Lauryn French, Kyle Kauwika Harris, Sariah Pemberton & Debbie Eckiwaudah
pose in front of a local watershed maps exhibit at Nurture Nature Center in Easton.
Contact the coordinator at PA-coord@neara.org
By Jim Wilson
NEARA helped sponsor four community events in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley in mid-March: at the Lehigh Valley Watershed Conference in Bethlehem PA, and the Nature Nurture Center in Easton PA. In addition to NEARA's $1500 sponsorship, NEARA volunteers from PA, NJ, CT and RI helped plan and deliver these public programs and engaged with the many folks who stopped by NEARA's sponsorship table at each of the two venues where the four events were held on March 11-14. In total, about 300 people attended these four events and had access to NEARA's sponsorship table at all of them. Dozens of email addresses were collected and lots of NEARA literature were freely taken, including our spring conference registration materials.
NEARA's sponsorship helped pay expenses for speakers to attend the events and address constructed cultural landscapes, the use of archaeology for land conservation with Indigenous tribes, and present a film screening and roundtable discussion about the award winning documentary, "The Water Gap: Return to the Homeland". The film screening and roundtable was led by the Choctaw filmmaker and three young Delaware women, who were teenagers when the film was made in 2016.
The land conservation talk and the cultural landscapes program were presented by Dr. Julia King, Anthropology Chair, St. Mary's College of Maryland.
Jim Wilson presented two illustrated programs on constructed stone landscapes during these events, which were sponsored as in-kind contributions by Jim's employer, Northampton County Parks and Recreation.
Jim Wilson contributed an article to the Pennsylvania SHPO's annual report on archaeological site reporting activities. The article starts on page 14. Other interesting articles are in the document, too.
Pennsylvania Archaeological Site Survey 2022
Jim Wilson made a great presentation to the Watershed Coalition of the Lehigh Valley. You can view it on Facebook at: The Mysteries of Constructed Stone Landscapes.
Jim Wilson adds: "I would like to correct an error in my presentation. It was local avocational archeologist Ed Henning who was the champion of, and deserves the credit for the recording of the Pocono Creek Watershed CSL in Monroe County with the PA State Historic Preservation Office. I mistakenly cited Ed Lenik in my talk. My apologies to Mr. Henning for that misattribution."
Hannah Harvey of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office blogged about Finding Meaning in Stone.
A Powerpoint presentation on the Hemlock Murray Chambers.