This week, UNC Chapel Hill announced they have launched a new interactive virtual museum all about N.C.’s ancient history – starting from ~15,000 years ago. Ancient North Carolinians: A Virtual Museum of North Carolina Archaeology is the result of decades of research on N.C.’s indigenous populations and past and contains resources for students, teachers, and anyone interested in our state’s ancient history.
DYK: North Carolina is home to the largest population of Native Americans east of the Mississippi River.
Most of the artifacts available online were collected + catalogued by UNC’s Research Laboratories of Archaeology (RLA), which curates over 8 million artifacts and 60,000 photographs + slides.
Here’s what you can explore in the virtual museum –
- 3D, 360º images of artifacts, including arrowheads, pottery shards, bones + more, organized by object type + time period.
- Video clips from programs exploring our area’s indigenous history.
- Timelines for pre-colonial and historic periods explaining how researchers break up archaeological periods.
- Info about modern tribes and their history in N.C., as well as contemporary urban Indian organizations. As of the 2000 U.S. Census, there were almost 100,000 American Indians in the state, including one federally recognized and seven state recognized tribes, plus four Urban Indian organizations.
- Classroom Resources for K-12 teachers and students, including activity guides + lesson plans.
- Driving routes for the entire state with an emphasis on historical sites. Each map includes directions and info on popular sites in the area.
- And, there’s a whole section on shipwrecks off the N.C. + S.C. coasts, complete with interactive Google Map + a history of their excavations.
We looked into our own local tribes + artifacts associated with them through the museum’s “Archaeology in Your County” feature. This ongoing part of the project will be filled in more as the RLA photographs objects from all 100 counties in the state.
Objects from Wake County include archaic spear points + several other types were found in Durham and Orange counties.
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