Lecture by Jennifer Martinez, Visiting Lecturer, Monmouth College

In 2010, Monmouth College received an anonymous donation of thousands of prehistoric Native American artifacts, including spear points, pottery sherds, axe heads, and arrow heads. The collection represents human activity in Western Illinois for the last 12,000 years. The Monmouth College Archaeology Research Laboratory now houses this collection which is one of the largest locally available for study. Students have been accessing and cataloguing artifacts from this collection under the direction of three different lab directors. This talk sets the collection within the chronological sweep of Western Illinois prehistory, provides an overview–complete with videos–of current student lab work and previews future avenues of student collection management including website development, database management and community outreach programs.