University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

Edith Hayward Hall Dohan (1877-1943) curated the Mediterranean collection from 1912 to 1915 and from 1920 to 1943. A classical archaeologist, she received her A.B. from Smith College in 1899 and her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr in 1908. A classical archaeologist, she received her A.B. from Smith College in 1899 and her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr in 1908. In 1904, she joined Harriet Boyd Hawes and Richard Seager in excavating Gournia in Crete, from which experience she developed her doctoral thesis, The Decorative Art of Crete in the Bronze Age, completed in 1907. Dohan returned to two other archaeological sites in Crete in 1910 and 1912, working under the auspices of the Penn Museum before becoming assistant curator of the Mediterranean Section in 1912. The records in the Edith Hall Dohan curatorial subgroup consist of four series: (1) correspondence; (2) collections; (3) administration; and (4) research. Records within each folder are arranged chronologically.

J. Alden Mason, noted archaeological anthropologist and linguist, was born in Orland, Indiana and attended school in Philadelphia attaining his A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907. He pursued his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley completing his dissertation on the ethnography of the Salinan Indians of California. Mason was influenced by Alfred J. Kroeber while at Berkeley and Edward Sapir of the University of Pennsylvania. The J. Alden Mason curatorial years (1922-1967) produced three archival boxes of correspondence and in-house memos, along with Section reports, research notes and articles and notes for publication. This material, in addition to personal records of Dr. Mason and evidence of his scholarship were arranged into series and placed in chronological order.

Stephen Langdon, noted Sumerian scholar, was an American-born British citizen who briefly curated the Near East section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The Stephen Langdon Near East section records consist of three folders of material mostly correspondence with George B. Gordon the Director of the Museum.

Hermann Volrath Hilprecht, eminent Assyriologist, arrived in the United States in 1886, summoned by the Sunday School Times to edit their oriental section. He was also appointed Professor of Assyriology at the University of Pennsylvania. The following year, Hilprecht assumned the duties of Curator of the Babylonian and General Semitic section of the Museum of Archaeology at Penn. Hilprecht was the scientific director for the Babylonian expedition to Nippur. In all, he worked on four expeditions, specializing in the interpretation of the cuneiform tablets. The Hermann V. Hilprecht Near East section records consist of five boxes of data. The folders had been previously organized into correspondence, collections, publications and controversy divisions. During processing, the correspondence was placed more appropriately in general, curatorial and publishing subdivisions. The collection folders as well as the majority of the publication data required only placement in chronological order.