Chucalissa's Robert Connolly Will Hold Lecture Exploring National Historic Landmark

For release: February 22, 2008
For press information, contact Chucalissa

The C. H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa will be holding a lecture and artifact exhibit called Poverty Point: Exploring Time and Space in the Southeast at 1800 B.C on Sunday, February 24th at 2:00 p.m. at the museum. Robert Connolly, Director of the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa, University of Memphis, and formerly Station Archaeologist at the Poverty Point site, will be the featured speaker. Poverty Point, a National Historic Landmark since 1970, was the hub of a vast exchange network of not just material goods, but also ideas about earthwork construction, ritual, and symbolic representations, that extended throughout much of the Lower Mississippi Valley nearly 4000 years ago.

Dr. Connolly's presentation will explore the evidence for house structures and specialized manufacturing areas at this 400 acre earthwork complex of ridges and mounds. He will also explore the range of occupation on the Poverty Point site landscape extending over the past 6000 years.

The presentation highlights the opening of a 3-month exhibit of artifacts from excavations of a household on one of the Poverty Point ridges and includes figurines, jasper beads & pendants, as well as everyday tools and cooking equipment used by the occupants. The exhibit, on loan from the Louisiana Division of Archaeology and the Louisiana Office of State Parks will be on display at the C.H. Nash Museum through May of 2008. For more information, call 901-785-3160 or email, chucalissa@memphis.edu.

The C. H. Nash Museum at Chuhcalissa is located at 1970 Indian Village Drive, Memphis, TN.