GREENVILLE – The Garst Museum Speakers Series returns on Oct. 14 at 2 p.m.
Kathy Creighton, executive director of the Butler County Historical Society, will give a program “The First Toolmakers: Native Americans of the Miami Valley.” Creighton will discuss the area’s Native Americans and the tools they made from stone. In addition, the members of the Stillwater Chapter of the Archaeology Society of Ohio will exhibit their collections.
Native American stone tools are durable artifacts surviving from the end of the last glacial period about 12,500 years ago. Stone Age technology and tools saw everyday use until the arrival of the European colonists in the 1500s. Flint-knapping techniques of chipping and flaking the brittle stone evolved from the earliest crude tools into sophisticated and finely manufactured artifacts. Pecking and grinding of hard granite provided long-lasting tools and stone implements. Each culture living in a particular time period had constraints on the shape of its tools, as if they were copied from a template. Other significant features of stone tools will be discussed to help identify what time period and culture may have used them.
All Garst lectures are free and open to the public. However, regular admission will apply to tour the museum, which includes the National Annie Oakley Center, Crossroads of Destiny, Lowell Thomas exhibit and Longtown display. Funding for this program was made possible, in part, by the Harry D. Stephens Memorial Foundation.
The Garst Museum is located at 205 N. Broadway, Greenville. For more information call 937-548-5250, email [email protected] or visit www.garstmuseum.org.
