After travelling the world for thousands of years, a set of ancient treasures uncovered in the Office of the Physical Plant (OPP) four years ago, dubbed the “Classics Collection,” is being housed in the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology. The collection includes items including Ancient Greek vases, jewelry, glass, and coins from Roman Judea as well as the Arab world. Students and curators alike are working to further catalog the collection.
When Head of School Raynard Kington and his family were moving into Phelps House, his husband Peter Daniolos was browsing through a list of OPP’s available furnishings when he spotted a box labeled “Greek antiquities.” Elena Dugan, Instructor in Philosophy and Religious Studies, is responsible for archival work related to this project. Dugan mentioned that the box, which was pulled from storage by OPP, contained materials far more historical than expected.
“When they pulled it off the shelf at OPP, it turned out to be this box that was full of vases that were 2,700 years old, and coins and glass and jewelry. It ended up at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology, which is the place that was the most ready to handle ancient materials,” said Dugan.
The investigation into the Classics Collection has involved many people thus far. Dugan has spearheaded the project, and students from various Religion and Philosophy classes have helped with cataloguing the finds after a specialist from Harvard University paid a visit to help with initial classification. Marla Taylor, Curator of Collections at the Peabody, has been coordinating the logistics behind the cataloguing and storage of the collection, and expounded on the response of students and faculty to the news about the collection.
“The most interesting [thing is] how much faculty interest and student enthusiasm [there is]. Students do get excited about the collections at the Peabody. It’s a small number of students who get really interested in the Native American collections. There are more students interested in the Classical Collection, and it’s been interesting to see the dynamics of that when our attention is the opposite. It’s been really fascinating, and I’m curious to see where it goes and see how these pieces can be utilized to supplement your education,” said Taylor.
Among the items were coins that dated back to the Roman occupation of Judea. Other pieces included ancient Egyptian mummy masks and domestic objects from the Classical world. Selene Xu ’27, one of the students studying the artifacts, noted her excitement about this as a hands-on learning opportunity and the possibility for student-led research.
“I thought that [the coins] were really cool, and I didn’t know that there were so many of them. Just looking at the digital pictures that Dr. [Ryan] Wheeler [Director of Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology] sent me, I didn’t see what the significance of each coin was, and I just thought they did a lot of work and it’s really impressive. There’s definitely going to be student presentations once they get to do more work on them, but there are so many coins left, and we’re just starting. There’s a lot more work to do,” said Xu.
The wide-ranging collection originally arrived at Andover thanks to Selah Merrill, a former American consul to Palestine around the late 1800s who brought artifacts back with him when he returned to the United States, putting them in his house as a ‘Museum of the Bible’ for students to tour when he subsequently taught at the Andover Theological Seminary. Thus, Andover’s possession of the wide-ranging collection has raised ethical and moral questions among the students and faculty involved.
Austin Washington, Instructor in Philosophy and Religious Studies and a member of the project, noted the complexities of holding such items within a high school context, particularly when their origins trace back to a different region.
“The moral questions I’m asking are related to the presence of the coins on our campus. They’re in our country and we know them to be part of the Israel-Palestine region. How did the coins get here? Do we have a responsibility to send the coins back? Do we have a responsibility to put the coins in an institution that’s more easily accessible? Do they belong somewhere other than a high school? Why should we keep these coins? Thinking about the person who brought the coins as an individual, [and] the means by which he used to get these coins, did he have a conversation with anybody about moving those coins from the Israel-Palestine region?” said Washington.
In the future, Washington and Dugan will be attending a national conference in November to further discuss the collection and the ethics surrounding it, with experts in related fields. Many faculty members involved with the project, including Washington, also hope to integrate the collection into their class curriculum, given the historical significance of the items.
“We hope to design curriculum around the coins to make the coins useful to us in classrooms, create opportunities around the coins for people to understand what they’re looking at, and engage with that part of the world and that moment in history,” said Washington.
