March 13, 2018 -- Penn Museum, part 1: mostly western hemisphere

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The Penn Museum is a world-class archaeology museum.  It is a stellar collection of the art of the past, from all over the world.

The outside of the museum is pretty cool, too.  This is the only place I've seen this sort of decorative work.

Water jar.  Pueblo. Ancestral Hopi.  1400-1625 CE.  Arizona, USA.

Girl's dress, with elk teeth.  Absaroke (Crow).  Montana, USA.

Assomption [sic] sash.  Haudenosaunee (Iroquois).  Quebec, Canada.

A closer look at this woven tour-de-force.

I hope this info describes the next three items.  I think it does -- only -- none of them look like pincushions to me...........  I wish this info included the materials used in the making of the items.

Marveling at the knowledge, technical expertise, and time it took to make this.

Dance Apron.  Hupa.

I wonder if someone still knows how to make these -- I'd love to hear what it sounds like in action.  Rustling and clacking (shells at the bottoms of the long pieces).  Northern California, USA.  c. 1890 CE

The next item was described as a stone belt, when we heard it described in A History of the World in 100 Objects.

This is kind of hard to parse.  It's a dog, head at right.  The dog's nose is pointed straight at us; the right side of its face/head are on top.  So much pre-Columbian work from south of the border is scary -- I wanted to remember this cute little smiling guy.

I've seen a lot of pics of buildings from Mayan sites, and they've all been "what they look like now."  All stone-colored.  I wish I'd done a better job of capturing the info about this little piece -- I wonder now if this is what they think these structures looked like when they were in use!  I had that impression when I was there, but nothing I captured says so.

Closer crop.

Papua New Guinea.  Bowls.  (info below)

Radiator and marble walls in the bathroom.  Fancy, and old, to match this fancy old building.

Info below.

I wouldn't describe the object above as a "bowl" but what do I know....  I am pretty sure I got the right info for the object above.....

It's interesting to look at a wide variety of item labels, from different times.  "AD" changes to "CE" ("Common Era," along with "BCE" "before Common Era")  Attempts are made to name the maker, sometimes.  I like that this one has a map, and also tells the materials.


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