The McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture will begin a special lecture series March 14 to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary.
The series will bring in worldwide experts to speak on topics related to the museum’s collections and exhibitions on archaeology, Egyptology, decorative arts, the American Civil War, geology, and natural history.
All lectures are free and open to the public.
The first lecture will be at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 14. The guest speaker will be Vernon Knight, professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama. His lecture, “Excavating and Interpreting the Mounds at Moundville,” will explore the Moundville archaeological site in west-central Alabama. The site originally had as many as forty Mississippian culture mounds, many of them large rectangular platform mounds arranged around a central plaza. During the last twenty-five years, there have been excavations into ten of these Native American mounds.
Knight will summarize the results of these excavations, followed by a discussion of differing opinions about the purpose and significance of Mississippian mound building.
Other upcoming lecture speakers and dates will be announced soon.
The museum is located at 1327 Circle Park Drive. It is open 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Sundays. Admission is free.
For more information about the McClung Museum and its collections and exhibits, visit its website.
—
CONTACT:
Catherine Shteynberg (865-974-6921, cshteynb@utk.edu)