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The USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum has reopened their doors since the end of August and guests are welcomed to come check out all the unique displays.

“Although the museum is reopened to the public and we are required to wear masks in the public spaces there due to the Governor’s mask mandate in state facilities. There are some things that are closed or modified slightly. For example, our what we call Prehistoric Explorer Corner, which is our children’s activity area it’s closed simply because we can’t sanitize it frequently enough to make it available,” said Museum Director and Curator of Archaeology, Dr. Tim Riley. There are other activities that have been altered to help keep the public and staff safe.

“A lot of the touchable exhibits have either been modified so that they’re no longer touchable. For example, we had an exhibit that was about how Native Americans used plants for their food, for their medicine, materials, it was a flip pages, that has been turned into a digital display. We’ve also either removed touchable objects, touchable specimens, or we’ve put up signs asking you to not touch,” said Dr. Riley. The museum staff is also going through the entire museum and cleaning common touched areas quite often during the day.

Museum officials have started hosting online lecture series that folks can join since they are unable to host any meetings at the museum at this time. “We’ve actually started and online lecture series. You can find it on Facebook either through the Castle Valley Archology Society or through the Prehistoric Museum where once a month, generally the third Thursday of the month at 7:00 pm we’re going to have an expert archeologist or sometimes other fields come and talk to us about interesting topics related either to Utah archology or more broadly global,” said Dr. Riley. The next lecture series will feature Ron Root the former State Archeologist who will discuss the Walker Wars. All of the lectures will be archive and can be found on the Facebook pages.

There are some changes to the visitation of the museum. Visitation is capped at 60 visitors, and they will be required to wear a mask. All visitors will share their contact information and confirm they have no symptoms of Covid-19. Guests will be required to follow directional guidelines throughout the museum and maintain social distance with those outside of their group. Their operation hours are Monday through Saturday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.

To learn more about the events taking place at the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum visit their website at https://eastern.usu.edu/museum/index

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