When: October 8, 2013, 7pm
Where: The Magnolia Room, second floor of the Reynolds Center on the SAU Campus, Magnolia, AR
Dr. George Lankford, Professor Emeritus at Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas, where he served as endowed professor and chair of Social Sciences.
The program for the October meeting of the Kadohadacho Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society will feature Dr. George Lankford, who will be talking to us about his work with iconography and reconstructing lost myths used by prehistoric Native Americans. Dr. Lankford is an excellent speaker and always a favorite with the AAS Chapters around the state.
All students of the past bump into what seem to be impenetrable walls and are left looking longingly beyond the barrier for the lore that seems hopelessly lost. Dr. Lankford’s work shows us that all that information is not necessarily lost. It may just need a different approach—perhaps multidisciplinary, perhaps a new method, or maybe just with a new hypothesis for testing. Lankford does just this in attempting to understand the mythic stories behind the masses of raw data (artifacts and iconography) left behind by prehistoric Native American groups. It is not an easy process, but it is engaging, and any puzzle-solver will find this sort of detective work worth the effort.
Lankford is a Professor Emeritus at Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas, where he served as endowed professor and chair of Social Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Indiana, but has long been working at the intersection of many disciplines—including folklore, anthropology, history and religion. Dr. Langford has authored numerous books and articles, including Native American Legends (Southeastern Legends: Tales from the Natchez, Caddo, Biloxi, Chickasaw, and Other Nations (1987), Bearing Witness: Memories of Arkansas Slavery (2006), Looking For Lost Lore: Studies in Folklore, Ethnology and Iconography (2008) and Reachable Stars: Patterns in the Ethnoastronomy of Eastern North America (2007) His current research interests are in prehistoric iconography, ethnoastronomy, Native American myth interpretation and local antebellum history. In his 30 years as a college professor, he taught anthropology, religion, local history (Ozarks) and mythology.
Come learn about Dr. Lankford’s explorations of Native American iconography, myth and archeology on Tuesday, October 8th at 7:00pm in the Magnolia Room on the second floor of the Reynolds Center on the campus of Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, AR.
