The Emergence of Man

This last project began with a 10:00 p.m. sit-down brainstorming session on the floor of the "Emergence" gallery between museum director Ellie Caston, project designer Michael Lewis, and myself.   We agreed that we needed to do something to make people stop in the room and take notice of the important information so many people had worked so hard to collect and record.  After about an hour of hashing out suggestions we settled on a basic idea for a mural and a different approach to the exhibit cases.  My ideas had been heavily influenced by my discussions with Florence Drew of Southwest Museum Services, which made her the best choice for a partner in the execution of the exhibits.

 The most prominent case in Emergence  

Before

 Essentially these exhibit cases needed more color and "oomph", something to make people stop and take notice. 
 A side case and attendant text

The Mural 

The "photo" in the center is of the site of the Horn Rock Shelter #2,(so named because it was the second rock shelter to be excavated on the property of Mr. Horn).  Then we added images from the excavations of both the north and south ends of the shelter.  We also added a page of photographic notes including a most peculiar slide.  Finally included is an image of a 9,700 year-old paleo-indian burial.  The effect is good enough that people can be seen trying to touch the painted "photos" from time to time. 

Trompe L'oeil Mural in Progress


 
  We decided to do photo montages in the exhibit cases that would show actual archaeological work in progress. In that way we could contrast the archaeological methods used at the Horn Rock Shelter and those used at an open field site called the Stone Site.
 Florence Drew, who has undergraduate and graduate degrees in archaeology, went through all the available photos and chose twelve for each side.  These we printed up on plain paper and mounted as you see here to check them for size.
 Design stage of photo montage

The Stuff

An important consideration in the stratigraphic model was showing that in some layers there would be lots of stuff left by people.  In others there would be very little. In the majority of soil layers there is none.  Here Ms. Drew carves spaces in the nearly finished model for artifacts.  The model was based on  actual records of soil layers at the Horn Rock Shelter.  The artifacts we placed were of the types found in corresponding soil layers at that site.

    Creating spaces for artifacts
Mural and Stratigraphic Model, finished

Now

As one enters the Emergence of Man gallery this is what one sees today.  People stop, take a look, and, hopefully, learn a little about both the early human presence in Central Texas and the scientific process by which we are able to reveal the evidence of that presence.

Ellie Caston inspects Horn Rock photo montage

Photo montages 

now show some of the excavation process and help museum visitors to understand the extraordinarily careful process by which the display artifacts were collected and, more importantly, recorded.

A genuine thrill for us all was to have The Horn Rock Shelter's lead archaeologist (he requested we not use his name) come by to inspect the exhibits based so heavily on his work.  He expressed one disappointment.  While I had shown photos of both him and Robert Forrester, the primary excavator of the north end of the Horn Rock Shelter, I had failed to put up an image of his mentor, Frank Watt, who had also worked on the south end.  It was not an intentional omission.  I simply had no good photo from which to work.
That will be fixed soon.
  Photo by Florence Drew



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