Western Carolina University Director of Cherokee Studies Jane Eastman works at a project site. Photo courtesy of UNC Asheville.

From UNC Asheville, shared Sept. 14:

Jane Eastman, director of Cherokee Studies at Western Carolina University, will deliver the Curtis Holliday lecture at UNC Asheville, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, in the Ramsey Library.

Western Carolina University Director of Cherokee Studies Jane Eastman works with students on her project site. Photo courtesy of UNC Asheville.

Eastman’s current project is an Early Qualla (14th-15th century) community in Hayesville, N.C. She and her students have helped build an outdoor exhibit at the Clay County Museum that includes art, interpretive information, and a full-scale 18th century Cherokee homestead. Eastman’s lecture, “Archaeology and the Small Town: Cultural and Community Revitalization in Western North Carolina,” is free and open to the public.

The lecture is co-sponsored by the WNC chapter of the (Archaeological Institute of America) and UNC Asheville’s Department of Classics. For more information, contact Laurel Taylor at (828) 251-6290 or visit classics.unca.edu.

Editor’s note: WCU’s website says that Eastman, who is also an associate professor of anthropology, “received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests include Native American societies of the Southeastern United States, particularly community organization, gender relations, pottery analysis, and culture contact studies.”

According to the site, Eastman “teaches on the origins of civilization, world prehistory, Indians of North America, method and theory in archaeology and bioanthropology, archaeological field and analytical methods, and hopes to soon add courses on Southeastern (U.S.) archaeology and gender studies. She is working with Roseanna Belt, director of Western’s Cherokee Center, on a Cherokee Language Preservation Grant from the Cherokee Cultural Preservation Foundation and is an active member of the Cherokee Language Revitalization Committee. In the summer of 2003 she was elected president of the North Carolina Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association.”

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Kathleen O'Nan is a contributing reporter to Carolina Public Press.

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