African Archaeology - The West African Archaeology research collection is the latest addition to the Museum. It is comprised of samples of cultural remains collected during archaeological research conducted  in Northern Cameroon, Northwestern Burkina Faso, and West Central Senegal.

Asian Archaeology - The Asian Archaeology and Ethnographic collection is comprised of a variety of materials including some of the Museum's earliest collections acquired by Dr. Beal Steere from his travels to Taiwan and China in the late 19th century. Additional clothing, textiles, jewelry, and trinkets came from the Imperial Chinese Government via the 1885 Cotton Centennial Exhibition in New Orleans. The largest archaeological collection was brought in by Dr. Carl E. Guthe during a three-year expedition to the Philippines in the 1920s and consists of over 10,000 objects. Other significant collections were donated throughout the years by important Michigan citizens (E.P. Power, J.M. Plumer, G. Mennen Williams, Walter Koelz) and others, and today the Range houses more than 80 collections from East Asia, mainland Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and the Philippines.

Ethnology & Material Culture - The Ethnology collection consists of traditional craft products from all parts of the world. The largest collections include Southwestern US pottery vessels, baskets, textiles, brooms, and Native Indian materials.

Great Lakes Archaeology - The Division is responsible for the Museum's archaeological holdings from Michigan, the surrounding Great Lakes states, and Canada. The Great Lakes Division holds more than one million cataloged objects collected from more than 2300 archaeological sites in the region. The materials held in the Great Lakes Division are overwhelmingly archaeological in character: ground and flaked stone tools, lithic manufacture debris, ceramics, copper, shell, and less commonly, wood, charcoal, and historic era artifacts.

Human Osteology - The Museum of Anthropology has a large collection of aboriginal human skeletal material from the state of Michigan and the Southwest United States.

Latin American Archaeology - The Latin America Collection is primarily pre-Columbian ceramics, mostly from Mexico and Peru, with some Central American and Amazonian material. There is also a substantial quantity of lithic materials, mostly obsidian from Mexico (both artifact and quarry source material). Our greatest single strength is from the Valley of Mexico.

Middle East Archaeology - The first teaching collections were received as a gift from the British Museum in the early 1920s. The first major research collection, ceramics from the Plain of Antioch, was received in the early 1930s from Robert Braidwood of the University of Chicago, who received his B.A. from Michigan. Professor Henry Wright has built up a unique series of archaeological collections from the Middle East and the western Indian Ocean relevant to the evolution of complex societies in these areas. In contrast to all other collections outside the Near East, which focus on complete objects of museological value, our collections contain representative collections of discarded debris from both surveys and excavations, which can be used to answer many different questions posed by social scientists regarding past behaviors.

North American Archaeology - The North American collection houses archaeological materials and extensive related documentation (e.g., field notes, site maps, plans and stratigraphic sections, photographs, unpublished manuscripts, and other archival materials) from all states except those in the Great Lakes area. The collection contains in excess of one million artifacts, including hundreds of thousands of ceramic sherds, hundreds of complete or nearly complete ceramic vessels, and tens of thousands of flaked and groundstone tools, items worked in bone and teeth, marine and freshwater shell, galena, mica, fluorite, red and yellow ocher, gypsum, copper, silver, wood, and other both perishable and nonperishable materials. Some of the range's largest and most important collections are from Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian period sites in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois (including Cahokia), Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland (including Accokeek Creek), and the Lower Mississippi Valley portions of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.