University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,

In the course of their graduate career at Penn, AAMW students have the unusual opportunity to work with a collection of Mediterranean art and artifacts larger than that at any other university in North America. Founded in 1887, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has conducted more than 400 archaeological and anthropological expeditions around the world. Three gallery floors feature materials from Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Levant, Mesoamerica, Asia and the ancient Mediterranean World, as well as artifacts from native peoples of the Americas, Africa and Polynesia. The Museum also serves as the headquarters of the American Research Institute in Turkey, which maintains branches in Istanbul and Ankara.
One of the most distinctive features of the Museum is its commitment to ethics in archaeology as well as to the archaeological context of the objects in its collection. From the beginning of its history, the University Museum articulated a collections policy less interested in individual objects and more with legally acquiring whole groups of objects that had come from scientific exploration, and that would be accompanied by carefully and scientifically gathered documentation. The Museum was the first such institution in North America to endorse the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, North American Museums regularly sponsored excavations in the Mediterranean and shared ownership of the discoveries with the host country. Much of the Museum's collection derives from such reciprocal arrangements. The new Etruscan exhibition, with its complete and well-documented tomb groups from cemeteries at Narce and Vulci, is a perfect example of the Museum's mission, as are the Roman exhibits dealing with Minturnae and Nemi.