The Verde Valley Archaeology Center and Museum celebrated the grand opening of its Children’s Adventure Room on Saturday, May 28, which included the unveiling of a high-tech augmented reality teaching sandbox.
Children of all ages delighted at unearthing “artifacts” hidden within the simulated desert landscape, complete with slithering rattlesnakes and rolling tumbleweeds.
“It’s interactive and engaging in the sense where all the objects that are virtually projected are within our collections,” Deputy Director Monica Buckle said.
The virtual objects include Sinagua artifacts from the museum’s Dyck Cliff Dwelling Collection.
“The Sinagua are the people that inhabited the Verde Valley so it will be nice for youth to understand that where they’re living is where people lived before as well, and that it’s all interconnected,” Buckle said.
The celebration also included a special presentation of two vibrantly colored scarlet macaws named Sedona and Bonita.
The birds were presented by Kelly Taylor of Sacred Scarlets, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of scarlet macaws, as well as promoting awareness of their history in the desert southwest.
“These [scarlet macaws] are very sacred to the Hopi and many of the pueblo cultures of today,” Taylor said.
Taylor said that some of the earliest bones of scarlet macaws in the United States date back to A.D. 600.
“The ancient people traded salt, copper and macaws,” she said. “The birds were never native here, their native habitat is 1,500 miles away” in the rainforests of Central and South America.
Other activities included a face painting booth with artist Cindy Bennett and a pottery painting table, where children could create their own designs to take home.
Additionally, ethnobotanist Robert Estrada performed corn grinding demonstrations using authentic metates, or mealing stones.
“These metates are over 1,000 years old,” he said. “It’s rare to find them intact.”
Tom Taylor, a financial planner, and his wife Janet Taylor, a retired educator, helped to make the children’s room possible through a donation.
“I’m very involved with Native American culture, Janet Taylor said. “Education is very important to me.”
The children’s room is a permanent addition to the museum, whose exhibitions, celebrate “the incredible and diverse accomplishments of the people” who inhabited what is now the Sedona area and Verde Valley for over 12,000 years.
For the event, admission was free, although donations of any amount were welcome.
Typically, admission costs $10 for adults and $5 for seniors 65 and older. Admission is free to Native Americans, children under 18, active duty military personnel and VVAC and NARM members.
The museum features a variety of collections, including ancient pottery, meteorites, minerals and ores, and artifacts from the Yavapai-Apache Nation.
