The Graduate Group in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World trains students for careers in the art and archaeology of Classical and Near Eastern Civilizations. Drawing on the vast resources of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, AAMW incorporates fieldwork, museum internships, and university instruction into a flexible interdisciplinary program leading to the M.A. and Ph.D. All students accepted into the program are fully funded for a period of at least five years.

The faculty of the AAMW Graduate Group features an extraordinary array of distinguished scholars who represent virtually every major area in the study of antiquity. Most of the faculty are drawn from four departments in Penn's School of Arts and Sciences: Classical Studies, History of Art, Anthropology, and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, although the resources of the Graduate School of Design, the University Museum's Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA), the Center for Ancient Studies, the Department of Religious Studies, and the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies are frequently utilized as well. AAMW students also have the opportunity to take courses at Bryn Mawr, Princeton, and Temple University, which form part of a regional academic consortium with Penn.