The Verde Valley Archaeology Center opened its new 10,850-square-foot facility in Camp Verde this past winter. This will be the Center’s fourth home in Camp Verde since it began in 2010. “The museum part will be four times the size it is now, and our curation area will be four times the size it is now,” says Kenneth Zoll, executive director of the Center. “It will be dramatically different, and it’s substantially better.”
Museum-goers can look forward to about 12 dynamic exhibits. “Every exhibit will be interactive,” says Kenneth. “Museums today, they’re getting away from just display cases with static stuff to look at. You need to get people involved.” Specific exhibits that you can look forward to include a rotating or a traveling exhibit. When the museum opens, this exhibit will feature meteorites that came from Meteor Crater outside of Flagstaff. The exhibit will cover how the meteorites were found, how they were used and how they got there. Another exhibit is the Blue Valley, which is what the Native Americans called the Verde Valley. Blue is found naturally throughout the Verde Valley, and the exhibit will focus on minerals used by prehistoric cultures. “Azurite, malachite, copper, all the other minerals that come in from the area and turquoise have a blue aspect to it,” says Kenneth. “Both the Hopi and the Zuni referred to this as the Blue Belt.”
Another highlight includes 50,000 items – the largest collection the Center possesses – from late painter Paul Dyck, who resided in Rimrock. The massive collection includes textiles, weaving equipment, clothing and needles that came from a cliff dwelling on his property on Beaver Creek. That dwelling had been untouched for about 700 years when Paul found it. “It’s considered the largest single collection ever found on one site that can tell the single best story of what life was like,” says Kenneth. Basha’s also has sponsored an exhibit on prehistoric diet and subsistence. The expanded space will give the Center room to hold classes and lectures. Even with a brand-new building, the Center’s mission remains the same as when it began over a decade ago. “We’re the introduction to all of the archaeology of the Sedona Verde Valley area,” says Kenneth. − Teresa K. Traverse
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