27th Annual Artifact Identification Day

27th Annual Artifact Identification Day

• Location: ISM Dickson Mounds Museum, Lewistown
• Date: Sunday, February 22, 2009, 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Dickson Mounds Museum will host the 27th Annual Artifact Identification Day on Sunday, February 22, 2009 between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Museum archaeologists and other experts will identify Native American artifacts and other objects between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. This year one member of the staff will provide "express" service for persons with less than 20 objects. Additional activities include demonstrations of making stone tools and a special presentation on the Illinois State Museum artifact collection.

Visitors are encouraged to bring artifacts, rocks, minerals, fossils, bones, and other curiosities. Joining museum archaeologists will be geologists John Washburn of the Lincoln Orbit Earth Science Society and Steve Holley from Farmington, Illinois. As they have for many years, Clark Iseminger, Glen Leesman, and William Johnson will be on hand to demonstrate flint knapping, the ancient technique of shaping chert/flint.

At 3:00 p.m., Dr. Michael Wiant, Dickson Mounds Museum Director, will offer a keynote address titled "Artifacts in the Illinois State Museum Collection" in which he will feature specimens collected by the museum since it was formed in 1877. The hour-long presentation will be in the museum's auditorium.

During the day, visitors will have the opportunity to examine a portion of the Mackinaw Cache, which was discovered near Mackinaw, Illinois in 1916, and is perhaps the finest example of Native American flint knapping in the Midwest, if not North America.