Presentation: The Baker Museum at Rollins: Relics and Tales from a Forgotten Collection

Winter Park, FL – December 16, 2019 - The Central Florida Anthropological Society (CFAS) is pleased to announce a presentation on The Baker Museum at Rollins: Relics and Tales from a Forgotten Collection. The presentation will be held December 16, 2019, 7:00 pm, at the Winter Park Public Library, 460 E. New England Avenue, Winter Park, FL 32789. This is a free public program. About the Presentation After a devastating fire destroyed the original Rollins Museum in 1909, the college made a broad public appeal for donations of “museum quality” specimens. Individuals and institutions across the country responded generously, and by 1920 more than 10,000 samples and artifacts had been received, forming the nucleus of the Thomas R. Baker Museum of Natural History. Dr. Gilmore will relate the story of the eclectic Baker Museum collection by highlighting a selection of its remaining artifacts, which collectively span five continents and more than 5,000 years of human history. The disparate origins and trajectories of these individual works help to illuminate a remarkable entanglement of historical events, characters, and objects whose paths intersected at Rollins in the early 20th century. About the Speaker Dr. Zack Gilmore is an anthropological archaeologist with diverse interests in the pre-Columbian societies of Florida and the broader American Southeast. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department and Archaeology Program Coordinator at Rollins College. He earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Florida in 2014 before coming to Rollins in 2016. He teaches courses on a wide range of topics in archaeological method and theory and North America's pre-Columbian societies. He also directs the Central Florida Archaeological Field School Program and supervises student internships related to the curation of collections in the Rollins College Archaeology Lab. His research focuses on understanding the social structure and interaction of Florida shell mound communities during the Late Archaic Period (ca. 5700–3500 B.P.), a subject he approaches primarily by studying the crafting and exchange of early pottery. He is author of Gathering at Silver Glen: Community and History in Late Archaic Florida (University Press of Florida, 2016) and co-editor of The Archaeology of Events: Cultural Change and Continuity in the Pre-Columbian Southeast (University of Alabama Press, 2015).