Get ready to dig up some fascinating facts because October has officially been named archaeology month by Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
To celebrate, the Michigan Historical Museum, in cooperation with the Office of the State Archaeologist, is hosting its eighth annual Archaeology Day this Saturday.
The event will be family-friendly and should be interesting to children, said Barbara Mead, the assistant state archaeologist.
"Archaeology is a way of learning about the past," she said. "It's a more personal experience you get through this."
Activities will include everything from slide show presentations and display tables to stone tool making and a hands-on demonstration of an atel atel - a more than 5,000-year-old weapon, which was used to throw a spear.
Exhibits will consist of pictures and posters, as well as artifacts from the Huron Indian village in St. Ignace and the shipwrecks of Thunder Bay in Alpena. There also will be displays on archaeological digs in Michigan and underwater archaeology.
Petroglyphs, or rock carvings, and tools such as shifters and shovels will be on display for children to experiment with. The children's picture book, "Right Here on This Spot," will be read at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m.
There also will be a handful of Michigan archaeologists ready to answer questions and discuss their latest work.
"It's one of the rare chances the public gets to talk to archaeologists outside a formal setting," said John Halsey, the state archaeologist.
Halsey will be making a presentation titled "Where did all the mounds go?," explaining why there are so few burial mounds left from centuries ago.
Archaeologists from the Michigan Department of Transportation will bring artifacts from Bay City, where they have discovered a 19th century corduroy road (a wood plank road used for carriages) and a late 19th century inter-urban rail system.
Jo Anne Arasim, a member of the museum's Education Unit and developer of Archeology Day, said she hopes the event will spark visitor's interests and give them insight into Michigan's history.
"Understanding how people dealt with the past helps us determine how to deal with things in the present," she said.
