ILLINOIS ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Archaeological Awareness Month

Archaeology Awareness Month Committee Report

2004 SUMMARY ILLINOIS ARCHAEOLOGICAL AWARENESS MONTH

The theme of the 2004 Illinois Archaeological Awareness Month was Art and Archaeology: Spirit of the Ancients. The theme was chosen to dovetail into Hero, Hawk and Open Hand: Ancient Art of the Midwest and Southeast, an exhibit which opened at the Art Institute of Chicago in fall 2004. Richard Townsend, Curator of the exhibit, was pivotal in obtaining permission to dovetail into his exhibit. His exhibit, his collaborations with both Native groups and archaeologists, is seminal in gathering Midwest objects never before on display in one place.

One of the most significant contributions of the month was the sales distribution of the special thematic issue of Illinois Antiquity in the Art Institute of Chicago bookshop. Alice Berkson, editor, arranged the sales and is working on sales distribution to the St. Louis and Smithsonian venues. Feedback from the Art Institute bookshop was extremely favorable, that this was a great low cost yet informative issue that appealed to a wide audience. The Art Institute Public Relations department were thrilled with the special issue especially Duane Esarey’s review of the exhibit catalogue and extended an invitation to attend the press opening of the exhibit. The special thematic issue and the Discover Illinois issue were requested to be distributed at the press opening for Hero, Hawk and Open Hand. Press attendees included the Chicago Tribune, Sun Times, and New York Times among others. Townsend’s breadth of collaboration was apparent with representatives from Native American groups and archaeologists.

2004 POSTER

The 2004 Art and Archaeology Spirit of the Ancients poster was a huge success! Thanks to Tom Emerson, Mike Lewis and Linda Alexander of ITARP who conceptualized and implemented the poster design. The poster was sent to the Society for American Archaeology to participate in their annual poster design contest.

The ITARP in kind donation of time is approximately $2830.00 of dollars. This in kind donation does not include any hours for the committee or me.

One thousand posters were printed at a cost of $1,198.00 by Chuck Martin of Martin Graphics in Champaign-Urbana. The base cost of printing the same number of posters remained the same from 2001 to 2004. The additional $198.00 was for four color proofs, an unanticipated cost. Chuck Martin once again placed a special coating on the posters to prevent black color rub off for free.

The committee, various IAS, IAAM and ITARP members distributed all but approximately 100 posters. Mailing costs were reduced by half to one third by taking advantage of a special category of mailing, media mail. The targeted focus distribution was tiered; 1) venues and sponsors 2) satellite distribution IAS and IAAM members, and 3) 2003 email requests.

OUTDOOR ILLINOIS

IDNR, Hal Hassen and Mike Wiant wrote a series of archaeology essays for the September IDNR sponsored magazine Outdoor Illinois. The entire addition was dedicated to archaeology and contained a variety of brief essays regarding Awareness Month, the AIC exhibit, Ft. Massac and a story line of archaeological discovery. This magazine has an enormous subscription base and many compliments were forthcoming to Hal Hassen and Mike Wiant.

2003 ARCHAEOLOGICAL AWARENESS WEBSITE

David Keene donated the $335.00 to renew both the domain and space name for the Awareness website. Karen Atwell redesigned the website and implemented a series of design changes that facilitated the use of the pages.

EVENTS

A total of 50 events were listed and I tracked approximately 20 school presentations.

STATISTICS

Through the wonderful world of the web, we are able to track the web page for the number of visitors, page hits, and origin of hits. Overall, the monthly hit average is 636 with an overall range total of 7,632 a 50% increase in monthly average hits from 2003. The month of September overall was 1,016 with an average daily hit of 33.87 and the month of October overall was 802 with a daily average of 25.06. A 56% and 65% increase respectively from 2003.

2005 ILLINOIS ARCHAEOLOGICAL AWARENESS TITLE

The proposed theme for the archaeological awareness month surrounds the theme of African American archaeological projects such as New Philadelphia and New Freedom. Chris Fennell, Terry Martin and Mary McCorvie sought comments from many researchers and interested constituencies regarding a title for the month. The title that received favorable comments is “Archaeology and African American Heritage: Places on the Pathways of Freedom.” Chris noted that “…this includes careful choice of the prepositions within the title, e.g., “on Pathways” is much better than “in Pathways” and “of Freedom” is much better than “to Freedom.”

Karen Poulsen

Chair, Archaeology Awareness Month Committee