2015 Awards

2015 Public Service Awardees

Virginia Jensen, in recognition of her donation of a large artifact collection to the Illinois State Museum in 2015 of both prehistoric and historic items that she and her (then) husband collected from the surface of the Crawford Farm site in the 1950s and 1960s. The historic-period material is especially important as it contains a number of artifacts associated with the late 1700s/early 1800s Sac that are not represented in the University of Illinois collection from that site. Nominate by Mark Wagner.

Ray Druhot, now retired from Illinois Department of Natural Resources, was responsible for creating the web service for access to the Illinois Inventory of Archaeological and Paleontological Sites. In addition, he was a member of the Illinois State Museum staff when the program to transform the Illinois Archaeological Survey site file into the Illinois Inventory was launched. Ray's contributions deserve considerable appreciation; in short, unprecedented access to cultural resource data has revolutionized Illinois archaeology in general, and cultural resource management in particular.

Mary Margaret Harris and Cynthia Knutilla, and their families, in recognition of their generous donation of their father's (John Cooper) collection to the Illinois State Museum–Dickson Mounds. This exceptional collection is comprised of more than 1,500 objects, nearly all of which he collected in Fulton County. A portion of the collection is the centerpiece of a permanent exhibit on the importance of artifact collectors in furthering archaeological research and the considerable value of responsible collecting.