Taking Shape

After weeks of swimming through the prolific amounts of stone artifacts lurking about the museum’s storage, a shape is beginning to emerge from the general direction I have been heading in. When beginning this internship journey, all I had was a general idea of what I wanted to accomplish at the end. I really had no idea how I would go about getting there or what the end result would actually look like. At week 10 of the semester, and of my internship, things are finally taking shape! The last nine weeks have been spent learning museum handling techniques, documentation standards and finally, wading through the numerous artifacts themselves. I’ve been relocating objects and re-recording their location, numbers, and other relevant information such as the artifact class, material and color. So far I have come across lithic tools ranging from awls and drills to scrapers, flakes and projectile points. These tools have been made from chert, chalcedony, obsidian, basalt, quartzite and other materials and range in color from tan to black to red, green and multi-colored. Now that I am entering the last phases of this process, the time is nearing for more individualized analysis of the points, such as possible typologies and time periods. As I go through the next step, I will begin selecting artifacts which can tell the story of ancient and pre-historic native peoples and their lives in and around the San Luis Valley. My goal is to create a display which takes visitors through the process of lithic tool making, of the many uses of the tools, and of importance of these tools to the subsistence systems of people who were here in the Valley long before the ancestors of many of us here today. This goal is beginning to take shape here in week 10!