At the library

There is a display of Indian artifacts at the Rensselaer library in the display case by the genealogy area. It contains items from a local collector.

 I am not sure what dates the Paleolithic refers to. Paleolithic is stone age, and before the arrival of Europeans, the Americas were still in the stone age with tools made not from metal but from stones (and sticks and bone and fired clay).

 The items are labeled so that there is some information about each. Experts could tell more, but even they do not know the full story behind many of the items (such as what banner stones were used for, a topic on which the local collector has written a paper published in an archaeological journal.)

 We think of the Indians as using bows and arrows, but for most of the thousands of years in which the Americas were inhabited, the primary hunting weapon was the atlatl.

The artifacts should remind us most of the human history of this area is only sketchily known.

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The demolition of the building on Front Street east of Washington is complete. This was the view on Sunday. The lot will be used for parking for CTS Tire. That will require some fill and a retaining wall because the land slopes down to the river. The additional parking will mean that customers of CTS Tire will not have to use the city lot across the street.