the floor with a domed covering constructed of reused potsherds. A courtyard with benches nearby allowed diners to enjoy their meals in comfort.

The patrons of this establishment ate well, it seems, provided they enjoyed a good pickled fish. We found hundreds of bowls—still full of fish and other animal bones—in what must have been the main larder, indicating a varied and hearty diet. Most of these vessels were tipped upside-down and jumbled together in a heap, right where they had fallen nearly 5,000 years ago when the shelves collapsed. Apart from this collapse, there is no indication that the building burned down or was intentionally demolished. For now we have no idea what calamity robbed these Sumerian tavern-goers of their dinner. We modern archaeologists can only be grateful that nobody ever came back to clean up the mess.

Unlike the food preparation and storage facilities excavated at other sites of the period, the Lagash “tavern” was attached to neither a major institution (a temple or a palace) nor a private residence. The quantities of food prepared inside would certainly have exceeded the requirements of any one household, but there is no

reason to think that the meal was prepared for some extraordinary occasion, like a ceremonial feast or a banquet. In this regard, it is a unique and groundbreaking discovery, as it sheds light on an aspect of early Mesopotamian urban life not reflected in most of the known textual and archaeological sources. It is likely that this building served as a gathering place for residents of the neighborhood going about their daily business, like a local pub or a canteen in any modern city. The “tavern” at Lagash offered the city-dwellers of ancient Sumer a quick meal, a cold drink, and a place to sit with friends and neighbors: in short, the same comforts that beckon us to a resturauant today.

David Mulder is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art Department. His research focuses on the art of early Mesopotamia, with a particular concentration on seals and seal impressions of the Early Dynastic period.

Two views of a cooler (zeer) cut out of ground, made from a sphere of broken pottery filled with sand around a smaller vessel. This ancient form of refrigeration, which works through evaporation, is still used today. An oven so big that it must have served the neighborhood rather than a single domestic unit was also found nearby.

A NEW STORY OF

BY REED GOODMAN

A LARGE EXPANSE of Iraq’s central floodplain, once thriving with life, now lies abandoned beyond the reach of modern agriculture. The dull beige of windswept desert stretches in all directions, marked only by the low rise of abandoned settlements, roaming dune sands and bygone canal levees. Subtle depressions shimmer white beneath the hot sun, betraying poisonous salts that choke all but the hardiest shrubs. Freshwater, the key to existence, is nowhere to be found. How did such an Ozymandian landscape, hostile to even the most intrepid among us, once harbor one of the most ancient and influential urban civilizations in history? This important question has stumped Mesopotamian archaeologists since the discipline’s founding, and it remains largely unanswered to this day.

Set within Iraq's historic urban heartland, the ancient city of Lagash presents an ideal opportunity to unravel this mystery. Looking to integrate a long-term paleoenvironmental research component into the Lagash Archaeological Project, we set out to reconstruct ecological changes at the site and across the region. To achieve such an ambitious goal, we forged a partnership with Dr. Liviu Giosan, a geophysicist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic

Institution on Cape Cod, along with geochemists at the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry facility, also housed at Woods Hole.

We wanted to piece together clues that could shed light on the ecological transformations that rendered this once-fertile land inhospitable, with a particular focus on the environmental conditions of the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE—a momentous period of city and state development in the Lagash region. During our inaugural season we established a geoarchaeological sampling program where remote-sensing data, including drone-based imagery, allows us to target subtle variations in topography, indicative of past features like watercourses, for geoarchaeological study. The latter includes the collection of sediment samples through augering and coring at strategic locations across the low-lying and sprawling tell, as well as offsite areas. This combines the bird's-eye view of the landscape with the laser-focused precision of sediment sampling by hand auger and drill.

The initial findings reveal a fascinating, dynamic history

The author drilled dozens of auger cores at strategic locations across southern Iraq. Each one pulled sediment samples that, when analyzed, became data that revealed the changing ecologies of the region over millennia. In particular, this heavy-duty drill extracted a core that goes 20,000 years back in time recording the diverse and changing habitats lived in by many generations of people from ancient Sumer until today.

Based on the breakthrough data collected by the author, these two maps illustrate a revolution in our understanding of Sumer’s first cities: The place where Lagash was first inhabited was underwater in the 4th millennium BCE, indicating that people could not have settled there until long after the establishment of western cities on the Euphrates, like Ur and Uruk. By the time Lagash emerged from the water, around 3200 BCE, it benefited from hundreds of years of cultural development in the western cities, such as the invention of the wheel, the cuneiform writing system, and the institutions of formalized religion.

of environmental change. Analyzing the geochemistry and biology of the sediments indicate past environments, including marshes, lakes, canals, and levees. Perhaps more importantly, cutting-edge methods in radiocarbon dating have allowed us to correlate these environmental signatures with the growth and decline of the city.

Our ongoing analysis continues to fill in the picture. For example, paleontological study of the sediment samples reveal the remains of unicellular aquatic organisms called ostracods and forams. While their protective shell is all that we have, they nevertheless offer invaluable insights into the range of environmental conditions that once persisted in our study area. Different classes of organisms inhabit specific types of waters, from fresh to salt to brackish (a mixture of fresh and salt).

We can now trace the evolution of this region from a once shallow sea, when the Persian Gulf reached far north of its present position during the Middle Holocene, to an increasingly anthropogenic landscape, as the advancing

Tigris-Euphrates delta replaced seawater first with vast intertidal flats and then with nutrient-rich muds fit for agriculture.

We are also finding that as the 3rd millennium BCE progressed, the Lagash city-state found itself quite literally upstream without a paddle. First, as the former shoreline moved farther south and east through time, the Gulf’s tidal influence decreased, depriving the area of timely and economic flood waters. Next, the Tigris and Euphrates themselves began to change course, in part because of hydropolitics, with upstream power centers redirecting water away from their downstream foes, or polluting the rivers to render them useless. It’s no coincidence that the first recorded war in history was a dispute over water in the Lagash region, and that the city-state of Lagash ultimately fell for this reason.

Ultimately, as once-abundant freshwater sources gradually declined, and the tidal powers of the Gulf disappeared, communities looked to the construction

of extensive canal networks to maintain opportunities for irrigation and transportation, a necessity for what had now become a predominantly urban lifeway. At the same time, without excess water to flush salts from the surface, the landscape’s productive potential began to drop. Marked decreases in water availability spelled impending disaster. The resulting environmental stressors would eventually contribute to the decline of many Sumerian cities, forcing populations to migrate to more favorable locales.

Our collaborative research has provided crucial insights into the complex interplay between human activity and environmental factors that shaped the rise and fall of these incredible sites. Our rigorous geoarchaeological analysis has only begun to unravel the intricate tapestry of ecological changes that transformed the once-prosperous floodplain into the desolate desert we see today. Moreover, the implications of our findings extend beyond understanding the environmental history of ancient Mesopotamia. As modern societies grapple with the challenges of climate change, dwindling water resources, and agricultural sustainability, lessons from the past take on new relevance. The fate of the these once-thriving urban centers in southern Iraq offers a cautionary tale about responsible water management and environmental stewardship.

Further research will continue to refine our understanding of the complex interplay between human activities, climate fluctuations, and environmental degradation at Lagash. Our Lagash Project team, in collaboration with our partners, plans to continue these paleoenvironmental investigations, expanding the scope of the project to encompass a broader geographic range and a more comprehensive array of data sources. By

combining archaeological evidence with cutting-edge scientific techniques, we hope to paint as nuanced and detailed a portrait as possible of the ecological conditions that shaped the lives of the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia.

In addition to the paleoenvironmental research, the Lagash Archaeological Project is investigating material evidence that can shed light on the daily lives, economy, and political structures of the ancient city. These findings, alongside our paleoenvironmental data, will contribute to a more holistic understanding of the complex and interrelated factors behind the rise and fall of one of the world's first cities.

We hope that the interdisciplinary nature of the Lagash Archaeological Project, blending archaeology with geoscience, serves as a model for future research in the region. As we continue to investigate humanlandscape interactions, we are reminded of the timeless adage that the past is a foreign country. The lessons we learn can help guide us as we navigate the challenges and uncertainties of our own rapidly changing world. This journey, far from being a mere academic exercise, holds one key to understanding the interplay between culture, society, and the environment, and may ultimately help shape a more sustainable and resilient future for Iraq, a place that finds itself once again at the brink of environmental collapse.

Reed Goodman earned his Ph.D. in 2023 while researching the relationship between social institutions and waterscapes in southern Mesopotamia. His work combines art history with high-tech data from remotesensing and geoarchaeology to look at the rise of the city-state.

SINCE THE 1980s, archaeological work in southern Mesopotamia has been challenged by waves of political instability, economic sanctions, and armed conflict. Under such conditions, only brief investigations or survey work could occur, and these decades of unrest gutted the highly professional and active archaeological community. These specialists were based both in universities and in the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism department that oversees the myriad cultural heritage projects in Iraq.

Then the tide began to turn. Around 2017, after security was reestablished in the South, Iraqi and international expeditions began to return to the heartland of cities in the southern alluvium of Mesopotamia. This was exciting news for the Penn Museum, which had been

active in southern Iraq before World War II. Work at the site of Nippur had seeded the earliest collections of the Museum, and the most notable Mesopotamian excavations were at Ur, through joint excavation with the British Museum led by Sir Leonard Woolley.

From 1922 until 1934, Woolley ran an ambitious investigation of the Temple Precinct of Nanna. There was of course the famous Royal Tombs of Ur, but also the Ziggurat and more Royal Tombs of the Ur III kings. As with Nippur—and following the practice of partage with the Iraqi government—one quarter of the nonunique materials from those excavations came to the Penn Museum, and are now the core of the new Middle East Gallery, Journey to the City

Returning to Iraq in the 21st century, the obligations and the commitments of foreign expeditions are different from those under which Woolley worked. The Lagash Archaeological Project has built a commitment to train Iraqi archaeologists into its research design and

funding structure. This includes not only the multiple representatives required by the Iraqi government, but also sourcing from the community of archaeologists in Dhi Qar province who want to work with us. As a landscape archaeologist and project manager, I regularly provide training lectures on geographical information systems and mapping of landscape features.

Paul Zimmerman, a survey and remote-sensing specialist, designed his survey to be bilingual so that both Arabic and English platforms are available for recording. In the fall 2022, for three days, we welcomed employees of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage from Baghdad, hosting them in our house, and training them in excavation, survey, and drone photography techniques.

Beyond our commitment to building capacity in the Iraqi archaeological and cultural heritage sector, we are deeply committed to the community in which we live. Last year we met with local elders and asked how

Children from the local school hold up signs to thank the Penn Museum for paving their blacktop, which means they’ll be able to play outside even if it’s raining. The Lagash Archaeological Project also funded repairs to the structure of the school's buildings.

we could best help the community. We first offered to improve one of the main roads that we drove on every day, but they told us something they needed more: to work on the primary school. With the money we contributed, they added roofs over the toilets, ran running water to the facility, and built up the fence around the school to provide more privacy. They were even able to pave the playground in front of the school, which meant that children could play at recess even if it had rained. When we return next year, we will provide educational materials in Arabic to tell the children and their parents about the historic site that they, by virtue of living here, watch over every day.

Unlike many of the ancient mounds in the region, Lagash has never been the focus of extensive looting, which was especially bad in the South during the Gulf War and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Sites like Umma, to the north, are pocked with looter holes. Throughout all the instability, the people of the village of Tell al-Hiba protected the site time and time again. We want to share with them what we are learning about the people who lived in their land more than 5,000 years ago. Not just about the kings and queens and priests, but the regular people who, like them, lived in a constantly changing environment, and did their best to steward and safeguard it.

Zaid Alrawi is the project manager for the Penn Museum’s Lagash and Ur projects. He studied archaeology at the University of Baghdad before coming to the U.S. to earn a M.A. in anthropology from Stony Brook University and a Ph.D. from Penn State University.

Above: On the last day of work in November 2022, team members gather with local staff and Iraqi archaeologists who were trained by the project that fall. Below: Field director Sara Pizzimenti, of the University of Pisa, serves a critical role in the Lagash Archaeological Project.

Near the beginning of the fall 2022 dig season, the Lagash team dug three small test pits to the north of the main area of excavations, close to the central part of the mound. These were meant to test whether a dried-up watercourse, clearly visible in aerial photographs of the site, had been present during the Early Dynastic heyday of the city of Lagash, or whether it had washed over the remains of an earlier occupation.

The test pits all revealed mudbrick architecture below the water-laid sediments, and a particularly surprising discovery lay in Test Pit 2: a clay nail, the sort that early Mesopotamian rulers often used to

commemorate their major construction projects. This nail bore a cuneiform inscription with the name Enanatum I of Lagash, who probably ruled sometime around 2450 BCE. Enanatum I oversaw the building of the Ibgal temple of Inana, the structure that was excavated in the southwestern area of the mound in 1968.

A grayish layer of sediment just above this nail marked the calamitous flooding that put an end to building on this part of the site. Dating of samples through optically stimulated luminescence indicated that the flooding occurred around 2330 BCE. This date is precisely when we know from other texts that Lagash was sacked and destroyed by the invading Lugalzagesi, ruler of Uruk and Umma, and again shortly thereafter by Sargon of Akkad. Without expecting it, we had uncovered traces of Lagash’s political apogee and subsequent demise at the end of the Early Dynastic period, a crucial period in the city’s history—all encapsulated within a two-by-three meter square.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Many people and institutions have contributed to the Lagash Archaeological Project. The Penn Museum would like to thank the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Janeway Foundation, the Reickett Fund at the University of Cambridge, the University of Pisa, the Italian Office of Foreign Affairs, the University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation, the Charles K. Williams II Publication Fund, the Penn Museum Director’s Field Funds, and the Bok Family Chair in the Humanities.

crisis

penn Museum Curator and penn pik professor Lynn Meskell Reflects on Speaking at NATO about Protecting the World’s Most Historic Places

In February 2023, Lynn Meskell boarded a plane to Belgium. The Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and Penn Museum curator had been invited to speak at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. This was no ordindary day in the life of a curator, but Meskell had been tapped for her rare set of skills. NATO had summoned an international panel of scholars with expertise about cultural heritage sites. The panel was faced with an urgent question: How do we protect our world’s most historic places in the wake of rampant, catastrophic war?

From the Russian invasion of Ukraine to conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, the clash of armies often leads to indiscriminate bombing of precious and sacred spaces. NATO now takes a broader view of the issue: It has begun to position the protection of heritage sites under initiatives dedicated to Human Security and the Protection of Civilians. The panel spoke directly to national delegations, military leaders, and NGOs.

A 2022 photograph of bomb-battered buildings in Mosul, Iraq, which fell under a caliphate government when seized by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in 2014. The city was liberated in 2017 by the Iraqi government and Kurdish forces; photo by Gina Haney.

CULTURAL HERITAGE CRISIS

Meskell got the call from Dr. Frederik Rosén, the director of the Copenhagen-based Nordic Center for Cultural Heritage & Armed Conflict. Rosén and his team have been working with NATO around cultural property issues for a decade. Back home in Philadelphia, Meskell continued the collaboration with Rosén and an international team of experts on matters of heritage, security, and policy at NATO, and she later went to Rome to resume dialogue and develop new research on the consequences of war for communities across the globe. She also organized a workshop at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome with her colleague Ankie Peterson, Cultural Property Protection Officer in the Dutch Armed Forces, to continue dialogue and develop new research on the consequences of war for communities across the globe. This work also connects to Meskell’s project about World Heritage and conflict risk, which she works on with Witold Henisz, Vice Dean and Faculty Director of the Environmental, Social, and Governance Initiative at the Wharton School.

Expedition spoke with Meskell about her time in Belgium. Why is cultural heritage and international security such a high-profile issue right now?

The recent concern with protection of cultural heritage at NATO comes in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it certainly follows on from conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. It’s true that cultural heritage sites have been a concern for NATO operations in Libya and Kosovo, in particular World Heritage properties. And they have encountered challenges with cultural heritage in operations not led by NATO, as in the U.S. War in Iraq or the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali. However, it is only since 2014, with the rise of Islamic State and the perceived weaponization of sites, that NATO allies have been galvanized into action. At the same time, there have been international highlevel debates on cultural heritage and conflict. NATO recognizes that protecting people and their heritage must now to be taken into account across the spectrum of conflict, including in prevention, conflict resolution, post-conflict reconstruction, peace operations, and humanitarian assistance. I think there is finally a realization that exploiting heritage in war has direct, negative ramifications for the rise of identity politics, ethnic or cultural cleansing, and the globalization of conflict and crisis.

You’ve worked on UNESCO World Heritage in conflict since 2011. What’s the relationship between UNESCO and NATO?

Initially, I would have said, “Not a lot,” certainly not from the UNESCO side. But the more I get to understand how an emerging heritage-security nexus is developing across international bodies—from the International Criminal Court and UN Security Council to NATO—the more I see how these organizations are connected. And often that’s not in entirely functional ways. Some at NATO would consider, quite wrongly I think, that they can outsource this type of work to UNESCO and, as I’ve written about extensively, UNESCO doesn’t have the funds, capacity, or political power to get its Member States on board. Like UNESCO, NATO has an expansive bureaucracy that is slow and not always as effective as we might imagine.

The Kutubiyya Mosque in Marrakesh, Morocco, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. It was built in the 12th century, and photographed by the author during her travels in 2022.

Both organizations increasingly factor in heritage destruction and preservation to their respective versions of “mission success.” I’d argue, however, that UNESCO’s conventions and modes of thinking are the products of World War II, and specifically Europe’s post-war reconstruction, in both process and sentiment. They do not adequately capture contemporary events and contexts. In particular, UNESCO’s heritage conventions don’t go far enough in understanding or protecting the local heritage valued by communities.

Today we have other ways of understanding conflict and post-conflict contexts, especially in respect to the communities involved. In Brussels this February, military personnel asked how they could identify and protect those places that mattered most to local people and predict the implications of their actions on the ground. Quite simply, they need to start by by asking—rather than assuming. That’s also when I spoke about our collaboration with the Princeton-based Arab Barometer, a nonpartisan research network focused on the social, political, and economic attitudes and values of ordinary citizens in the Arab world. It is now feasible for international agencies to educate themselves as to peoples’ priorities, rather than just assume EuroAmerican preferences for UNESCO World Heritage properties, museums, and archaeological sites.

How does the reality of cultural heritage play out in conflicts?

Since 1945, we have become accustomed to seeing nostrike lists issued by foreign governments, international bodies like UNESCO, and now by private heritage foundations and international experts. These lists identify the sites deemed important through the mapping of cultural heritage on foreign soil. An example: Iraq has been the subject of extensive mapping and external decision-making in the context of the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and Islamic State insurgency since 2014. While site listing and monitoring is now an accepted facet of both conservation as well as military operations and post-conflict rehabilitation, there are more equitable processes for heritage recognition. This involves garnering public opinion and community priorities, and representing a cross-section of people and faiths, within an ethical framework. When that military representative

asked me how he could grasp the priorities of people, especially in nations that are unfamiliar to its operations, I offered the example of the large-scale public opinion surveys we conducted in Mosul, Iraq, and Aleppo, Syria, where we interviewed more than 3,000 people in total. Results such as these might yield greater heritage potentials not only for healing and rehabilitation, but also for delimiting the material and immaterial destruction caused during the kinetic phase of conflict.

How did your time in Brussels relate to your projects in the Middle East, your work on the Islamic State, and post-conflict reconstruction?

It provided a great opportunity to get the message out to a very different kind of audience—national delegations, military leaders, and NGOs—about issues

“there is finally a realization that exploiting heritage in war has direct, negative ramifications for the rise of identity politics, ethnic or cultural cleansing, and the globalization of conflict and crisis.”

A view from NATO: Lynn Meskell (front row in the red shirt) sits with colleagues and military members in Brussels; photo courtesy of NATO.

CULTURAL HERITAGE CRISIS

of responsibility and accountability in what they do and how they must do better.

It’s fair to say that the city of Mosul, more than most, has had a concentration of heritage projects and agencies working there in recent years, receiving millions of international donor dollars. With my colleague Ben Isakhan and the Arab Barometer in Princeton, we surveyed local public opinion about heritage destruction and reconstruction, and assessed the degree to which that aligns with foreign-led programs.

Perhaps contrary to media speculation, the vast majority of people were deeply troubled by heritage destruction and did not support the actions of the Islamic State. Yet the reasons they gave for the violence were complex, including looting for revenue, religious extremism, and anger at the Iraqi government. International actors like NATO should be aware that, while people understood religious extremism was a key motivation, they also felt that the devastation was driven by numerous factors. They would prefer local religious sites to be restored in preference to archaeological sites and museums. And we discovered the same sentiment in Aleppo. People want their own government to lead heritage reconstruction projects and they expressed very little support for the involvement

of foreign states (including the Gulf, U.S., or U.K.), or multilateral agencies like UNESCO. It suggests that Iraqis and Syrians need to be empowered to take the lead themselves and that heritage rebuilding is part of the broader recovery and repair.

What other Penn-supported projects were you presenting on?

In Brussels, I also presented the results of research conducted with my Wharton colleague Vit Henisz, which was supported by Penn Global and its Global Engagement Fund. Our work demonstrates how UNESCO World Heritage sites have become embroiled in all types of conflict worldwide rather than engendering peace and cooperation—which was the initial promise. Here, too, I was arguing that the older UNESCO instruments are no longer about conserving the world’s most amazing places, much less world peace. If we examine the actions of UNESCO Member States in nominating and inscribing properties, so much of what they do not only leads to conflict, but is precisely more about inflaming conflict, border wars, claims to sovereignty, past battles, and old wars. So it’s not only aggressive nations and armed groups that are weaponizing heritage today.

“Iraqis and Syrians need to be empowered to take the lead themselves. Heritage rebuilding is part of the broader process of recovery and repair.”

A partially destroyed orthodox church in Mosul; photo by Gina Haney.

What do these new developments in NATO mean for Ukraine?

After the rise and fall of the Islamic State, NATO realized that site destruction was being mobilized to victimize people, and that the destruction was used as propaganda. We see that strategy sadly playing out today in Ukraine. UNESCO said very little after the illegal “annexation” of Crimea in 2014. I was there at the Paris meetings when discussion amongst the Member States was incredibly muted. Russia remains a powerful player at UNESCO and has more backing than the U.S. or Europe would like to imagine.

Many African, Asian, and Latin American nations have expressed various levels of support for the Russian Federation, and they had remained as Chair of the World Heritage Committee throughout 2022. Russia still sits on that committee and tried to block the listing of Odesa in January 2023. Ukraine moved swiftly to recognize the site was in danger.

So now the international community has begun to frame the militant destruction of heritage places within an emerging heritage-security nexus. This is reflected in the academic literature, too, expressing concern that international heritage politics and even some “protection” efforts can spur antagonisms and destruction during violent conflicts. Agencies like NATO or the International Committee of the Red Cross are becoming more involved with the far-reaching impacts of heritage destruction in conflict zones and in subsequent peace-keeping and humanitarian missions. We had a terrific team in Brussels discussing these points, marshalling our own research and experience from the U.S., Denmark, the Netherlands, and Canada.

I’m especially grateful to the Crown Princess Center for Public Policy and Frederik Rosén at the Nordic Center for Cultural Heritage & Armed Conflict, which made my participation possible.

Together we were advising NATO that decisions taken in the heritage sphere will have long-term implications in the social, economic, and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives. Moreover, foreign actors need to develop their own ethical oversight and accountability mechanisms, not simply outsource those to UNESCO or rely on outmoded international agreements from the past. Because Ukraine sits on NATO’s eastern flank, and this is seen as a European conflict, it is receiving a lot of attention and hastening the development of cultural protection policies. But I would caution that we do not forget the people of Iraq, Syria, and Yemen who are still living in the ruins of war and who are still dealing with the onslaught of foreign intervention.

Lynn Meskell is a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Weitzman School of Design, and a Curator in the Near East and Asia sections at the Penn Museum. She holds honorary professorships at the United Kingdom’s University of Oxford and University of Liverpool, India’s Shiv Nadar University, and South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand.

When the front lines reach the big city: Ukrainians build a protective structure around the Prince Vladimir Monument in Kyiv during the Russian invasion of Ukraine; photo from Wikimedia Commons.

The New CAAM Digital Laboratory

BY JASON T. HERRMANN

THE VIRTUAL LABORATORY of the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials found a physical home in December 2021 with the construction of a computer laboratory located within the Kowalski Digital Media Center. Equipped with 10 powerful Windows PCs and two wall-mounted screens that can broadcast images from multiple devices at once, the new CAAM Digital Lab (CAAM-DL) provides a space for instruction, meetings, and collaborative student research. CAAMDL was inaugurated in spring 2022 when students in "Geophysical Prospection for Archaeology" ran specialized software and collectively processed data from near-surface geophysical surveys.

Like "Introduction to Digital Archaeology," offered annually, the CAAM geophysics course was designated an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course endorsed by the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, in which students work with stakeholders at cemeteries in greater Philadelphia to tell the story of African American mortuary heritage. Core exercises in both classes center on data from these cemeteries, and students from both courses participated in weekend fieldwork at cemetery sites. Students could also develop research aligned with our partners’ goals and interests, including mapping subsurface features with shallow geophysics or developing documentation schemes for physical monuments and historic records with digital and 3D methods.

This spring, CAAM-DL served students from two courses. "In Material Past in a Digital World," students across Penn learned how digital documentation and representation opens new modes of engagement in museums. At the semester’s end, they completed digital object biographies in which students explored ways to develop analysis or enhance interpretation of objects in the Penn Museum collections through the creation and use of 3-D

digital models. In "Surface Archaeology," co-taught with CAAM Executive Director and Professor in Classical Studies Tom Tartaron, advanced archaeology students scrutinized surface investigation strategies of all kinds, from pedestrian survey and surface artifact collection to the development of digital models of topography from airborne laser scanners.

CAAM-DL has also been the base of operations for several field projects, made possible by the generous support of the Kowalski Family Foundation, which funded the acquisition of aerial-imaging devices and geophysical prospection instruments, including a groundpenetrating radar (GPR) system.

In March 2022, students and faculty from CAAM-DL

Anthropology graduate student Chris Lamack plots hypothetical deposition environments for understanding ground-penetrating radar results; photo by Eric Hubbard.

contributed two research projects in the Wayne National Forest in southeast Ohio in partnership with colleagues from Ohio University and the U.S. Forest Service. The first was a GPR survey of Tinker’s Cave, a rock shelter hosting precontact and early American settlement, in advance of subsequent excavations. Students helped supervise data collection and led data interpretation for a farmstead in Payne’s Crossing, a pre-Civil War African American settlement, and an associated cemetery. Results were presented in a conference entitled "Black Life in the Ohio Valley" hosted by Ohio University’s Central Region Humanities Center and will lead to further collaboration planned for Fall 2023.

In June 2022, CAAM-DL continued fieldwork at Isola San Pantaleo, Sicily (ancient Motya) with University of Palermo partners. Intensive surface collection and test excavations helped us verify our interpretations of previous geophysical survey results and update our account of the development and spatial organization of life on the island between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE. The surface collections yielded artifacts that helped date the buildings mapped with geophysical survey and showed two distinct patterns: dense, highly ordered settlement at the Punic city’s apogee in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, and a later pattern of large estates dispersed across the landscape. Excavations in the ordered section showed the longevity of the street system in the densely packed area and revealed the foundation of an unidentified monumental structure built after the Punic city was abandoned.

In fall 2022, CAAM Director Marie-Claude Boileau and teaching specialists Chantel White and Jason Herrmann joined forces at The Woodlands in West Philadelphia with a project that seeks to clarify the location and extent of William Hamilton’s 1792 greenhouse and reconstruct the garden landscape that surrounded the Hamilton Mansion. New excavations, in cooperation with Jason King of the Center for American Archeology and aided by student assistants, tested and augmented interpretations from prior excavations and surface and geophysical surveys conducted in earlier CAAM-DL courses.

Jason T. Herrmann is the Kowalski Family Teaching Specialist for Digital Archaeology in CAAM and a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology.

FOR FURTHER READING

Herrmann, J.T., and J. Clark. 2021. Return to the Field: Mapping the Urban Plan of Ancient Motya. Expedition 63(3): 22–25.

Boileau, M-C, J. Lynch, and Y. Wang. 2020. Late 18th- to Early 19th- Century Flowerpots at The Woodlands. Expedition 62(3): 38–45.

Herrmann, J.T., K. Alaga, and K. Breyer. 2020. Reconstructing a Historic Landscape. Expedition 62(3): 28–37.

Herrmann, J.T. 2020. In The Labs: Teaching Geophysical Survey. Expedition 62 (2): 56–57.

Boileau, M-C. et al. 2019. In the Labs: Celebrating Five Years of CAAM. Expedition 61(2): 68–81.

Left: CAAM Archaeobotanist Dr. Chantel White and Center for American Archeology Executive Director Dr. Jason King evaluate results of excavation and GPR survey at the Woodlands in the CAAM-DL; photo by Eric Hubbard. Right: Caitlyn Marentette, a course assistant for Intro to Digital Archaeology, assists CAAM Director Marie-Claude Boileau as she collects ground-penetrating radar data at The Woodlands in Philadelphia.

Answering Key Marco Questions

BY ANNA HOPPEL, SYDNEY KAHN, QI LIU, MEGAN KASSABAUM, AND SARAH LINN

EACH YEAR, THREE PENN UNDERGRADUATES take on a venerable task: curating their own exhibition at the Penn Museum. This year’s student-run show, Key Questions: Unlocking Florida’s Ancient Past, focuses on a well-preserved archaeological assemblage from the site of Key Marco, Florida. It explores the fascinating discoveries and identifies the mysteries that are still unsolved, pointing out how archaeological science can help us find answers. This is the ninth year of the student curatorial program, but it’s the first time our curators have conducted new scientific analysis on objects included in their show. Samples from four objects were sent for carbon-14 dating, and the results revealed important new information about the residents of Key Marco and the remarkable objects they made. The evidence has expanded our understanding of the site by helping us determine which culture made and used these objects.

The site was excavated in 1896 by Frank Hamilton Cushing. As one of the first archaeologists to use a grid

system, Cushing’s excavation methods were innovative for the time. Thanks to the waterlogged environment of Key Marco, materials such as wood and fiber were preserved— fragile materials that that rarely survived elsewhere in the American South. Cushing and his crew did not record stratigraphy, complicating our ability to date the objects. A lack of European material indicates the site predates Western contact, but there is debate about whether the objects were deposited before or after 1350 CE.

Previous radiocarbon dating attempts provided inconsistent results. In 1968, a piece of cord was dated to 1670 CE. Six more results from 1975 varied wildly: from 30 CE to 850 CE. These dates have been contested due to possible contamination from pesticides and other early conservation techniques. We hoped that dating four of the objects from our Key Questions show would allow us to definitively assign them to either Glades or Calusa culture, which would contribute to the scholarly

Above: The student curators examine objects in the Collections Study Room for possible inclusion in the exhibition; photo by Megan Kassabaum.

conversation around Key Marco and lay the groundwork for future research.

We examined the objects under ultraviolet radiation to rule out any that might have been contaminated, which could jeopardize the dating process. Conservation materials such as glues, varnishes, and plastic resins appear fluorescent when exposed to UV radiation, which allowed us to omit treated objects—such as the pestle fragment—from our list.

Radiocarbon dating is, by definition, a destructive method. We submitted a proposal to the Penn Museum’s Scientific Testing Committee, and to minimize harm to the collection, we chose objects that were associated with small fragments that could not be reattached, or that had residue we could scrape off without harming the object. Four objects were approved for testing: a panther jaw (40703), a piece of netting (40548), a large vessel (40184), and ceramic fragments (40265). These objects cover a wide range of organic materials—bone, fiber, wood, charcoal— which minimized biases that could result from tests on a single material type. Samples were collected in the conservation laboratory and sent to Beta Analytic for testing.

The results were remarkably consistent. The panther jaw, netting, and large vessel dated between 1260 and 1293 CE, while the ceramic residue dated approximately 100 years earlier, suggesting that it may have been deposited before the other three objects. The dates all sit comfortably within the late Glades time period. This consistency

increases our confidence in the resulting date range, which means that this information can be used to help understand other objects from the site. Still, despite this confidence, our exhibition only attributes these new dates to the four objects we tested, leaving the other objects in the exhibition with a broader date range on their labels, from 500–1500 CE. (We will wait for regional specialists to weigh in for more specific dating.) Meanwhile, we plan to publish our newly tested dates in a scholarly journal soon, and we hope that they can open the door to further analysis, especially since radiocarbon dating is more accurate and accessible than ever. With additional dates, we could determine early and late boundaries for the site’s occupation, reconstruct a sequential timeline for the excavated materials, and build a clearer picture of which people left these objects behind. Dating a site is much more than an abstract number: understanding the age of the site allows us to use Key Marco to better understand other southeastern sites, and if we know certain sites existed at the same time, the artifacts from Key Marco could hint at a much bigger story than the site itself. They could help answer questions about the organic material culture that is missing from the archaeological record of other pre-contact native groups.

Megan C. Kassabaum, Ph.D., is Weingarten Associate Curator of the American Section and Associate Professor of Anthropology. Sarah Linn, Ph.D., is Associate Director of Academic Engagement. Anna Hoppel is a senior in the PAFA/Penn B.F.A. program, majoring in Fine Arts with a minor in Art History. Sydney Kahn is a junior majoring in Anthropology with a minor in Creative Writing. Qi Liu is a junior double majoring in Anthropology and Art History.

Left: Results of testing of the objects (in green) were remarkably consistent, compared to earlier testing results. Below: A pestle fragment (40225) showed residues of former conservation treatment under UV radiation, and was ruled out for dating.

Unpacking the Past with Philadelphia Students

BY EMILY HIRSHORN

Instead of a museum being simply a collection of ‘old stuff,’ students recognize the artifacts as examples of culture of a once-living society of people. It makes history real for students! My kids love this program year after year.”

—Francesca Cantarini, C.W. Henry School

SINCE 2014, UNPACKING THE PAST has worked closely with over 40,000 middle school students in the School District of Philadelphia, providing cost-free experiences that help young Penn Museum visitors engage with and connect to human history. The program includes a pre-trip lesson taught by one of our Penn Museum educators in the schools followed by a bus ride to the Museum where students tour the collections, learn from our educators, and participate in a hands-on activity.

The 2022–2023 school year felt like a new beginning for the program. Knowing that the pandemic had cancelled the bulk of field trips and hands-on learning opportunities, we spent the summer revamping our curriculum. Rather than offering programs that focused on geographical regions and time periods (such as ancient Egypt or ancient China), Penn Museum staff created programs that explore universal themes across cultures and centuries. This year the focus has been on our relationship to color. Staff included a “making” component for students to use mortars and pestles to create their own paints from local, natural pigments (ochre and charcoal). Students then used their handmade paint to decorate a wooden ornament that they got to keep. This gave them a deeper appreciation for the painted objects in the Penn Museum galleries and showed them how to recognize stylistic and material similarities in the art of various cultures. “The Color Workshop is great,” said Matthew Adler, a teacher from Freire Charter School who has participated in Unpacking the Past for years. “Students were so engaged and were incredibly eager to show off the ornaments that they painted with the paint that they made.”

Unpacking the Past serves Philadelphia Title I schools through a unique approach to teaching history, with experiential lessons that enhance our students’ appreciation of history as well as their critical thinking

“This program makes artifacts come alive and gives students a different perspective of a museum.

Educator Paul Best teaches a lesson at Blaine Elementary School, to prepare students for their upcoming field trip to the Penn Museum.

skills. A student from Carver Middle School said it best in a post-program survey: “I like to understand why things are what they are right now, and the Museum helps me understand that in a fun way.”

The “making” component welcomed students of all learning styles and academic levels to fully participate in the lesson. As one teacher said: “During this trip, we had a number of students with varying special needs. One student in particular has difficulty focusing and is usually disengaged. During the in-school part of the program, he became very interested. At the Museum, he completely came alive. It was such a pleasure to see this student shine.”

Emily Hirshorn is the Associate Director of School Programs at the Penn Museum. She manages and teaches in Unpacking the Past with the support of educators Camden Copeland, Christopher LaChapelle, Amanda Man, and Paul Best.

But it also serves as a reminder of the power of taking learning outside of the classroom. I am motivated to set up more similar experiences for my students.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Unpacking the Past was founded by a lead challenge grant from GRoW @ Annenberg and continues to be made possible by generous support from Penn Museum members and other individuals, foundations, and corporations. To learn how you can create opportunities for students to come alive as they connect to human history, contact Therese Marmion (tmarmion@upenn.edu) or Jon Heisler (heislerj@upenn.edu).

In a new workshop exploring our relationship to color across cultures and centuries, students mix their own paints and then decorate ornaments they can take home with them.

“Unpacking the Past is the trip I look forward to most for my students.

—Michael Furman, Mayfair Elementary School

Students from Harding Middle School tour the Middle East Galleries as the first part of their field trip.

Michelin Guide Points Readers to 'Spectacular'

Penn Museum

FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY, Michelin’s famous Red Guide has rated the world’s best restaurants and hotels. Their lesser-known Green Guide shows readers how to enjoy a city’s neighborhoods, museums, and cultural institutions. The first-ever Philadelphia Green Guide came out in 2023, and in it, Michelin points to the Penn Museum as a key spot in a five-day tour of the city.

“Many visitors might miss out if they don’t take the trip out to University City, but we suggest you make the effort as it’s one of the most revered and best documented museums devoted to the history of civilizations in the world.” The Guide was especially impressed with the

Museum’s Upper Level galleries of “statues of Pharaohs, Buddhist sculptures, and Sumerian steles, some of which are inscribed with the earliest known writing in the history of humanity.” In a word, the Guide says, the Museum is “spectacular.”

As for modern Philadelphia, the Guide calls our city “the perfect compromise between American excess and European spirit.” On the fold-out map included, the Penn Museum is rather isolated in West Philadelphia, with most of the attention given to places in Old City and Center City. Here’s to hoping that next time around, some of our spectacular neighbors get the nod, as well.

A Commendation for Commitment

SINCE 2011, Penn Museum has partnered with the Mexican Cultural Center each fall to put on a Día de los Muertos event during CultureFest! Along the way, the MCC’s Executive Director, Ivette Compean Rodriguez, said that the Museum has become “one of our mostcherished partnerships.” Earlier this year, the MCC commended the Museum by honoring it with the 2023 Culture and Art Access Award.

The MCC works closely with the Mexican Consulate to promote Latinx culture and heritage in the Philadelphia area. The award praised the Museum for its track record of “embracing and strengthening” local communities, both through onsite and online learning programs such as Unpacking the Past.

At a luncheon at Condesa in Center City, Williams Director Christopher Woods proudly accepted the award that recognized the Museum’s commitment to a “fundamental philosophical transformation.” This includes “tackling barriers to equity for staff, the public, and research community partners.”

The recognition strengthens the Museum’s commitment to access and the direction it has begun

to take, and serves as a reminder that it is still in the early stages of this journey. The Museum is fortunate to have partners like the MCC to help navigate this transformation.

Peter Giorgi Joins the Museum Board of Advisors

PENN MUSEUM IS PROUD TO ANNOUNCE its newest board member, Peter Giorgi, the President and CEO of Giorgi Global Holdings, Inc., an international leader in agriculture, food, and packaging. Giorgi is also a trustee of The Giorgi Family Foundation, the philanthropic motor behind the Museum’s new Eastern Mediterranean Gallery.

The grandson of Italian immigrants, Giorgi grew up in Berks County, Pennsylvania. The family business, Giorgi Global Holdings, began in 1928 as a mushroom growing house, expanding into a global business over the course of the 20th century.

Giorgi studied History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated magna cum laude, and then earned an M.B.A. from Harvard University and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

The annual CultureFest! Día de los Muertos is a cornerstone of the Penn Museum's partnership with the Mexican Cultural Center.

Serving up 1,000-Year-Old Leftovers

IN JUNE, PENN MUSEUM OPENED ANCIENT FOOD & FLAVOR, a culinary-themed survey of food, crops, and kitchen tools that have stood the test of time—a very, very long time. The objects on display come from sites that date back 6,000 years across three continents: Peru (Pachacamac), Jordan (Numayra), and Switzerland (Robenhausen). The exhibition shows how food—back then, just as now—unites diverse cultures and presents throughlines of the human experience.

From corn and potatoes to apples and jerky, the first-floor exhibition introduces visitors to food that has somehow avoided mouths, trash bins, and the elements. And then there are the everyday objects that brought food to the table, such as a Neolithic harpoon made of bone, or that held the food in between meals, such as a Bronze-age ceramic bowl for storing grain. Leaving the Merle-Smith Galleries on the Lower

Level, the show continues outside, thanks to a partnership with Bartram’s Garden. Three planter boxes teem with plants native to modern Peru, Jordan, and Switzerland. Take a breath and take it in: It’s a reminder that the same food still grows now that grew so many centuries ago. (The plants are presented in memory of Joel T. Fry, Curator at Bartram’s Garden, who died in 2023.)

Top: Dr. Chantel White leads a tour of three outdoor planter boxes teeming with plants native to modern Peru, Jordan, and Switzerland. Bottom: Dr. Katherine Moore points out ancient food specimens.

The show was co-curated by Dr. Katherine Moore, Mainwaring Zooarchaeology Teaching Specialist, whose popular undergraduate class, “Food and Fire,” helped inspire the exhibition. The class teaches students about the origins of baking bread, weaving cloth, and firing pottery.

The show’s other curator, Dr. Chantel White, is the Archaeobotanical Teaching Specialist at the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials. White’s research focuses on the complex networks that gave rise to ancient agriculture, food production, and cooking and plant processing techniques. “These ‘leftovers’ help us to reconstruct ancient environments and identify the plant and animal resources that were available to past people,” White said. Shortly after the show opened to the public, White headed back into the field to dig in coastal Greece.

The exhibition was made possible with generous support from the Diane vS. Levy and Robert M. Levy Exhibitions Fund, Ina Heafitz and Lewis Heafitz, W'58, and Janice T. Gordon, Ph.D.

Your Food Story

MEANWHILE, Ancient Food & Flavor has provided food for thought for West Philly students at Sayre High School, thanks to a $15,000 Community Partnerships Grant from the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation. The six-week summer program, called “Your Food Story: Storytelling through the Photography of Community Landscapes,” brought ancient insights from the Museum’s curators to local students, and brought local students to the Museum.

The project comes as a direct result of community input and a shared vision of how museums can serve local youth. In the grant announcement, Sachs described it this way: “This community partnership is an opportunity to lift youth voices in museum exhibitions and cultivate career pathways for young people in the arts and sciences.” Students will create and curate their own pop-up photography display, which will be one of several student-run displays on view at the Museum in the fall. The grant hopes to inspire students to consider careers in the museum field, and no matter where they end up working one day, it hopes to plant in them an appreciation of nutrition, food heritage, and gardening.

The program is a partnership with the Netter Center for Community Partnerships, in particular with the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative. At the Museum the program is led by Tia Jackson-Truitt, the inaugural Chief Diversity Officer, and Jennifer Brehm, Merle-Smith Director of Learning & Community Engagement.

A weaving basket and weaving tools from Nazca, Perú, dating between 14601532 CE. These were common tomb offerings, containing the personal tools and projects of the person being buried.

Program directors Tia Jackson-Truitt (left) and Jennifer Brehm (right) at the annual Sachs Center Grants Award Celebration.

MEMBERSHIP MATTERS

Member Spotlight: Krishna Lahiri

DR. KRISHNA LAHIRI, GR79, was born in Kolkata, India, and studied at Loreto College, University of Calcutta, and the University of Chicago, where she majored in history and education. When she came to Philadelphia, she completed her doctorate at Penn. A longtime Penn Museum member as well as a volunteer educator in the International Classroom program, she has been a member of the Loren Eiseley Circle since 2017.

How did you first become acquainted with the Penn Museum?

I first got involved with the Museum in 1974 during the Bicentennial Celebration in Philadelphia. The organizers of the celebration held a meeting at the Museum for various ethnic groups. I had only lived in Philadelphia for about five years at that point and hardly knew anyone. I was on campus, because my husband was a professor in Penn’s School of Medicine, and I had also started my own studies.

I was looking for a place for two ethnic Indian groups to gather for the Bicentennial Celebration (the Association of Indians in America, and Pragati, the Bengali Association of the Greater Philadelphia Area). The Director of the Museum offered us the space free of charge for our activities, and I was able to gather a large number of Indians in the Philadelphia area for the event, which included demonstrations where Americans could learn techniques of Indian art and culture, such as dance and the traditional crafts of batik and dhokra This experience encouraged me to sustain my interest and participation in the Museum. I soon learned that it is one of the best anthropological and archaeological museums in the United States.

Then you became a member, which you've been for over 30 years. Why is Penn Museum membership important to you?

My continued support was really inspired by my late husband, who admired the Museum for what it was trying to do to promote diverse voices in its programming. I think he saw a great future for the Museum. Before he died, he said, “Don’t give up your membership with the Penn Museum.” Then, of course, you formed the Loren Eiseley Society (now known as the Loren Eiseley Circle), and I went a step further and became a member of that, as well. I still enjoy being invited to exhibition openings and special events.

Tell us about your experience as a volunteer at the Museum as part of our International Classroom program.

I participated in that program while I was a student. I would visit schools and present to student visitors about India and my culture. It was a wonderful program, and I’m happy to know that it continues to this day.

Do you have a favorite Penn Museum memory?

You have a great collection from India, and we were able to display it for several months during the Bicentennial Celebration. The Museum recognized that diversity exists on the Indian subcontinent, and we portrayed that through a series of workshops. We recruited Indians from different ethnic groups and offered them an opportunity to display their culture. We even had a lesson on batik, a special technique of painting. That is something I remember even to this day. I was also able to connect the founder of the Please Touch Museum, Portia Sperr, with the Penn Museum to request a loan of objects for their first Diwali celebration back in 1978. I continue to be grateful to the staff of the Penn Museum for promoting Indian culture in their galleries and programming.

Krishna Lahiri at the Golden Gala celebrating the opening of the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery in November 2022; photo by Eddy Marenco.

Members See it First and Up Close

PENN MUSEUM VISIONARIES AND SUPPORTING

CIRCLE members got a look ahead at a new Native North American Gallery and an up-close encounter with the Museum’s outstanding collection of fish skin garments this spring.

On March 21, Visionaries heard from internationally known expert Elisa Palomino, Research Associate at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, who talked about the uses of fish skins as our members dined on breakfast. Palomino then led a tour of a whole classroom of fish skin clothing and accessories with Keeper of Collections Bill Wierzbowski.

At the annual Curator’s Party on April 10, Supporting Circle members and Visionaries heard from lead curators Dr. Megan Kassabaum and Dr. Lucy Fowler Williams about their ongoing collaborations with Native specialists and communities, and their vision for a new Native North American Gallery, to open in Spring 2025.

Introducing New Team Members

AT EVENTS THIS SPRING, members were greeted by two new faces: Jon Heisler, Assistant Director of Individual Gifts, and Danielle Foster, Major Gifts Coordinator.

Jon joined the Penn Museum from the Inglis Foundation, where he served as a gift officer. Prior to his career in development, he was a high school history teacher in Maryland. He has a B.A. in History and a B.S. in Secondary Education from Mount St. Mary’s University, and a master’s degree in Public Administration and a certificate in Nonprofit Management from Villanova University.

Danielle was previously a program coordinator at the American Association of Cancer Research, and a customer operations specialist at the National Board of Medical Examiners. She is the co-chair of the Fundraising Committee of the Junior League of Philadelphia and serves on the Soiree on the Square Planning Committee for the Friends of Rittenhouse. Danielle is currently working on an M.A. from Rutgers University, where she previously earned her B.A.

Top: Keeper of the American Section Bill Wierzbowski (center) shows historic salmon skin garments from the Amur River, Siberia, to (left to right) Amanda Mitchell-Boyask, Judy Freedman, Sandy Portnoy, and Zelda Prince; photo by Emily Holtzheimer.

Remembering Bob Ousterhout, 1950–2023

BY IVAN DRPIC

THE PENN MUSEUM, together with Penn’s Department of the History of Art, mourns the passing of Robert G. Ousterhout, Professor Emeritus, an outstanding scholar, educator, and writer. Bob, as he was known among friends and colleagues, will be remembered as one of the giants of Byzantine studies whose groundbreaking work on architecture, monumental art, and urbanism reshaped the field for many generations to come. His work on the Byzantine objects in the Penn Museum collection greatly increased understanding of their significance for visitors and scholars alike, and informed interpretation of many of the objects from Byzantine-era Beth Shean, now on display in the new Eastern Mediterranean Gallery. Bob guest edited a special issue of Expedition (55.1) on Beth Shean in 2013. Bob curated the 2010 exhibition Archaeologists & Travelers in Ottoman Lands, which looked at the accomplishments and struggles of Osman Hamdi Bey, Turkish archaeologist, museum director, and renowned artist; American archaeologist John Henry Haynes; and German archaeologist and Penn Professor Hermann Vollrath Hilprecht. It included two of Hamdi Bey’s oil paintings: Excavations at Nippur and At the Mosque Door, which had never been previously exhibited and for which Bob raised funds for conservation and a traveling frame, enabling the show to also travel to Istanbul’s Pera Museum. In 2016 Bob co-curated, with Grant Frame, the popular exhibition Magic in the Ancient World, informed by a curatorial seminar they co-taught the previous year.

An exceptionally prolific author, Bob produced such seminal volumes as Master Builders of Byzantium (1999), Visualizing Community: Art, Material Culture, and Settlement in Byzantine Cappadocia (2017), and Eastern Medieval Architecture: The Building Traditions of Byzantium and Neighboring Lands (2019), for which he was awarded the 2021 Haskins Medal by the Medieval Academy of America.

Upon joining the faculty at Penn in 2006, Bob proved to be a transformative presence thanks to his exemplary teaching, mentorship, curatorial work, and service. He supervised and mentored over 20 Ph.D. students at Penn and beyond, and served as Director of the Center for Ancient Studies and as Graduate Chair in the History of Art and the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World.

As a co-director of the “Cappadocia in Context” summer program in Turkey, Bob trained generations of budding Byzantinists from around the world, teaching them how to look, think, and conduct fieldwork. His generosity and profound humanity touched countless people.

Bob loved and celebrated life. He swam across the Bosphorus, flew in a balloon with Martha Stewart, hosted the best dinner parties, and could spin a limerick for any occasion. During his final years, while undergoing taxing medical treatment, he continued to lecture, travel, and write, producing several works of fiction. “A light has gone out of the world,” wrote a friend on Facebook, upon receiving the news of Bob’s passing. But the memory of his kindness, wit, and intellectual brilliance will continue to shine.

Ivan Drpic is an Associate Professor in the History of Art Department who specializes in the art, architecture, and material culture of Byzantium and its Slavic neighbors in southeastern Europe. Expedition contributed additional content around Robert Ousterhout's extensive work at the Penn Museum.

Robert Ousterhout examines objects for inclusion in the 2016 exhibition Magic in the Ancient World.

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PENN MUSEUM SHOP

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INTRODUCING AN UPDATE TO OUR POPULAR GREAT LECTURE SERIES:

RCHAEOLOGY IN CTION

2023-24 VIRTUAL LECTURE SERIES

First Wednesdays starting October 4

Learn about the latest findings from archaeological projects across the globe, and hear what it’s like to do research in the field. Near Eastern archaeologist Michael Danti, Ph.D., kicks off the series with new details about the discovery of the Mashki Gate at the ancient site of Nineveh in Iraq.