SALT LAKE CITY — Utahns with interesting artifacts around the house had the chance to find out more about their treasures Wednesday at the annual "Ask an Archaeologist" event.
"If people have artifacts they found or that grandpa has handed down through the family, and they want to know more about those artifacts, maybe how old they might be, what they might be, how to best take care of them, they can bring them in and they'll be looked at by an archaeologist," said assistant state archaeologist Ron Rood.
Robert Francke and his son Shawn drove in from Vernal with an old vessel Robert's father, a doctor, kept his pipe tobacco in.
"I thought it was a mortar and pestle," something one might expect a doctor to have around the house, Robert said.
But Rood and State Archaeologist Kevin Jones identified the items as a vessel carved out of a soft stone called steatite that is about 400 years old, and a fossilized core of a bison horn — which they said is likely more than 10,000 years old.
Jones and Rood examined baskets, stone tools, other fossilized bones and numerous arrow and spear points.
A few people attending the event did not want to be interviewed or photographed, recalling news stories about people who found themselves in big trouble for possessing antiquities they shouldn't have had.
"We just want to help people understand what they have," Rood said. "If people ask us about what the laws are and things like that about archaeological sites and things, we'll be happy to discuss that with them. But we're not law enforcement. We're not going to arrest anybody or turn anybody in."
And unlike the PBS TV program "Antiques Roadshow," "We don't give appraisals," Rood said. "We're really just about the information about the item itself and what they can do to best take care of it."
The event is part of Utah Archaeology Week, and has been held annually for the past four years. Rood said most people attending have some idea what they have but leave knowing a lot more. Last year a woman from Logan brought in a very unique item. "It was maybe a 10- or 11,000-year-old spear point," Rood said. "They had no idea it was that old."
Dennis Phipps and his wife, Vickie, brought a collection of items they found along the Columbia River in Washington near where the remains of the prehistoric Kennewick Man was discovered.
A piece of fossilized bone was from a mammal, but not a human, and a few rocks turned out to be — rocks. "I thought I had a tomahawk or a club of some kind. It's old, but they think it just happened to be broke naturally," Dennis said without any sign of discouragement.
"I'm going to go look some more," he said at the end of his first trip to Ask an Archaeologist. "I'm loving it. I had a great time."
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