In celebration of International Archaeology Day and National Fossil Day, UT’s McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture will host Can You Dig It?—a free, family-friendly community event with activities focusing on archaeology and fossils.
The event, cosponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America East Tennessee Society, will be held from 1:30 to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 12, at the museum, 1327 Circle Park Drive.
UT archaeologists, paleontologists, and geologists and their graduate students will host displays about their projects locally and around the world. They will be on hand to talk with visitors about their work and offer hands-on activities demonstrating their research. Visitors can also bring artifacts, rocks, and fossils to the museum for the experts to identify.
The event will have a number of activities for children, including make-and-take Roman-style shield decorating, writing names in Egyptian hieroglyphs, creating clay fossil molds, writing on clay tablets, identifying plant remains in sandboxes, and matching animal bones.
All activities are free and open to the public, and reservations are not required. The event is sponsored in part by Cultural Resource Analysts Inc. and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
International Archaeology Day is a project of the Archaeological Institute of America. The organization sponsors local activities about archaeological projects around the world. National Fossil Day was started by the National Park Service to encourage interest in the field of paleontology and the study of fossils.
McClung Museum is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Sundays. Parking passes are not needed on the weekends.
For more information about the McClung Museum and its collections and exhibits, visit the museum’s website.
For more information about the East Tennessee AIA, visit the organization’s website.
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CONTACTS:
Erin Darby (865-974-6977, edarby1@utk.edu)