Marilyn Knapp retired as the liaison between the Survey and the Arkansas Archeological Society (AAS) on December 31, 2022, concluding ten and a half years of service. Her commitment to Arkansas archeology goes back even further, as she has been a member of the Society since 1995 and helped with excavations across the state before coming to work for us. Over her years as the Survey/Society Liaison, Marilyn oversaw the successful completion of 7 summer Training Programs, 10 Annual Meetings (2 of them virtually due to Covid), and 9 Archeology Months. She was always a smiling face for Society members as they came to check in for the Training Program or Annual Meeting and behind the scenes she organized and planned these events and wrangled all of the other people involved to make them successful. She came full circle this year with her first and last Society Annual meetings being hosted in Conway.
As a Society member, Marilyn was instrumental in creating the northwest Arkansas Ko-ko-ci Chapter of the Society. Marilyn also completed most of the Certification Program. She worked her way up from helping in the field and lab to supervising an excavation area during a few different Training Programs over the years (Grandview Prairie, Historic Washington, and Oden to name a few). At this point, she only has to complete her capstone project to be one of only a few people to have completed the program in it’s history. Her project focused on an area that she supervised during the Grandview Prairie excavations in 2001.
Having been with the Society for a long time, hearing Marilyn reminisce about Training Programs past is always a blast. And with her leadership, the programs have continued to be a great place of learning and comradery for Society members and Survey staff alike.
In her personal life, Marilyn has 5 grandchildren and is becoming a movie star! You can see her in the movie, Alone, and the sequel, Lonely Echoes. We hope to see her at more Society events in the future as a participant, getting back to just enjoying archeology, and in more and bigger movies going forward. Enjoy your retirement, Marilyn, and thanks for all your years of hard work bringing the Survey and Society together.
