Around 100 CE, a huge metropolis began to emerge in the Basin of Mexico, one the Aztecs would later call Teotihuacan, or “Birthplace of the Gods.” It quickly came to dominate the region, and, with its completely new urban grid-plan, contained as many as 150,000 people. Its two gigantic buildings, the Pyramids of the Sun […]

This panel discussion highlights tribal relationships to Lenapehoking, the ancestral and spiritual homeland of the Lenni-Lenape and Delaware peoples of the Delaware Valley. Archaeologists and tribal cultural specialists will bring the site-specific landscape and histories to life, illuminating once-vibrant places that remain important to tribal Nations today. Jeremy Johnson (Delaware), Director of Cultural Education, Delaware […]

A millennium ago, Native people constructed over 120 earthen mounds at the site of Cahokia, a World Heritage site in Illinois. Built entirely by hand, the largest of these constructions towered 100 feet over a city that was more densely populated than the contemporary medieval city of London. Over two thousand years before Cahokia’s construction, […]

The earliest cities in the world arose in a dynamic wetland environment at the intersection of the Tigris-Euphrates delta and the shore of the Persian Gulf during the 4th- and 3rd-millennia BCE. Recent work at the site of Lagash, led by the Penn Museum, in collaboration with the University of Pisa and Cambridge University, focuses […]

Beginning in 1902, the archaeological sites and monuments of Lower Nubia were increasingly threatened by the construction of the series of dams on the Nile River at Aswan. By the early 1960s, the ancient land of Lower Nubia had vanished forever beneath the waters of Lake Nasser. Through international efforts, some of the cultural heritage […]