March 6, 2017
by Maclaren Guthrie
It’s safe to say that the GBL has kept me busy since my last blog post, I’ve worked on quite a few new things after finishing with the newspaper clippings. I have done a lot of research recently about historical burial grounds and how to enter them into state site files, as well as the legal land record. This is so Liz Watts Malouchos, the GBL’s research scientist, and I can add a previously unrecorded historic cemetery to the state records.
In addition to that research, a lot of my time has been spent identifying point types using the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology’s extensive type collections. The points I am identifying are a part of my grandmother’s large collection of finds from all over Indiana. Fortunately for me, she wrote down where the points were found which makes it a lot easier for me to identify them. I am also using Stone Age Spear and Arrow Points of the Midcontinental and Eastern United States by Noel D. Justice, the previous Curator of Collections at the GBL, to help me identify the points.
My grandmother’s collection also includes some pottery that I am trying to learn more about. Specifically, a miniature vessel found near the Wabash River which Liz dated to the Mississippian period (1100 AD – 1400 AD), as well as some southwestern black on white and corrugated pottery from Hovenweep National Monument in Utah that was collected in the 1960’s.
