First Farmers exhibit opens Thursday at Kentucky Museum

This Thursday at 5 p.m., the Kentucky Museum will premiere First Farmers of the Barren River Valley, an exhibition showcasing current excavations of a Native American village in Warren County. The exhibit’s opening occasion can be from 5 to 7 p.m. and embody a behind-the-scenes take a look at excavations, with a visitor speak by the Kentucky Archaeological Survey crew that surveyed and excavated the positioning in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Following the speak, guests can be offered the primary take a look at First Farmers, which shows and interprets findings associated to know-how, settlement, foodways, society/politics, and economics/commerce that reveal life in a farming village circa 1350 CE.

“This exhibit gives museum guests with a glimpse of what life might have been like alongside the Barren River 700 years in the past,” said Dr. David Pollack, Director of the Kentucky Archaeological Survey, who led the excavation crew.

That point interval is the late Mississippian period – so named as a result of the vast majority of peoples lived alongside what’s now the Mississippi River and its tributaries. These communities have been linked to bigger town-and-mound facilities the place political and spiritual authority was held by the chief, warfare leaders, and shamans. These folks have been linked by the centralized political and spiritual authority of the chief in addition to in depth commerce networks. Uncooked supplies and completed merchandise moved via these networks throughout vast ares. Symbols and ceramic types present that they shared rituals and spiritual beliefs. Due to their related methods of life, archaeologists confer with all these peoples as Mississippians. By the mid-to-late 1300s CE, when First Farmers residents established their village alongside the Inexperienced River, Mississippian tradition had existed for 400 years.

“We’re thrilled to have partnered with the Kentucky Archaeological Survey to showcase their current excavations,” said Tiffany Isselhardt, Exhibit Curator on the Kentucky Museum. “Our mission as a educating museum is foremost to showcase the analysis being executed by WKU school and college students, which expands our data of Kentucky’s historical past and cultures. First Farmers demonstrates that Indigenous peoples settled right here – they known as this land ‘house’ – and we have to acknowledge and honor that as a part of our historical past. We’re really grateful for all of the exhausting work that college students, school, archaeologists, and artists put into serving to inform this story.”

Study extra in regards to the First Farmers exhibition right here.

Concerning the Kentucky Museum

The Kentucky Museum is an integral a part of WKU’s campus and the South-Central Kentucky group. The Museum actively helps the tutorial and cultural targets of WKU whereas offering high quality instructional experiences and alternatives to have interaction with Kentucky’s heritage and our relevance in a world society. Due to the implementation of free admission, the Museum has grown exponentially over the previous three years, from 14,000 guests in 2019 to over 30,000 in 2021, representing a broad swath of Kentucky residents and vacationers.

For extra data, contact Tiffany Isselhardt at tiffany.isselhardt@wku.edu.