Brad Lepper standing in the doorway of the Slater Memorial Museum.
The Slater Memorial Museum in Norwich, Connecticut recently offered the Ohio Historical Society a collection of ancient tools and ornaments, which originally had been collected in central Ohio during the 19th century. The Ohio material was a part of the Edmund Indian Collection, which included “relics that have been found in all parts of the country.” The Slater Museum had decided that these materials no longer served its mission and rightly concluded that the Ohio Historical Society would welcome them home. Last month I had the opportunity to visit their beautiful museum and pick up the two boxes of Ohio treasures.
Selection of stone tools from the Slater Memorial Museum originally found in Columbus, Ohio.
Many of the artifacts can be attributed only to Ohio, but many others have more specific information about where in Ohio they were found. The majority come from Franklin County and many are from Columbus.
Although these wonderful artifacts would be more valuable from a scientific perspective if we knew exactly where they had been found, they nevertheless provide many exhibit-quality examples of the tools and ornaments used by the ancient Native American cultures of Ohio.
We thank the Slater Memorial Museum for graciously offering to return this collection to Ohio!
One of the most interesting artifacts in the collection is this rectangular, two-holed gorget with delicate geometric designs engraved upon it. It dates to somewhere between the Late Archaic and late Middle Woodland periods.
