Hunter-Gatherers
The Hunter-Gatherers of the Blackland Prairie gallery at the Pearce Museum has more than 44,000 artifacts related to Central Texas’s prehistoric period. Almost all the artifacts were collected and donated by Robert Reading, a longtime Corsicana leader, and businessman. The collection is now displayed in an immersive interactive gallery that fully explores the story of Central Texas’s earliest inhabitants, the tools they used to survive and how these tools were made.
From the Hunter-Gatherers of the Blackland Prairie Collection
Read Corsicana Daily Sun’s post – New Digs: Arrowhead Collection Now in Cook Center : link
From the Corsicana Daily Sun
October 28, 2014
By Bob Belcher
It was a labor of love that some involved didn’t live to see.
And, it’s provided a new, permanent home for a prized collection of Navarro College and the community.
“Hunters and Gatherers of the Blackland Prairie” is the new name — and home — of the Robert Reading Arrowhead Collection, for years displayed in glass cases in the college’s Gooch Library building.
The collection of some 44,000 items was a gift to the college from Robert Reading, longtime Corsicana leader and businessman, in 1954. Reading also shared a love of archeology and spent years combing through the blackland soil of central Texas collecting the artifacts that would come to make up the display.
Longtime college supporters Oliver Albritton, Tom White and Forrest Green all shared a desire to house the collection in the Cook Center along with the Pearce Museums, and worked for years with the Navarro College Foundation to raise funds for the project, built in a space between the Cook Center and museums. Working with Dr. Tommy Stringer of the Navarro College Foundation, Lloyd Huffman and Dr. James Price of Navarro College Board of Trustees, along with the late Bill Young, local historian, planning began for the new home of the collection, which Young said were “not arrowheads, but rather projectile points,” Huffman said at the dedication of the exhibit.
The Robert Reading Collection is now in a new gallery at the Pearce Museum. Hunters and Gatherers of the Blackland Prairie is the new home of the collection of some 44,000 prehistoric artifacts. Daily Sun photo/Bob Belcher
It took years of planning, organizing and fund-raising to make the exhibit a reality. Albritton, White and Green passed away before the project would be completed, but provided the support and leadership to make it happen, Huffman said at the dedication of the exhibit Oct. 16.
“I look at this opening as the end of an era, going all the way back to Gioia Keeney and Embry Ferguson … people that made huge contributions to the school and the Pearce Collections museum.”
The foundation drew upon the expertise of Dr. Don Wyckoff, award-winning archaeologist and curator emeritus of the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma, to help organize the collection, and designer Ross Edwards as project manager to transform the collection into the exhibit housed in the Cook Center today.
“We didn’t just want to display the arrowheads, or projectile points, we wanted to tell the story of the people that made them to begin with,” Huffman explained. With colorful displays and pull-out cases that were incorporated into the design, the exhibit brings together Reading’s artifacts with the stories behind them, Huffman added.
“It’s a natural extension to the existing venues that we have at the Cook Center,” said Stringer. He said the addition will be an additional attraction for the researchers, school children and history lovers that already visit the Pearce Museums.
“It will provide even greater opportunities for the college to fulfill its mission of providing lifelong learning opportunities.”
Source: Corsicana Daily Sun article
