When: March 12, 2013, 7pm
Where: The Magnolia Room, second floor of the Reynolds Center on the SAU Campus, Magnolia, AR
Projectile point recovered from the recent shovel testing at 3MN298.
Our Archeology Month program will be Meeks Etchieson, the Ouachita National Forest Heritage Program Manager. Meeks will be talking about new excavations at a Montgomery County site that are planned as part of the Arkansas Archeological Society’s Training Program in June, 2013. Etchieson (along with AAS-HSU Research Station Archeologist Dr. Mary Beth Trubitt) will be directing the summer excavations that will focus on 3MN298, a multi-component prehistoric site on the Ouachita River that is located in the Ouachita National Forest near Oden. The site is clearly a significant one, based on previously-documented cultural features (large refuse-filled pits) and the excellent preservation of organic materials (animal bone, shell, and charred plant remains).
This summer’s archeological excavations at 3MN298 will highlight four themes: (1) the production and exchange of chipped stone tools made of Arkansas Novaculite from local Ouachita Mountains sources, especially during the Archaic period; (2) the origins of farming in Arkansas in the Late Archaic and Woodland periods, since the Mississippi River Valley region was one of the primary centers for plant domestication in the world; (3) archeological evidence for Caddo Indian lifeways in the Ouachita Mountains circa A.D. 1200-1700; and (4) modern interpretations of the route of the Spanish expedition of Hernando De Soto through the Ouachita Mountains and western Arkansas in the sixteenth century.
Meeks Etchieson has a long history in southwest Arkansas Archeology (he first shows up in AAS-SAU records in 1970). He has been involved with many of the important digs in the region, has been active with both the Arkansas Archeological Society and the Forest Service programs and has been involved in research on topics as disperate as prehistoric novaculite quarries, historic Choctaw farmsteads and sites relating to tick eradication in the early twentieth century. Meeks was a driving force in organizing the Ouachita Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society and its continuing successful function as a source of public archeology. As Heritage Resource Manager on the Ouachita National Forest, he has sponsored two Society Training Programs and led the preparation and successful conduct of a Society Annual Meeting in Hot Springs. Meeks was honored as the “Arkansas Archeological Society Member of the Year” in 2008.
You will want to come to this month’s meeting and get the scoop on the upcoming summer dig—Tuesday, March 12, 7:00pm in the Magnolia Room on the second floor of the Reynolds Center on the campus of Southern Arkansas University.
