ETSU, museum present lectures on Mongolian deer stones
Issue date: 3/2/09 Section: The Scene
The East Tennessee State University and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum at the Gray Fossil Site will host free back-to-back 20-minute lectures on Tuesday, March 3, from 6-7 p.m. in the Eastman Credit Union Multimedia Classroom. Question-answer sessions will follow each talk.
Dr. William Fitzhugh and his co-principal investigator, Dr. Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan, will speak about Mongolian deer stones and related bronze-age artifacts housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C.
Fitzhugh is an anthropologist specializing in circumpolar archaeology, ethnology and environmental studies. As director of the Arctic Studies Center and Curator in the Department of Anthropology at NMNH, he has spent more than 30 years studying and publishing on arctic peoples and cultures in northern Canada, Alaska, Siberia and Scandinavia. His talk, titled "Mongolia's Mysterious Bronze Age Deer Stones: The Search for Scythian and Eskimo Connections," will enlighten viewers on some of the mysteries surrounding these enigmatic works of monument and sculpture.
Fitzhugh's collaborator, Jamsranjav, is Curator of the Bronze Age and Director of Research at the National Museum of Mongolia in that nation's capital, Ulaanbaatar, and he has been working with Fitzhugh in the years since the Deer Stone Project began in 2001, investigating the region's connections to arctic cultural history.
Following Fitzhugh, Jamsranjav will speak on "New Discoveries in Mongolian Archaeology: Paleolithic to Middle Ages." Deer stones are characterized by low-relief carvings of deer with large, flowing antlers. More than 500 specimens have been found in Mongolia's grassy steppe region.
The Khirigsuur are typified by a stone mound, with small circles of stones facing the sun in the East, that may have been used in ritual sacrifice of horses at the burials of chieftains. Such mounds are often "dated" using horse bone shards found at the sites and are helpful in identifying ages of related monuments that cannot be carbon dated.
ETSU's Dr. Richard Kortum of the Department of Philosophy and Humanities was instrumental in bringing Fitzhugh and Jamsranjav to the region.
To fund the dual lectures, Kortum aligned the museum with the ETSU departments of Sociology and Anthropology, Art and Design, and Philosophy and Humanities, along with the ETSU Honors College, and the Student Government Association BUC Fund, as well as Anthropos (ETSU's student anthropology club).
For further information, contact Dr. Jay Franklin at (423) 439-6653, or via franklij@etsu.edu. The ETSU and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum is open 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. daily and is located off the I-26 Gray Exit 13. For information call toll-free 1-866-202-6223.
Dr. William Fitzhugh and his co-principal investigator, Dr. Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan, will speak about Mongolian deer stones and related bronze-age artifacts housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C.
Fitzhugh is an anthropologist specializing in circumpolar archaeology, ethnology and environmental studies. As director of the Arctic Studies Center and Curator in the Department of Anthropology at NMNH, he has spent more than 30 years studying and publishing on arctic peoples and cultures in northern Canada, Alaska, Siberia and Scandinavia. His talk, titled "Mongolia's Mysterious Bronze Age Deer Stones: The Search for Scythian and Eskimo Connections," will enlighten viewers on some of the mysteries surrounding these enigmatic works of monument and sculpture.
Fitzhugh's collaborator, Jamsranjav, is Curator of the Bronze Age and Director of Research at the National Museum of Mongolia in that nation's capital, Ulaanbaatar, and he has been working with Fitzhugh in the years since the Deer Stone Project began in 2001, investigating the region's connections to arctic cultural history.
Following Fitzhugh, Jamsranjav will speak on "New Discoveries in Mongolian Archaeology: Paleolithic to Middle Ages." Deer stones are characterized by low-relief carvings of deer with large, flowing antlers. More than 500 specimens have been found in Mongolia's grassy steppe region.
The Khirigsuur are typified by a stone mound, with small circles of stones facing the sun in the East, that may have been used in ritual sacrifice of horses at the burials of chieftains. Such mounds are often "dated" using horse bone shards found at the sites and are helpful in identifying ages of related monuments that cannot be carbon dated.
ETSU's Dr. Richard Kortum of the Department of Philosophy and Humanities was instrumental in bringing Fitzhugh and Jamsranjav to the region.
To fund the dual lectures, Kortum aligned the museum with the ETSU departments of Sociology and Anthropology, Art and Design, and Philosophy and Humanities, along with the ETSU Honors College, and the Student Government Association BUC Fund, as well as Anthropos (ETSU's student anthropology club).
For further information, contact Dr. Jay Franklin at (423) 439-6653, or via franklij@etsu.edu. The ETSU and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum is open 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. daily and is located off the I-26 Gray Exit 13. For information call toll-free 1-866-202-6223.
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