User:Coryannyyz/University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology/Bibliography

Bibliography

This is where you will compile the bibliography for your Wikipedia assignment. Add the name and/or notes about what each source covers, then use the "Cite" button to generate the citation for that source.

Section B (of WA2 Word Doc Template): Editorial Plan

i. and ii. Evaluation, Proposed Contributions, and Justifications

a. Citations: This article needs many improvements, starting with the addition of reliable and current citations. Most of the sections completely lack in-line citations, while others rely on promotional materials published by the PM itself. At least one of these citations was incorrectly entered as a website, while it was in fact an online journal article. A fact in that section was found to be questionable too, which raises the question whether the uncited information is accurate.

b. Article title and Lead section: The Museums guidelines notes that the article title should be the current name of the museum. On the talk page, Wikipedians noted that the name has changed to Penn Museum, but the issue has not been fixed. I’ve not figured out how to change an article title yet, but if and when I do, I will change the name. The lead section is barebones and does not provide an adequate overview of the article contents according to the guidelines. I probably won’t tackle this until after I’ve seen how far I can go with other improvements.

c. Organization: I have consulted the Guidelines for museum articles published by the Museums WikiProject, as well as the article Talk page. The article’s current upper level sections are: Lead, History (subheadings: 2008 restructuring and MOVE Bombing Victim Remains), Museum Building, Museum Library, Collections (subheadings: Africa, North America, Mexico and Central America, South America, China, Egypt, Iraq and Morton Collection), See Also and References.

Re the History section, on the Talk page, a suggestion was made in 2011 and then someone agreed in 2020, that the 2009 restructuring section should be incorporated into a more comprehensive and balanced narrative within the History section. This has not yet been done, so I should do so. The section on MOVE Bombing Victims Remains should also be moved, but within the current framework it’s not clear where to.

The entire Collections section is problematic for its lack of verified fact, its uneven coverage and its organization. First, while an introductory paragraph notes the collections are divided into three sections (archaeology, ethnology and physical anthropology), the subsections follow a geographic pattern, except the entry for the Morton Collection. In addition to the discrepancy between the disciplinary divisions of the museum versus the geographic organization of the article entries, there is a tension between description of the collections and of exhibits based on them. For example, one article I found (but did not include in my bibliography) was a review of an exhibit organized around One of the easier problems to fix is to create these three divisions as subsections that will discuss not only the collections, but also the exhibitions. For example, both the MOVE section and the Morton Collection sections could be moved to paragraphs of a newly created Physical Anthropology section. A framework for these sections could be: a. collecting history within the division; b. overview of current collection content and scope; c. historic and recent exhibits based on items in the division; d. public engagement initiatives related to the division. The Africa section provides a rough example of this format that could be included in a newly formed ethnology division section. Further research and reflection is needed to make a decision on major reorganization, however.

Another approach, which I first entertained, was to create a new section focused on Public Engagement. A lot of the recent research, exhibits and controversies could be gathered here. The advantage to this approach, although deviating somewhat from the Museums article guidelines, is it would help to highlight and resolve equity gaps, while also creating new emphasis on what is an increasingly important function of museums, particularly anthropology ones.

d. Equity gaps: Providing more and more reliable information on the anthropology collections, exhibits and public engagement initiatives will help to fill equity gaps in the article, particularly where specific source communities and collaborators can be brought into the discussion.

iii. Evaluation of sources

The sources I’ve found are by no means balanced in the areas of weakness of the article. I’ve found several sources that will help fill in important gaps in the History section. But even so, these do not provide material for a complete history of the PM. I’ve also found several sources to help balance the coverage of the Physical Anthropology section, including more on the Morton Collection and ongoing controversies around it. I found only two sources that help fill equity gaps in discussion of the Archaeology and Ethnology sections (Egypt and North American, respectively). However, these are by no means comprehensive. Finally, a few of the articles are case studies of public engagement that demonstrate the museum’s long history of applied museum work. The older examples should go in the History section, but perhaps the newer ones should be including in a new section on Public Engagement. The unevenness of the sources suggests that I will still need to find additional sources to balance coverage.

Section C (of WA2 Word Doc Template): Annotated Bibliography (Note that non-peer reviewed sources are included as adjunct sources to peer reviewed sources. These are not counted among the 6 required peer reviewed sources.)

• 1: Wegner, Josef, and Jennifer Houser Wegner. 2015. The Sphinx That Traveled to Philadelphia: The Story of the Colossal Sphinx in the Penn Museum. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press [book].
  • This is a book published by a university press, so it is a reliable source. It also covers the topic in some depth, so it's helpful in establishing notability. The Penn Museum article's section on their Egyptian collection is very short and lacks any citations. Moreover, it contains evaluative language that is not supported by in-line source citations. This book will help fill in details about the Egyptian collection's history and scope, as well as reveal more about the famous Sphinx that is unique to this museum. The book verifies the claim that this collection "is considered one of the finest in the world," so an in-line citation can be added there.
• 2: Pavement, Peter. 2019. "The museum as media producer: Innovation before the digital age." In The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication. Kirsten Drotner, Vince Dziekan, Ross Parry, and Kim Christian Schrøder, eds. Pp.31-46. New York: Routledge [book chapter].
  • This peer reviewed chapter discusses Penn Museum's involvement with the What in the World? TV show for its 13 year run. The article includes a section on the MOVE human remains controversy, but lacks any mention of positive forms of public engagement. I propose to create a new section for Public Engagement, move the MOVE section to it, and add a section on the What in the World TV show, as well as add a section on the Wampum Trail project. It is possible I can find additional sources, perhaps in the news, about the TV show. The article's coverage of the TV show is found mainly on pages 38-39, where there is also a photograph of the show from the Penn Museum archives.
• 3: Meskel, Lynn. 2021. Atomic Archaeology: Italian Innovation and American Adventurism. American Anthropologist 124(): 655-669 [journal article].
  • This article is in the peer reviewed journal of the American Anthropology Association, so it is both reliable and relevant. I intend to use this article to fill in some gaps in the History section of the Penn Museum article, which jumps from its founding to today with nothing in between. This article focuses on the archaeological expeditions sponsored by the Penn Museum under the leadership of Froelich Rainey, who served as its director for thirty years following WWII. The exact dates are not given in the article, so I will have to find that information elsewhere. Many museum articles include a list of directors and their dates, so this might be desirable to add if the information can be found. The article argues that the museum was complicit with US spy activities. Since this might be controversial, I probably will not include this part in my edits. However, the article contains information about the archaeology expeditions in the 1950s and 1960s that can add neutral facts that will benefit the coverage of the museum's history.
• Marsh, Diana. 2014. Exhibit Review: Imagine Africa with the Penn Museum. Exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Museum Anthropology 37(2): 172-174 [journal exhibit review].
  • Although this is not a peer reviewed article, it is an exhibit review written by a professor at the University of British Columbia who is a well-known expert in the field of museum anthropology. The review describes and evaluates the exhibit Imagine Africa, 2011 to sometime before 2019, when a new African Gallery opened. The Penn Museum article has a relatively large section on the African collection. However, it lacks in-line citations for three paragraphs. The only citations are found in the fourth and final paragraph; however, these are not all reliable (e.g. a promotional page from the Penn Museum's website). This review can help fill in some citations to this section. However, I think it will be most beneficial to include it as a short paragraph in the new Public Engagement section, outlining a case study of public engagement at the Penn Museum.
• n/a Chavarria, Antonio R., and Maxine E. McBrinn. 2015. Continued Conversations in the Field. Museum Anthropology 38(1): 3-14 [journal interviews].
  • This journal article is a transcript of interviews with university museum curators, including Lucy Fowler Williams, Associate Curator and Jeremy A. Sabloff Senior Keeper of American Collections, Penn Museum. Dr. Williams also oversees implementation of NAGPRA, about which she advises the museum director and the university at large. This is not a peer reviewed article, so it is not included in the count of required 6 sources. The interview describes PM's relationship with the anthropology department and undergrad students more broadly in internships and work-study programs where they have opportunities to do research in curation, collections management and NAGPRA. However, PM does not have a museum studies program. While the information in this interview is somewhat limited, it may be applied to the introductory paragraph of the new section on Public Engagement.
• n/a Williams, Lucy Fowler. 2023. Telling Stories of Today: Collecting Native American Material Culture in the 21st Century. Penn Museum Blog [blog].
  • A google search reveals that Dr. Williams curated an exhibit on contemporary Native American art. Although this blog source would not be considered "reliable" or "neutral" (because it's not peer reviewed and it's on the PM website by Williams), it might help support the interview source by providing an example of the type of Public Engagement work done by the American Department. Also, the fact of there being a public-facing blog is evidence of their public engagement. Although this source can be used on Wikipedia, it cannot be included in the required 6 peer reviewed sources. This is not a peer reviewed article, so it is not included in the count of 6 required sources.
• 4. Geller, Pamela L. 2020. Building Nation, Becoming Object: The Bio-Politics of the Samuel G. Morton Crania Collection. Historical Archaeology 54: 52-70 [journal article].
  • This journal article is peer reviewed in an archaeology journal, so it is both reliable and relevant. The section on the Morton Collection is supported only by newspaper articles and PM sources. It also discusses mostly the controversy of the collection and the discovery of 55 slaves' skulls. Geller's article can help to provide more substantiated facts about the history and scope of the collection, as well as to clarify or verify some of the controversial claims. I found that the Wiki article states there are "approximately 1,300 skulls" in the collection; however, this source says 967 (p.53). I followed the link from the Wiki article's citation to find, first, that it was incorrectly entered as a "website," while in fact it is an online version of a journal article. So, I fixed the citation. Second, the cited source stated 867 skulls, which is neither what the article says nor what Geller's article states. In fact, additional sources on or linked to the PM site give other numbers, 1,355, approximately 1,200, and an inventory that lists 2,261 skulls and skeletons. So, clearly some simple facts need to be established about this collection. A brief article in Expedition Magazine (this one clearly not peer reviewed because it is only one page and more like an info bite) provides the information that there are "over 10,000 individuals" in the PM skeletal collection, which might in part explain the difficulty in pinning down the exact number in the Morton Collection. In addition to establishing some baseline facts about the collection, the section of Geller's article "In Crania We Trust" details the collection of 16 Seminole skulls (pp.57-60). This will be useful to a discussion of the NAGPRA repatriation that PM is currently undergoing, which is not mentioned in the Wiki article, but recounted on the PM's info page about the Morton Collection.
• 5. Bruchac, Margaret M. 2018. Savage Kin: Indigenous Informants and American Anthropologists. Tucson AZ: University of Arizona Press [book].
  • This book is published by an academic press, so it is peer reviewed. Bruchac is an indigenous anthropologist, so it is relevant to anthropology and also filling an equity gap. The book describes in detail many ethnographic collectors and the indigenous "informants" who helped them, including some of the ethnographers who collected Native American artifacts for the PM. As such this source will help support both the History and North American collections sections of the article. On p.9 Bruchac notes that PM was among several American museums that sent collecting expeditions into Indian country. On p.85, she notes Mark Raymond Harrington as one of those collectors, as assistant curator at PM. On pp.102-3, Bruchas discusses a PM curator's (Edgar B. Howard) discovery of the Clovis Point and its implications for the Bering Strait theory. On p.140 Bruchac introduces Frank G. Speck, the "most prolific ethnologist of his generation." Speck was instructor, later professor, of anthropology at U. of Pennsylvania from 1909 to 1949, and assistant curator at PM from 1909-1913. On pp.156-60, Bruchac recounts the founding of the anthropology department at UP, and its relationship with PM, including the appointment of George Byron Gordon as director of PM in 1910. He is the reason why Speck left PM in 1913. Interestingly, Gordon advocated anthropology's involvement in political policy decades prior to PM director Froelich Rainey, discussed by Lynn Meskel above. Since there are now two references to this factor, it may be important to mention in the History section. On pp.183-88, Bruchac discusses Speck's role as middleman between indigenous people and wealthy collector, Pennypacker. She also discusses her PM funded project "the Wampum Trail," which will contribute an indigenous case study for the new Public Engagement section.
• Anon, ed. 1917. University Museum: Section of Oriental Art. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania [collection catalogue, although I used the book template in Wiki with the addition of a URL field].
  • This catalogue is not peer-reviewed. It can be taken as reliable source given that it is research produced by the PM, but this could also raise conflict of interest issues. A Wikipedian on the Talk page posted a link to it. Although it would seem promising, there is no overview of the Oriental collections that would be helpful to a Wikipedia article. Rather, there are only detailed descriptions of items in the collection of use to experts in the field of oriental art.
• 6. Jacknis, Ira. 1999. "Patrons, Potters, and Painters: Phoebe Hearst's Collections from the American Southwest." In Collecting Native America, 1870-1960, Shepard Krech III and Barbara Hail, eds. Pp. 139-171 [book chapter in edited volume].
  • In this chapter, Jacknis describes Phoebe Hearst's support of PM by purchasing a large collection of artifacts from Mesa Verde, Colorado, which she then donated to PM. She was encouraged in this action by her friend, William Pepper, who was then provost of the University of Pennsylvania and a founder of the PM. This collection had first been exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair, while Stewart Culin was director of PM, and was interpreted by Frank Hamilton Cushing, whom Hearst subsequently funded on an expedition. Although this reference is limited in scope, it provides a window into a moment of the PM history that can contribute to the History section and tie into other entries, such as for Phoebe Hearst, Stewart Culin, and their other activities. This information can also contribute to the narrative about the newly proposed Archaeology division section of the Wiki article.
• Waterfield, Hermione. 2009. "William Ockelford Oldman." In Provenance: Twelve Collectors of Ethnographic Art in England, 1760-1990. Hermione Waterfield and J.C.H. King, eds. Pp.65-77. London, UK: Paul Holberton Publications [book chapter].
  • This edited volume does not appear to be peer reviewed, as it is not an academic press and there are no citations. Therefore it is not included in the peer reviewed sources count. However, it is clear that the research the chapters are based on is done by prominent curators working with museum accession records. Each chapter in this book is about a different British collector of ethnographic items. Oldman sold Maori pieces to a variety of American museums, including the PM when Gordon was director in 1922 (p.72). Oldman tried to sell the 1,000 items in his Polynesian collection to PM for ₤55,000 in 1930 when Henry Hall was Curator of General Ethnology. This collection included preserved heads and skeletons. PM did not have the money, so the negotiations ceased (pp.73-4). These few details about building the ethnology collection may be applied to a rework of the Collections section, which currently doesn't mention anything about Oceania holdings.
• Waterfield, Hermione. 2009. "Harry Geoffrey Beasley." In Provenance: Twelve Collectors of Ethnographic Art in England, 1760-1990. Hermione Waterfield and J.C.H. King, eds. Pp.79-91. London, UK: Paul Holberton Publications [book chapter].
  • This chapter from the same volume notes that in 1931 Beasley exchanged something in his collection to acquire thirty-four Inuit items from Point Barrow that were in the E.A. McIlhenny collection at PM. This exchange occurred at around the same time as PM was dealing with Oldman and shows that they were actively attempting to round out their collection to trim down redundancies and fill in gaps. It would also be used in the Collections section.
• Cheng, Fangyi. 2016. Chinese Nomadic Art and the Journey to Collect. Expedition 58(3): 8-15 [journal article].
  • This source is a peer reviewed article in the PM Expedition magazine. It is about the Chinese collection of William and Isabel Ingram Mayer, who went on a collecting expedition in Beijing and across the northern provinces from 1930 to 1931 (p.12). The portion of the Mayer collection at PM consists of 464 small bronze daggers, harnesses, plaques, and a variety of ornaments that represent "Ordos" style made by the Scythians and related nomadic peoples between the 12th century BCE and 3rd century CE, as well as pieces made of diverse metals dating from more recent periods (Pp.11-12, 15). Other portions are in the Arthur M. Sackler collection at the Smithsonian (p.12). This information will be used in the Asia sub-section of the Collections section.
  • Cheng also notes that in 1929 Dr. Horace H.F. Jayne became Director of Penn Museum (p.11). Sometime between 1931 and 1941, George Clapp Vaillant succeeded him (p.14). This information will be used in the History section.
• Zhou, Xiuqin. 2005. Excavations at Zhaoling, Shaanxi, China: More Light On the Museum’s Chinese Horse Reliefs. Expedition 47(2): 38-9 [News article].
  • There were originally six horse panels at Zhaoling, the mausoleum of the Tang Dynasty Emperor Taizong. Four of them are at the Beilin Museum in Xi'an, China. The two horse panels at PM are the only two of them outside of China (p.38). These six panels were originally removed from the Zhaoling site in the early twentieth century.
• Madeira, Percy C. Jr. 1964. Men in Search of Man: The First Seventy-Five Years of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.