Archeology.
history.
people.
Archeology.
Interested in Touching the Past?
In Arkansas, you can! By joining the Arkansas Archeological Society, you can hold a 3,000-year-old stone tool that the first Arkansans used to hunt game. You can turn up the grass and find the foundations of a prehistoric farmhouse or the remains of a French colonial fort. You can visit a mound center built 1,000 years ago by people who did not leave writings but could read the stars. You can help preserve, protect, and appreciate the historic places that hold unwritten stories of people who made Arkansas their home over the last 10,000 years.
Today, thousands of sites face destruction through development and vandalism, and the stories they could tell may never be heard. Through protection and proper study we can preserve the most important of these places to commemorate and learn about the lives of people who may never be mentioned in history books, but who are part of Arkansas’s heritage. The Arkansas Archeological Society is an organization for people who want to help in this task.
Want to learn more about the Society? Check out our informational brochures!
Calendar
A full updated list of Society and Survey events is curated on the Survey’s website. Click here to view.
Announcements and Events
Society Member Receives Lifetime Achievement Award
Arkansas Archeological Society member John Connaway received a prestigious award at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Tulsa earlier this month. John is an archeologist with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. SEAC presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. The following testimonial accompanied the presentation. Congratulations!
“The second archaeologist we will honor tonight is John Connaway who is entering his 51st year working for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. He has spent that time working out of the Clarksdale office and has done more work in the Yazoo Basin than any other single archaeologist. Many of the sites he has salvaged, Oliver, Austin, and Carson to name three of the most important, were threatened by modern agricultural practices. In all three of these examples, he mobilized a crew of volunteers including academic archaeologists, graduate students, avocational archaeologists, and field schools to conduct a remarkable amount of archaeology on a very small budget. When his volunteers can’t make it, he works alone. The resultant collections of carefully curated artifact assemblages and meticulous fieldnotes have provided material for two or three generations of graduate student theses. There are few archaeologists who know their region as well as John and nobody who is better at shovel shaving.”
Cedar Grove Pots Stolen from AA Survey Research Station at Southern Arkansas University
Sometime between May and July 2006, 26 pots from the Cedar Grove site were stolen from the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s collections at the Southern Arkansas University Research Station. The Survey is working with SAU police and the FBI in attempt to recover the vessels. The Arkansas Archeological Survey has issued a press release along with a complete list and pictures of the stolen ceramics.