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"...
every time we take up another potsherd, there's another gold ornament...You
get a great kick out of finding gold. Give it a wipe or a little
scrape and it's as beautiful as it ever was..." --J. Alden
Mason, 1940
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The UPM has
sponsored or participated in over 350 projects
of archaeological and/or anthropological significance that have resulted
in artifact collections primarily from ancient civilizations and traditional
cultures. The archival collections are a valuable resource for serious
researchers, as the records document the recovery of the artifact collections.
Recently, the Museum Archives completed a project to digitize J. Alden
Mason's field notes from his excavations
to Sitio Conte, Panama,
and worked with the
University
of Pennsylvania Library (SCETI) and the University
of Pennsylvania African Studies Center on "Daily
Life in Sierra Leone: The Sherbro in 1936-37," which makes
available one of the UPM's major ethnographic collections.
Archival
collections include
more than 2,000 feet of textual records, more than 300,000 individual
photographic items, and several special collections. Photographic collections
include glass plate and film negatives, lantern slides, moving images
such as motion picture films and videotapes, stereograph cards, color
transparencies, and vintage photographic prints.
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A
cameleer of the Sinai. Photo by Bonfils, ca. 1880.
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The Notable
Photographers Collection
includes the work of photographers such as Bonfils, William Henry Jackson,
Edward S. Curtis, Jessie Tarbox Beals, and others. These collections contain
ethnographic portraiture and architecture, with work by American and European
nineteenth- and twentieth-century photographers of the American West,
the Near East and Egypt, the Classical Lands of the Mediterranean, and
Central America. Online preview: Excavating
Voices: Photographs of Native Americans,
a volume of arresting photographs of Native Americans from the Notable
Photographers Collection.
Special
collections include
items such as books, journals, and exhibition catalogues published by
or about the Museum, its research and collections; maps; archaeological
site plans; art on paper; press clippings; posters, post cards and graphics;
recorded sound media (phonograph records, reel to reel and cassette tapes);
and even oil paintings and sculpture relating to Museum history.
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"Surveyors,"
pen and Ink by Alfred Bendiner, Tikal, Guatemala, 1960.
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Researchers
may consult A
Guide to the University Museum Archives of the University of Pennsylvania
(Philadelphia, 1984); the Index to American Photographic Collections
(New York, 1995); and Anthropological Resources: A Guide
to Archival, Library and Museum Collections (Garland Publishing, 1998).
Finding aids for specific collections are available upon request for a
nominal photocopying charge. Researchers may consult the collections by
appointment only, Tuesday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Direct
inquiries to the following staff:
Alessandro
Pezzati,
Reference Archivist
Charles
S. Kline,
Photographic Archivist
The Museum is
also home to the University of Pennsylvania Museum Library,
which houses more than 100,000 volumes related to archaeology and anthropology.
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