About & Help
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is steward to one of the oldest and largest collections of cultural objects in the Western Hemisphere. Since the late nineteenth century, the Museum has played an active part in the history of American anthropology and in the evolving relationship between museums and native peoples. As a university museum situated in an academic and regional community central to the development and the study of American civic culture, the Peabody strives to make collections widely accessible and engage issues of concern to diverse audiences.
Terms of Use & Help Contact
Please read the Peabody Museum's Collections Online Terms of Use. Use of Collections Online is subject to these terms and conditions and all applicable laws. By using Collection Online, you accept and agree to be bound by these Terms of Use. If any of these Terms of Use are unacceptable to you, do not use the Site. Please Report a Website Problem if you encounter any difficulties.
Additional Researcher Options
In addition to the basic searching and browsing described above, researchers can contact the Peabody Museum's curatorial department to request a password to allow greater access to the online collections database. Researcher accounts provide access to additional data fields and more extensive data. To apply for researcher access, first create a login for an individual account, then email the museum's curatorial department at pmresearch@fas.harvard.edu with a brief explanation of your research and the username of your Collections Online account.
There are a few ways to browse the Online Collection:
On the homepage, you can browse curated selections from our collection.
On the Favorites page, you can browse user-created collections. You can add your own favorites to Community Favorites by registering on the site and creating sets that are marked "public".
Enter keywords or names in the search box (Quick Search) to find objects or other records in our collection. To search on specific criteria, you can use the advanced search to search within certain data fields. You can search using multiple criteria, such as the term "portrait" in the title + a date range of "1800-1900". If you are not getting any results with advanced search, try broadening your search by removing criteria.
- You can use an * (asterisk) as a wildcard in searches, to match partial terms (e.g. draw* will return results for draw, drawn, drawings, etc.)
- Use quotation marks to get more exact results - e.g. John Doe will return any results with John or Doe, but "John Doe" will return results with this exact phrase.
There are different types of search results, such as object records and people records. When there is more than one type of result, you can choose different types of records to view.
You can refine a result set by using filters to narrow down results. For example, you can filter to see only works that have images within any result set. You can also clear each filter to revert to a larger result set, or clear all filters to get to your original result set.
An image may be shown as not available if it is not yet available in our database, or if it cannot be displayed for copyright reasons.
Favorites allows you to create your own sets from the collection objects available on this site. You can share your Favorites with others, or create sets of artworks for your own viewing (Favorites are private by default).
You can optionally add a description for each Favorites set. You can view your collection sets by going to the "Favorites" page and logging into your account.
To use Favorites, you must first register an account. Once you have completed registration, you can start creating Favorites sets and adding artworks to them.
You can add artworks to your sets by clicking on the heart symbol while viewing objects, and selecting which set to add the artwork(s). After selection, you can choose to add all selected works on the page to a Favorite. You can also add the entire result set or all objects on a page.
If you mark your Favorites set public, this Favorite will be visible to others in the Community Favorites section. The option to mark a set as public is available when you edit your Favorite.
After setting a Favorite set as public, you can also share the link to allow others to view your set.