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ALBANY -- A brass slave collar engraved with the name of a Montgomery County slave owner, and bones from a Chautauqua County elk, more than 170 years old, are among items from the New York State Museum’s collections now on exhibit at the State Museum.

Also on display are items from an archaeological collection including trade goods from the early 1600s found in Saratoga and Washington counties, additional artifacts relating to slavery from Montgomery County, and specimens from a lichen research collection.

The items are showcased adjacent to the research gallery in a rotating display area highlighting recent additions to the Museum’s vast collections of more than 12.5 million specimens and artifacts.

The elk bones are from an adult male elk discovered in the middle of Cassadaga Lake by Gale Smagacz, a recreational kayaker of Lily Dale, N.Y., in August 2006. Elk were native to New York and roamed the state for thousands of years before being hunted to extinction in the 1830s. The elk specimen will be studied to determine how old it is, where and how it lived and died, and how it differs from modern elk.

“The abundance of the elk bones make this specimen a rare find for the State Museum collection,” said Dr. Robert Feranec, the Museum’s curator of Pleistocene Paleontology. “Because of the foresight of Gale Smagacz to donate this specimen we will be able to examine the biology of this animal as it lived in the past and make more informed decisions about New York wildlife in the future.”

Feranec is interested in hearing from others who have fossil vertebrate remains they would like to donate or know where any are located. They may contact him at (518) 474-5819.

Other items from the slavery collection on display include a broadside offering a reward for a runaway slave named Harry, and three letters pertaining to his owners’ unsuccessful efforts to find him. Harry was purchased jointly for $220 by John S. Glenn and John Diefendorff, prominent landowners in Montgomery County. Harry ran away from his Canajoharie masters sometime before March 1806. There is no proof that Glenn required his slaves to wear the collar on display, which is engraved, J.S.

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Glenn/GLENN/Montgomery Co. NY.” Such devices were usually associated with the southern plantation system and not with the type of slavery found in New York State.

Archaeological artifacts on display include items that the Dutch, English and French traded to Native Americans for beaver pelts and other goods, or presented as gifts. These found their way to sites throughout the upper Hudson River drainage after the Dutch began trading near present-day Albany in the early 1600s, first at Fort Nassau and then at Fort Orange.

Several are from the Winney Rift site on Fish Creek in Saratoga County. These include a brass “Jesuit” ring of a type given to converts by French missionaries; brass ornaments and projectile points, possibly made from kettle scrap; a glass trade bead; a European gun flint, indicating the presence of firearms on the site, and a clay pot fragment, dating from 1,000 to 400 years ago.

Also on exhibit are projectile points from the Snook Kill site on Snook Kill Creek in Saratoga County, which date to approximately 3,500 years ago, and a banded slate bannerstone, from a site in Whitehall, dating from 5,000 to 4,000 years ago. This was a weight attached to a spear thrower used prior to the advent of the bow and arrow. There also is an undated mortar stone from the Moses Kill site in Washington County, which was used to hold nuts or seeds while they were being ground into flour with a smaller round stone called a “muller.”

The artifacts were donated to the Museum by Mr. and Mrs. William H. Rice of Fort Edward. The Rices were charter members of the Auringer-Seelye chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association, which facilitated the donation. From about 1950 until the early 1970s the Rices investigated sites from northern Saratoga County to southern Lake Champlain, including many sites no longer available to researchers due to construction or other reasons.

The display also includes specimens of lichens, composite organisms consisting of a fungus and an alga. Scientists are interested in using lichens as indicators of forest health, particularly in woodlots managed for timber production. The collection on display consists of voucher specimens, which are preserved samples of the actual organisms on which research has been conducted. Vouchers are maintained in perpetuity at institutions that hold collections to allow verification of research results by subsequent investigators – an essential element of the scientific method.

There are 25,000 vouchers in the Museum’s lichen collection. Those on display are from a collection of 400 recently donated by Heather T. Root. Root conducted research to determine if the growth patterns of lichens correlated with the management of woodlots for timber production.

The New York State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department, the

University of the State of New York and the Office of Cultural Education. Started in 1836, the Museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the United States. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Further information can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

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