Cane River National Heritage Area, Inc. (CRNHA) will open a temporary exhibit entitled, Archaic Material Culture of Northwestern Louisiana at the US Army Corps of Engineers Grand Ecore Visitor Center. The exhibit will explore the various changes in Native American material culture and provide information on how stone tools reflect the changing hunting-and-gathering practices developed during the Archaic period (11,000-3,500 B.P.) in Louisiana.

The beginning of the Archaic period is concurrent with the environmental changes that began around 13,000 B.P. As the climate warmed, the types of animals and plants that people could hunt and harvest changed dramatically. As the mammoth, mastodon, ground sloth, and other megafauna became extinct, Archaic hunters-and-gatherers began to create new stone and bone technologies to help them exploit the different plants and animals. These new tools included that atlatl (dart thrower), smaller stone points created from local stone for the atlatl darts, and ground stone tools such as grinding stones, ground-stone axes, boatstones, atlatl weights, and groundstone plummets.

Archaic Material Culture of Northwestern Louisiana is a partnership with the Williamson Museum of Northwestern State University and will be on public display from March 8 to April 31. For more information on this exhibit contact Steven Fullen, CRNHA Director of Interpretation, at 318.356.555 or at sfullen@canerivernha.org.