Kids dig Archaeology Day, the annual event at Fernbank Museum of Natural History, happening today as part of Georgia Archaeology Awareness Month.
They can sift through sand for pottery shards, handle ancient weapons, view musket balls and other War of 1812 artifacts, make a simple coil clay pot (to keep), ask questions of real-life archaeologists and play chunkey.
Chunkey?
That's a game that was popular eons ago among Native Americans of the Southeast. It involved rolling disc-shaped stones across the ground and hurling spears at them, with the winner being the player whose spear lands closest to the chunkey stone. Parents, worry not. At Fernbank, plastic hockey pucks sub for the stones, and the javelins are made of foam.
Chunkey will command Fernbank's front plaza, weather permitting, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., with breaks at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. for throwing demonstrations of those ancient weapons (also re-creations, by the way).
"We'll let the pros handle the weapons and the kids play the game," Fernbank family programs specialist Kristy Richardson clarifies.
Boys and girls can also check out a 300-year-old dugout canoe. Discovered adjacent to the Satilla River in South Georgia and carved out of a single longleaf pine, the 17-foot-long canoe, Fernbank suggests in a way kids can appreciate, might be considered the minivan of its day.
The museum, which typically attracts about a thousand parents and kids for Archaeology Day, hopes several real archaeologists will be born today.
"We get a fair amount of kids because they're already interested in archaeology, and then some who may be considering careers in the sciences in the future but may not yet know the way they want to go," Richardson said. "And it's especially great that we're introducing them to the topic."
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