Mesopotamian figurines

About the Collections

Registration room of the Megiddo Expedition

The ISAC Museum carries forward more than a century of ISAC fieldwork, from Spain to Afghanistan and from the Prehistoric through the Islamic periods. Its collections stand at the core of ISAC’s mission. The vast majority of the more than 350,000 artifacts in the collections were excavated by ISAC archaeologists and exported with the agreement of the relevant authorities and in accordance with the laws in force at the time of excavation. Additional objects were acquired through gifts and purchases. Because most objects were recovered through systematic research and retain well-documented archaeological contexts, the collections offer an unparalleled resource for scholarship. The collections bear witness to landmarks in world history: the rise of the first villages, cities, and empires; the development of essential technologies that underpin the modern world, among them domestication and the earliest writing; and the emergence of great institutions of palace and temple.

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Filing drawers with object registration cards

Museum Registration

Museum Registration documents and cares for the ISAC Museum collections, maintaining both the objects themselves and the records that trace their history. Their principal components, the earliest of which date to ISAC's founding, are:

  • Registration cards for individual objects
  • Accession files
  • Subsidiary information files, including object files, site files, subject files, and collection files
  • Loan records, both incoming and outgoing
  • Books, monographs, and articles containing published research on the Museum collections
  • The physical objects in the Museum collections, numbering more than 260,000 accessioned artifacts
  • More than 100,000 additional artifacts, comprising archaeologists' collections and other artifacts not yet accessioned
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Acquisitions Policy

The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago considers for donation only items that can be shown to have left their country of origin before 1972, the year the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property entered into force, or to have been otherwise legally exported from their country of origin and legally imported into the United States. Legally exported items include, but are not limited to, those that are part of a state-sponsored division (partage), scientific samples (floral and faunal remains, carbon, soil, and wood, among others), and study collection materials, for which an export license has been granted by the country of origin or is not required under the laws of the country of origin.

 

 

In cases where the national ownership laws of an object’s country of origin can be shown to predate 1972, objects must have been exported before the date of that country’s law. The term “country of origin” here refers to the country within whose boundaries, as recognized by the United States Government, the object was discovered in modern times.

The provenance of acquired items will be a matter of public record. Once an object has been vetted and approved by the Acquisitions Committee and accessioned into the collection, ISAC will publish an image and any associated provenance information related to acquisition in the Annual Report and on the Collections section of ISAC’s website.

Please note that ISAC does not authenticate or evaluate objects in private collections.

To discuss a potential donation, please contact the ISAC Museum.