Got something cool?

The Billings Curation Center will have its seventh annual Artifact Road Show Thursday, April 13 from 1 to 4 p.m.

Greg Liggett, a geologist, discusses his findings of an artifact brought in during a previous year' show. 

“We want to help the public identify objects that they have in their own personal collections,” says David K. Wade, Museum Curator for the BLM Billings Curation Center.

The public is invited to bring in their artifacts, big or small, to be analyzed by a panel of experts from federal, state, and private businesses. There will be regional experts including archaeologists, historians, paleontologists, geologists and more on hand to look over the artifacts brought in and, discuss the purpose, time period and story behind any objects they can identify.

The Billings Curation Center is the main repository for artifacts recovered from activities such as university research, digging for well pads or oil and gas actions that have taken place on federal lands.

The show is co-hosted by the Montana Bureau of Land Management.

The center also keeps artifacts for about a dozen other agencies. “We keep, not just for BLM, but a lot of federal and state agencies as they are operating under the same set of laws and they need a place to store their things too,” explains Wade, “And throughout the years of doing this it’s become a major archaeology research resource for the Northern Plains.”

The Artifact Road Show will be at the Bureau of Land Management State Office, 5001 Southgate Drive, Billings, MT 59101, a federal secure building. Visitors need a photo ID to gain access to the building and road show.