Jayne, Horace H. F. (Horace Howard Furness), 1898-1975

Sir Leonard Woolley directed the excavations at Ur in southern Iraq from 1922 to 1934 for the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum. As part of this involvement, the University of Pennsylvania Museum sent Leon Legrain, Curator of the Babylonian Section, as a cuneiformist during the 1924–1925 and 1925–1926 seasons. Most of the records of the Ur expedition are located at the British Museum. The Museum Archives hold only a few records.

Tell Billa is located eight miles east of Tepe Gawra and was excavated by the same staff. Because Tell Billa and Tepe Gawra were excavated simultaneosly, records from the excavations are somewhat mixed and should be used together. Although it is difficult to determine amounts of time spent at Tell Billa, emphasis shifted after the third season to the prehistoric layers at Tepe Gawra.

Jayne (Harvard College Class of 1920) earned his Harvard AB in 1919.

Tepe Gawra in northern Iraq was the site of excavations uncovering twenty-six levels of occupation spanning the years from about 5000 B.C. to 1500 B.C. This expedition was funded by the University Museum, A.S.O.R.- Baghdad, and Dropsie College in Philadelphia. Excavations took place from fall to spring, directed by E. A. Speiser (University of Pennsylvania, University Museum and A.S.O.R.- Baghdad) for the 1930-1931, 1931-1932, and 1936-1937 seasons, and by C. Bache (University Museum) for the 1932-1933, 1934-1936, and the 1937-1938 seasons. During 1933-1934, work started late because of complications due to a change in the Antiquities laws and was not represented by a separate field report.

Tureng Tepe, a site dating from approximately 3100-2900 B.C. through 1900 B.C. in northeast Iran was excavated by Frederick R. Wulsin during two short field seasons in 1931. Although the expedition was directed by Wulsin, a University Museum staff member who was a curator of Anthropology during 1930-1932, the expedition was sponsored by the Atkins Museum of Fine Arts in Kansas City, Missouri.

In 1930, Wulsin and his wife Susanne were living in Teheran where they were promoting the archaeological interests of the University Museum by making diplomatic overtures to Teheran officials. When the Iranian antiquities laws were revised in 1930, Wulsin made a preliminary survey for archaelogical sites in the Astarabad region (northeast Iran) and with E. Herzfeld in the Damgham area. Eventually, at Herzfeld's recommendation, Wulsin selected Tepe Hissar and the Citadel at Damghan as sites suitable for excavation by the University Museum (cf. Near East/Iran/Tepe Hissar). The Director of the Museum, H. Jayne, decided that another project could be undertaken in northeast Iran at Tokimakh Tepe which lies north of Astarabad. The original permit from the Persian government was for Tokhmakh Tepe, but a natural mound and that Tureng Tepe would yield more artifacts.

Langdon Warner, a colleague of Jayne, procured the financial assistance of the Atkins Museum of Fine Arts. At first Jayne intended that the University Museum would pay Wulsin's salaries as the Museum's share of the financial contribution. However, the trustees of the William Rockhill Nelson Trust at the Kansas City Museum wanted complete sponsorship of this Project and so they assumed total financial responsibility for the expadition. The University Museum contributed funds for the Wulsins' return trip to the United States and a loan of equipment and staff in return for a portion of the archaeological artifacts recovered from the excavation.

As it happened, the trustees at the Kansas City Museum were not pleased with the Tureng Tepe archaeological material and the University substituted other Near and Far Eastern art objects from the Museum collections. The University Museum also gave as a gift a small representation sample of Tureng Tepe objects (cf. General Correspondence and Reports/General Correspondence, 1967, concerning the present location of the Tureng Tepe objects). This situation may have made the field notes and indexes and catalogs more confusing since some object cards and entries in the object catalog are marked with K.C., designation since Kansas City initially refused Tureng Tepe objects. The Director's Files, Jayne (1929-1940) under Langdon Warner, Kansas City Museum and J.C. Nichols should be checked for further information concerning the financial terms of the project and the transfer of University Museum objects.

Piedras Negras is a Maya site in Guatemala particularly noted for the beautifully sculpted stelae and hieroglyphic inscriptions it has yielded. The site, located in the northwestern corner of the Department of Petén, Guatemala, along the Usumacinta River, which forms in this area the border between Guatemala and Mexico, was discovered in 1894 by a Mexican lumber man, and brought to the attention of Teobert Maler, a pioneer archaeologist and explorer of the Ancient Maya. Maler visited the site in 1895 and 1899 under the auspices of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, but conducted no excavations. His work consisted of disinterring and photographing the large carved stelae and other monuments. His report was published in 1901 as Volume II, No. 1 of the Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology. Thereafter the site was visited several times, beginning in 1921, by Sylvanus G. Morley for the purpose of recording glyphic inscriptions. Morley took many photographs and notes and made many drawings of the glyphs. His assistant, Oliver Ricketson, made a map of the site, which was later superseded by the map of University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Between 1931 and 1939 the University of Pennsylvania Museum conducted extensive excavations at this site. J. Alden Mason, Curator of the American Section, went to Guatemala in 1930 to select the site and obtain an excavation permit that would allow for the removal on loan to the Museum of half of the monumental sculpture uncovered by the expedition. Mason's visit also served to make renewed arrangements with Robert J. Burkitt, who was also excavating in Guatemala for the Museum at this time (see separate Record Group). Mason made some artifact collections on this trip, which are documented in the records. In December of the same year Mason visited the site again as a member of the Museum's aerial survey of Petén and Yucatan.

The site was selected because of its fine sculpture, its early origin, and the fact that little work had been done in that area of the Maya world up to that time. It was also relatively more accessible than many other Maya cities. Mason led the first two seasons of work at the site (1931–1932), and returned again in 1936 to inspect the progress of excavations. Funding for the first three seasons was provided by Eldridge R. Johnson, founder and former President of the Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, NJ. Linton Satterthwaite was Assistant Director under Mason, and directed the remaining six seasons (1933–1939, excluding 1938). The seasons ran generally from February to May, but sometimes began or ended late, that is in March and June.

The work of the first two seasons concentrated heavily on building a road to the site through the jungle and the removal of a number of monumental stone stelae and other sculpture, half of which were sent to Guatemala City and the other half to the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Included among these was Lintel 3, dated ca. 750 AD, still considered to be among the most beautiful specimens of Maya sculpture, and Stela 14 (on display in the Museum's Mesoamerican Gallery), credited with giving Tatiana Proskouriakoff the inspiration for her decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics. The second season produced a new map of the site, but also saw part of the camp catch on fire, resulting in the loss of part of the photographic record.

Under Satterthwaite's direction, the focus of the excavations shifted from the more glamorous task of bringing carved monuments to the exhibition galleries of the Museum to purely archaeological questions, such as uncovering architectural remains, establishing building sequences, and stratigraphy. Satterthwaite concentrated heavily on the architecture of the city, excavating a total of eleven temples and seventeen palaces, as well as two ball courts and a number of sweathouses. As a result the collecting of artifacts became less important in the later seasons. In 1934 and 1935 Satterthwaite visited the nearby site of Yaxchilán and in 1936 the site of Palenque, to obtain architectural data and measurements for comparative purposes. Some of the records for these trips can be found among the Piedras Negras record group, but most of them have been transferred to a separate group, Linton Satterthwaite- Various Sites (see separate listing).

The expedition staff changed almost every season, with the exception of Satterthwaite and his wife, who participated every year, and were the only Museum personnel in 1934. T. Egan Wyer was the engineer for the first season, responsible for constructing the road. Fred P. Parris, architect, took over for Wyer for the second and third seasons. He surveyed and mapped the site. Mary Butler was responsible for artifact analysis, specifically pottery, and stratigraphy. She worked in 1932 and 1933. Tatiana Proskouriakoff, an eminent figure in Maya archaeology, especially the study of Maya art, architecture, and epigraphy, began her archaeological career on the Piedras Negras expedition during the seasons of 1936 and 1937. She later worked for the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC and Harvard University. Other members of the expedition included David W. Amram, Jr. (1932), Francis M. Cresson, Jr. (1935–1937), William S., Jr. and Marian A. Godfrey (1939), and representatives of the Guatemalan Government. Marian A. Godfrey (later Boyer) eventually became Secretary (1942–1949) and Acting Director (1945–1946) of the Museum.

Most of the monuments borrowed from Guatemala were returned to the country of origin in January, 1947, after an extension to the original loan. Only Stela 14 and one leg from Altar 4 remain on display in the Museum's Mesoamerican Gallery today.

A number of publications have resulted from the findings at Piedras Negras, but Satterthwaite never finished all the reports he intended to produce. Much material remains in this collection of use to the Maya scholar and student. See the attached Appendix I for a complete list of Museum publications covering this site.

Excavation at Khafajah, a site located fifty miles northeast of Baghdad, was initially directed by Henry Frankfurt and Pinhas Delougaz of the Oriental Institute in Chicago between 1930 and 1937. In the same year, the Joint American Expedition, under the field direction of E. A. Speiser, continued excavation in conjunction with the work in progress since 1931 at Tepe Gawra (700 miles north of Khafajah). In theory, excavation was to take place between December and February when the weather was favorable. The excavation at Tepe Gawra would continue during October and November and in the spring. During the second season, 1937-1938, P. Delougaz was the field director and C. Bache, field director at Tepe Gawra, assisted him. Excavation did not occur at Khafajah in 1938 because of political conditions.

Karatepe, located ten miles from Tepe Gawra in northern Iraq, is mentioned only briefly in the general correspondence (C. Bache) for the Tepe Gawra and Tell Billa excavations. Penn Museum involvement with this site was during the 1930s. At present, the Near Eastern collections at the museum contain sixty-seven objects (accession numbers 36-7-1 to 36-7-67) from Karatepe (1934-1935). Records are limited to a small group of photographs depicting excavations with captions, and an oversized plan. Other material relating to this site may still be located with the records of other joint Assyrian Excavation ventures. Records for Tepe Gawra, Tell Billa, Karatepe, and Khafajah overlap because excavations were carried out by the Joint Assyrian Expedition which consisted of staff from the Penn Museum and the American School of Oriental Research (A.S.O.R.), Baghdad. The two major excavations were Tepe Gawra (1931-1938), and Tell Billa (1930-1938), although at Tell Billa the most intensive season occurred before 1933.