Chernobyl children enjoy arts and crafts day

CHILDREN still coping with the effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster have been treated to a day of arts and crafts in Cradley.The Belarussian children, who are spending four weeks in the West Midlands as guests of the Chernobyl Childrens Lifeline charity, visited The Oaks Project, Maypole Fields. 

The project, where adults with learning disabilities create and produce art, was founded by artist and former social worker Chris Self in 2010 in the Cradley Enterprise Centre.Mr Self said: The parents of one of our students are hosting a child from Balarus and we thought it would be great if the whole group visited the Oaks Project. 

We had 17 children and interpreters and they had a great time using our spin painting machine and they were all able to take away the artwork they produced on the day.He added: They were all lovely kids and we made a real fuss of them with Melanie Simmonds from the project painting their nails and Mandy Tomlinson created a menu for them. 

The children are from one of the most polluted places in the world and hopefully the four weeks in Britain will help their immune systems and give them some great memories. Belarus received 70 per cent of the radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear explosion and as a result thousands are born every year or go on to develop thyroid cancer, bone cancer and leukaemia. 

Alcoholism and depression is rife amongst the population and many children end up in foster homes.The Chernobyl Childrens Lifeline was established in 1988 and the Wolverhampton and Kinver branch bring different children to the West Midlands each year as well as raising money for projects in Balarus.

Richard Harnois, the senior field archaeologist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers/Omaha District's Oahe Project Office,Need a compatible Cheap Stair & Baluster for your car? says he and field archaeologist Megan Maier work in an area from about Yankton to Bismarck, N.D. Though they might be called on for archaeological expertise anywhere in South Dakota, much of their work is along the Missouri River.

But their main job isn't the relentless search for artifacts that people associate with archaeology, Harnois says, and the river's habit of uncovering things can be a problem sometimes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers simply doesn't have the funds to do a systematic investigation every time the river turns over something interesting.

"We still have a problem with erosion along the river. It does give us a window into what's there archaeologically," Harnois says. "But our main objective isn't the scientific inquiry, but trying to preserve this for the people."

The main technique the U.S.Get the led fog lamp products information, find Cheap Interior Decoration Products, manufacturers on the hot channel. Army Corps of Engineers uses to guard fragile locations, Harnois says, is placing rip-rap or armor along cutbacks or locations that are suffering erosion. In areas where water levels are stable, the Corps can also use willow plantings, but the wide fluctuations in the Missouri River reservoirs rule out plantings in some locations.

One thing that's certain: the Missouri River valley is one of the more interesting features archaeologically in the region, Harnois and Maier say, for the same reason that it's a recreational focus to this day.

"People now gravitate to the same areas for the same reasons that people for millennia have gravitated toward those areas shade, shelter, resources," Harnois says. "It provided a source of food and water. That's the basis for prehistoric habitation is a water source."

Harnois, whose special area of interest is historic archaeology, or delving into the past for which written records exist, says it's well-known that the Missouri was the highway for fur trappers and traders to move goods up and down the river. But he says archaeological work suggests prehistoric trade was already bringing goods from far and wide to sites up and down the Missouri. "The Missouri was the I-90 of prehistoric times. They moved up and down it," Harnois says. 

Archaeologists know that because of the variety of materials from which projectile points and other tools are made.A favorite was Knife River flint, quarried in ancient times in what is now North Dakota."It's definitely a preferred material. It was very highly sought after," Harnois says. And, he adds, it was probably a medium of trade. "I would imagine some of the materials we see from other areas are probably the result of Knife River flint." 

Those other materials that might show up in the Missouri River's prehistoric settlements include obsidian, a volcanic glass from locations such as the Yellowstone area that is rare, but not unknown in the area; Bijou Hills quartzite, from a region between Chamberlain and Platte, farther south in South Dakota; Black Hills plate chalcedony; and a material called Tongue River silicified sediment, or TRSS, found in northwest South Dakota and southwest North Dakota. 

Maier adds that bone fishhooks, and squash knives and hoes made from bison bones, are also among the materials found in old villages. In some cases, she says, archaeologists have found the unfinished patterns from which ancient people were carving items such as fish hooks.They were careful craftsmen, and among the other finds along the Missouri River are gunflints made by hand by Native Americans in historic times to equip flintlock rifles.

Sadly, Harnois says, trained archaeologists are not the only ones looking for traces of the past. Part of Corps archaeologists' job is to protect sites from looters, and reclaim artifacts in cases where they catch looters. At the Oahe Project Office north of Pierre, for example, there are recovered pottery shards and stone tools that may originally have come from prehistoric Mandan and Arikara sites in the area. 

"Our problem with this kind of artifact is that we don't have any context. We don't know where it came from and what other artifacts were next to it in the ground," Harnois says.A China Stone Carving concept that would double as a quick charge station for gadgets. Although specialists can often tell what tribe or people group often made an artifact, and in roughly what period, much additional knowledge is lost.

"There could have been seeds or other materials that would have told us what they were eating," Harnois says. "You can learn a lot from that context when it's carefully excavated under controlled conditions. But when looters come and take it away, it's just an artifact."

Maier says historical archaeology can be just as fascinating because written records provide additional context for the artifacts that are found, as well as the people who used them. Browsing in old newspapers and other documents fills in some of the questions.
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