Main content
A. Frances Eyman American Section records
Notifications
Held at: University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives [Contact Us]3260 South Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104-6324
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
A.(Alice) Frances Eyman, Assistant Curator and Keeper of the American section of the Penn Museum was educated at Oberlin College and the University of Pennsylvania (B.A.) and did graduate work at Columbia and the University of New Mexico. While at the University of New Mexico, Eyeman participated in archaeological field work with the Navajo. Eyman taught as a part of the education departments of both the American Museum of Natural History and the Penn Museum. While at the Penn Museum, Eyman became the assistant to the American section then moved to Keeper of the collection in the American Section. Her special interest involved American Indian objects and how they fill the gap in the ethnology of the native people.
Eyman was married to Dr. John Witthoft, Anthropologist on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. They shared an interest in native peoples and collaborated often. Wittoft studied the Eastern tribes including the Delaware and Cayuga and, in the West, the Havajo and Piute.
A life-long learner, Eyman wrote many articles on native Americans for Expedition Magazine. She held a particular interest in the material culture of the tribes as seen in her research and writings which included the clothing, objects and games of tribal life. Eyman worked slowly on a paper about the agriculture of the Hopi nation but sadly, did not complete it before her untimely death at age 48 from cardiovascular disease.
A.(Alice) Frances Eyman, Assistant Curator and Keeper of the American section of the Penn Museum was educated at Oberlin College and the University of Pennsylvania (B.A.) and did graduate work at Columbia and the University of New Mexico. While at the University of New Mexico, Eyeman participated in archaeological field work with the Navajo. Eyman taught as a part of the education departments of both the American Museum of Natural History and the Penn Museum. While at the Penn Museum, Eyman became the assistant to the American section then moved to Keeper of the collection in the American Section. Her special interest involved American Indian objects and how they fill the gap in the ethnology of the native people.
The American Section records of A. Frances Eyman consist of three boxes of information divided into three series; correspondence, notes, and writings/manuscripts.
Correspondence makes up the bulk of the papers consisting of general correspondence and an alphabetical file. Following the correspondence is a folder containing Eyman's "Deskbook," a record of finances and research for the 1950s and 1960s.
Eyman's notes, mostly undated and unorganized were almost always related to North American Indians and their culture. Specific topics of her notes are: arrows and poison, the Indian game of lacrosse, ceremonies and clothing. There are also notes for the articles written for the Penn Museum magazine, Expedition.
The manuscript section consists of five folders; two representing papers by other archaeologists, M.D.Dilks and John Witthoft. A draft is present for Eyman's paper, "Lacrosse and the Cayuga Thunder Rite" for Expedition Magazine and the notes and proposal for a paper on the "Study of the Rio Grande and Other Textiles."
People
- Barbeau, Marius, 1883-1969
- Catlin, George, 1796-1872
- Dockstader, Frederick, 1901-1998
- Eyman, Frances, 1921-1949
- Mason, John Alden, 1885-1967
- Witthoft, John, 1921-1993
Subject
- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives
- Finding Aid Date
- 11/9/2015