Archaeology Collections

The Museum’s archaeological collections are organized into geographic divisions or by material. The geographic collections derive from Michigan and the surrounding Great Lakes area, Eastern North America, East and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, West Africa, and Europe. Our ethnobotany and zooarchaeological divisions include both archaeological remains and important comparative collections. Other divisions are human osteology and the analytical collection, which consists of sediments and materials related to lithic sourcing studies. Most of the Museum’s archaeological collections derive from excavations and surveys and are enriched by accompanying field notes, site and survey maps, photographs, and other relevant documents and records.

Asian Archaeology

The Asian Archaeology Division has more than 80 collections from East Asia, Southeast Asia, Japan, and South Asia. Most important are the Philippine Expedition (Guthe) Collection and other collections of Asian trade ceramics.

European Archaeology

The European Archaeology collections consist primarily of Lower and Middle Paleolithic stone implements used extensively in teaching. Recent additions to the collections come from museum excavations at Neolithic to Bronze Age sites in southeastern Europe.

Great Lakes Archaeology

The Great Lakes Division curates archaeological holdings from Michigan, surrounding Great Lakes states, and Ontario. The division holds more than one million cataloged objects from scientific research at over 2300 archaeological sites and from donations.

Latin American Archaeology

Latin American collections largely consist of pre-Columbian ceramics from Mexico and Peru and some Central American and Amazonian material. Highlights are ceramics from Peru collected by J. Beal Steere and artifacts from early Valley of Mexico surveys.

Near Eastern Archaeology

Most important of the Museum’s Near Eastern collections are the unique fieldwork-based, comprehensive archaeological collections derived from Curator Henry Wright’s surveys and excavations in Iran and Syria documenting the evolution of complex societies.

North American Archaeology

The division houses archaeological materials and related documentation from all states except in the Great Lakes area. Important collections come from Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian sites in the Midwest and southeastern U.S. and from New Mexico.

West African Archaeology

The African Archaeology Division curates collections from archaeological and ethnoarchaeological research in northern Cameroon, northwestern Burkina Faso, and west central Senegal.

Archaeobiology Laboratories

In July of 2011, the Museum of Anthropology decided to combine its ethnobotanical and zooarchaeological holdings into a single collection—Archaeobiology—to be curated by Kent V. Flannery. In so doing, Michigan was following in the footsteps of the Smithsonian Institution, which had created a similar Archaeobiology program in the decade of the 1990s.

Analytical Laboratory

The Analytical Laboratory Collections curates non-artifact materials, mostly sediments and geological specimens. These materials are used in studies of ancient environments and to identify the sources of raw materials used by ancient peoples.

Human Osteology Collections

The Museum has a large collection of aboriginal human skeletal material from the state of Michigan and the Southwest United States in addition to remains from the Philippines and Near East.