GSCOAS Monthly Meeting and Program

The Use of Native Americans during Late Victorian Times for Commercial Advertising

by Historian/Archaeologist/Curator, Towana Spivey

September 24th, at 2PM,

at the Museum of the Great Plains

601 NW Ferris Avenue

Lawton OK 73507

     Towana Spivey has spent his professional career preserving and interpreting the prehistory and history of the Trans-Mississippi West with particular interest in the Oklahoma area.  He is a native Oklahoman and the descendant of several generations of Chickasaws who came to the Indian Territory in 1837 from northern Mississippi and western Tennessee.

      His educational background includes undergraduate work in History and Natural Science with graduate emphasis in Anthropology and Museum Studies. He has conducted archaeological and interpretive investigations of several 19^th century military posts including Forts Washita, Towson, Ft. Sill, Reno, and Supply as well as other historic and prehistoric sites.  This experience has developed his expertise in the restoration and utilization of 19^th century buildings.  He has researched and is currently supervising major restorations within the Fort Sill National Historic Landmark including the 1870's Cavalry and Infantry Barracks, Guardhouse, Quartermaster Corral, etc. 

Some of his more unique experiences involved providing forensic archaeological support to the Federal Aviation Administration on an organized crime murder case in northeast Oklahoma and to the Federal Bureau of Investigation involving a serial murder case in California.  Local law enforcement has also utilized his expertise with incidental cases in the discovery of human remains associated with missing persons.

      Spivey has served on numerous boards and advisory committees for such organizations as the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey, the Oklahoma Governor’s Review Committee for the State Historic Preservation Office, Oklahoma Museums Association, and Southwestern Oklahoma Historical Society.  His work experience includes:  Historic Archaeologist for the Oklahoma Historical Society, Curator of Anthropology for the Museum of the Great Plains, and Director/Curator of the Fort Sill Museum.  He also is a senior curator for the U.S. Army Museum System.  He served with the U.S. Army during the "Berlin Crisis" in the early 1960's.

      He has also been featured in live interviews promoting the cultural history of SW Oklahoma for several regional radio programs in the U.S. such as the Red Steagal Show, as well as for Australian Radio in Sydney.   In 1989, during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, he recorded several hours of audio-tape on American frontier history for the “Voice of America” to be broadcast behind the Iron Curtain.  He has been an instructor or guest lecturer for the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Center, Smith & Wesson Firearms Historical Society, American Association for State and Local History, Cameron University, Oklahoma Center for Continuing Education, and other major universities in Montana, Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma.

       Throughout his career he has regularly been involved in preserving the history, language, and material culture of many Oklahoma tribes including the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Comanche, Kiowa, Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache, Apache Tribe of Oklahoma and others.  He has testified as an expert witness in state and federal courts involving criminal issues on Indian lands and also protection of sacred sites on military property.  He has advised Congress, the Pentagon, and the White House on topics such as Native American soldiers, Comanche Code Talkers, and other related subjects. He has served as an art consultant for the Oklahoma State Legislature.  

Spivey has recently completed a major exhibit gallery entitled, “The Warrior’s Journey” at the Fort Sill National Historical Landmark Museum featuring cultural materials and detailed histories of many historic figures such as Geronimo, Quanah Parker, I-See-O, Satanta, Satank, and others. 

His most recent publication “Silent Witness-The Diary of a Historic Tree at Fort Sill” is attracting wide attention for its unique perspective of a 250 year old oak tree witnessing the history of this very important historic site.  Other research projects he is currently involved with includes:  The Stagecoach History of Oklahoma; Native American Soldiers, Scouts, Marshals and Police; and Early Movies in Frontier Oklahoma.

Spivey’s presentation at the Museum of the Great Plains on September 24^th will focus on:  The Use of Native Americans during Late Victorian Times for Commercial Advertising. This will examine both the artistic and cultural perspectives of marketing products using romanticism and stereotypical attitudes regarding Native Americans so common at that time. 

GSCOAS meetings are held on the fourth Saturday of each month from 2-4 pm at the Museum of the Great Plains, 601 NW Ferris, Lawton, OK, unless otherwise announced.

For more information please contact Debra Baker at 580-581-3460.

Join us this Saturday, August 26th at the Museum of the Great Plains at 2pm. No speaker this month. Just a chance to get together, catch up on Chapter business, discuss future plans and of course, eat! Hope to see you there.

GSCOAS Monthly Meeting and Program
Medicine Park Museum of Natural Science
by Executive Director Doug Kemper
 
July 23rd, at 2PM,
at the Museum of the Great Plains
601 NW Ferris Avenue
Lawton OK 73507
 
 
Executive Director of the new Medicine Park Museum of the Natural History will be the guest speaker for the Greater Southwest Chapter of the Oklahoma Anthropological Society meeting Saturday June23rd at 2:00 P.M., at the Museum of the Great Plains. 
Mr. Kemper will give a power point presentation on the plans and ideas that are incorporated into the opening of the Medicine Park Museum of Natural History.  The Museum will be a new and exciting supplement to biology and science curricula programs for Southwest Oklahoma’s school kids and a compelling family activity and attraction for our entire region.
The Museum will also become a major component of the Wichita’s and Southwest Oklahoma’s eco-tourism appeal and an additional economic driver helping to increase visitors and visitor length-of-stay in Medicine Park, Lawton, and the entire Great Plains Country. The positive impact this Museum will have on our entire region will be tremendous, educationally, culturally and economically.

The Greater Southwest Chapter of the Oklahoma Anthropological Society

Monthly Meeting
Saturday, January 22nd at 2pm
Museum of the Great Plains
601 NW Ferris Avenue
Lawton OK 73507

Our speaker for this Saturday will be our own famous Mr. Randy Clark.  Randy's lecture will be titled " Preservation of Historic Properties of the Big Pasture".  The City of Grandfield's CLG (Certified Local Government's Program)  is administered by Randy Clark, who is the Coordinator of the Local Historic Preservation Commission.  This past year the CLG received a Historic Fund Matching grant-in-aid, administered by the Oklahoma Historical Society, State Historic Preservation Office to carry out the CLG's program, which included the development and printing of a historic brochure about the historical development of Grandfield, including the relationship to the Big Pasture, the historic properties that represent Grandfield's heritage, and efforts to preserve the local landmarks and district that represent that heritage.

Mr. Clark also serves as the City Manager of Grandfield and has been an enormous help in regards to the excavation of the Grandfield Mammoth.

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