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Louisa Shepard
Senior News Officer
lshepard@upenn.edu
Anthropology
State Department awards Penn $2 million to preserve cultural heritage in northern Iraq
State Department awards Penn $2 million to preserve cultural heritage in northern Iraq
The two-phase, three-year project aims to revitalize the city and its culture.
Marking the winter solstice, from Neolithic times to today
Marking the winter solstice, from Neolithic times to today
For millennia, people have marked the winter solstice with rituals and celebrations—and they continue to do so today. Penn Museum anthropologists Lucy Fowler Williams and Megan Kassabaum discuss both ancient and contemporary customs associated with attending to the shortest day of the year.
Making campuses more inclusive of Native ideology
Making campuses more inclusive of Native ideology
A recent panel considered how to transform the worldview on university campuses to be more inclusive of Native ideology and more intentional about indigenization.
The Healing Word
The Healing Word
Deborah Thomas embeds herself in communities stricken by violence to chronicle the humanity revealed during the aftermath.
A new take on the 19th-century skull collection of Samuel Morton
A new take on the 19th-century skull collection of Samuel Morton
After unearthing and analyzing handwritten documentation from scientist Samuel Morton, doctoral candidate Paul Wolff Mitchell drew a new conclusion about the infamous 19th-century collection: Though Morton accurately measured the brain size of hundreds of human skulls, racist bias still plagued his science.
Invisible partners: Recovering relationships in early anthropological research
Invisible partners: Recovering relationships in early anthropological research
Margaret Bruchac, an assistant professor of anthropology, examines the social relationships between early 20th-century anthropological collectors and Indigenous collaborators.
Exploring the human propensity to cooperate
Exploring the human propensity to cooperate
Working with a nomadic group in Tanzania, one of the last remaining nomadic hunter-gatherer populations, Penn psychologists show that cooperation is flexible, not fixed.
Collective grief over loss from Brazil’s National Museum fire
Collective grief over loss from Brazil’s National Museum fire
Members of the Penn Museum’s archeological community discuss the devastation felt over the destruction of an invaluable piece of world history.
Piecing together an ancient biblical site, bone by bone
Piecing together an ancient biblical site, bone by bone
In the lab of Penn Museum’s Janet Monge, rising senior Fiona Jensen-Hitch is sorting and photographing ancient human remains to shed light on the people of ancient city of Gibeon.
Philly as lab, classroom, and collaborator
Philly as lab, classroom, and collaborator
Philadelphia’s rich history and forward momentum make it ripe for scientific inquiry for a number of Penn schools and departments, from urban and population studies to medicine and anthropology.
Media Contact
In the News
Associated Press
Archaeologists discover 4,000-year-old canals used to fish by predecessors of ancient Maya
Jeremy Sabloff of the School of Arts & Sciences and Penn Museum says that ancient fish-trapping canals show continuity in Maya culture.
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Artnet News
Do these ancient seals unlock clues to the origins of writing?
Holly Pittman of the School of Arts & Sciences and Penn Museum helped contribute to a study arguing that ancient Sumerian seals used to brand products shaped the formation of cuneiform, humanity’s earliest known example of writing.
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The Conversation
Reconstructing heritage after war: what we learned from asking 1,600 Syrians about rebuilding Aleppo
In a co-authored survey of residents of the Syrian city of Aleppo, PIK Professor Lynn Meskell identifies four key themes for the reconstruction of heritage sites after conflict.
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BBC
From Ancient Egypt to Roman Britain, brewers are reviving beers from the past
Patrick McGovern of the School of Arts & Sciences and Penn Museum oversaw the first hi-tech molecular analysis of residues found in bronze drinking vessels during a 1950s excavation of an ancient Turkish tomb.
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Time
Why Indigenous artifacts should be returned to Indigenous communities
The Penn Museum is noted for creating its “Native American Voices: The People—Here and Now” exhibit with the help of tribal representatives.
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Associated Press
International Women’s Day is a celebration and call to action. Beware the flowers and candy
Kristen Ghodsee of the School of Arts & Sciences explores International Women’s Day as a tool for activism in Russian history.
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