Friday, February 26, 2016

Greetings from Niles!



Hello everyone! This past Monday and Tuesday, Julie Stein from the University of Washington came to visit Western Michigan. She is an alumna of the Department of Geosciences and Anthropology who now works as a geoarchaeologist out of the University of Washington and is the director of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. On Monday, Julie was greeted with bagels by graduate students of the anthropology department and she gave two lectures. First she spoke about gender in the sciences and later in the day she spoke about the archaeology of the Lewis and Clark expeditions. On Tuesday Julie, Dr. Nassaney, Austin, and I made a trip down to Niles to show Julie where we work. We started out by touring the floodplain, stopping at Father Allouez’s cross, the commemorative Fort St. Joseph boulder, and then went up to the Lyne Site. We then headed over to the Fort St. Joseph Museum and Chapman House for a tour there. We ended the day by grabbing a bite to eat at the Nugget in downtown Niles. We exchanged stories about Fort St. Joseph and Julie’s experiences and I learned some pretty interesting things from her. I enjoyed spending the day in Niles and I’m getting excited to be back this summer!

-Liz Mantyck