Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology!

What Is the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology?

The Peabody Museum at Harvard University is the birthplace of American anthropology and a treasure trove of artifacts from around the world!

What Makes It Wonderful?

This museum takes its name from philanthropist, George Peabody, who donated $150,000 to establish America’s first anthropological museum! See, anthropology, or the study of humans, was a very new field of study at the time, and at opening on October 8, 1866, the museum just had a small exhibit of artifacts from the Merrimack Valley between New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Under the guidance of its second director, Frederic W. Putnam, that field, and the collection to fuel it, grew exponentially! Whereas European anthropology focused on Greece and Egypt, Mr. Putnam’s attention was on ancient civilizations of the Americas, and he made it his mission to collect and catalog as much of it as he could (and by whatever means necessary). Today, the Peabody houses over 1.2 million cultural items from around the globe!

In fact, the Peabody Museum has so many artifacts that they’re constantly rotating exhibits. Some highlights when I visited were the All the World Is Here exhibit, which talked about George Putnam and the 1893 Columbian Exposition; and Resetting the Table, which traced the ingredients of a fancy meal enjoyed by the Harvard Class of 1913; Encounters in the Americas, which talked about how plaster casting has helped preserve the details in ancient Mesoamerican carvings! Of course, the whole bottom level is a permanent collection of Native American artifacts from across the country (Penobscot canoes, Tlingit totem poles, Apache baskets, and even some of Sitting Bull’s personal items)!

One of the neat things that the Peabody has been working on since 1990 is repatriating certain items that folks like Mr. Putnam “collected” through unscrupulous means, including human remains! With a goal of ethical stewardship and display that feature items that were freely given, the Peabody has repatriated 4,309 ancestral remains and more than 10,000 funerary items as of June 1, 2023!

How Can I #HelpTheHelpers?

Pay the entrance fee to help maintain trails, signs, structures, and other visitor services!
Volunteer at the Peabody Museum!
Donate to the Peabody Museum!
Be a responsible visitor! Please respect the signs and pathways, and treat all structures and artifacts with respect. They’ve endured a lot to survive into the present. They’ll need our help to make it into the future!