Linda Gould has a pretty diverse collection of old rocks, stones and fossils. One item in particular – small, brown and craggy – has always looked familiar.
“When I saw it, I said, ‘That looks like a fossilized piece of poop,’” she said. “And that’s what it is!”
Gould found out for sure after having her fecal fossil analyzed at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History’s 19th annual Identification Day. Identification Day is both informational and informal. There are no scientific tests or appraisals, just local specialists, examining items such as rocks, antiques, fabrics, fossils, baskets and bones, and telling their owners about their ages, uses and origins.
“It’s been very interesting. I’ve been meaning to do this since I moved down here,” said Gould, who moved to Eugene from Olympia, Wash. She also brought a 300 million-year-old piece of coral she bought at a rock show and oxytropidoceras ammonite fossils – “it’s like a big shell, similar to a nautilus” – she found on a fishing trip in Dallas, Texas.
“We get calls almost every day from people who wonder if an expert can look at their item,” said Ann Craig, the museum’s tour coordinator. “Knowing the public has things they want evaluated, it’s easier for everyone to bring all the experts in on one day.”
Stationed throughout the museum on Identification Day, there were separate tables: textiles, paleontology and geology, rocks and fossils, and a fourth where people learned proper care for their items.
“One of the goals of the day is to teach people how to take care of items they have, and also to teach people when it’s OK to pick things up off the ground and when it’s not,” Craig said.
She added that many people may not realize that while it’s OK to take rocks from public lands, artifacts such as arrowheads should be left alone for research purposes.
During Identification Day’s three hours, people brought in a variety of items, including a reptilian fossil bone that looked like a piece of petrified wood, a set of arrowheads and small blades from Saudi Arabia, Mayan pottery, slate knives from Alaska and a large magnetic rock that may have been a meteorite.
“We have everything from stone bowls from the Willamette Valley to what looks like a plains-style war club,” said Patrick O’Grady, an archaeologist with the museum.
Looking around her mother’s basement a few years ago, Kristie Barsby of Springfield came across a mortar and pestle, a stone bowl and stick typically used for crushing and mixing substances, that belonged to her grandfather.
“I just know that when I was a kid, he always used to go river rocking,” said Barsby, whose mortar and pestle were so large she wheeled them into the museum on a hand truck.
Barsby brought the mortar and pestle to Identification Day because she was curious about their origins; she knew that before settling near River Road in Eugene her grandfather had lived in California and Idaho.
Barsby, who learned that the items were used by Native Americans in the Willamette Valley, said she inherited her grandfather’s fascination with rocks.
“I’m a river rock baby. Give me a bucket and sit me down for a couple of hours,” she said, laughing.
“I like things that are different; maybe I’ll plant something in it,” she added, gesturing toward the mortar.
O’Grady said it’s very common for people to arrive at Identification Day with things family members had collected.
“Everybody’s got treasures that have been sitting in the closet that they know little about,” he said. “Often the memories that were with those (items) have disappeared with the ages. What we try to do is try and help people repossess those family memories.”
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