ARCH B425 Praxis III: Independent Study
Semester: Spring 2025
Faculty Advisor: Wu Xin
Field Site: Philadelphia Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Field Supervisor: Katherine Blanchard
Praxis Poster:
PIS_SallyJamrog PraxisPoster
Further Context:
This spring semester, I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with my friend and fellow Bryn Mawr student Ellie Toyama (‘26) at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum) in their Near East collection archives under the supervision of the Fowler/Van Santvoord Keeper of Near Eastern Collections, Katy Blanchard.
Over the course of these last four months, Ellie and I traveled into Philadelphia from Bryn Mawr two times a week to work on inventorying and digitizing the material in the Near East collection from the site of Beth Shemesh, Israel. These artifacts were excavated in the 1930s by Haverford College and accessioned into the University of Pennsylvania’s collection in 1961, mainly consisting of pottery sherds, bits of ceramic or larger incomplete vessels, but we occasionally worked on stoneware from the same site. We looked at lamps, spindle whorls, loom weights, juglets, Cyprian milk bowls, and grinding stones among many other types of objects. We would work on this project a shelf at a time, taking down 1-2 boxes of material a session, carefully making sure each item in the box corresponded with its location status through the Penn Museum inventory software EMu, and photographing items via “shot-down” or “shot-on” camera angles. For more two-dimensional objects such as smaller pot sherds without much curvature, we used “shot-down” photography, during which photos are taken from an overhead angle. Vessels for which simply turning them over would not provide as much information as would be helpful for a researcher looking at these images online, we would employ the “shot-on” technique, during which the camera is placed on a tripod or held freehand, allowing for more photographic, dimensional perspective on a given object. Evaluating each of these items for photography required forethought, especially for items which were significantly more incomplete than others which also might require props to allow for correct orientational positioning. After each session of photography, we would then rehouse and relabel the objects we brought out of storage, assisting with the general upkeep and maintenance of the archive. We found several “unaccounted for” objects over the course of our project, allowing previously lost material to be logged correctly into EMu, and ended up fully digitizing the Beth Shemesh collection!
Katy also had us help out around archives with any other projects that came up during our working hours. We frequently helped her pull material for different researchers and classes as well as set up safe viewing locations for objects. Katy additionally took us on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Morgan Library in New York City, on which we got to meet the curators of their exhibition highlighting their cylinder seal collection and a couple curators specializing in rare books and manuscripts. I learned an incredible amount about the processes of curation and what goes into thinking about how material should be displayed in a museum setting as well as what a museum ends up having a final say on. It was also valuable to me to be able to compare the differences between the Morgan Library’s way of keeping materials as opposed to the Penn Museum (a primarily purchased vs. primarily excavated collection).
In addition to the fieldwork I engaged in on-site with Ellie, I developed my skills in art historical and archaeological research and observation through practicing formal analysis on a Khirbet Kerak Ware pot from the Near East collection archives, journaling every week on its formal qualities and materiality as well as practicing various methods of archaeological sketching. Sketching accomplished a similar role in broadening my ability to think critically about these objects as our photography fieldwork assignments in that it encouraged me to consider what features of an object convey its most relevant information. The additional readings and research I also completed on Khirbet Kerak Ware and materiality will culminate in a final paper I will submit at the end of finals week this semester which will also encompass my Penn Museum case study observations.
This whole experience has vastly broadened my knowledge on the behind-the-scenes processes of museum work and has given me an incredible skill set to take into future museum work. I have also learned to more critically and closely observe archaeological artifacts, synthesizing methods of art historical formal analysis with the more scientific, deductive eye often employed in the field of archaeology and plan to continue to develop these skills throughout my time at Bryn Mawr, double majoring in History of Art & Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology.