Digging Dames: Women Archaeologists Come Clean

Lecture and Luncheon Benefit at the Penn Museum May 4, 2015
* * *
The Realities of Archaeological Fieldwork From a Woman's Perspective

Philadelphia, PA April 2015 – With Mother's Day not far off, the Women's Committee of the Penn Museum offers a unique way to celebrate, with a benefit luncheon lecture program that puts the spotlight on women in the field: Digging Dames: Women Archaeologists Come Clean runs Monday, May 4,10:30 am to 3:00 pm at the Penn Museum, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia. Kate Moore, Ph.D., an archaeologist who has conducted fieldwork in South America and Central Asia, offers a lively presentation at the event, which includes a catered lunch in the Museum's ancient Egyptian gallery, special shopping opportunities in the Museum's Chinese Rotunda, a raffle, door prizes, and complimentary valet parking. Tickets are $125 and $150, and all proceeds benefit the Penn Museum.

Women have been part of the adventure of archaeological field research for more than 150 years. In contrast to such icons as Indiana Jones and Laura Croft, women archaeologists are scientists with a deep curiosity about the past and a willingness to get dirty. With this program Kate Moore celebrates her 40 years as an archaeologist with a specialty in zooarchaeology by considering the realities of archaeological fieldwork from a woman's perspective. What about dirt? What about children? What about danger? What about careers? As more women than men enter the field each year, some of the answers to these questions may change, but the questions remain the same.

Dr. Moore is the Mainwaring Teaching Specialist for Zooarchaeology at the Penn Museum's Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials (CAAM), and adjunct associate professor in the Department of Anthropology.

The launch luncheon invitation is online (wcpennmuseum.com). Reservations (Excavator individual tickets at $125 each, Explorer individual tickets at $150 each, or Table of 10 at $1,000) to the Digging Dames: Women Archaeologists Come Clean luncheon are due by April 27. To reserve a space, call the Museum's Women's Committee: 215.898.9202, or email Ardeth Anderson, ardeth@sas.upenn.edu.

About the speaker:
Kate Moore, Ph.D.
Katherine Moore was brought up in Delaware and is the daughter of a chemist and a biologist. She first saw archaeologists in action at Colonial Williamsburg in 1965 and visited the Penn Museum for the first time in 1967. She switched from her intended major in history to anthropology early on in her time at Washington University in St. Louis, where she participated in lab work and excavation at sites in Kentucky and Tennessee. She studied at the University of Michigan for her Ph.D. in anthropology, working on how llamas and alpaca were first herded in the Andes of South America. Later, she worked in the Bone Chemistry Lab at the Peabody Museum at Harvard and taught anthropology at Bentley University, outside of Boston. She came to Penn in 1996, and is currently the Mainwaring Teaching Specialist in the new Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials. She is still working on animal bone from sites in Bolivia and Peru and will be in Peru in July and August of this year. Katherine Moore is married to Fredrik Hiebert, an archaeologist who works in Central Asia, and has collaborated with him on work in Turkmenistan and on raising their two sons, now 18 and 24.

About the Penn Museum
Founded in 1887, the Penn Museum (the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology), 3260 South Street in Philadelphia, is one of the world's great archaeology and anthropology research museums, and the largest university museum in the United States. With nearly one million objects in the collection, the Penn Museum encapsulates and illustrates the human story: who we are and where we came from. A dynamic research institution with many ongoing research projects, the Museum is an engaging place of discovery. The Museum's mandate of research, teaching, collections stewardship, and public engagement are the four "pillars" of the Museum's expansive mission: to transform understanding of the human experience. Information: www.penn.museum, or 215.898.4000.

The Penn Museum is located at 3260 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (on Penn's campus, across from Franklin Field). Public transportation to the Museum is available via SEPTA's Regional Rail Line at University City Station; the Market-Frankford Subway Line at 34th Street Station; trolley routes 11, 13, 34, and 36; and bus routes 21, 30, 40, and 42. Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, and first Wednesdays of each month until 8:00 pm. Museum admission donation is $15 for adults; $13 for senior citizens (65 and above); free for U.S. Military; $10 for children and full-time students with ID; free to Penn Museum Members, PennCard holders, and children 5 and younger.
Hot and cold meals and light refreshments can be purchased with or without Museum admission in The Pepper Mill Café; the Museum Shop offers a wide selection of gifts, books, games, clothing and jewelry. The Penn Museum can be found on the web at www.penn.museum. For general information call 215.898.4000. For group tour information call 215.746.8183

Photo: Mummy Portrait of Woman and Frame. Portrait: El Rubiyat, Fayuum, Egypt; Greco-Roman Period (2nd century CE). Wood, pigment. Frame: Hawara?, Egypt; Roman Period (2nd century CE). Gilded wood and stucco. Penn Museum.