Time for my yearly post, I guess. I really must be better about posting, but I've been busy, busy, busy!!
I have been working at the Museum of the Grand Prairie in Mahomet for more than a year, first as an Education Program Specialist, and more recently as Curator. I am so excited about this move - I love museums, I love *this* museum in particular, and it is an exciting career move, as well. I still love archaeology and hope to contribute to archaeological programming at the museum in the future, but I am very excited to be in this role as the Museum moves forward with building several new exhibits.
First of all, we are working on creating a mini-exhibit of a glacier to interpret the most recent period of glaciation in our region of Illinois. Glaciers helped sculpt the landscape throughout Illinois, including changing the course of the ancient Mississippi (!), and we will be interpreting these changes as a prologue to our main gallery exhibit.
And speaking of changes, we will be completely redoing the mail gallery Prairie Stories exhibit. This, along with our name change from "Early American Museum" to "Museum of the Grand Prairie," is in an effort to more effectively interpret the museum's mission of collecting, preserving, and interpreting the natural and cultural history of Champaign County and East Central Illinois. This will be a HUGE project over the next year, but I am hoping that when we finish it will be every bit as immersive and interactive as our "Champaign County's Lincoln" exhibit downstairs.
We are also working on a gardening exhibit for the temporary exhibit space which will run March through December of next year. There will be several other updates and changes throughout the museum as well, as we work to make interpretive signage consistent and evaluating how all the aspects of various galleries will fit together with the updated areas upstairs.
It is an exciting - but BUSY! - time for us all!
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
How the Time Does Fly . . . !
Reading back over that last post, written more than a year ago as I was finishing my thesis, I can hear the exhaustion in every word. Now, a year on, I suppose it's time for a few updates.
I submitted my thesis, defended successfully, and graduated in May of last year:
After a brief stint with the Illinois State Archaeological Survey as a seasonal field tech (doing mostly Phase I surveys and lab work), I submitted a volunteer application with the Museum of the Grand Prairie here in Mahomet. On the day I came in for an initial interview, one of their educators resigned, and I was offered the position. It sometimes seems like these jobs that I happen to fall into, without having formally applied, are ones that I enjoy much more than positions I've worked hard to get. I love the group of people I work with, and I'm trying to make the most of the opportunity to learn more about the museum industry.
I've gotten some good feedback about my thesis, and it seems like some folks in Maryland are interested in using it. I researched Maryland Indian women in the 17th Century, as they were coming into contact with Anglo settlers, and I tried to discern their contributions to creolization and ethnogenesis in the Chesapeake region in part through a subtypological analysis of changes in ceramic production throughout the century. (If this sounds to you like really exciting reading, you can link to a .pdf version here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/108160211/THESE%20POTS%20DO%20TALK.pdf )
I am hoping to return to this topic at some point, but as I find myself in Illinois for the foreseeable future, I think my research might take a more local focus for the time being. There is a very interesting tavern site nearby--one of the places Lincoln used to stay on his way through Middletown (the former name of Mahomet) as he rode the 8th Judicial Court circuit--and I have the opportunity to dig there this summer as part of an Archaeology Day Camp I'm leading through the museum. I doubt I'll make any earth-shaking finds, but it should be good fun, and perhaps the historical research will turn up some interesting tidbits.
I submitted my thesis, defended successfully, and graduated in May of last year:
After a brief stint with the Illinois State Archaeological Survey as a seasonal field tech (doing mostly Phase I surveys and lab work), I submitted a volunteer application with the Museum of the Grand Prairie here in Mahomet. On the day I came in for an initial interview, one of their educators resigned, and I was offered the position. It sometimes seems like these jobs that I happen to fall into, without having formally applied, are ones that I enjoy much more than positions I've worked hard to get. I love the group of people I work with, and I'm trying to make the most of the opportunity to learn more about the museum industry.
I've gotten some good feedback about my thesis, and it seems like some folks in Maryland are interested in using it. I researched Maryland Indian women in the 17th Century, as they were coming into contact with Anglo settlers, and I tried to discern their contributions to creolization and ethnogenesis in the Chesapeake region in part through a subtypological analysis of changes in ceramic production throughout the century. (If this sounds to you like really exciting reading, you can link to a .pdf version here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/108160211/THESE%20POTS%20DO%20TALK.pdf )
I am hoping to return to this topic at some point, but as I find myself in Illinois for the foreseeable future, I think my research might take a more local focus for the time being. There is a very interesting tavern site nearby--one of the places Lincoln used to stay on his way through Middletown (the former name of Mahomet) as he rode the 8th Judicial Court circuit--and I have the opportunity to dig there this summer as part of an Archaeology Day Camp I'm leading through the museum. I doubt I'll make any earth-shaking finds, but it should be good fun, and perhaps the historical research will turn up some interesting tidbits.
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