For the past 30 years, the University Museum has conducted excavations and surveys at the site of Abydos, an important town site, cemetery, and cult center for the worship of Osiris. Excavations have revealed important information about the Archaic period (3000-2625 B.C.), including the discovery of royal boat pits and the enclosure of King Khasekhemwy. Continuing projects include that of Josef Wegner at the mortuary complex and adjacent town site of Pharaoh Senwosret III (1878-1841 B.C.) and Mary Ann Pouls' excavations in the Middle Kingdom cenotaph zone, which have also uncovered a small temple of Tuthmosis III (1479-1458 B.C.).
Excavation of the newly discovered temple of Thutmose III formed an important component of the archaeological research that the North Abydos project carried out in the spring of 1997. A small Eighteenth Dynasty structure was discovered in the course of the previous season of fieldwork, and continued excavation of the site has focused on articulating the unusual architectural plan of the temple, and recording the numerous fragments of beautifully carved and painted scenes and texts which once covered its limestone walls. This research will ultimately enable the program of the temple's relief decoration to be reconstructed, and will clarify its function within the larger context of the cult of Osiris at Abydos.
In 1994 Josef Wegner (now Associate Professor, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; Associate Curator, Egyptian Section, University Museum) re-excavated and re-studied a severely damaged temple complex built for pharaoh Senwosret III (1878 - 1841 B.C.), with important results. The temple proper had been entirely removed in antiquity, but the new excavations located part of its outline, scratched by builders on the stone platform upon which the temple had stood. Most important of all, hundreds of decorated fragments, reflecting the temple's function and overlooked earlier, were also recovered.
Dr. Wegner has also conducted more recent excavations at South Abydos. In 2002 magnetic resonance mapping was completed in and around the current excavation site of the mortuary complex and town of Senwosret III. The results of the magnetic survey were positive, and allowed for the identification of two important structures near the town of Senwosret III: 1) a likely administrative building which may have been the center for the local mayoral administration of the town and cult foundation of Senwosret III, and 2) a silo complex which appears to be part of the agricultural storage facilities of the town. In 2003 excavations yielded a mastaba-tomb that may be belong to a king of the 13th dynasty. This tomb includes a massive sarcophagus and burial chamber set within a superstructure of brick. Objects recovered included pieces of painted and gilded plaster that may derive from parts of the burial equipment and elegantly made alabaster vessels. The architecture and objects indicate the possible burial site for a pharaoh of early Dynasty 13 (ca. 1800 B.C.), but future work is required to make a positive identification of the tomb owner.
In 1989, under the co-directorship of David P. Silverman (Curator-in-Charge, Egyptian Section), the University Museum began epigraphic work at the tombs of the nomarchs (local governors) at the site of Bersheh, a major provincial cemetery of the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom (2130-1630 B.C.). A joint expedition with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the University of Leiden focused on the tomb of the nomarch Nehri (Tomb 7). The results of this season's works were published in Bersheh Reports I.
The site of Beth Shean (modern Beisan) is 17 miles (27 km) south of the Sea of Galilee, at the strategic junction of the Harod and Jordan Valleys, and the site was almost continuously occupied from the Chalcolithic period to the present. Between 1921 and 1933, excavations conducted under the auspices of the University Museum uncovered eighteen city levels dating from the late Neolithic period (4500 B.C.E.) through the 12th century C.E. At the time of the conquest, according to the Bible, Beth Shean was one of the cities from which the Israelites did not rout the Canaanites (Joshua 17:11; Judges 1.27). It was also named as the city onto whose walls the Philistines "fastened" the body of Saul and those of his sons (I Samuel 31:10). The project at Beth Shean was one of the largest excavations of its time. Among the most impressive finds were those from the late Bronze to early Iron Age (1400 to 1150 B.C.E.) when it was an Egyptian administrative center and garrison. The highlight of the excavations was the discovery of a series of five Canaanite and hybrid Egypto-Canaanite temples. Burials contemporary with these city levels were excavated in the north cemetery.
The Black Sea Trade Project is an interdisciplinary study of trade systems in the Black Sea over the past 5,000 years and their effects on local cultures and economies. The project focuses on the hinterland and port of Sinop (ancient Sinope), an important Greek and Roman colony at the midpoint of the Turkish Black Sea coast. The long-term goal is to document the development of Sinop and its hinterland from mountaintop to ocean bottom using techniques that will disturb the archaeological record as little as possible. Directed by Fredrik Hiebert (Research Associate, University Museum) and Owen Doonan (California State University, Northridge), the project includes: survey programs on land and under water; geomorphological research; art historical documentation of under-studied material held in museum collections; comprehensive study of literary, historical, and epigraphic evidence; and selected emergency excavation of sites threatened by modern building. So far about 180 sites have been documented in the Sinop region, each of which has been pinpointed on 1:25,000 topographic maps provided by the Turkish government using a Global Positioning System (GPS).
Since 1988 a research team known as the Corinth Computer Project led by Dr. David Gilman Romano (Senior Research Scientist) from the Mediterranean Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has been involved in making a computerized architectural and topographical survey of the Roman colony of Corinth. 
During the course of the seventeen years of the project to date (2005), the nature of the research has evolved from a fairly straightforward consideration of the location and orientation of the excavated roadways of the Roman colony, to a more complex topographical and architectural consideration of various elements of the colony, including the rural as well as the urban aspects of planning and settlement. The project now utilizes a number of methodologies, simultaneously, in the overall study of the ancient city. One aspect of the project is a regional landscape study of a portion of the Corinthia, with the city of Roman Corinth as the focus. Another aspect of the project is the effort to include information from the city of Corinth from chronological periods other than Roman, specifically Archaic and Classical Greek, Hellenistic, Late Roman, Byzantine, Frankish, Venetian, and the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. By means of low level and high altitude air photography, as well as satellite images and some balloon photographs, the limits of the project have been greatly expanded into areas that had not been considered in the original research design. More than 120 Penn undergraduate and graduate students have been trained to date in these modern methods in the field in Corinth and in the lab in Philadelphia. Aspects of the results of the research and methodology of the project are available at the 
Located at the crest of the Cyrenaican (Libyan) coastal plateau, Cyrene was colonized by Greeks from the island of Therea around 630 B.C. Its population was gradually augmented by the arrival of other Greeks after 600, and by the century's end it had become the largest and richest of North Africa's Greek colonies. Excavation of its Intramural Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone began in 1969 under the sponsorship of the University of Michigan, and was continued by the University Museum between 1973 and 1981 under the direction of Donald White (Curator Emeritus, Mediterranean Section). 
The University Museum participated in work at the site of Dendereh, an important cemetery site spanning the Old through Middle Kingdoms (2625-1630 B.C.). Egyptian Section curator Clarence Fisher excavated the site from 1915-1918, continuing the work begun by Charles Rosher and Flinders Petrie at the end of the nineteenth century. In addition to furnishing significant information on the history, culture and funerary practices of this critical transitional period in Egyptian civilization, the Dendereh excavations have provided the Museum with a wealth of important artifacts, including ceramics and other funerary offerings, inscribed stelae, and a variety of architectural elements from the tombs.
From 1921-1923 the site of Dra Abu el-Naga was excavated by Clarence Fisher, one of the early curators of the University Museum's Egyptian Section. The site was an important non-royal cemetery near Deir el Bahri in western Thebes, near the modern Egyptian city of Luxor. Fisher's excavations included work in the tombs of New Kingdom officials and the mortuary complex of the 18th Dynasty king Amenhotep I and his wife Nefertari. Beginning in 1967, Lanny Bell continued work at the site, concentrating on the epigraphic recording and conservation of the decorated rock-cut tombs of Dynasty 19 (1292-1190 B.C.). The excavations at Dra Abu el-Naga provided significant artifacts for the University Museum, including statuary, pottery, funerary furnishings, and painted reliefs.
The site of Gibeon was excavated by James B. Pritchard, the first curator of the Biblical Archaeology section of the University Museum. Gibeon, now the modern Arab village of el-Jib, was first occupied in the Middle Bronze Age I as evidenced mainly by its cemetery. In the Early Iron Age, a massive city wall was built around the mound and a huge cylindrical pool for fresh water, reached by a spiraling stair of 79 steps, was excavated in the bedrock. The city reached its peak in the 7th century B.C.E. when the entire mound was covered with buildings, and the Gibeonites produced and traded large quantities of wine. Altogether, 63 rock-cut storage cellars for wine were excavated by Dr. Pritchard.
Penn excavations at Giza began in 1915 under the direction of University Museum Egyptian Section Curator Clarence Fisher and focused on the area known as the "minor cemetery." This excavation produced important information on the arrangement of Old Kingdom (2625-2130 B.C.) mastaba tombs and the mortuary cults of their owners. In the 1970's the University Museum renewed work at Giza as a sponsor of the Giza Mastabas Project, under the direction of David O'Connor, Egyptian Section Curator-in-Charge, and William K. Simpson. This work has resulted in several volumes providing information about tombs in the Giza Necropolis.
The Gordion Project began in 1950 under the direction of Rodney S. Young (Curator-in-Charge, Mediterranean Section, University Museum) who subsequently directed 17 seasons of excavation. Attention concentrated on the large Phrygian Destruction Level (now dated to ca. 800 B.C.) and the subsequent rebuilding and occupations. After Young's accidental death in 1974, K. DeVries (1974-1987) and then G. K. Sams (1987-present) served as the Gordion Project Director, as analysis, conservation, and publication of excavated material progressed. In 1988-89 excavation resumed under the direction of M. M. Voigt. The goal was a detailed stratigraphic sequence of artifactual, floral, and faunal samples from the Middle Bronze age through the late Hellenistic period (ca 1500-150 B.C.), with particular attention devoted to strata documenting the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age transition. Subsequent excavations conducted in 1993-1997 focused on the development of the Phrygian city from the Middle Phrygian through Hellenistic and early Roman Imperial periods. 
In 2004 Prof. Brian Rose (Curator-in-Charge, Mediterranean Section, University Museum; AAMW Chair) began a new multi-year project, The Granicus River Valley Archaeological Survey Project, focused on an area of northwestern Turkey that was controlled by both Greeks and Persians during the first millennium B.C. Looting there has become increasingly rampant due to the gold and silver objects still preserved in many of the tombs, and the new survey represents the first attempt to record and map both the settlements and burial mounds in this region. 
This project focuses on excavation of the sites of Konar Sandal South and North near the town of Jiroft in the valley of the Halil river in south-central Iran. The area was first revealed by extensive looting in 2000 and 2001, and Iranian archaeologists began excavation at the Bronze Age sites in the valley of the Halil Rud under the direction of Youssef Madjidzadeh in 2003. Dr. Holly Pittman (Professor, History of Art; Curator, Near Eastern Section, University Museum), together with students from History of Art, Anthropology, and AAMW, participated in several seasons of excavations of the two mounds, as well as the exploration and survey of the region. The preliminary results of these early seasons of excavation have revealed a hitherto unknown civilization of the early Bronze Age that interacted with societies in Mesopotamia, the Indus valley, and Central Asia. Most interesting among the finds are more than 150 impressions of cylinder and stamp seals used in the administration of the region. One of the brick tiles is inscribed with linear Elamite.
The project takes its name from the site of Tepe Hasanlu, located near the modern Iranian city of Mahabad. It is the largest site in the Gadar River Valley, which runs from the Zagros mountains on the west to the marshy southern shore of Lake Urmia at the east. The valley provides a direct route from the border of Assyria on the west to highland Iran on the east. Occupation in the region extends from the sixth millennium B.C. through ca. 800 B.C., when a violent attack, possibly led by an army from the neighboring Urartu kingdom, destroyed the citadel. 
The excavations of Hasanlu ran from 1957 through 1977, and were sponsored by the University Museum, the Archaeological Service of Iran, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the overall direction provided by Robert H. Dyson, Jr., former Director of the Museum and Curator Emeritus, Near Eastern Section. The Hasanlu Project involved from the outset the study of more than just the main site, and preliminary soundings and excavations were also carried out at neighboring sites, including Hajji Firuz, Dalma Tepe, Pisdeli Tepe, Dinkha Tepe, Agrab Tepe and Qalatgah among others. The early Iron Age levels of Hasanlu and other neighboring sites excavated by the Hasanlu Project played a central role in defining the Iron Age chronology for Western Iran. 
Between 1996 and 2000 joint team from the University of Pennsylvania, the American Academy in Rome, and the Institut National du Patrimoine conducted a survey of the Island of Jerba, under the direction of Dr. Renata Holod (History of Art; Curator, Near Eastern Section, University Museum), Dr. Elizabeth Fentress (Research Associate, Mediterranean Section, University Museum), and Dr. Ali Drine. The survey, carried out by transects running north-south across the island, revealed over 400 sites, giving a clear picture of the development of settlement between the fifth century B.C. and the 19th century. It revealed precocious agricultural settlement, fairly intensive trade with central Italy, and a strong presence of villas by the second century B.C.; a decline in sites in the fifth century; and a gradual strengthening of the settlement from the ninth century A.D. onward. This fairly coarse-grained image was further refined by intensive, gridded survey of the city-sites, Būrgū and Meninx, and of an 18th century estate, Gish’iyyīn; by geophysical survey at Meninx; and by excavation at a number of sites: the Punic and Roman city of Meninx, the late Roman fortlet at Tala, early mosques at Jami J Gmīr and Jami J Zāyid, and a medieval house at Jami J Zāyid. The publication is due in 2006 as a supplement to the Journal of Roman Studies. 
The Kalenderhane mosque in Istanbul is located in the center of the old city at the eastern end of the Valens Aqueduct, and was excavated and restored by Prof. Cecil L. Striker (Penn, History of Art) and Prof. Dogan Kuban (Istanbul Technical University), in collaboration with the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies between 1966 and 1978. 
Located on the southwest coast of Cyprus, Kourion was one of several independent kingdoms of ancient Cyprus. It was settled as early as the late Bronze Age (14th century BC.), but most of the visible remains at the site belong to the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The University Museum began excavations at Kourion in 1934 under the direction of Bert Hodge Hill, and work continued until 1941 when World War II intervened. Excavations were resumed in 1948 under the direction of George McFadden and continued until his death in 1953. These excavations uncovered extensive cemetery areas of the late Bronze and early Iron Ages, as well as parts of the Greek and Roman city. A major focus of the Museum's work, however, was the excavations of the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates, about 3 kilometers west of the main city center. Here worship of Apollo began as early as the eight century B.C.
An Underwater Archaeology Section of the University Museum was founded in 1960, overseen by George F. Bass, a former curator of the Mediterranean Section and one of the pioneers in the science of underwater archaeology. The first Underwater Archaeology project was a late Bronze Age shipwreck at Cape Gelidonya, off the southwest coast of Turkey. In 1968 underwater excavations were carried out by the Museum, this time off the north coast of Cyprus, near Kyrenia. With the cooperation of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, and under the direction of Michael Katzev, these excavations uncovered a fourth century B.C. Greek merchant vessel that sank in the early third century B.C. The vessel was carrying a cargo of hundreds of amphorae, some of which contained almonds. Twenty-nine millstones, probably used as ballast, were also recovered, as well as pottery from the ship's cabin and coins that helped to date the wreck.
The palaeobotanical project at Lake Nemi is part of a larger multi-disciplinary excavation and research project at a Roman villa and at the Sanctuary of Diana on the shores of Lake Nemi, in the Alban Hills south of Rome. In 2001 and 2002, with an invitation from the Nordic Institutes in Rome and the Soprintendenza Archeologica per il Lazio, Dr. Irene Bald Romano, Research Associate of the Mediterranean Section of the Museum, organized a team of archaeologists specializing in the excavation of ancient gardens, as well as soil scientists, remote sensing specialists, and palaeobotanists to excavate and study the garden areas of a large Roman villa. The villa, built in the 1st c. BCE and destroyed in the 2nd c. CE, is probably that which is described in ancient sources as a country home of Julius Caesar, later inherited by the imperial family. The team was able to identify some of the garden areas of the villa, pinpoint garden features, and identify aspects of the wider botanical landscape, as well as individual cultivated species in the villa area such as grapes, wheats, barley, legumes, and olives. In addition, the team was invited to explore an area of the nearby Sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis in which there is evidence for a grove. In the coming year the team will return to the sanctuary to excavate and study a series of planting pits. Dr. Romano has also initiated a collaborative palynology (study of pollen) project with the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands to analyze sediment cores taken from Lake Nemi. The goal is to augment the information from the land excavation and provide a diachronic picture of the palaeobotanical environment in the area around Lake Nemi.
The royal city and palace complex of King Amenhotep III (1391-1353 B.C.), one of the longest ruling pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty, was excavated between 1971 and 1977 by University Museum Egyptian Section Curator David O'Connor and Cambridge University Egyptologist Barry Kemp. The site consists of a number of residential and ceremonial structures, including a temple to Amun and at least four palaces. To the east of the complex stood a vast artificial harbor and canal, while the earth removed in antiquity during the excavation of the harbor was used to create a series of man-made hills along the southwestern shore. The artificial harbor is the largest known in ancient Egypt.
The excavations of the University Museum at Marsa Matruh on Bates Island, on the north coast of Egypt's western desert, were conducted by Prof. Donald White (Curator Emeritus, University Museum) between 1985 and 1989. Excavations uncovered a site located on a small island positioned at the end of a protected salt water lagoon. During the late Bronze Age its facilities were used during the non-winter months by Aegean mariners to break their voyages between Crete and the southeastern Mediterranean. In addition to modest living quarters and storerooms, the island was equipped with a shop for metalworking, in which simple tools were manufactured for exchange with the local Libyan population who provided the island mariners with water, food, fuel and ostrich egg shells. The pottery wares indicate that the settlement had links to Cyprus, the Aegean, and Canaan, in addition to Egypt and their Libyan neighbors. 
Memphis (now called Mit Rahineh) was the capital city of Egypt during the Old Kingdom (2625-2130 B.C.) and remained an important administrative and religious center throughout Egyptian history. The site of Memphis was sacred to the god Ptah, his consort Sekhmet and the third member of the Memphite Triad, Nefertem. Egyptian Section Curator Clarence Fisher excavated at Memphis for 8 years (1915-1923), during which he discovered the ceremonial palace of the New Kingdom pharaoh Merenptah (1213-1204 B.C.) as well as an associated urban area; a series of later settlements; and a temple precinct dedicated to Ptah. Much of the material excavated during these seasons, including substantial portions of the palace, is now in the University Museum. Under Rudolf Anthes, the Museum returned to the site of Memphis during the years 1950-1962 and excavations were carried out at the temple of Ptah.
The site of Meydum, one of the most important royal and non-royal cemeteries of the Old Kingdom (2625-2130 B.C.), was excavated from 1929-1931 under the direction of Egyptian Section Curator Alan Rowe. His work was a continuation of that begun by Flinders Petrie at the pyramid of Meydum and the surrounding 3rd and 4th Dynasty (2675-2500 B.C.) mastabas. Rowe's excavations also uncovered later burials dating from the Middle Kingdom (1980-1630 B.C.) to the Graeco-Roman Period (332 B.C.-A.D. 642).
Minturnae lies 65 kilometers northwest of Naples, where the Via Appia crosses the Garigliano (ancient Liris) River on the border between Latium and Campania. Originally inhabited by Italic tribesmen called the Aurunci, Minturane was conquered by the Romans in 313 B.C. The site soon grew to a respectable size, in part because the Via Appia ran directly alongside it, but it was badly damaged by fires toward the end of the Republic. Recolonized by Augustus, Minturnae enjoyed a long existence until its final abandonment about A.D. 590. The site was excavated under the auspices of the University Museum by Jothan Johnson between 1931 and 1933, and the Museum received part of the discoveries by agreement with the Italian Department of Antiquities. Architectural terracottas make up the Museum's most exceptional finds from Minturnae. Although typical of central and northern Italo-Etruscan buildings, such decorations are rarely found in museums outside of Italy. The once colorfully painted revetments are part of a native Italic crafts tradition. Conservative traditionalists like Cato the Elder (243-149 B.C.) praised the technique, but such terracottas eventually lost their appeal and disappeared. Minturnae marks the furthest south that they have been found.
The 
The University of Pennsylvania Museum has a long history of field work in the Middle East, beginning with the late 19th century excavations at Nippur, early Mesopotamia’s pre-eminent religious center. Nippur is located approximately 100 miles south of Baghdad, and the mound there is 60 ft. high and nearly a mile in length. The Museum's excavations at Nippur were the first American archaeological project in that part of the world. 
The University Museum has one of the largest collections of Nubian material in the United States, due in part to its excavations at sites in Lower Nubia such as Shablul, Areika, Karanog, Aniba and Buhen under the direction of David Randall MacIver and Sir Leonard Woolley during the years 1907-1910. In addition, the Museum participated in salvage campaigns at the sites of Toshka and Arminna during the 1960's in an effort to excavate sites that would be flooded by the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Materials in the Museum's collection span a period from prehistory through the Christian era.
Dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, was introduced into the eastern Mediterranean region for the systematic study of ancient monuments and sites by Prof. Peter Kuniholm (Classical Archaeology, Cornell University; Ph.D. Penn, 1977) in the early 1970's. He was joined shortly thereafter as collaborator by Prof. Cecil L. Striker (Penn, History of Art), who assumed responsibility for the post-Classical, and especially the Byzantine buildings. They worked together in Turkey, Greece, and the former Yugoslavia until 1988. Thereafter, Prof. Striker continued with his own project, concentrating on the dendrochronology of Byzantine and medieval architecture in Greece, the former Yugoslavia, and Albania, and including an eight-year long study of the Heptapyrgion Castle crowning the acropolis of Thessaloniki, Greece.
The Mugello Valley Archaeological Project and Poggio Colla Field School center on the excavation of Poggio Colla, an Etruscan settlement site in the Mugello near the modern town of Vicchio, about twenty miles northeast of Florence, Italy. The project is co-directed by Professor P. Gregory Warden (Associate Dean, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University; Research Consultant, Mediterranean Section, University Museum), and by Professor Michael L. Thomas (Tufts University). Sponsoring institutions include the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, Franklin and Marshall College, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. 
In 1969 a sunken Greek ship had been discovered and ransacked by looters in the Straits of Messina near the village of Porticello. Shortly thereafter the University Museum was asked by the Antiquities Department of Calabria to undertake an emergency underwater excavation of the shipwreck, which yielded transport amphorae from a variety of sites as well as fragments of bronze statues. This merchant vessel, probably of Greek origin, sank or was scuttled between 415 and 385 B.C.
Exploration of the west-central portion of the Gulf of Mirabello coast, eastern Crete, began in 1910 and 1912 when Edith Hall of the University of Pennsylvania Museum began an excavation of the settlement and cemeteries of Vrokastro, a Bronze Age and Early Iron Age refuge settlement on a mountain peak near the coast. This excavation was followed in 1912 by a brief two-week excavation at the coastal site of Priniatikos Pyrgos, which revealed part of a large Early to Late Bronze Age harbor settlement on this small coastal promontory. The historical settlement of this coastal site was represented by abundant Roman pottery. 
Since 1992 the University Museum has been conducting a joint project with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the area of the Teti Pyramid Cemetery. Headed by David Silverman, Egyptian Section Curator-in-Charge, and Rita Freed, this epigraphic project has relocated the Middle Kingdom (1980-1630 B.C.) burial chambers of the officials, Ihy, Hetep, Sekhwesket, and Sahathoripi. In addition to the investigations in these Middle Kingdom tomb chapels, the team has also focused on the 6th Dynasty (2350-2170 B.C.) tomb of Mereruka, recording the inscriptions in the rooms dedicated to his son, Meriteti. In its last season, it carried out a survey and mapping project of the area surrounding the Teti Pyramid Cemetery, and an archaeological surface survey to the south of the pyramid.
Between 1968 and 1974, Dr. James Pritchard directed four seasons of excavations at Sarepta (modern Sarafand), where the Bible locates King Solomon's bronze works.. This important Phoenician port city flourished from its foundation in about 1600 B.C.E, through the Byzanitne era. and is the one city in the heartland of Phoenicia that has been thoroughly studied following excavation. a shrine at Sarepta in Phoenicia, including a stone pillar and an altar with channels. Pritchard's excavations here revealed many artifacts of daily life: pottery workshops and kilns, religious figurines, clay masks and amulets, and numerous inscriptions that included some in Ugaritic. Pillar worship is traceable from an 8th century shrine of Tanit-Astarte, and a seal with the city's name made the identification of this site with Sarepta secure.
In 1962 under the direction of Froehlich Rainey (Museum Director from 1947-1976), the University Museum undertook a collaborative project with the Lerici Foundation in Rome and the Archaeological Soprintendenza of Reggio Calabria to search for the site of Sybaris, a Greek colony on the Gulf of Tarentum (now Taranto). It was founded in 720 B.C. and destroyed ca. 510 B.C, after which the city of Thurii was reportedly built above the ruins. The Sybaris project developed into a pioneering survey expedition that featured one of the first archaeological uses of magnetometry, a remote sensing technique that measures variations in the magnetic fields of buried structures.
In 1964 Dr. James Pritchard turned his attention to the Jordanian site of Tell es-Sa'idiyeh, identified as the biblical city of Zarethan. The site lies at the heart of the central Jordan Valley, at the intersection of two major trade routes, and was occupied from the early Bronze Age through the seventh century A.D. In two seasons of excavations, Pritchard found a cemetery used in the late Bronze and early Iron Age (ca. 1250-1150 B.C.E.) as well as city remains from the Iron Age (9th-8th century BCE. The rich burials at Tell es-Sa'idiyeh contained bronze vessels, jewelry of gold and precious stones, and imported and locally produced pottery, much of which shows considerable influence from Egypt.
Tell es-Sweyhat, excavated by Prof. Richard Zettler (Associate Curator, Near Eastern Section, University Museum), is a large mounded site located on the left (east) bank of the Euphrates, ca. 65 km. down river from Jerablus (ancient Carchemish) on the Syrian/Turkish border. The Tell es-Sweyhat region plays an important part in subsistence economy today, and probably did also in the past. Tell es-Sweyhat was occupied throughout the third millennium B.C.E., but by the end of that period the site had become a large fortified urban center with a citadel surrounded by an extensive lower town. 
Located in northwestern Iraq near the modern city of Mosul, and not far from ancient Nineveh, Tepe Gawra was excavated by the University Museum from 1931 to 1938. The site was continuously occupied from the Halaf Period (c. 5000–c. 4300 B.C.) to the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C., and gives its name to the Gawra Period (ca. 3500-2900). During the fourth millennium the site appears to have been the ceremonial and administrative center of a small, somewhat peripheral polity in the piedmont of northern Iraq. In varying degrees from level to level, the site's residents also engaged in craft production, including cloth manufacture, pottery making, wood working, bone/stone bead and seal carving, ground stone and lithic tool manufacture, and, perhaps, ran a small, central market place.
In the 1920's, the Royal Cemetery of Ur excavations became one of the great technical achievements of Middle Eastern archaeology, and now represent one of the most spectacular discoveries in ancient Mesopotamia. Deep within the site lay the tombs of the mid-3rd millennium B.C. kings and queens of the city of Ur, famed in the Bible as the home of Biblical patriarch, Abraham. 
In AD 144-5, at the age of 23, Marcus Aurelius travelled from Rome to the imperial villa at Villa Magna where his adoptive father Antoninus Pius awaited him. In letters to his tutor, Fronto, he describes two days spent there, hunting, writing and harvesting the grapes. (Fronto iv. 5). The site of the villa where this rural idyll took place is known today as Villamagna and lies just south of Anagni, some 40 miles south of Rome, at the foot of a steep hill that must be the one referred to in the text. Covering dozens of hectares, the site of the villa today shows little of its former splendour. The remains consist of three ranges of cisterns fed by an aqueduct which probably leads from a spring at the base of the wooded hill, a nineteenth-century casale built on top of a range of substructures which form the basis villae for some part of the ancient villa, and various traces of substructures on the long ridge running down from the casale towards the road. Halfway along this ridge is found a complex of medieval structures, including a large church with a Romanesque apse and masonry of much earlier periods and some late medieval walls. From the ridge the land slopes away and various walls are just visible under the grass. The site has never been subject to deep ploughing and today consists of open meadow. The only excavation in the recent past has been a test trench in the courtyard of the casale which revealed a pavement in opus spicatum where Numidian marble takes the place of the standard terracotta tiles. An almost identical pavement is found in the palaestra of the Emperor Domitian’s villa at Circeo. Such a witty reference to rustic pavements gives us a hint of the sophistication of the decoration that we might expect to find elsewhere in the villa. 
The mountain citadel of Vrokastro overlooks the west-central coast of the broad Gulf of Mirabello in eastern Crete. Vrokastro is an important site in the archaeological record as a defensive or refugee settlement that bridges the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the early Iron Age. The site was first inhabited during the Middle Minoan period (ca. 2100 to 1700), then reoccupied at the end of the Bronze Age (ca. 1250 B.C.), and continuously inhabited until the seventh century B.C. In 1910 and 1912, this settlement was excavated for the University Museum by Edith Hall, who uncovered a Middle Minoan and Early Iron Age settlement on the peak and north slope of the 300 m. high mountain. She also excavated cemeteries spanning a period from LM IIIC (ca. 1200 B.C.) through late Geometric (700/650 B.C.).