John Weeks, former head of the Penn Museum’s library, died March 7 from declining health, including end-stage kidney disease requiring peritoneal and later hemodialysis, triple bypass surgery and prostate cancer. He was 73.

Dr. Weeks was born in New York City and spent his childhood in Great Neck, New York, where he attended the local public schools. He served in the US Army in Darmstadt, Germany, from 1966 to 1968, after which he enrolled in the State University of New York at Albany. While there, he received his BA cum laude in anthropology and history in 1972, MLS in librarianship in 1974, MA in anthropology in 1976, and PhD in anthropology in 1980.

After earning his doctorate, Dr. Weeks worked in cultural resources management for the New York State Museum and then served as senior indexer/managing editor for Anthropological Literature: An Index to Periodical Articles and Essays at Tozzer Library, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and resident tutor in anthropology at John Winthrop House, Harvard University, from 1982 to 1987. He was bibliographer for the social sciences at Wilson Library and graduate faculty in the department of anthropology and interdisciplinary program in archaeological studies at the University of Minnesota from 1987 to 1997. From 1991 to 1993, he also served as consultant for the US Agency for International Development (AID)/Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities (MUCIA) University Agribusiness Partnership Project with Instituto Superior de Agricultura (ISA), Santiago, Dominican Republic. Between 1970 and 1998, Dr. Weeks conducted archaeological and archival research in New York, Wyoming, Guatemala, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. 

From 1997 to 2015, Dr. Weeks was head of the Museum Library, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While at Penn, he created and developed Bibliografia Mesoamericana, a bibliographic database consisting of more than 75,000 records and the Mesoamerican Language Texts Digitization Project, the digitization of the historical and linguistic manuscripts collected and written by Karl Hermann Berendt.  

Dr. Weeks authored or edited 23 books and monographs, and 35 articles based on his anthropological field research. He is survived by his wife, Virginia Ramirez; daughters, Hillary (Michael Gunther) and Isabela; and granddaughter, Marin Gunther. A Celebration of Life memorial will be planned for later this spring.

--

To Report A Death

Almanac appreciates being informed of the deaths of current and former faculty and staff members, students and other members of the University community. Call (215) 898-5274 or email almanac@upenn.edu

However, notices of alumni deaths should be directed to the Alumni Records Office at Suite 300, 2929 Walnut St., (215) 898-8136 or email record@ben.dev.upenn.edu