Judy Costello, Kimberly Hosey, and Michelle Rathgaber will give a brief welcome and introduction to the program and how it works. Judy and Kim will be your hosts in alternating sessions throughout the program so this is a chance to meet them. Michelle helps to plan the schedule and recruit speakers. If you have not participated in the program before this may help to clarify the presentation links and how the program is set up to accommodate all of the speakers and students. This session is typically short, but is a chance for teachers to ask and last minute questions that they have about how the program works.

Michelle is the Educational Outreach Coordinator with the Arkansas Archeological Survey. In this role she works with K-12 and college students, the general public, fellow archeologists, and archeology enthusiasts to bring information about the archeology of Arkansas to the public. She does this through classroom presentations, booths at public events, the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s YouTube channel and social media accounts as well as co-hosted events such as Native American Days!

T’ata Begay (Choctaw/Taos Pueblo) is a Tribal Researcher with the Choctaw Nation’s Historic Preservation Department, based in Durant, Oklahoma. Her work focuses on preserving, protecting, and revitalizing Choctaw history and culture. With a strong commitment to narrative sovereignty and Indigenous representation, T’ata brings scholarly rigor and cultural insight to her research and public engagements. 

Lisa Rutherford will discuss Cherokee moccasins and demonstrate making a pair of center-seam pucker toe moccasins from deerskin. Other examples of beadwork and decoration will also be shown.

Lisa Rutherford (Cherokee Nation) is a full-time artist specializing in pottery and textiles. Rutherford began making ancestral style pottery in 2005 and began researching and making historic clothing, including feather capes and mantles, twined textiles and 18th-century Cherokee clothing. She is a 1986 graduate of Northeastern State University (Oklahoma) and in 2009 participated in the Oklahoma Arts Council’s Leadership Arts program. In 2014, Rutherford was selected for the Art Leadership Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, studying twined textiles, historic clothing and beadwork, and feather capes.

In 2018, she was named a Cherokee National Treasure by the Cherokee Nation for her work in preserving and promoting Cherokee pottery and culture.

Her work is in collections, including the Smithsonian Museum’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art, the Fred Jones, Jr. Museum at OU, the McClung Museum, University of Tennessee, Knoxville and the Cherokee National History Museum in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

* Demonstration materials can be provided while supplies last.

Betty Gaedtke will be explaining the method to process raw clay for use in making Native American pottery. Using raw clay that she dug up locally, she will demonstrate the process from start to finish from cleaning, grinding, mixing, adding temper, and rehydrating the clay to make it usable in the same way that her ancestors did.

Betty Gaedtke is an enrolled member of the Quapaw Nation and former Quapaw Tribal Council Member. Her Quapaw name is Te-Mi-Zhi-Ka (Little Buffalo Woman) after her great, great grandfather, Te-Zhi-Ka (Buffalo Calf). She is descended from a long line of pureblood Quapaw, and belongs to the Buffalo clan. Her goal is to resurrect that lost art of Quapaw pottery and bringing back to the tribal culture. She learned how to make Quapaw and Mississippian pottery several years ago and is the only Quapaw Tribal Member producing it today. She uses some of the methods and tools used hundreds of years ago and has made over 500 vessels in the styles and designs of her ancestors with many of them being displayed in museums in several states.

* Demonstration materials can be provided while supplies last.

This presentation introduces students to the exciting intersection of archeology and technology. Students will learn how the Arkansas Archeological Survey uses 3D scanning and printing to preserve, study, and share artifacts from sites. The process allows researchers to create detailed replicas of fragile or hard-to-access objects, making archeology more interactive and accessible. This demonstration will explore how these technologies are changing the way we study and understand the past.

Madelyn graduated with her Bachelor’s in Art History and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Arkansas in 2018. She started working at the University of Arkansas Museum as an undergraduate in 2014, where she then transferred to work at the Arkansas Archeological Survey in 2015. Since then, she has worked in various capacities at the Survey, from lab technician to lab lead to Assistant Registrar, where she runs the 3D Technology Lab. She is currently working towards her Master’s in Library and Information Sciences through University of Oklahoma Online, where she is set to graduate Spring 2025

Dr. Michelle Rathgaber (PhD-University of Arkansas 2019, MSc-Bournemouth University 2011, BS-University of Wisconsin 2006) is the Educational Outreach Coordinator at the Arkansas Archeological Survey. She has worked as an archeologist since 2007 and has conducted extensive research on the Mississippian time period in eastern Arkansas, looking at how people responded to large-scale earthquakes through time. She has also taught classes about archeology to elementary, middle, and high school students as well as college classes and classes for the general public. Most recently, she co-directed an archeological curation field school for college students interested in working in archeology and archeological museums. 

The Parkin site is a large, well-preserved Late Mississippian and Early Contact period (AD 1300-1600/1650) site on the east bank of the St. Francis River in Cross County, Arkansas. It is a 17-acre village area surrounded on three sides by a wide moat or ditch. A platform mound is located on the west edge of the village immediately adjacent to the St. Francis River. The site is believed to be the Indian village of Casqui visited by the military expedition of Hernando de Soto in 1541. It is the only site in Arkansas where Spanish expeditionary period artifacts have been recovered through controlled scientific excavations by archeologists. Because of its importance for understanding Native American history and prehistory in northeast Arkansas, the “Parkin Indian Mound Site” was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. Today, the Parkin site is located entirely within the boundaries of Parkin Archeological State Park (PASP).

This presentation will consist of a 15 minute pre-recorded walking tour of the Parkin archeological site. Dr. Scott will show students where archeologists have dug within the site, explain why they chose to dig in those locations, and summarize what was found and learned from those excavations.

Robert J. Scott is the research station archeologist at the Parkin Archeological State Park research station of the Arkansas Archeological Survey. Robert (Bob) received his B.A. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale (2000), his M.A. from the University of Alabama (2004), and his PhD from Southern Illinois University Carbondale (2018). He worked previously for the Illinois State Museum, the Center for Archaeological Investigations at SIUC, and Panamerican Consultants, Inc (Tuscaloosa). Between 2004 and 2007, he worked as the station assistant at the Survey’s UAM research station, and served in the same capacity at the ASU research station from 2010 to 2013 and at UAPB from 2010 to 2023. He has conducted archeological excavations in Illinois, Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas and has extensive experience in the laboratory analysis of Native American ceramics, lithics, and faunal remains from sites across east Arkansas. His research interests include the Late Prehistoric and Early Contact periods in the Lower Mississippi Valley, the archeology of colonial era Native Americans, the Late Woodland to Mississippian transition in northeast Arkansas, diaspora and Cahokia’s influence on regional communities in eastern and southeastern Arkansas, and applied zooarchaeology (mollusks).

Details coming soon!

Matthew Rooney is a station archeologist and assistant professor of anthropology for the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s research station in Monticello. He has conducted fieldwork in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. His research focuses on colonialism in the southeastern United States with great emphasis on collaborating with descendants and other affiliated communities. Dr. Rooney is currently the board president for Preserve Arkansas, a trustee for the Arkansas Historical Association, and an associate editor for the Southeastern Archaeological Conference.