This tomb group was excavated in 1977 during the excavations of W.E. Rast and R.T. Schaub. As an element of partage, the tomb group became a part of the Expedition’s share of the finds legally exported from Jordan with the appropriate documentation. The expedition directors (W.E. Rast and R.T. Schaub) were authorized by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities to distribute their share of the excavation finds to various parties/institutions who participated in the project. Robert H. Johnston of the Rochester Institute of Technology [RIT] received tomb group A 91 E for ceramic analysis and study. The tomb group remained at Rochester until Johnston’s death in 2005. Thereupon, Mrs. Johnston returned the collection to the expedition director (R.T. Schaub) who in turn offered them to the University of Pennsylvania for the purposes of study and in honor of Robert H. Johnston.
The Penn Museum has extensive collections from the Near East, including Jordan. The collections committee believed that this well-documented group of objects was an appropriate addition to the collections. The material has a recent accession number: 2007-10. All documentation for the 32 objects from Tomb Group A91E in this accession is housed in Museum Registrar’s Office. The associated field inventories and excavation diaries were retained by the expedition director (R.T. Schaub) until his death in 2015 are now housed and available for study in the Anthropology Department at the University of Notre Dame.
