University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

The Cape Nome expedition collection was donated to the University Museum by the author himself, John Bockstoce. The collection documents Bockstoce’s records and analysis of his archeological findings in Cape Nome fom 1969-1974. It consists of five series: field notes, drawings, photographs, reports and publications, and oversized documents. The expedition was conducted by Bockstoce for the purpose writing a dissertation on the cultures of the Arctic and obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford, which he achieved in 1974. This expedition was advised by Dr. Froelich Rainey of the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Douglas Anderson of the Haffenreffer Museum of Brown University, and Dr. Derek Roe of Oxford University.

George Byron Gordon led expeditions to Copan at the end of the nineteenth century and, with his brother MacLaren Gordon, to Alaska in 1905 and 1907. As Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and as Director of the Museum, Gordon was first to conduct regular lectures to undergraduate and graduate students in Anthropology and oversaw one of the the largest periods of Museum growth. The G.B. Gordon Central America collection includes diaries, surveying notes, reports and stories from the Copan Expeditions and the Yucatan Expedition in 1910, original stories, articles, and book reviews written by Dr. Gordon, communication with The British Museum about Maya site excavation, Gordon's introductions composed for speakers for the Saturday Afternoon Lecture Series, speeches to professional organizations, and class lectures.

George Franklin Dales was born in Akron, Ohio in 1927. He received his Ph.D. at Penn in 1960 studying the history, art and archaeology of the Middle East. Dales lectured at the University of Toronto from 1961 to 1963. He returned to Penn and was appointed both assistant and then Associate Curator of the South Asian Collection at the Penn Museum and moved from Assistant to Associate Professor in the Department of South Asian Regional Studies. Dales left Penn in 1972 to work at the University of California, Berkeley. The George F. Dales Papers consist of seven archival boxes of data and one card file box. The records are arranged by site-Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ceylon, Thailand and Indonesia.

The Montroville W. Dickeson Collection is a record of Dickeson's expedition to the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys to investigate the origins and archaeology of the North American mound builders. Interested in collecting from an early age, Dickeson left his medical residency and traveled in the South from 1837 to 1844 pioneering in the use of trenches in excavation and strata and cross-sections in description. The collection consists of catalogues, maps, drawings, renderings, photographs, cross-section drawings, and advertising material. Dickeson displayed his collection on his return to Philadelphia and commissioned the Mississippi Panorama painted by John J. Egan, an itinerant Irish artist. Dickeson's collection and the panorama were displayed at his own museum, in subscription lectures, and at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 in Philadelphia. Dickeson engaged in ceaseless self promotion but mostly published in local venues and in serialized format. His advanced archaeological techniques and the catalogues of artifacts from Southern sites no longer in existence, though praised, are not well known.