As 2024 marks 100 years since Francis Kelsey's pioneering excavations in Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt, the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology has another reason to celebrate. The museum, housed in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) at the University of Michigan, has received a $1.15 million gift from New York City-based businessman and U-M alum Steve Klinsky. The gift will establish The Klinsky Expeditions, a series of archaeological digs that will be led by LSA faculty and include U-M students, in addition to new educational programming for K-12 students across the state of Michigan. 

“We are deeply thankful to receive this gift from Steve Klinsky, Maureen Klinsky and the Klinsky family in support of the Kelsey Museum as well as the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology,” said Rosario (Rosie) Ceballo, dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. “This is just one example of the transformative power of the liberal arts and how LSA continues to push boundaries to advance knowledge in the humanities and sciences.” 

The first cohort of The Klinsky Expeditions will be led by faculty from the Kelsey Museum and the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology (UMMAA) and will take place in different areas in Africa, Asia, and North America. The expeditions are scheduled to begin later this month and will be completed over the next one to two years. The gift will also fund new educational programming related to The Klinsky Expeditions for K-12 students in Michigan, who make up a large segment of the museum’s visitors. 

“We are so grateful to launch The Klinsky Expeditions and expand our educational outreach to students statewide,” said Nic Terrenato, director of the Kelsey Museum. “This gift is a major milestone for the Kelsey Museum. By exploring the past of the ancient world, we are educating for the future, and the new expeditions further advance our work in archaeological research.” 

The archaeology program in LSA is home to one the world’s leading fieldwork and collections-based research projects. The program offers a suite of undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as educational programming, resources, and more for students, scholars, educators, and community members.

"The University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology (UMMAA) is very excited to embark with our sister museum, the Kelsey, on The Klinsky Expeditions,” said Michael Galaty, director of UMMAA. “The projects we have planned represent the cutting-edge in archaeology. The kind of stuff Michigan school kids will love.”

“I am proud to partner with the University of Michigan and the Kelsey Museum to launch the five Klinsky Expeditions seeking breakthroughs in archaeology, along with educational outreach,” said Steve Klinsky, founder and CEO of New Mountain Capital and a 1976 LSA graduate (B.A. economics and political philosophy). "The University of Michigan and the Kelsey Museum offer one of the greatest archaeology programs in the world. As a Michigan native, U-M alumnus, and lifelong lover of history and archaeology, I am pleased to support them." 

The Kelsey Museum opened in 1928 and features more than 100,000 artifacts from countries around the Mediterranean Sea, including Egypt, Greece, and Italy. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday with free admission, and offers resources and programming including tours and lectures to the university community, K-12 students and educators, and the general public. 
 

The five Klinsky Expedition projects are: 
 

Battlefields of the Punic Wars 

The project team will travel to search for lost battlefields in the wars between Rome and Carthage that marked the beginning of Rome’s dominance of the Mediterranean. The initial goal is to find an ancient battle site, with the subsequent efforts focused on what we can learn about the lives and deaths of the soldiers at the battle through studies of their DNA, pathologies, diets, and weapons. Michigan archaeologists will work closely with local archaeologists, who are expected to make prominent contributions to the discoveries

U-M Project Lead(s): David Stone

 
Finding Ancient Napata: Lost City on the Nile 

The project team will investigate the ancient city of Napata, located next to Jebel Barkal along the Nile River in northern Sudan. Long known for its temples, palaces, and pyramids, it was the capital city of kings of ancient Kush, the earliest empire of sub-Saharan Africa. These kings conquered ancient Egypt and ruled there as its 25th Dynasty. Until recently, the location of the ancient city itself—the area where Napata’s residents lived and worked—had been unknown. The project team, including Sudanese archaeologists, will investigate ancient Napata to produce an innovative and holistic reconstruction of this great ancient city.

U-M Project Lead(s): Geoff Emberling

 

The Northern Masters of Eurasia: Nomadic Elites at the Dawn of the Silk Roads  

The project team will head to Kazakhstan in central Asia to search the burial sites of Eurasian nomads. These nomads have been stereotyped throughout history as uncivilized, when really they were creators of sophisticated societies and innovators of trade and exchange. The team will explore their tombs to determine how they built the Silk Roads and Fur Roads, thus becoming architects of archaic globalization. They will unearth these hidden burial grounds to get a better understanding of the leaders of this long, pivotal period in early Eurasian history.  

U-M Project Lead(s): Bryan Miller

 

Dust, Beads and Genes: Pinpointing Our African Origins with Ancient DNA  

The project team will travel to various archaeological sites in Africa to extract DNA from jewelry worn by the earliest humans and sediments from the locations where they lived to get a better understanding of our origins as humans. While fossil and archaeological evidence show that the human species originated in Africa, the question remains: where exactly in Africa did we evolve? The team will explore this issue using new DNA extraction methods. 

U-M Project Lead(s): Brian Stewart 

 

A Moonshot Under Water: Discovering Ancient Hunting Sites Beneath the Great Lakes 

Using new and innovative submarine technology, this project team will look to find an underwater and undiscovered country that sits at the bottom of Lake Huron. Described as Pompeii-like, the land dates back 11,500 years and sits preserved with still-rooted trees and stone constructions that are among the earliest dated hunting structures in the world. This expedition will mark the most comprehensive view of an ancient submerged landscape ever produced in the world, and will provide a detailed picture of a land and culture that has never been seen before. 

U-M Project Lead(s): John O’Shea 


To learn more about Archaeology at Michigan, visit the website. To learn more about the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, visit the museum website.

 

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