Adair Mound subject of Ouachita Chapter, AAS
The Ouachita Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, 200 Whittington Ave. Parking is available in the lot adjacent to the western building; enter through the portico and meeting is located inside to the left. Visitors are welcome. For more information, email Sherri Bradbury at OuachitaChapter@gmail.com.
The program will feature Mary Beth Trubitt, station archeologist at the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s research station at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia. She will present “WPA Excavations at the Adair Mound Center.”
One of the federal responses during the Great Depression was the Works Progress Administration, later named the Works Projects Administration. One part of the WPA was the employment of local men and women on archeological projects across the southeastern United States, including here in Arkansas. Four archeological sites in Garland and Hot Spring counties were excavated as WPA projects in 1939-1940. Results of three of the four projects have been published, improving the understanding of the history of this region. The fourth project investigated the Adair mound center before it was flooded by Lake Ouachita. This presentation revisits the 1939 excavations at Adair, shows its importance to the archeology of the Ouachita Mountains region, and brings insights from new analyses of ceramics in University of Arkansas Museum collections.
Trubitt is an archeologist for the Arkansas Archeological Survey and a research professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Arkansas. She earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Northwestern University. Since 2000, she has headed the survey’s research station, where she teaches, conducts research and works with members of the public interested in historic preservation.
Trubitt’s research interest in novaculite quarrying, tool production and exchange led to development of the “Arkansas Novaculite: A Virtual Comparative Collection.”