A History of Walls: The Borders We Build is now on display until September 20, 2019. This exhibit explores four significant historic walls built by nation-states. The featured walls are the Israel/West bank barrier, the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, and the wall along the U.S./Mexico border. This bi-lingual exhibit looks at the history of and meaning behind these imposing infrastructural elements.
Kansas Archeology Training Program (KATP) Field School - Tobias site (14RC8)
7/2/19
The annual KATP field school, a joint program between the Kansas Historical Society and the Kansas Anthropological Association, was held in Lyons at the Tobias archeological site from June 1 to June 16, 2019. A total of 196 participants contributed 7451.5 hours of their time to the project. The Tobias site was a village inhabited by the ancestral Wichita or Great Bend aspect people between about 1400 to 1700 CE and likely part of the region of Quivira encountered by Coronado during his 1541 expedition.
Principal Investigator Nikki Klarmann, Archeologist with the Kansas Historical Society, was interested in further exploring the day-to-day lives of the inhabitants of the Tobias site. Excavations conducted at the site focused on identifying residential areas and examining the use of midden or trash mounds. Multiple deep storage pits were identified, these would have stored corn and other food materials, once these pits were no longer used, they would be filled with trash. Artifacts recovered from excavations were processed at a lab set up at Lyons High School and ongoing analysis continues at the Kansas Historical Society in Topeka.
Multiple evening programs took place during the 16 day project, including a tour of the Coronado Quivira Museum, Artifact Identification Night, and multiple speakers on the archeology of Rice and surrounding counties.
The information recovered from the excavations will eventually be written up in a summary available to the public through the Kansas Historical Society website. Plans for the 2020 KATP field school are underway and the location will be announced in early January 2020.
7/2/19
The annual KATP field school, a joint program between the Kansas Historical Society and the Kansas Anthropological Association, was held in Lyons at the Tobias archeological site from June 1 to June 16, 2019. A total of 196 participants contributed 7451.5 hours of their time to the project. The Tobias site was a village inhabited by the ancestral Wichita or Great Bend aspect people between about 1400 to 1700 CE and likely part of the region of Quivira encountered by Coronado during his 1541 expedition.
Principal Investigator Nikki Klarmann, Archeologist with the Kansas Historical Society, was interested in further exploring the day-to-day lives of the inhabitants of the Tobias site. Excavations conducted at the site focused on identifying residential areas and examining the use of midden or trash mounds. Multiple deep storage pits were identified, these would have stored corn and other food materials, once these pits were no longer used, they would be filled with trash. Artifacts recovered from excavations were processed at a lab set up at Lyons High School and ongoing analysis continues at the Kansas Historical Society in Topeka.
Multiple evening programs took place during the 16 day project, including a tour of the Coronado Quivira Museum, Artifact Identification Night, and multiple speakers on the archeology of Rice and surrounding counties.
The information recovered from the excavations will eventually be written up in a summary available to the public through the Kansas Historical Society website. Plans for the 2020 KATP field school are underway and the location will be announced in early January 2020.
Archaeological Collections Curation Project
The completion of the 2017-2018 Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant has meant positive outcomes for RCHS’s Great Bend Aspect collections. The Quivirans were part of this archaeological grouping. You will find excerpts from the final report by Dr. Lauren W. Ritterbush, Kansas State University on our Quivira page.
The completion of the 2017-2018 Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant has meant positive outcomes for RCHS’s Great Bend Aspect collections. The Quivirans were part of this archaeological grouping. You will find excerpts from the final report by Dr. Lauren W. Ritterbush, Kansas State University on our Quivira page.