On April 8 Dr. Julie Stein, the Burke Museum executive director, will present a lecture at the Lopez Center. The presentation is entitled “Big Sites, Small Sites, and Settlement Patterns in the San Juan Islands.” It will be primarily concerned with the results of a radiocarbon dating project in the San Juan Islands, a project now running for five years.

Stein and field technician Amanda Taylor will share what they have learned about when and where prehistoric Native Americans lived on the islands, why the number of archaeological sites may have changed over time, and the impact of erosion and public outreach on addressing these questions.

Taylor, in describing the vision of the talk, said: “People will get a perspective on the ways that archaeologists come up with and explore ideas about the past by studying shell, artifacts, and even sediment. There are many other ways to understand the past, but our approach is scientific. We come up with a hypothesis, an idea, about prehistoric lifeways and then we see if the “data” (dirt, shell, radiocarbon dates) support that idea.”

Donations are encouraged. For more info, contact Mark Thompson-Klein at lopezmuseum@rockisland.com