Mark Anderson, a project archaeologist, will present a program entitled, “A New World at Your Feed: 13,000 years of Human Prehistory in the Belle Plaine Vicinity” at the Belle Plaine Museum on Sunday, Oct. 18, beginning at 2 p.m. He will specifically be sharing information on the native American artifacts found on the Stammer farm east of Belle Plaine.
Anderson described his program this way: “Just about everyone knows what an ‘arrowhead’ looks like and that it was made by some Native American in the past. That past is usually associated with contact by Euro-American explorers and settlers some 300- 500 years ago. What most people don’t know is that those ‘arrowheads’ tell far more about our prehistoric past than is seen at first glance.
“The Belle Plaine Historical Society, as most others across the state, holds a collection of prehistoric stone tools from those little ‘arrowheads’ to knife blades, dart points, spear tips, scrapers, drills, gravers, and numerous other tools. Some of these were in use when our Euro-American ancestors arrived but most are hundreds and thousands of years old. They represent the existence of humanity across the landscape of Iowa from the end of the last Ice Age to the modern era. This presentation will use that stone tool collection to frame some 13,000 years of human occupation of the Belle Plaine vicinity.”
