Half a bison skull, a necklace made from melted down Mexican pesos, a stone sculpture of a baby wrapped in a blanket and a multitude of arrowheads were some of the artifacts examined at Dickson Mounds Museum on Sunday.
The museum held its 28th annual Artifacts Identification Day and invited visitors to bring objects and curiosities for identification and a little bit of history. Experts examined dozens of items.
Central Illinois is teeming with stories from the past. The area was inhabited 12,000 years ago, and natives continued to make their lives in Illinois until French settlers forced them out in the late 1800s.
“This is a rich area for all sorts of archaeology,” said Jonathan Reyman, a curator of anthropology at the Illinois State Museum. “You could dig almost any place in Peoria and find lots of stuff.”
Many visitors brought prehistoric arrowheads and spear points to the event for evaluation, such as the 9,000-year-old projectile points Ron Beaird brought.
Beaird originally is from Lewistown and now lives in Vermont, but he said he returns for the museum’s identification event every year. He has collected nearly 200 prehistoric projectile points and other prehistoric objects in 25 years.
“You’ll see stuff here you’re never going to see anywhere else,” he said. “Stuff your grandfathers have found.”
Some eventgoers did bring artifacts their relatives had passed on to them. David Blakley of Springfield may have had the most confusing object – a small sculpture of a baby on a cradle board, a Native American baby carrier. The stone effigy had the tracings of blue-painted decorations and had a rough-hewn look. Blakley’s mother found the object 50 years ago in a shop in southern Illinois.
“We’ve had it for years,” Blakley said. “Nobody could ever tell us what it was worth or where it was from.”
At least three experts evaluated the baby sculpture, and none could tell the sculpture’s age or origin. Comparing a symbol on the sculpture’s side to a symbol on another prehistoric piece led archeologist Alan Harn to say it could be between 600 and 700 years old, but he wasn’t sure.
“It’s one of the more unusual things I’ve seen,” he said.
To find artifacts, most eventgoers said they hunted in fields, on creek beds and sometimes in rivers.
Terry Martin, a curator of anthropology at the Illinois State Museum, said even though experts aren’t always sure of an object’s history, it’s still important for them to know about the things people find in local fields.
“Nobody learns anything if they just hoard these things,” he said. “We’re interested in what people have. . . . We can work together to learn.”
Kelvin Sampson, an exhibit designer at Dickson Mounds, said the history and age behind some artifacts can be hard for people to understand.
“They find these things and think they’re a couple hundred years old,” he said. “But no, they’re 9,000 years old.”
Lauren Rees can be reached at 686-3251 or [email protected].
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