The Peabody

February 23, 2026

Robot Reading

Contributed by John Bergman-McCool

AI seems to be everywhere these days. A recent real-world example of AI creep came during this year’s Super Bowl where roughly 25% of the ads that aired were about AI or utilized AI to generate ad content. In general, the ads promised increased productivity and greater inclusion of AI in our everyday lives.

Aside from the occasional Google Lens image search, I haven’t found a productive use for artificial intelligence in my everyday life. A recent study of ChatGPT interaction logs illustrated that, by rank, people engage AI most for creative composition, “romantic” role-playing, planning, and as a source of general information. Productive uses for AI, including coding and academic composition, came in farther down the list.

In my work at the Peabody, I engage in data management tasks that are repetitive or deal with large amounts of data. I have learned to use Excel tools to make my work more efficient (VLOOKUP- if you know, you know). However, some tasks are more complicated and in recent years we have explored AI as a tool for processing them.

*Example of catalog card with provenience information to extract.*

One such complicated process is transcribing institutional records. We have roughly 50,000 catalog cards that are associated with our collections that were accessioned between the 1930s and 1970s. These cards hold valuable information on provenience and provenance for our collections and should be included in our database. Extracting the text from these cards would normally require time-consuming transcription of text by hand into an excel document.

As an example, in 2019 we were awarded an Abbot Academy Fund grant to hire a temporary staff member to transcribe our handwritten accession books. The process took a little over a year and, eventually, three staff members were tasked with completing the project. By comparison, the catalog cards would likely take just as much or more time to process.

Unlike the handwritten ledgers, the typed catalog cards have the benefit of being able to be converted to searchable text through the use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Many of us have converted a PDF into a searchable document with OCR. The technology is standard in many PDF readers these days.

Various attempts have been made over the years to use OCR to extract the text from our catalog cards. The process is complicated because, in the case of these cards, a block of text is useless unless it can be related to the field it originated from. OCR is also an imperfect technology; it can include a lot of errors. Despite these problems, it can be helped with a bit of training.

*Normally, OCR spits out text in a single block, which is not helpful for isolating fields of text.* *It also includes many errors.*

PA students embarked on the first attempt to read and extract the catalog card data. They created a computer program which read and extracted text from the cards and placed the text in corresponding fields. Even better, their model could be trained through the use of Machine Learning thereby improving the program’s accuracy over time. OCR, on its own, utilizes pattern-recognition which does not qualify as Artificial Intelligence. Once Machine Learning was incorporated the program fell squarely within the realm of AI.

*This is an example of the PA student’s program user interface. The output could be improved by editing the text fields above the image of the catalog card.*

Output from the program was quality checked by humans; this was one of my weekly tasks when I first started working at the Peabody. In theory, the errors I and others corrected were fed back into the program. Once the output was loaded, the program would improve with subsequent readings.

Unfortunately, the student who spearheaded this program graduated and the project fizzled out without seeing results from the Machine Learning. Not long after, I found that I was consistently going to the catalog cards for provenience information. I realized that the project had serious benefits for our data management and I decided to take it on in my free time.

I found Tesseract OCR, a free and powerful tool for extracting text from images. I learned to use it in concert with tools to target specific areas of the cards so that the extracted text could be associated with its field of origin. The results were not great, so I learned how to improve the quality by correcting errors and feeding them back into the program. I basically recreated a very crude, inelegant and less functional version of the student program.

Kull, a free tool for pointing Tesseract at specific fields to read.

Early training showed that the program was probably not going to improve without a lot of input. I decided to stop working on the project at that point.

In the intervening years, AI tools have been developed that can read text with greater accuracy. We learned of a museum professional using Microsoft’s Power Automate to read catalog cards. We reached out and got a basic roadmap for how we could make the program work.

This is the visual workflow I set up. Once an image is placed in the folder, the model reads the card and extracts text into an excel file.

Very briefly, the AI Hub within Power Automate allows you to create a visual workflow that skips the need to write code. In addition to the workflow, I trained a model on ten examples of catalog cards. The training process allows you to select fields for the model to read. With the model trained and a workflow created, I was able to generate an Excel document where the extracted fields would be output.

The process of understanding how to set up the workflow, how to trigger it, and how to send the output into Excel were challenging. It required tinkering and several YouTube videos to get it function. It was not easy, but it was achievable, eventually.

And now, the Peabody has entered the AI age. If you need any advice on how to set up a workflow for reading documents, please feel free to reach out to me. Best of luck in your AI exploits.

February 23, 2026

This Year 125 Years Ago

Contributed by Lainie Schultz

Front page of the Illustrated London News. January 26, 1901.
Margaret Mead stamp, US Postal Service souvenir sheet, Celebrate The Century: 1920s. May 28,1998. Copyright United States Postal Service. All rights reserved.
British and Japanese forces engage Boxers in battle.
“Melbourne Rejoices in the Commonwealth.” Parliament of Australia.
Booth’s vacuum cleaner at work, 1903. Science Museum Group Collection.
Jagtime Johnson’s Ragtime March; 1901 sheet music cover.
1901 Chicago White Stockings.
Nobel Prize medal.
1901 Kidder Steam Runabout, Kidder Motor Vehicle Company advertisement. New Haven, CT.
Spread from the 1901 Circle, Abbot Academy Yearbook.

Hitting a major birthday like a 125th is no small thing. Even institutions established to preserve history in perpetuity – like, say, an archaeology museum – rarely last even a fraction of that time. The Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology reaches this milestone on March 21, and it offers a moment for introspection: how did we manage to make it this long? What has the Peabody done in that time? What from our past continues to inspire us today – whether as something we seek to sustain or that guides us toward new directions?

I hope you aren’t now looking at me to answer any of these questions. These are thoughts to let tumble around the entirety of this anniversary year, and beyond. (Possibly we should all start our quasquicentennial with a (re)reading of “Glory, Trouble, and Renaissance at the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology” – because, yes, Emma, I am fancy!).

Instead, I want to go all the way back to the beginning. If we are going to ask how far the Peabody has gone, we have to know where the Peabody started. This makes me wonder: What was the world the Peabody was born into? What did 1901 look like? With the help of Google, below is an absurdly partial snapshot of life as the Peabody came onto the scene.

[Word of warning: despite my best intentions, it turns out that when you’re doing a Google search, in English, with an internet connection in MA, and an education obtained almost entirely in the US, Canada, and Australia; and when you’re trying to find examples of events that you think will be “recognizable” and “interesting” – you end up with a pretty biased list. You would almost think from my snapshot below that the only noteworthy things to happen came out of the US and Great Britain (which I think is wrong?). Please bear in mind AAALLLLLL the other places and people and happenings not remotely referenced here while reading.]

In no particular order and with truly no claims of significance:

A lot a lot a lot of people died. Some of these deaths were noted by historians, and even the general public. These included: Queen Victoria (at the time the longest reigning monarch of Great Britain); President William McKinley (the third US sitting president to be assassinated); and Cecil Franklin Patch Bancroft (the 8^th Principal of Andover’s Phillips Academy).

A lot a lot a lot of people were born. Even more than the number of people who died. Eventually history would care about some of them. These included: Louis Armstrong, Walt Disney, Hirohito, Langston Hughes, Margaret Mead, and Ed Sullivan.

As typical, there were far too many military engagements. Such as: the Second Boer War in South Africa (then ongoing); the Philippine-American War (then ongoing); the War of a Thousand Days/Colombian civil war (then ongoing); and the Boxer Uprising/Yihetuan Movement in China (formally ended with the signing of the Boxer Protocol).

Other political-type stuff happened: The six British colonies of Australia federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia. The US’s Platt Amendment made Cuba a US protectorate. The US and Great Britain signed the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, giving the US exclusive right to build and manage a canal in Panama. In his first annual message to Congress, US President Theodore Roosevelt stressed the need to treat Native Americans as individuals rather than as members of separate sovereign nations, and to break up tribal funds in the same way allotment broke up tribal lands.

We got some cool new technologies: Guglielmo Marconi sent the first transatlantic radio transmission; it said “S.” The first United Kingdom Fingerprint Bureau was established at Scotland Yard, using Edward Henry’s classification system; it worked way better than phrenology. Hubert Cecil Booth patented a dust removing suction cleaner and started offering mobile cleaning services; his vacuum was large enough to frighten horses (it was also drawn by horses. This sounds messy). Satori Kato introduced his vacuum-dried coffee granules – aka instant coffee – at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. (Also where President McKinley was shot. Yikes.).

There was a bunch of art and culture: Beatrix Potter published the Tale of Peter Rabbit. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche posthumously published her brother Friedrich’s The Will to Power. H.G. Wells got it close with The First Men in the Moon (would have nailed it with first man on the moon…). Anton Chekhov’s play “Three Sisters” premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre. Vincent Van Gogh had his first retrospective, in a gallery in Paris. Pablo Picasso had his first major exhibit, also in a gallery in Paris. Sergei Rachmaninoff composed Piano Concerto No. 2; Claude Debussy offered Pour le piano; and Edward Elgar started his Pomp and Circumstance series with Marches No. 1 and 2 ( graduation ceremonies had no idea what was coming for them). But Americans REALLY loved parlor ballads, ragtime, and marching band music; they still could not get enough of Sousa’s Band’s Stars and Stripes Forever.

Are sports art and culture? Let’s just call it sports: The Winnipeg Victorias edged out the Montreal Shamrocks to win the Stanley Cup. Fútbol Club Atlético River Plate was founded in Argentina. The American League was established and the Chicago White Stockings (adorable!) won the first AL pennant. The Pittsburg Pirates took the National League pennant.

The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in Stockholm to Wilhelm Röntgen (Physics), Jacobus Henricus van ‘t Hoff (Chemistry), Emil von Behring (Medicine), Sully Prudhomme (Literature), and jointly to Frédéric Passy and Jean Henry Dunant (Peace).

In other odds and ends: J.P. Morgan incorporated U.S. Steel as the first billion-dollar corporation. Mr. Walgreen opened the first Walgreens. The first successful loop-the-loop roller coaster opened on Coney Island (it was called the Loop-the-Loop). Connecticut set the first speed limit law (12 mph in cities; 15 mph on country roads) and forced cars to stop if they were scaring horses. Schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor celebrated her 63^rd birthday by going over Niagara Falls in a barrel and surviving, proving…something?

Immediately closer to home: fifteen young women graduated from Abbot Academy, and William Clarence Matthews graduated from Phillips Academy. No one knew it yet, but Matthews would go from leading the batting average on Harvard’s baseball team to playing on the Burlington, Vermont team of the Northern League, making him the only Black player in any white professional baseball league at the time. When he was barred from playing in the Major League he had to settle for being a lawyer instead, eventually getting appointed to the Justice Department by President Calvin Coolidge. Big mistake, MLB. Huge.

Andover baseball team, 1901. Archives & Special Collections, Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass.

Finally, Churchill House was moved a block down Main Street, to make room for construction of the Peabody Institute building. And the rest is history.

[For more on gallery images: Illustrated London News; Margaret Mead stamp; British and Japanese forces engage Boxers in battle; Melbourne Rejoices in the Commonwealth; Booth’s vacuum cleaner at work, 1903; Jagtime Johnson’s Ragtime March; 1901 Chicago White Stockings; Nobel Prize medal; 1901 Kidder Steam Runabout; 1901 Circle]

February 17, 2026

Celebrating 125 years of the Peabody!

Contributed by Emma Lavoie

We are just over a month away from celebrating the founding anniversary of the Peabody Institute of Archaeology (originally known as the Department of Archaeology) at Phillips Academy Andover. This year marks a special milestone for the Peabody, being our 125^th Anniversary, that’s quasquicentennial if you’re fancy!

This blog celebrates the founding history of the Peabody as captured by Phillips Academy’s student newspaper, The Phillipian, and acts as a “save the date” for more ways to celebrate with the Peabody throughout the year.

On Thursday, March 21, 1901, the Trustees of Phillips Academy established the Department of Archaeology at a meeting held in Boston. An anonymous donor and friend of the Academy, “provided a foundation sufficient for the erection of a suitable building, an endowment for instruction, research, and publication, together with a large collection.”

The inaugural officers of the Department of Archaeology were Dr. Cecil F.P. Bancroft (Principal of Phillips Academy), Charles Peabody (first Peabody Director), and Warren K. Moorehead (first Peabody Curator and Chief Executive Officer of the Archaeology Department).

In later years, the anonymous donor was recognized as Phillips Academy alumnus, Robert S. Peabody (Class of 1857), the namesake of our institution. Peabody’s passion for archaeology led him to create the archaeology program to encourage young students’ interest in archaeological sciences and to foster respect and appreciation for Native American culture. In addition, the institution would support archaeological research and serve as a place for students of Phillips Academy to gather.

*The original name of the Peabody is still present above the building’s front entrance.*

At the time (1901), this was the largest single gift to the Academy and included Peabody’s collection of nearly 40,000 items. It was not only rare but quite unusual for a preparatory school to have its own department of archaeology with international connections and a major collection.

The new archaeology department was officially dedicated on Wednesday, May 1, 1901. Warren K. Moorehead spoke at a campus chapel meeting describing upcoming construction for the department and that a new building would be located on the corner of Phillips and Main Streets, where the current institute resides today. “The collection is now in Philadelphia and will be brought here [Phillips Academy] within the next two weeks and placed in the old gymnasium until the new building is finished.” Students from the Archaeology class would meet in the old gymnasium (located in the Brick Academy – the gym incarnation of Bulfinch Hall) on Monday and Thursday afternoons to help Mr. Peabody and Mr. Moorehead unpack the collection. The class met there for weeks while the new building was under construction, the laboratory-style work giving a unique replacement to the typical lectures students attended in their daily classes.

*Students unpack Robert S. Peabody’s collections in the school gymnasium, circa 1901. Lantern slide, from the photographic collections, Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology.*

In the image above, students are unpacking from the very wooden drawers the Peabody used as housing for the collection, before it was replaced by more sustainable storage material in Phase 1 of the Peabody’s building project in 2023. If you look closely, you’ll see Mr. Moorehead standing in the background overseeing his students’ work!

The first lecture in Archaeology was given by Charles Peabody on October 14, 1901. Lectures were shared between Peabody and Warren K. Moorehead, most taking place in other buildings on campus such as the science building while the Department of Archaeology was under construction. In addition, Moorehead would take students participating in the archaeology class to various sites in the area – examining shell heaps in Ipswich, MA and an Indigenous village site along the Merrimack River near Lawrence, MA.

It is fascinating to see the parallels between current Peabody events and this moment in time – as of January 2026, the Peabody staff have moved out of the Peabody building to a temporary space across campus while the final Phase 2 of the Peabody’s building project begins. In addition, classes with the Peabody are (at present) being taught across other locations on campus during the building’s construction. With our Peabody Director, Ryan Wheeler, even teaching his Human Origins course in the science building as we saw Mr. Peabody and Mr. Moorehead doing about 125 years before!

By October 30, 1901, bids for the new Archaeological building were in and construction was to begin soon after. Guy Lowell was chosen to design the building – the Peabody being his first architectural commission for Phillips Academy. Guy Lowell would later design other buildings on campus such as the Isham Infirmary (1913), Memorial Bell Tower (1922), and Samuel Phillips Hall (1924). Lowell also played a part in the development of the campus “Vista”, the reorganization of the Great Quadrangle, and renovations to Bulfinch Hall (1902). The Boston architect was most renowned for his design of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and New York State Supreme Court Building.

The building plans called for more than just a museum, detailing reception and meeting rooms “in which the students may assemble during recreation hours, both day and evening.” Spaces would be provided for the various clubs on campus as an informal gathering place.

“The main entrance is in the center, opening into a spacious hall wherein the largest specimens in the collection can be shown. On one side of this hall is to be a big exhibition room, with an alcove, and on the opposite side is a similar hall, behind which are the custodian’s office and private apartments, and a cataloguing room. 

The building is two stories. The second floor is given over to a room, on one side of the main hall, to be used for lectures and entertainment, with a large platform provided for these purposes. This hall will seat 175 or 200 students. On the other side of the main hall is a large library and reading room and lounging place, with a stack room, which will make it possible to care for 15,000 volumes. The windows on the lower floor are arched at the top, while those of the second are what architects term square headed.

The basement of the building is commodious, but will not be finished at once, although the plan is to have eventually an assembly room, a grill room, various committee rooms for the athletic departments, offices for The Phillipian and Mirror, and possibly a small cooperative store for the benefit of the students.”

-Excerpt from The Phillipian, October 30, 1901 Article.

For more details about some of the Peabody’s earlier building features, check out my previous blogs here and here!

As the new building construction began to reach completion, the Peabody collections were growing from various donations across the country. The archaeology department staff stored the collection in various parts of campus such as the old gymnasium (Bulfinch Hall), the new gymnasium (Borden Gym), and the Administration building (which alone, stored about 30 different collections, totaling to about 4,000 items.)

By early February of 1903, the Peabody collection was officially moved into the new building. Briggs & Allyn, a company in Lawrence, MA built fifteen large museum exhibit cases modeled after the Peabody Harvard Museum to display some of the collections.

*The Peabody during the Byers and Johnson era (1936 – 1968)*

I did appreciate the Peabody staff’s honesty at the time expressing the difficulties of balancing the move into the building with their academic responsibilities, mentioning “it has been difficult for the officials of the department to conduct class work properly, and for students to understand the course, since all the specimens have been inaccessible… all will welcome the installation of the collections in their proper quarters.”

The formal opening of the new Department of Archaeology building was held on Saturday, March 28, 1903. The opening was celebrated with a reception including performances by the Mandolin and Banjo clubs as well as several speakers from the Academy and Archaeological field. Out of the various addresses by members of the Academy, two stood out – one, from Dr. Robert R. Bishop (on behalf of the Trustees of the Academy) who most gratefully accepted the gift of the new building on behalf of the Trustees, regretting only that “on account of the modesty of the donor, he was not permitted to make known their name.” This being the very donor that we now honor as the namesake of our institution.

Second, from Vice-Principal A.E. Stearns (on behalf of the Faculty of the Academy) who mentions a very significant fact – “that one hundred and twenty-five years ago the first class that ever graduated from Phillips Academy, met for its exercises on the very spot where the new archaeology building now stands.” I find these words timely as the Peabody looks forward to celebrating 125 years in that same spot next month.

In commemoration of our 125^th the Peabody will be celebrating all year with upcoming activities, events, special communications, virtual opportunities to connect with our institution, and ways to support the Peabody and our future projects. There is so much more to come that we cannot wait to share with you! Stay tuned and follow us on our socials so you don’t miss out on the festivities!

Instagram – peabodyandover

Facebook – peabodyphillipsacademy

Twitter – @RSP_Museum

Peabody Newsletter – Sign up here!

January 20, 2026

Wrapping up Peabody History

Contributed by Marla Taylor

Did you know that the building that houses the Peabody Institute was built between 1901 and 1903? Designed by well-known Boston architect Guy Lowell, the building was designed to be the home of the Phillips Academy Department of Archaeology. Over the past 120 years, the department has transitioned into the Peabody Institute.

As anyone who has lived in the same house for a long time can attest – it is really easy to accumulate stuff (both valuable items and less-than-helpful clutter). Like a well-loved home, the Peabody certainly had its fair share of stuff that needed to be sorted and rehomed before the current building project could get underway. The best stuff had been kept in the attic.

Attics always have a reputation (you know what I mean) and the Peabody’s attic is a special one. If you are over 5’6”, you better watch your head. The corners are as dark as you imagine. And yes, sometimes there are bats. However, there are also piles of old archaeological field equipment, a dumb-waiter, traveling trunks and some incredible pieces of institutional history that needed to be preserved before the building project.

Everything was lovingly wrapped in plastic – it wasn’t always pretty (you try wrapping a pickaxe!) – and clearly labeled for the future. Who knows what future Peabody staff will do with these items, but I am relieved that they will have the opportunity to engage with these echoes of history.

January 16, 2026January 16, 2026

January 2026 Building Update

Contributed by John Bergman-McCool

With construction in our building slated to start this month we have been busy packing up the Peabody. The collections are staying onsite in the recently renovated basement, but everything else that isn’t nailed down from the first floor through the attic has been moved to our temporary office in George Washington Hall (known on campus as “GW”) or to an offsite storage facility.

In addition to packing, we have taken steps to protect the collections during construction. Though very little construction is planned in the basement, renovations in the rest of the building will inevitably result in dust and small bits of debris in the collections areas. To keep everything clean, and avoid weeks of post construction cleaning, we have covered the metal shelving in plastic sheeting. The library has been prepared in a similar fashion.

This week, we made the move to our temporary office in the former Dean of Student’s Office in GW Hall. We’re thankful to have been welcomed by many of our new neighbors. Stop by and say hi if you are in the area.

Now for some pictures of the preparations:

Room 207:

Library:

South Gallery:

Merrimack Vitrine removal for restoration

Hornblower Gallery:

Basement:

January 13, 2026

Why We Started the AAS Blog

Contributed by Jack Angelo ’26

My name is Jack Angelo and I am a board member and Blog Lead in Andover’s Anthropological Society, a student club we created here at Phillips Academy last year. I first became interested in Anthropology because of the many different topics it could cover, allowing someone to perform curiosity-based research about whatever subject matter interests them. When the other board members and I created the club, we knew most of our members’ research and curiosity would be directed towards our more major projects working in tandem with the Peabody Institute. But, understanding that the larger, focused research projects did not allow total intellectual freedom for the whole club, and that it did not spread our club’s messaging to the whole campus, we decided to create the Andover Anthropological Society Blog Site.

Our blog has now run for almost nine months and has served as an amazing display of the various topics our members are interested in, such as Corporate Consumerism in America, The Rise of Digital Tribalism, and the History of Art in Quarantine. Each post reflects what genuinely interests our writers, allowing people to contribute to the club without having to take part in our larger projects. In this way, the blog has developed into exactly the kind of free representational space we hoped for.

Additionally, the blog is a public source for anybody to read to understand our club’s messaging or to just further their interest in anthropology. We wanted to make sure that what we’re doing in AAS isn’t limited to the people who show up to meetings. By putting our work online, we’re giving the whole Andover community access to the topics we’re exploring and the research our members are doing. If someone’s curious about anthropology but doesn’t know where to start, or if they just want to read about a specific topic, the blog is there for them.

Ultimately, the AAS Blog is about making anthropology accessible. We wanted to create something that anyone could engage with, regardless of whether they’re in the club or have any background in the field. By keeping our work public and covering topics that connect to everyday life, we’ve built a resource that’s open to the entire Andover community.

December 12, 2025

Archaeology with No Thumbs

Contributed by Lainie Schultz

Sometimes it’s hard to be an archaeologist. You tell people what you do and watch their excitement dim as you say “No. Not dinosaurs.” Sometimes people think you’re Indiana Jones, so that’s a little better, but then you have to explain that actually looting’s not ok, and maybe we should discuss the ethics of collecting? Plus, you’ve never once fought a Nazi. (You do, however, wear an awesome hat.)

Not an archaeologist. (Via ChatGPT. I didn’t even need to prompt the pyramid.)

Some would argue this is the greatest real-world problem archaeologists today face. Incredibly, hope for the field has finally arrived – and it’s all thanks to LEGO.

FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) is a global program designed to encourage children in hands-on STEM learning. Among its major activities is the FIRST LEGO League Challenge, an annual competition for students aged 9-16 that has them working in teams to design, build, and code their own LEGO robot and complete a research-driven Innovation Project that identifies and solves a real-world problem related to a specific scientific theme. This year, the Challenge theme was UNEARTHED, inviting FLL teams to learn about the field of archaeology, identify a real-world problem faced by archaeologists, and propose an innovative solution.

Never have archaeologists been so popular! As soon as the Challenge kicked off, the Peabody began receiving requests from teams hoping to meet with an archaeologist and find out what challenges they’d want to see solved. And, of course, we weren’t remotely alone in this. I had a lot of fun this fall checking in with colleagues at other institutions, as we collectively realized how big the FLL Challenge is. The Society of American Archaeologists (SAA) even convened a panel of experts (including our own Ryan Wheeler!) for a webinar specifically designed for participants in the UNEARTHED season, just to help manage all the requests people were receiving. Exploring Archaeological Challenges: A Webinar for FIRST® LEGO® League and Robotics Teams was recorded and posted on the SAA’s YouTube channel, massively eclipsing in viewership all the channel’s other recordings combined.

We also heard from teams once they had their projects and were ready for feedback on the problems they’d selected and the solutions they’d proposed. Projects broadly sought either to help archaeologists do their jobs more easily with sustainable solutions, or to help non-archaeologists better understand the field and access archaeological information. Ideas included such products as a Swiss Army trowel, and an artifact cleaning and processing machine with residue-testing capabilities. They sought to help people grasp the size of ancient monuments through comparison with a football stadium for scale, and harnessed the sun to power absolutely anything you could imagine. They ranged in size, scope, and ambition, and all were far more sophisticated than I have represented here.

We might have initially been both a little concerned and a little amused when we first learned about this competition (an FLL reel Ryan found on Instagram had a lot more fire and explosions than we generally like to associate with archaeology!), but the projects that teams have come up with have truly been impressive. Most impressive of all has been the amount of thought and attention these young students have put into learning about the field of archaeology, and the care they have put into making it better for the future. I can only imagine what might be the long-term impacts of this program on the next generation of archaeologists.

Though perhaps their biggest problem will be convincing people that, no. Usually they do have thumbs.

December 11, 2025December 16, 2025

The Not So Amazing Peabody Heist(s)

Contributed by Ryan J. Wheeler

Flyer for a dance at Phillips Academy capitalized on the Louvre heist, November 2025.

The brazen theft of crown jewels from the Louvre on October 19, 2025 fed the ongoing public fascination with museum heists. From details like which mobile work platform was used to access the museum to issues with security, there was almost endless interest and speculation. Even the dapper high school student mistaken for a French detective captured the world’s attention. Not surprisingly, the museum heist is a classic movie and tv trope from the recent The Mastermind (2025) to How to Steal a Million (1966) to the multiple versions of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968, 1999—and apparently a new one in production!), and many others. Fictional literature about heists could occupy a library. Even students here at Phillips Academy hosted a Louvre heist-themed dance! The exciting and glittery portrayals of museum heists, however, often veer far from the real blend of cunning, avarice, ineptitude, and the real mess that museum thefts leave in their wake. Just a few days before the Louvre heist, thieves gained access to the Oakland Museum’s storage spaces, taking over 1,000 objects, including many Native American items.

Plan of the Louvre from Phillips Academy student trip, 2015.

When I joined the Peabody Institute in 2012, former director Jim Bradley told me to be on alert for missing items, presumed stolen at some unknown point in the museum’s past. Early in Jim’s tenure as director, he had been involved in the recovery of a shell gorget from the Etowah site in Georgia. Since that time several collectors have returned items from Etowah and Maine, and others have been tracked down with the aid of the FBI art crimes team. What we now understand is that the Peabody Institute experienced two thefts—one in late 1970 or early 1971, and another in 1986.

Eagle-Tribune article from 1986 recounts George McLaughlin’s theft of artifacts from the Peabody Museum.

Marla Taylor and John Bergman-McCool recount the theft by George McLaughlin in 1986 in their 2020 blog post. McLaughlin gained access to the Peabody’s collection housing areas at a time when the institution lacked professional staff. That made it easier, but he also stole from other museums across New England and several private collectors. He was ultimately caught by the FBI and prosecuted, but not before removing most of the catalog numbers from the thousands of stone tools that he had taken. It was unclear what McLaughlin’s plans were, but it seems he was readying items for sale. And while the FBI arrest prevented that, to this day we have a large number of items that have lost their original provenience—in other words, a big mess.

Boston Sunday Globe article recounts the return of the Etowah shell gorget (December 27, 1992).

I’ve shared before about an earlier theft at the Peabody Institute (also, see my article in the April 2018 SEAC newsletter). Based on correspondence, we are confident that items from Georgia and Maine were stolen in late 1970 or early 1971 while exhibits were being refreshed and updated. These items had been on display when they were photographed to illustrate Dean Snow’s 1976 book The Archaeology of North America. It seems like they were taken while awaiting reinstallation in the exhibits. As I mentioned above, a number of these items have been returned, either by conscientious collectors or through an investigation by the FBI art crimes team, begun in January 2018 when one of the Etowah items was returned to us. Many of these items are funerary objects and subject to repatriation under the Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Their continued absence complicates those repatriation efforts.

The Indian River Press Journal sought reader opinions about the 1980 theft of Spanish shipwreck treasure from the McLarty Museum and if treasure items should continue to be exhibited (Friday, March 8, 1980, page 8).

Unlike the glamourous (or humorous) fictional depictions of museum heists, these are often crimes of opportunity, driven by greed or misguided ideas about the role of museums in caring for and sharing art and culture. I think one example from my past career as Florida’s state archaeologist aptly captures the stupidity of the museum heist. Our collections in Florida included impressive holdings recovered from the shipwrecks of Spanish treasure galleons. Loans to the McLarty Museum near the survivor’s camp of the 1715 fleet wreck included gold coins and gold bars. In 1980, thieves defeated locks and security systems, but when confronted with the reality of disposing of a gold bar, things took a weird turn. They used a hack saw to begin cutting a gold bar into more saleable (or tradeable) pieces before being apprehended. The gold bar was recovered, but the saw cut end remains at large. During our annual 100% inventory of precious metals and coins our outside auditor frequently questioned what was going on with the clearly chopped up gold, so much so that we finally tucked some of the paperwork and news coverage with the piece to allay fears that we were helping ourselves. The thief in that case ultimately criticized press coverage, telling the court that he was “by no means a professional burglar” and that the theft was just a “reckless impulse.” So, enjoy that museum heist movie or book, but remember, it’s a far cry from the real mess made by these thefts.

December 1, 2025

24-25 Peabody Annual Report is LIVE!

Contributed by Emma Lavoie

Our Peabody annual report for academic year 2024-2025 has just been released online! This report features educational participation at the Peabody, including over 1,600 students and 30 Phillips Academy instructors. In addition, our report features institutional highlights, updates on our collections and NAGPRA work, collaborations with students and researchers, and more!

Thank you to everyone who supported the completion of another wonderful year at the Peabody!

You can read the report in its entirety HERE.

November 20, 2025

Trapping a giant

Contributed by John Bergman-McCool

In a past blog post, I shared that we regularly monitor glue traps for signs of insect activity around our building. The traps are not a method for controlling insect populations, rather, they alert us to the presence of unwanted pests that pose a danger to the collections. When unwanted bugs are found we have a set of tools we can employ to remove them while minimizing risk to the health of our collection and colleagues. These tools include vacuuming and freezing collections.

Now, I imagine that many readers (probably most of you) are not excited by pictures of bugs, but earlier this fall, we trapped an unknown insect that I felt was worthy of the spotlight.

*Unknown Beetle removed from glue trap* for easier identification

This remarkable beetle is the largest insect that I’ve seen in our traps. Beyond it’s massive size, any new or unknown bug is cause for excitement for a few reasons. First, we typically see the same three or four insects throughout the year. Second, we need to find out whether the insect is cause for alarm.

I snapped a few pictures and loaded them into Google’s ‘search by image’ function. Pretty quickly I learned that this guy is a Hermit Flower Beetle (or that is my best guess). They pose no danger to the collection. The larva live inside dead or rotting logs and play an important role in recycling wood and the nutrient cycle. The adults are frequently found around flowers. Somehow this one wandered into our building and ended up in one of our traps.

*The University of Minnesota Extension webpage is a helpful identification resource*

Unfortunately, once in our trap, the beetle died and became a food source for a carpet beetle, an insect we absolutely do not want in our collection. Even if an insect is not actively detrimental, it can always pose a risk.