Our GSCOAS Christmas Luncheon will be this Saturday, December 11th at Crockette's BBQ, 1508 W. Gore Blvd in Lawton.

We have reserved their party room from 11:30 to 2:00 that day. Our guest speaker will be Wallace Moore.
Wallace will tell us about his book!

 

            The Alibates Quarry is adjacent to the Texas Panhandle town of Fritch. One of the most colorful rock formations in America is found there. It is the source of fine flint tools crafted by Indians over thousands of years. Jon and Diana Denton, Mustang, have a strong avocational interest in archeology and Oklahoma history. The Alibates Flint Quarries Monument is among their favorite places to visit.  A retired journalist, Jon is editor of Trowel Marks, the quarterly newsletter of the Oklahoma Anthropological Society (OAS). Diana, a retired Physician Assistant at the OU Health Sciences Center, shares her husband's interest in archeology and photography. Avid travelers, they have joined OAS excavations and explored archeological sites, museums and other points of historic interest. From several trips to the Alibates Monument, they have created a show they title “Alibates: The Rainbow Flint of Indian Country.

  Isolated in the high canyons of the Southwest, the national monument has a low visitor count. Even so, it rewards visitors with a small museum, well informed park rangers, winding caliche paths, and High Plains flora and fauna. Yet it is the outcroppings of brilliant, flinty agate that people come to see.The rocks are geologically classified as agatized dolomite. Collected and cleaned, they resemble the shiny marbles treasured by children. Swirling streaks of red, yellow, blue and green flow together in tiny rivulets of color. In fact, each stone is unique in its brilliance and luster.

            For millennia, Native Americans mined the colorful alibates for tools and trade. The stone has been found as far south as Mexico City, north to Canada, and east to the Mississippi River. Other Indian cultures prized it for its fine texture and vivid colors. The flint, abundant near the Canadian Valley now known as the Lake Meredith National Recreation Area, exists in abundance no place else in the world – at least none that has been reported. For much of the time, life was good for Indians of the Texas Canadian River Valley. The canyon had ample water and fertile soil for agriculture. Stone slabs were easily gathered and stacked to make homes. This left Indians ample leisure time to mine the mineral, trade, socialize, and craft their prized alibate flint. It all ended about 1400 AD. Severe drought and invaders from the north forced the inhabitants to abandon their canyon homes. They are thought to have merged into other tribes, the forbearers of today’s Caddo, Wichita and Pawnee.

            Although the National Monument forbids collecting alibates at the site today, visitors have much to enjoy. Rangers guide visitors to the rocky outcrops where boulders of alibate, once as big as refrigerators, are now cut to the nub. Alibate glitters in the landscape.  In their presentation, the Dentons explore the history, both geological and archeological, of the brilliant rainbow rock of Texas.

 

 

OAS FALL MEETING AT CHOCTAW COMMUNITY CENTER
1632 South George Nigh Expressway
McAlester, OK
October 23, 2010

INFO

GSCOAS August Monthly Meeting and Program
Army Mules & Military Asses
 
George & mules
Second Seminole War
Mexican War
Camels vs. Mules
Blue Mules & Gray Mules
 Indian Wars
Spanish-American War
WWI
WWII

August 28th at 2PM
at the
Museum of the Great Plains
  601 NW Ferris Avenue
   Lawton, OK 73507
 
The Greater Southwest Chapter of the Oklahoma Anthropological Society (GSCOAS) will have its regular monthly meeting and program August 28th, at 2pm, at the Museum of the Great Plains in Lawton, Oklahoma. Our guest speaker this month is Tim Poteete, the Museum of the Great Plains Living History Interpreter.  Tim grew up in Webber's Falls, Oklahoma, in a menagerie that was not glass, but did include horses & mules.  He went to Connor's College, Oklahoma State University, Northeastern State, & the University of Arkansas, where he has received degrees in Business and History.  Tim was told to do a thesis on something no one had ever done before, therefore he did his thesis on mules in the American Army.  He worked at the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman before coming to the Museum of the Great Plains as the living history interpreter

The meeting and program is free and open to the public.

For more information call Debra Baker at 581-3460

GSCOAS  Monthly Meeting
Australian Archaeology
by
Dr. James Smith
June 26th at 2PM
at the Museum of the Great Plains
601 NW Ferris Avenue
Lawton OK 73507
 
The Greater Southwest Chapter of the Oklahoma Anthropological Society (GSCOAS) will have its regular monthly meeting and program June 26th at 2pm at the Museum of the Great Plains in Lawton Oklahoma. Our guest speaker this month is Dr. James Smith, an Australian archaeologist who now resides at Okeene, Oklahoma.  Dr. Smith is a cultural resources (archaeological) consultant and a designer/builder of web sites.

Dr. Smith will present a slide show on Australian archaeology.  In his own words, "Australian Aborigines have lived in Australia from the Dreamtime (the time of creation). They don't care about dating methods or how long archaeologists say they have lived on this island continent; forever means forever.

In this time they have left traces of their lifeways all over the country from single stone artifacts to massive shell middens and stone arrangements to amazing galleries of art.

In this talk I'd like to take you on an archaeological/anthropological tour of my home. While I'll try to cover as much of the country as possible, you have to keep in mind that Australia is almost the same size as the continental USA!"
 
Dr. Smith was educated at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.  He earned a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in archaeology and anthropology; a BA Honors (similar to our Master of Arts degree) in anthropology and archaeology; and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in archaeology.  His interest include databases, geographic information systems (GIS), and Global Positioning System (GPS) as applied to archaeology.  He is also fascinated by stone tool technology, especially the use of stone tool manufacturing characteristics as time markers for artifacts found on the surface.
 
The meeting is free and open to the public.

Monthly Meeting and Program 

The Grandfield Mammoth

Presentation and Exhibit Tour

by CU Students 

April 24 at 2PM
at the Museum of the Great Plains
601 NW Ferris Avenue
Lawton OK 73507

The Greater Southwest Chapter of the Oklahoma Anthropological Society (GSCOAS) will have its regular monthly meeting and program April 24 at 2pm at the Museum of the Great Plains in Lawton Oklahoma. Our guest speakers this month are the students who were involved in the recent excavation and lab work of the remains of a mammoth. The mammoth was discovered years prior in the southwest region of Oklahoma. Aware of the discovery and of the unique learning opportunities it could provide to students, Dr. Michael Dunn, Associate Professor of Biology at Cameron University, Debra Baker, Archaeologist for the Institute of the Great Plains and President of the GSCOAS, and John Hernandez, Director of the Museum of the Great Plains envisioned a plan that would put students in the midst of the discovery. Brandon Null, Rodney Roy, Dana Schaffer and Heather Young will share their experiences and research beginning at 2pm at the Museum of the Great Plains. The students' research will also be unveiled within the new exhibition entitled, The Grandfield Mammoth. 

Open to the public. There is no charge to attend. 

For more information call Debra Baker at 581-3460

The OAS annual spring meeting will be held on Saturday, April 10, in Norman, Oklahoma, at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Program coordinator is State Archeologist Bob Brooks. The all day session will begin with the Spring Board Meeting at 8:30 a. m. and will be followed by the annual business meeting for members from 10:15 to 10:30 a.m. (including election of officers and directors; and awards). Speakers begin at 10:30. Refreshments will not be set up for this day, due to classes scheduled in the classrooms that we have used in the past.

More Info

Oklahoma Anthropological Society

Monthly Meeting and Program

Native American Plant Use
by Dr. Schneider

March 27 at 2PM
at the Museum of the Great Plains
601 NW Ferris Avenue
Lawton OK 73507




The Greater Southwest Chapter of the Oklahoma Anthropological Society will host a presentation by Dr. Fred Schneider on Native American Plant Use at the monthly chapter meeting Saturday March 27 at 2PM at the Museum of the Great Plains in Lawton Oklahoma.

Dr. Fred Schneider has his Master of Arts degree in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma and his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Anthropology from the University of Missouri. After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Schneider chaired, helped to build, and taught in the Anthropology Department at the University of North Dakota. When he retired seven years ago, Dr. and Mrs. Schneider moved back to Norman, Oklahoma.

Dr. Schneider is active in Oklahoma's State Master Gardner Program and the Teaching Garden at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds in Norman. About half of this garden is devoted to traditional Native American vegetables. In addition to his knowledge of Northern Plains traditional plant use, Dr. Schneider is gathering information on garden plant varieties used by Native Americans in Oklahoma. He is also developing an atlas of resources on Native American use of wild plants in the Oklahoma area. His presentation will discuss traditional Native American garden plants as well as traditional uses for wild plants.

The presentation is open to the public and free.

Next Meeting
February 27, 2010

Meet us at the Museum of the Great Plains parking lot at 1:45  before driving over to the Comanche Nation College for our meeting and program.


Our guest speaker, Juanita Pahdopony, Comanche artist and educator, will meet us at CNC to show us the murals and the exhibition, "Indian Education in Southwest Oklahoma: Yesterday and Today," a photographic exhibit featuring compare and contrast images from the historic Fort Sill Indian Boarding School and today's Comanche Nation College.

About the exhibit
Photographs depicting life at the two educational institutions reveal widely contrasting treatments of native American culture. Students at the historic Fort Sill Indian Boarding School were expected to abandon their native culture and to assimilate fully into white culture. They received instruction in speaking, reading and writing English as well as vocational training in farming, blacksmithing, domestic duties such as sewing and laundry, and more. Students who today attend Comanche Nation College study the Comanche language through language immersion, and all classes have some integration of culture and language.

“Indian Education in Southwest Oklahoma: Yesterday and Today” is funded through a grant by the Oklahoma Humanities Council.

Museum of the Great Plains
601 NW Ferris Avenue
Lawton, Oklahoma

We all hear about historic situations as cause and effect, but parts that lead to those situations are often unrecorded. All those parts are bits individuals do to make up the whole. Anthropology is the study of those bits of the whole of human existence.

Carol (Carolyn) Stayer grew up in Lawton. She retired from the US AF (1998) and currently lives in Meers where she spends her time volunteering with Meers VFD, Wildlife Refuge, Fr. Sill Natural Resources and Blue Thumb Water Quality Program.

On January 23 at 2 p.m. Carol will talk about Blackbirds – man-made and other - stories specific to Carol’s pixels of the whole picture.

Ever wonder how high a u-2 can go? How fast an SR-71 flies? What is the SR-71 Space Shuttle? Why are they black? Can that lead into environmental conservation topics? In Carol’s life it can! Come see how military recon aviation or conservation is a part of your life!