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Louisa Shepard
Senior News Officer
lshepard@upenn.edu
Anthropology
A tour of the ancient world—in Mandarin
A tour of the ancient world—in Mandarin
The Penn Museum offers tours of its exhibits in Mandarin, increasing cross-cultural access to its invaluable assemblage of objects on display, the only known museum in Philadelphia with regularly scheduled tours in the language.
A shared past for East Africa’s hunter-gatherers
A shared past for East Africa’s hunter-gatherers
PIK Professor Sarah Tishkoff, Laura Scheinfeldt, and Sameer Soi use data from 50 populations to study African genetic diversity. Their analysis suggests that geographically far-flung hunter-gatherer groups share a common ancestry.
The diversity of rural African populations extends to their microbiomes
The diversity of rural African populations extends to their microbiomes
In the largest study of its kind, researchers led by PIK Professor Sarah Tishkoff, Matthew Hansen, and Meagan Rubel investigated the gut microbiomes of people from Botswana and Tanzania, and illuminate the impact of lifestyle, geography, and genetics in shaping the microbiome.
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.
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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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