TELL US WHAT YOU THINK
If you had to pick one object that would best tell future historians about us today, what would it be? How do you think our culture will be viewed by future generations? Share your thoughts in an email to edletter@coxohio.com.
Southwest Ohio is rich in Native American history, and Lynn Hanson, vice president of Collections and Research for the Dayton Society of Natural History and the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery, is one of the people who’s most responsible for keeping it alive for people today to study and appreciate. A Springfield resident, she spoke with us about the past — and the future — this week.
Q: Talk about your job and training.
A: You'd think such a long title would cover a lot of things, right? I oversee the work of seven departments — astronomy, anthropology, biology, geology, live animals, Fort Ancient in Warren County and SunWatch Indian village in Dayton. It's certainly never boring. My BA is in anthropology, and I focused on archaeology. In 1999, I got my master's in public history at Wright State, and that covers collections, museum work, archives, and even a bit of records management. So it's very broad.
Q: Anthropology is a broad area of study. For folks unfamiliar, what does it touch upon?
A: It's a lovely field of study, and it's kind of a four-fold approach to understanding people and why they do things. It includes archaeology, the study of cultures that don't exist any more; cultural anthropology, which is the study of cultures different from the one in which you grew up, or you could say, non-Western cultures; physical anthropology, or bio-anthropology, the study of our closest non-human relatives, chimpanzees, gibbons, orangutans, gorillas; and linguistics, the study of how languages have changed over time and locations.
Q: For an archaeologist, this is a pretty rich region, isn’t it?
A: Absolutely. Lots of people think of Ohio as a cultural backwater where we just grow corn and raise cows, but our state is so much more than that. For archaeologists, one of the cool things about Ohio is that what happened here is part of the whole reason why and how archaeology developed into a real science in the United States — because with the Adena and Hopewell and the mound-building cultures, that was a huge question in the 18th and 19th centuries, of who built them? Even Thomas Jefferson excavated a burial mound on his property, and he did a very good job, using strategraphic levels, and all. So Ohio is important from that perspective. But there's also that we have a very long history here — our story doesn't just date from the time when the first European settlers arrived. People have lived here a very long time. When Native American people can come to Fort Ancient and SunWatch and say, we're still here, it's a nice interface between the past and the present.
Q: It seems the history of Native Americans here tends to get grouped into two baskets — prehistoric, and then the wars with white settlers and the relocation. Is that an oversimplification?
A: I don't think so. Archaeologists love to break things into smaller parts so they can understand them more fully, but it does come most simply into pre-contact and post-contact. I think that's partly for the benefit of the general public, who have a tendency, through no fault of their own, to lump anything Native American into the historical period — the John Wayne version, where everybody has feathers, horses, teepees and totem poles. Really, I think it's important for people to know we're still learning things — that we don't know exactly who the historical tribes in Ohio are descended from. There's a foggy area of about 75 years between the Fort Ancient people, who built SunWatch and were prehistoric, and the Shawnee, who were here when whites arrived. And also, there are still hundreds, maybe thousands, of prehistoric sites in Ohio yet to find. And there are probably just as many that have been destroyed.
Q: Destroyed how?
A: Well, just generally over time through sprawl and development. Cincinnati, for instance — it's located where it is because it's a great transportation hub. Native Americans built their villages in the same places for the same reasons, and so there are probably not too many sites left there to find. But there are more than 1,100 archaeological sites in Montgomery County alone. A lot of them are pretty significant, like the site we've been excavating for years near Wegerzyn Gardens MetroPark in north Dayton. It's a late prehistoric site, made by the Fort Ancient culture, the people who built SunWatch. It's smaller than SunWatch, and different in some very interesting ways — such as, they seem to have done less farming there than at SunWatch. We don't know why.
Q: So, are there things we can learn about ourselves today from studying these past cultures?
A: Well, there is the pat answer we often give, which is yes, we can always learn to not repeat the mistakes of the past. But I'm not sure we really do that. If we had looked in this country at the Korean War, we would not have become involved later in Vietnam, or so many of the other conflicts we've had since then. But I think looking at previous cultures and groups is one of the best ways to explore humanity — what it means to be a person, and how these people did it. Until somebody invents a time machine, studying what people left behind is the best way to learn those things. Makes you wonder, 1,000 years from now, what they'll say about us.
Q: I shudder to think.
A: We'll be the milk-jug culture, or at least until everyone gets on board and recycles. It's fun to sit and pipedream about what they'll find in our big trash dumps. But really, one of the things historians wonder about is what will happen in the future to all the records we create today that are born digital. How will they survive and stay alive? That CD may still exist, but what are you going to run it on? That's a scary thing. Museums like ours are trying to convert things to the new technology each time a new wave comes along, and sometimes that works, sometimes not. But we're doing our best to hold back decay for future generations.
Q: So, if you had to pick one object that would best tell future historians about us today, what would it be?
A: Hmm. Tough question. Three years ago, I would have said a book. Any book. But now with fabulous things like Kindles, which hold hundreds of books so easily, I think it would be hard not to choose an object of technology. They're so important now and so ingrained in our lives. I mean, you can't even fix your car anymore without technology, right? So, books are still important, but I guess I'd say a Kindle.
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