The Menard County Historical Society will have its monthly meeting and program this Sunday, November 20 at the Menardville Museum at 2:00p.m. This month’s program will be in entitled “Late Prehistoric Peoples of the Western Edwards Plateau” and will be presented by one of the region’s most distinguished scholars on the subject, Dr. John Wesley Arnn III.
A native Texan, Dr. Arnn served in the U.S. Army in Europe before returning to his home state to earn a bachelor degree in anthropology from Texas Tech in 1989 and a master degree in anthropology from UTSA in 1998. He then went on to earn his doctorate degree from the University of Kentucky in 2007. He is a doctor of philosophy in anthropology and the author of Land of the Tejas: Native American Identity and Interaction in Texas, A.D. 1300 to 1700 (UT Press).
Dr. Arnn’s book will be available for purchase at the MCHS meeting this Sunday, November 20. Courtesy photo.
(UT Press).
Dr. Arnn has spent many hours researching prehistoric people in Menard County but his expertise is much more farreaching. For over thirty years, he has studied the indigenous cultures of the Americas from the pre-Clovis period through the 20th century. His scholarship includes field work in Central and South America researching the advanced Incan, Moche, Chimu, and Maya civilizations. It is, however, his investigations of early human activity in North America, particularly the complex and diverse cultures of prehistoric and early historic Central Texas and Menard County that will be featured in Sunday’s program.
Dr. Arnn’s holistic approach at anthropological studies includes archeological, historical, ethnographic, and environmental data. That, along with both his intimate knowledge of Menard County and his experience conducting investigations throughout the Americas, provides Dr. Arnn with the knowledge to shed some light on those many artifacts and Native campsites found throughout our local area. If you’ve ever pondered Menard and the San Saba Valley within a greater context of the peopling of the New World continents, then this is a program worth attending.
The following is a review of Land of the Tejas by John Wesley Arnn III on Amazon’s website (where it gets a fivestar rating): “Arnn’s study…debunks long held misconceptions of pre-history…while proposing a provocative new approach to the process by which we attempt to reconstruct the history of humanity.”
Dr. Arnn’s book will be available for purchase at the museum on Sunday. MCHS programs are open to the general public at no charge and all are welcome. Annual memberships in our organization are available for only $7 per individual or $10 for a family. For more information, please contact the organization at 325-456-2644 or 325-4561884.