March 24, 1999

Contact Eliza Schmidkunz (541) 346-5083 or John R. Crosiar 346-3135

Source: Dennis Jenkins (541) 346-3026; djenkins@oregon.uoregon.edu

EUGENE–Musty mummies, slithering snakes and nasty Nazis? They have never slowed a dig for Dennis Jenkins, but this University of Oregon Museum of Natural History archaeologist could give Indiana Jones some good advice on how to cope with such mishaps.

Jenkins will share his hard-earned lessons in a slide show and talk, "Real Life Adventures of Archaeology," at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 3 with Indiana Jones fans who attend a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" extravaganza at Regal Springfield Cinemas, 2005 Olympic St., Springfield. The special event includes demonstrations, prizes and an 11 a.m. showing of the 1981 movie, starring Harrison Ford as Jenkins’ imaginary counterpart.

Springfield Cinemas also is offering prizes of movie memorabilia to children who answer questions about Oregon archaeology by visiting the UO Museum of Natural History, 1680 E. 15th Ave., any time during museum hours–noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday

Jenkins was a member of the team that discovered North America’s oldest house, a charred 9,500-year-old structure near Newberry Crater in Central Oregon. He will talk about the work of archaeologists in the Great Basin area of Oregon. He will show slides of UO Archaeology Field School students in the Fort Rock Basin, where the ancient sagebrush sandals, known as "Oregon’s Oldest Running Shoes," were found.

"I will try to explain how an archaeologist searches for tiny clues to past behavior, For example, we study old seed and food remains, and charcoal and animal bones. We can tell what ancient Native Americans ate and how they hunted and cooked. We study burnt houses–we can actually reconstruct what the house was made out of," Jenkins says.

"We find many arrowheads and old tools made of obsidian," Jenkins continues. "We can tell what volcano the obsidian came from. And, we know that water works its way into this volcanic rock and changes the rock in certain ways. Now we can look at very thin slices of the obsidian and see the chemical changes made by the water. This tells us how old it is."

An archaeologist since 1975, Jenkins is now co-director of the UO Archaeology and Geoarchaeology Field School and on the faculty of the UO Museum of Natural History. In addition to the field school research and Newberry Crater investigations he will discuss at the April 3 event, he also has worked on the Fort Irwin Archaeological Project in the Mojave Desert of southern California.

"I am a field research archaeologist in general and I study the Great Basin area of Oregon in particular," Jenkins explains. "I have been paid to do archaeology since 1975, and I became an archaeologist because I absolutely loved looking for artifacts and trying to understand what happened at a site, especially what effect cultural happenings had on the people who lived at a particular site or region."

For more information about the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" event, call (541) 726-0230 or the UO Museum of Natural History, 346-3024.

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