Submitted by Rita Elliott (rfelliott@windstream.net)

The Society for Georgia Archaeology is pleased to announce a recent birth after a long labor. The new arrival is a beautiful, baby bus. ArchaeoBus arrived on November 21, 2008, measuring 16’ long and weighing several tons. Proud Godparents include the ArchaeoBus Committee. These baby pictures show the new bus, swaddled in its designer ‚“wrap” created by John Burns of jcbD. Have you ever seen a more beautiful baby? Thanks, John, for your graphics and your pro-bono work.

Committee member Tom Gresham has been the driving force in the rebirth of the bus. Tom virtually single-handedly prepped the old bookmobile, which included not only cleaning the exterior, but the labor-intensive job of scraping and peeling old vinyl letters off the outside of the former bookmobile. Tom also made all the arrangements with the firm that applied the wrap to the exterior of the vehicle, taking it from a bookmobile to SGA’s new ArchaeoBus. As you may recall, Tom obtained the grant from the Georgia Transmission Corporation (GTC) to pay for the wrap. Thanks Tom for all your hard work. And thanks again to the GTC for this important component to the bus.

We expect ArchaeoBus to grow up soon, going to school for the first time in early 2009 when she will meet large numbers of school children participating in her educational programming. As this newsletter goes to press, ArchaeoBus Committee members are drafting the curriculum and preparing to purchase technology items for the bus. In addition they are designing the bus interior to include a small exhibit area and a ‚“Save Our Sites” (SOS) area to record and document archaeological sites from across the state, from information gathered by collectors and researchers.

Stay tuned for further updates as SGA’s little ArchaeoBus grows up. You can expect a first report card in the next issue of The Profile.

Posted online on Saturday, December 20th, 2008