Public Events --

Brownbag Lecture Series

Brownbag Lecture Series

• Location: ISM Research & Collections Center, Springfield
• Date: Wednesday, April 08, 2015, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

"600 Generations There: Changes in the Land and Human Settlement Evolution at the Illinois/Spoon River Confluence Fulton County, Illinois"

Alan Harn (Speaker), Sally McClure, Edwin Hajic, Majorie Schroeder, and Bonnie Styles

In 1930, the University of Chicago ushered in a new era of archaeological innovation with their excavations at the Morton site, now a part of the developing Emiquon Preserve and National Wildlife Refuge at the Illinois/Spoon River confluence. Subsequent reconnaissance surveys of this area have located 29 mortuary sites and 129 habitation areas featuring examples of every prehistoric culture now identified in the region. Twenty-seven archaeological excavations have been carried out at these locations. This corpus of often unique information recently has been combined with data from some 850 subsurface excavations and deep sediment cores to assess landform assemblages, related climatic change, fluctuating natural paleo-biotic resources, and their relationship to observed human activity at Emiquon. This investigation reevaluates traditionally held concepts concerning the antiquity of landforms and bottomland fluvial events and underscores the importance of qualifying and quantifying a host of interrelated variables when interpreting human and non-human articulation with the landscape through time.

Weekly lectures held at the Museum's Research and Collections Center. Lectures are usually held during lunchtime on Wednesday. The RCC is located at 1011 E. Ash Street in Springfield. Access to the building is from 10 ½ Street (between Ash and Laurel Streets), where there is ample visitor parking in the west parking lot. For more information, please call 217-785-0037. Brown Bag Lectures are free and open to the public.

Also, if you want to be informed of upcoming lectures by email, you can sign up for the brownbag announcement list.