Learn more about Spiro Mounds, a prehistoric site in eastern Oklahoma with remarkable preservation, whose discovery in the 1930s was described as "King Tut's Tomb in the Arkansas Valley."  Known for producing masterpieces of ancestral Native American art, mysteries that continue to puzzle and provoke controversy among archaeologists today, and a series of enduring legends that figure in both the scholarly literature and fiction, Spiro remains a source of fascination and study.

Recent work by a group of scholars, including iconographical analysis of Spiroan art, geophysical studies of the Spiro Mounds, and archival reanalysis of excavation records and stories from the initial looting of the site by the so-called "Pocola Mining Company” have revealed surprising new details about Native American occupations in the region in the final centuries before European contact.

Participants will join Dr. Alex Barker, Director of the Arkansas Archeological Survey and an anthropological archaeologist, who has worked on both the iconography and compositional sourcing of objects from Spiro, in exploring how much is still being learned from objects excavated nearly a century ago.