Yvonne Davis, Administrative Manager (215-204-7577)

Ms. Hilliard, Graduate Secretary (215-204-7775)

Muriel Kirkpatrick, Director
Laboratory of  Anthropology
(215-204-1418)       

I began work in the Anthropology Laboratory in 1964 as an illustrator of Mayan pottery after graduating from Temple's Tyler School of Art. When the Anthropology Department started acquiring collections to enhance teaching I became laboratory assistant cataloging and documenting the artifacts, from feather headdresses to fossil casts.  I continued to produce illustrations and photographs for faculty publications and I initiated an exhibit program featuring faculty research and the departmental collections.

As well as illustrating Mayan pottery I participated in a publication that produced a journal, “Ceramica de Cultura Maya”, which was issued for twenty-nine years from 1967 to 1996.

In 1978 I received a Master's Degree in Anthropology from Temple based on my research on potters in Metepec, Mexico. I studied not only what they made but what they bought and used in their own homes and whether this examination would shed light on the nature of archaeological pottery classifications. My thesis was titled “The application of the type-variety method of ceramic analysis to a collection of contemporary pottery from Metepec, Mexico.”

In 1990 I became involved with the Society for Industrial Archeology and worked with them in documenting industrial production in the many neighborhoods of the Philadelphia. Two of us recorded over forty sites in West Kensington and North Philadelphia. The survey was published in “Workshop of the World: A Selective Guide to the Industrial Archeology of Philadelphia.”  In 2007 I was managing editor for “Workshop of the World Revisited” an update of the industrial sites first surveyed in 1990. The information from both publications is available on line at workshopoftheworld.com where I continue to add research in industrial archeology as contributing editor.

I have continued my interest in image production and am using a digital camera to document collections with a goal of making known what is here in the lab and how it may be made accessible to a wider audience. Recently the main lab was reconfigured to display a number of collections in an area designated the Anthropology Department Exhibit Center. I am documenting and cataloging new collections donated by retiring faculty members Jonathan Friedlaender, Elmer Miller that form the core of the displays on view.