PAN ISSUE 8
JANUARY 2021
We hope you've enjoyed past issues of Public Archaeology Notes (see Archives below). Please feel free to distribute Public Archaeology Notes to your networks, constituencies, and various communities. Email us interesting news and resources, so we can share with everyone! Our contact information may be found at the bottom of this newsletter.
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 PAN & COVID-19 in 2021
We continue to recognize that each of you are impacted differently by COVID-19. Our Network Volunteer Team: Melissa Zabecki (Arkansas State Coordinator), Bernard Means (PEC member and Virginia State Coordinator), and me - Rachel Kulick (Ontario Provincial Coordinator) wish you well during these challenging times. We are working together with Elizabeth Reetz (SAA PEC Chair) and Beth Pruitt (SAA Manager of Education and Outreach) to continue to coordinate remote and safe public archaeology education and outreach efforts.
We are pleased to present you with PAN Issue 8, which has been a team effort with the State/Provincial Coordinators and the public archaeology community.
Photo by Amy Johnson, Indiana State Archaeologist: Dr. Henry, Professional Archaeologist, hanging a tree ornament depicting past archaeological excavations at the Angel Mounds State Historic Site in Evansville, IN
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From SAA Headquarters
By Beth Pruitt, SAA Education and Outreach Manager
Contributions edited by PAN Editor
Spotlight: Virtual NCSS Conference
The Archaeology Education Clearinghouse, a partnership between SAA, SHA, and other archaeological organizations, had a successful exhibiting experience at the virtual NCSS conference on December 4-6. Sara Ayers-Rigsby, Brian Crane, and SAA’s manager, Education and Outreach, Beth Pruitt staffed the booth, talking with educators through text chat. 118 unique visitors stopped by the booth throughout the weekend, and more will continue to access the digital resources, which remain available to attendees. The booth highlighted a new video on the importance of teaching archaeology and several revised SAA lesson plans, including ones about:
· The differences between observations, inferences, and opinions [PDF 344KB]
· How to read a topographic map [PDF 176KB]
· How to tell stories through objects [PDF 209KB]
· Using historical photos as primary sources [PDF 464KB]
This interactive map created for the NCSS exhibit booth lists the AEC partners, SAA PEC Network Coordinators and Project Archaeology state coordinators. These contact details are compiled from information available on saa.org and projectarchaeology.org. If you are PEC Network Coordinator or Project Archaeology state lead and need to update your contact information, please send updates to Beth Pruitt [ elizabeth_pruitt@saa.org] or Erika Malo [ erika.malo@projectarchaeology.org] and CC Elizabeth Reetz [ elizabeth-reetz@uiowa.edu] who maintains the map.
2021 SAA State Poster Contest
The SAA State Archaeology Celebration Poster Contest’s deadline is March 31. Voting will take place entirely online in early April. If your state has not yet entered for the 2021 contest, please consider submitting! Thank you to the donors of the Public Education Endowment, who make our annual NCSS booth and State Archaeology Celebration Poster Contest possible.
2020 State Poster Winners
2020 First Place: Alaska
2020 Second Place: California
2020 Third Place: Wyoming
Poster images from SAA website |
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Spotlight: Archaeology Month Recap
Oklahoma Archaeology Month (October 2020)
By Ella Crenshaw, Assistant Director of Oklahoma Public Archaeology Network
 In October, 2020, Oklahoma Archaeology Month, the Oklahoma Public Archaeology Network (OKPAN) offered a mini-series of three Zoom events. Dr. Larry Zimmerman, professor emeritus of Anthropology and Museum Studies at the Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis, kicked off the series with a talk about pseudoarchaeology in Oklahoma and beyond: “Dealing with the Fringe: Archaeological Thinking About Everything from Ancient Aliens to Viking Runestones."
Next, Dr. Chip Colwell, editor-in-chief of Sapiens magazine, and Mr. Gordon Yellowman, Cheyenne Chief of the Southern Cheyenne Nation, offered insight and answered questions about Colwell's book, Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America's Culture. We invite anyone interested to view recordings of our first two events on our YouTube page.
We closed our OAM series with a virtual workshop taught by Dr. Mia L. Carey, anti-racism activist and independent scholar of the Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. Carey's interactive workshop, “Towards an Antiracist Archaeology," taught participants about creating and sustaining diversity in the field of archaeology.
Indiana Archaeology Month (September 2020)
By Amy Johnson, Indiana State Archaeologist
We conducted virtual presentations and live streaming via Facebook and Zoom and held alternative activities even in person (e.g., cookie excavation—each participant had a separate baggie of supplies prepped earlier by staff with gloves and masks).
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Spotlight: Dr. Henry Professional Archaeologist
Indiana
By Amy Johnson, Indiana State Archaeologist
Dr. Henry, Professional Archaeologist was out and about these past few months. He’s had adventures in several counties in east central Indiana checking out historic cemeteries, bridges, and more. He even helped with the State Archaeologist’s tree decorating! He helped hang a tree ornament depicting past archaeological excavations at the Angel Mounds State Historic Site in Evansville, IN. Make sure to follow our Facebook page to keep up with what Dr. Henry has been accomplishing! #drhenrydhpa
Photos provided by Amy Johnson, Indiana State Archaeologist |
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Spotlight: Virtual Outreach Campaigns
Ontario
Museum of Ontario Archaeology (MOA)
By Sharon Woods, Visitor Experience Assistant, MOA
Following the success of our Summer Camp Kits, the Museum of Ontario Archaeology in London, Ontario, offered families a fun and exciting new Winter Break Camp Kit for kids ages 5-10. Each kit contained crafts, learning activities and games for the season designed to enrich children’s understanding of Ontario’s history. Participants got to learn about hibernating native animals and what winter would be like in a longhouse village and enjoy twists on classic winter activities like building a snowflake and bringing the ice rink indoors with a magnetic skating rink.
In light of the continuing global health crisis the Museum of Ontario Archaeology has collaborated with one of our volunteers to create custom ON (Ontario) Point masks, featuring an illustrated pattern of some of the oldest styles of spear points found in our collection! The masks are available in five archaeology-inspired shades for $10 each.
Image from Museum of Ontario Archaeology website.
Indiana
Highlighting Hoosier Archaeological Sites: Examples from 92 Counties
By Amy Johnson, Indiana State Archaeologist
 Just over a year ago, Indiana State Archaeologist Amy Johnson approached her Division Director, Beth McCord, with an idea for a new way for the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology (DHPA) to share information with the public regarding archaeology in our state. She proposed a digital document that would highlight an archaeological site from each of Indiana’s 92 counties. In addition to DHPA archaeologists, she proposed involving archaeology colleagues who would volunteer to write the features for a general audience. Beth agreed that this would be a great, collaborative way to share archaeological information with the public, and the project took off from there.
Photo by Dodd, Mead, and Company (1894), Public Domain
The DHPA put the call out to our archaeological colleagues who might be interested in volunteering, and the response has been much appreciated. Archaeologists have chosen their site(s) to highlight based upon past fieldwork they have conducted, a research interest in a particular site (precontact or historical), or for a variety of other reasons.
Highlighting Hoosier Archaeological Sites: Examples from 92 Counties will be a StoryMap through ArcGIS on the DHPA webpage where viewers will be able to click on a county and read about the featured site. In the future, additional sites and case studies per county may also be added.
Archaeologists from many Indiana state agencies and state-sponsored institutions routinely perform projects throughout the state. In the StoryMap documents, we try to minimize the technical details and summarize the facts into a simple format, integrating photographs, diagrams, and maps where possible to better educate and inform the public about the practice and significance of archaeology around Indiana. We thank our many archaeology colleagues who have thus far contributed to the project.
We will let you know when the StoryMap is available and hope you will check out this exciting new public archaeology initiative in Indiana.
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Spotlight: Remote Working at State Parks
Indiana
By Amy Johnson, Indiana State Archaeologist
 One of our staff members is remote working out of one of Indiana’s State Parks, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as an archaeological site. This has allowed her to communicate in additional ways with the public about archaeology, stewardship, laws, and specific history of the property (either 6 feet away with mask and/or outside).
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Spotlight: Welcome to Delaware State Coordinator!
By John W. Martin, RPA, Delaware State Coordinator
Contribution edited by PAN Editor
Welcome to John Martin, RPA, the new Delaware State Coordinator!
 A native Delawarean, John Martin has 40 years of historic preservation experience, beginning as a field and lab technician to managing the CRM group for an engineering company. Trained as an archaeologist, he has an undergraduate degree in Anthropology from the University of Delaware and a master’s degree in the same from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. John is a Registered Professional Archaeologist and has managed archaeologists and architectural historians on hundreds of projects in ten states. He just moved over from the Delaware State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) where he had been since the beginning of 2019, working with several agencies including DelDOT. Prior to the SHPO, John worked for several private consulting firms in New Jersey and Pennsylvania following a stint at the University of Delaware Center for Archaeological Research which came after his start at DelDOT in 1980.
John is a life member of the Archaeological Societies of Delaware and New Jersey. He formerly served as chair of the Delaware State Review Board for Historic Preservation and executive board member, vice president, and interim president of Preservation Delaware, Inc. John’s initial archaeological focus was on the Archaic period in the Middle Atlantic, but exposure to industrial archaeology and post-contact Native American research has broadened his interests. Graduate school allowed him to follow his childhood archaeological interest of paleoanthropology, spending time at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.
Photo © Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs
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Spotlight: New Book
The Archaeology of Virginia’s First Peoples
By Bernard Means, Virginia State Coordinator
A new book, The Archaeology of Virginia’s First Peoples, explores Virginia’s pre-European contact past, stretching back more than 15,000 years, and is authored by archaeologists from Virginia universities and state agencies and published with funding from the Department of Historic Resources, the Archeological Society of Virginia and the Council of Virginia Archaeologists.
The book was co-edited by Elizabeth Moore, Ph.D., Virginia’s state archaeologist in the Department of Historic Resources, and Bernard Means, Ph.D., an assistant professor of anthropology in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of World Studies in the College of Humanities and Sciences.
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Spotlight: Congrats to Arkansas State Archaeologists!
Contribution suggested by Giovanna Peebles, SAA Public Education Committee
Written by Rachel Kulick, PAN Editor, Ontario Provincial Coordinator
Congratulations are in order for Dr. Ann M. Early on her early retirement in June 2020 from the position of Arkansas State Archaeologist! Her numerous awards and honors over the course of her career speak to her outstanding dedication to public archaeology, her investment in public and university instruction, particularly at Henderson State University, and her commitment to professional service, including serving on various SAA and SEAC committees, among others. We wish Ann an amazing retirement!
 Congratulations are also due to Dr. Melissa Zabecki for stepping into her new position as the Arkansas State Archaeologist this January 2021! In addition to her work as part of the SAA Network Volunteer Team, Melissa brings to the position her years of outreach and education experience in public archaeology with the Arkansas Archaeological Survey, in CRM, in lab work (University of Kentucky), and in university teaching (University of Arkansas, Fayetteville and Arkansas State University Midsouth). We would like to send a hearty congratulations and good wishes to Melissa in her new role!
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Spotlight: New Archaeology Column
Contribution suggested by Giovanna Peebles, SAA Public Education Committee
She Digs is a new column series that features women archaeologists every month! December's edition featured archaeologist Annalisa Heppner who studies Indigenous communities on the Arctic Coast of Alaska. Heppner is working at Brown University as Project Manager of the Circumpolar Laboratory Inventory Project at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.
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