Statement Details

Due to the cancellation of SAA’s Austin Public Archaeology Day, we celebrated public archaeology online the week of April 27-May 3! SAA social media accounts posted videos and resources on archaeology in Texas and elsewhere from the speakers and organizations who would have participated in the public event in Austin. Discover those resources below.

Archaeological Tea-construction: an educational stop-motion animation from SAA's Manager, Education and Outreach, Beth Pruitt. It demonstrates how archaeologists reconstruct artifacts in the lab.

Exploring Archaeology in Texas [PDF 56 KB]: a variety of Texas-based societies and agencies offer local field trips, tours, lectures, and other public archaeology events or activities, collected here by the Archaeology Education Clearinghouse (AEC). The AEC is a partnership between the SAA, SHA, and other archaeological organizations.

Archaeology Short Takes: the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) promotes the conservation, study and public understanding of Florida's archaeological heritage. This video series from FPAN's Northwest Region shows how they do it.

20,000 Years of Texas Prehistory: go back 20,000 years in this video with D. Clark Wernecke, Executive Director of the Gault School of Archaeological Research, and learn about the prehistoric artifacts found at the Gault Site in Texas, and the importance of archaeology.

Want to Dig Deeper with TxDOT Archaeology?: view videos, StoryMaps, information about ongoing archaeological research, and more on the Texas Department of Transportation website.

What Archaeologists Learn from Making and Using Stone Tools: learn about flintknapping and stone tools in this video from Christopher W. Ringstaff, Texas Department of Transportation, who uses experimental archaeology to understand the stone tools that archaeologists find.

The Heritage Education Network’s Annotated Bibliography Project: a database of heritage education resources for professionals, educators, and the public. Use it to find books, journals, classroom materials, and more!

Conflict Archaeology: Untold History of the Buffalo Soldiers and the Apache in Texas: the Mescalero-Buffalo Soldiers Project in Texas' Guadalupe Mountains joined together Howard University students and Mescalero Apache Tribe high school students for an innovative archaeology project. Find out what they uncovered in this video.

Oklahoma Community Heritage Project: join the Oklahoma Public Archaeology Network’s community with the Oklahoma Community Heritage Project (OKCHP)! Virtually “donate” an object related to your heritage, then learn about the community’s story through the objects of others.

Why I 3-D Printed Benjamin Franklin's Mastodon Tooth and How You Can Too: Bernard K. Means, Virtual Curation Laboratory at VCU, tells the story of a mastodon tooth once owned by Benjamin Franklin in this video. He uses a 3D-printed replica of the tooth, plus models of a mastodon, woolly mammoth, and Ben!

Rock Art Exhibit for Public Archaeology Week: Shumla’s mission is to record and preserve prehistoric rock art in southwest Texas. Digitally explore the Rattlesnake Shelter through 3D models and gigapixel panoramas.

Learn about historical pottery artifacts found at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park through this video! Archaeologists study items left behind at the missions in order to learn more about the history of our community.

Archaeology Online Educational Content Resources for Teachers and Students: Lewis Borck, University of Missouri, organized a crowdsourced spreadsheet of archaeology/history content as a resource for teachers and students looking for activities to do at home during social isolation.

The Science of Ancient Hunting Technology: Jeremy Freeman, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, performs an experiment about ancient hunting technology that you can try at home. Atlatls were spear-throwers used by ancient humans and now studied by archaeologists. See how this technology helped humans throw spears farther and faster.

Thank you to all of our participating speakers and organizations. You can find more educational resources on the SAA website in the Education and Outreach section.