EUGENE–On exhibit this millennial winter at the University of Oregon Museum of Natural History is a new exhibit, "Sagebrush, Cedar and Tule," drawn from the museum’s collections that will help visitors unlock the stories told by baskets, sandals, nets and other remarkable items created by native peoples many millennia ago.

Opening to the public on Tuesday, Jan. 11, at the museum, 1680 E. 15th Ave., the exhibit features the oldest shoes in the world–10,000 year-old-sandals found at Fort Rock Cave in Oregon’s high desert–as well as living art created by the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest during the past 150 years. The exhibit will run through Sunday, March 26, in the museum lobby.

Archaeologist Tom Connolly, a prehistoric basketry expert and the museum’s research director, will speak at a grand opening lecture and reception at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 28, in Room 110 of the neighboring Knight Law Center, 1515 Agate St. on the UO campus.

His lecture, "Oregon’s Ancient Basketry," will cover basketry technology and its uses by the Pacific Northwest’s first people. Listeners will discover how people turned bark, roots, stalks and husks into tools, clothes, containers and other complex objects.

Connolly’s lecture will offer an archaeologist’s look at early finds in dry caves and recent finds at wet sites along the coast. It also will explain why those places are the key to the preservation of ancient woven art.

The Jan. 28 lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow at 6:30 p.m. in the museum lobby.

The nearly 100 fiber objects on display in "Sagebrush, Cedar and Tule" include a prehistoric embroidered basket "start"; shoes made of rabbit fur, tule and sage; rabbit and bird nets made of hemp; and other fragments that are thousands of years old. The Museum of Natural History holds one of the world’s most extensive collections of prehistoric basketry, partly because Oregon’s high desert caves and wet coastal estuaries help preserve fragile plant fibers.

Most of the exhibit’s baskets come from the first years of this century, which signaled the end of basketmaking for daily use as mass-produced containers, rope and other utensils and tools became available. Objects on display include elaborate work from Oregon’s four great basketmaking traditions: the Great Basin area, the Columbia Plateau, the Pacific coast, and the Willamette Valley and other interior valleys.

Although most of the items on display are from the past, traditional Northwest basketry is far from a dying art. New museum acquisitions featured in this exhibit include a contemporary Wasco sally bag with images of a human, sturgeon, frog and birds by Pat Courtney Gold, a traditional basketmaker, lecturer and Wasco tribal member.

The work of Bud Lane, a basketmaker from the Confederated Tribes of Siletz (Chetco), is represented by a double-handled basket with traditional Siletz designs.

For thousands of years, winter has been the time for basketmaking and for storytelling in Oregon’s Native cultures. The complexity and sophistication of the cordage, nets, shoes and container fragments found by archaeologists in Oregon show that basketmaking skills and techniques were already well-developed 10,000 years ago.

In the past, basketmaking was a necessary part of everyday life. The first Oregonians gathered and stored their food in baskets, cooked in baskets, ate from baskets and carried their babies in basket cradleboards. Baskets were used as gambling trays, given as gifts and made into hats, shoes and capes. Fiber mats were used for building materials, and fiber cordage was made into nets, ropes and weirs for hunting and fishing. People made basketry bird decoys and basketry boats.

Traditional basketmakers were women, but many young boys learned the techniques during long winters when they stayed close to their elders to help them with their work. Contemporary basketmakers include women and men, most of whom give credit to their grandmothers for teaching them the skills.

Today’s basketmakers work with traditional and new materials using the old techniques to express their own creativity–and to show respect for all the basketmakers who came before them.

The UO Museum of Natural History and Museum Store is open six days a week, from noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Suggested admission contribution is $2. Admission is free for UO students and museum members.

For information, browse http://natural-history.uoregon.edu, send e-mail to mnh@oregon.uoregon.edu or call (541) 346-3024.

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