(WAVERLY, NY) The Susquehanna River Archaeological Center
(SRAC) is announcing their tenth annual “Drumbeats Through Time” event which is planned for Saturday, October 5th
from 11- 4pm at 345 Broad Street in Waverly, NY. The event, which is a
celebration of their Center, their mission, their supporters and the region’s
Native American past begins at 11 am with a SRAC membership luncheon that will
be catered by the Waverly Methodist Church, and includes prizes and gifts exclusively
for the SRAC members.
At 1pm, the doors open to the public and the first speaker
of the event will be Dr. Barry Kass, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at
Orange County Community College, S. U. N. Y., in Middletown, NY,
where he has taught various courses in anthropology, sociology, and human
geography for more than forty years. Dr. Kass will present, “Quarry Caves
Site near Florida, N.Y.: Key Archaeological Discoveries of the Earliest Inhabitants
of the Lower Hudson Valley in New York State.” The site yielded an
extraordinary archaeological assemblage ranging from the PaleoIndian to the
Woodland stage. Most noteworthy was the discovery of a classic Cumberland
fluted point, dated through association with caribou bones found at the site,
which provided one of the earliest carbon dates for human occupation in the
Americas. The archaeological material will be illustrated and described, and
historic photos of the early excavations will be shown.
At 2pm, SRAC advisory board member, Dr. Deeanne Wymer, professor of Anthropology
at Bloomsburg University will give a presentation on the excavations she led in
2012 on a Hopewell ceremonial mound site that had numerous significant features
that will be discussed and shown on screen. SRAC’s Deb Twigg commented, “Dr.
Wymer has been with SRAC for many years and has given a handful of
presentations in that time that always are popular and in fact I still refer to
in many of the tours that I give at SRAC.”
At 3pm, SRAC welcomes back the national award winning Seneca
“Buffalo Creek Dancers”, who regularly close the Drumbeats event and have become the ambassadors of the Native
Americans during the event, sharing their history, culture and friendship with
the audience who are invited to take part in some of the dances as well.
The whole event is free to attend and the SRAC Exhibit Hall
will also be open and include several local private collections that are not
normally on public display. Twigg added,
“This truly is a huge celebration of SRAC and what we stand for, filled with
friendships, education, and of course representation of the Native Americans
that we all include as a part of this region’s local heritage. There’s just
nothing like this event anywhere else around, and I hope the public comes out
and supports our efforts.”
