Every
neighborhood has one- one of those girls who would rather catch
crawdads in the creek than play with pink hair ribbons. In Team
Paleo, three such girls from three different neighborhoods gathered
together to pursue their interests in critters that creep, dirt from
the depths, and historical evidence that speaks.
During
the summer of 2012 the girls and several siblings attended a natural
history summer camp at Dickson Mounds Museum in Lewistown, Illinois,
where they worked with rangers from federal sites like Chautauqua
Wildlife Refuge and biologists at The Nature Conservancy's UIS
Therkildsen Field Station. The following summer, Dickson Mounds
Museum programming drew the girls back, this time to a camp focused
on archaeology and local history. The girls worked with
anthropologists and archaeologists, graduate students and other
volunteers to dirty their hands in a real dig.
This is where a decade of
fascination with our world and its history became focused and the
girls made a decision. They asked the museum director if they could
volunteer for the museum, both to benefit our community and to gain
educational insight and experience.
To their delight, he said
yes.
Starting in July 2013,
meeting weekly, the girls logged 40some volunteer hours each in five
months, and are now tackling 2014 with vigor. They are learning so
much! Among the many tasks learned, Team Paleo has sorted, cataloged,
and photographed collections of artifacts, cleaned and identified elk
bones, repaired artifacts, and have been introduced to many aspects
of museum function and collection preservation.
Each of the members of Team
Paleo has unique interests and hopes to go into fields of
paleontology, biology, herpetology, engineering, paleoanthropology,
and forensic science. Life is abundant with so many choices. In the
meantime, the girls seek out real life experiences to add to their
portfolios and hope that Team Paleo will be around for a long time to
come.
