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Nancy Bernard’s Far-Reaching Embrace of Stone Age Tools

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By Anne W. Semmes
Sentinel Features Reporter

Nancy Bernard displays the Stone Age Tools on loan from UCLA's Fowler Museum that she brought to her Prehistoric People Program sponsored by the Bruce Museum that allowed some 75,000 children access to these ancient tools. Photo by Anne W. Semmes
Nancy Bernard displays the Stone Age Tools on loan from UCLA’s Fowler Museum that she brought to her Prehistoric People Program sponsored by the Bruce Museum that allowed some 75,000 children access to these ancient tools. Photo by Anne W. Semmes

Nancy Bernard of Belle Haven has an affinity for old things—very, very old—say, three million years or more. She holds in her hand a simple pebble stone, the first tool used for cutting by pre-humans. Spread before her are numerous Stone Age tools. She picks up a hand axe with “the longest use of any tool,” at 800,000 years.

Nancy can demonstrate how a blade is made from a flint stone. With a “hammer” stone she breaks off a flake from a flint stone that easily cuts through paper. “With these flakes,” she says, “They were scraping off skins at the height of the ice ages.”

Nancy is best known about town as founder and director of the Archaeological Associates of Greenwich (AAG), which features talks by prominent archaeologists at the Bruce Museum. But her fascination with Stone Age tools is far reaching. It began in 1966 in her native Los Angeles, when as a volunteer at UCLA’s Fowler Museum, she was present when 93 crates of Stone Age tools arrived requiring cataloging.

The tools had been collected across Europe, Africa and the Near East by the American-born Sir Henry Welcome, a pharmaceuticals magnate. “UCLA Chancellor Franklin Murphy had discovered the cache of Sir Henry’s Stone Age Tools languishing in the basement of the British Museum,” says Nancy, “and he managed to procure the lot as a donation to UCLA from the British Museum.”

Nancy became a docent and Stone Age tools expert, and with her loaned Fowler Museum Tools, she began sharing her fascination with students in Los Angeles schools.

In 1974, when Nancy and her husband, Alan, moved to Greenwich, she replicated her L.A. docent program as the Prehistoric People Program. With a selection of the UCLA Museum-loaned Stone Age tools and the sponsorship of the Bruce Museum, she then trained some eight docents, who would introduce those tools in time to over 75,000 students in some 30 public and private schools in Greenwich, Westchester, and other Connecticut towns.

“We gave them a unique archaeological experience,” says Nancy. “We would tell the students, ‘These are the Stone Age tools of prehistoric peoples—the real thing. We can pass them if you are very careful, but remember these artifacts are usually behind glass in a museum.”

This December, Nancy’s Prehistoric People Program (PPP) comes to an end after 40 years, with the Bruce Museum ceasing sponsorship of the program.

“The Prehistoric People Program, administered by the Bruce Museum, but developed and taught by Nancy Bernard’s group,” said Susan Ball, deputy director of the Bruce, “was dropped from the local schools’ list of ‘assured experiences’ because of a decrease in interest in the program.” With the drop in demand, says Ball, “the Bruce Museum turned the administration of the program back to the AAG, who in turn decided to discontinue offering it.”

Perhaps it was also that Nancy’s Stone Age tools, being predominantly pre-human European Stone Age tools, didn’t “tie in” with the focus of the Bruce’s science program, notes Corinne Flax, the Bruce’s manager of School and Community Partnerships. “But Nancy really did create something marvelous with her Prehistoric People Program,” says Flax. She adds, “I’m glad she is continuing her Archeological Associates lectures here at the Bruce.”

To capture the classroom experience of Nancy’s program, this reporter visited the last PPP class given a few weeks ago at Western Middle School. There, long-serving docent Neal Konstantin stood before a table filled with the UCLA Museum Stone Age Tools surrounded by sixth graders in Rachel DeBlasio’s classroom. The room was filled with illustrations of the history of early man routinely studied in the public schools’ 6th grade curriculum and thus the appropriate time for the PPP program visit.

Nancy-Bernard-stonesDiscussing Homo habilis and the level of its technology, Konstantin picks up a Pebble Tool. “They used these tools to crush things or break open bones to get at the marrow,” he says, passing around the Pebble Tool. The students take turns handling it, turning it over or just letting it lie in their hand. He explains how Homo habilis was just at the beginning of tool technology.

“I’m an engineer,” he says to the students, “But on my vacations, I do archaeology in the Southeast.”

Introducing Homo erectus he passes out a hand axe citing its age anywhere from 800,000 to 40,000 years old. “These tools are museum pieces from Europe,” he says. Student Chris Gonzalez seems mesmerized holding the hand axe.

Konstantin holds up a Neanderthal scraper. “The Neanderthals have the same brain size as we do today,” he says. “We humans are the winners,” quietly notes student Emma Phillips. “We have the best attributes,” agrees Konstantin. “We’ll continue to evolve.”

It’s finally student Bella Alvisi’s turn to hold the hand axe. “It’s my favorite class today,” she says, staring long and hard at the axe.

Teacher DeBlasio, speaking afterwards of the PPP, says that though it is just a one day experience in their 6th grade Social Studies class, “It brings the past to the present right before their eyes. Students love being able to handle tools from many years ago. It is a privilege, and they are honored to be some of the few to handle them.”

Indeed, Nancy’s Stone Age Tools sharing program is unique in the country. 

“A student will come up after a lecture,” says Konstantin, “and he’ll be wide-eyed, speechless, and say, ‘That was unbelievable.’”

Konstantin, who’s served 10 years as docent and has a degree in classical archaeology, is saddened by the Bruce Museum ending their PPP sponsorship. “Those Stone Age tools are the oldest manmade objects these kids will ever touch in their lifetime.”

“That was the magic of it all, when students could see and hold Stone Age tools,” says one of Nancy’s original docents, Renee Steblatnigg of Cos Cob. “The students were seeing how those tools were made. They were knapping the tools; they were making a bladed tool out of stone—and that opened a whole door as to how to make tools. The kids always had questions. It was a revelation for them. There was a whole new understanding of our prehistoric ancestors as humans adapting.”

Nancy underlines what she sees as the major takeaway of students of her Prehistoric People Program: “These students figured out how our ancient ancestors progressed and adapted to their environment, just as these students have to adapt to their more sophisticated tools, like computers.”

Thanks to Nancy’s husband, Alan, a significant piece of Nancy’s Prehistoric People Program will continue in the fall of 2016 under the aegis of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). The Nancy Stone Bernard Fund will support AIA lecturers when they visit selected middle school classrooms to introduce students to those now familiar and famous UCLA Museum Stone Age Tools.

Next spring, when Nancy Bernard returns from her winter oasis in Malibu, Calif., she’ll be back at the rostrum at the Bruce Museum to introduce another round of AAG lectures, at their new meeting time on Saturday afternoons.

For more information on the Archaeological Associates of Greenwich, visit http://people.brandeis.edu/~jbernard/brucemuseum/aag.html. For Nancy Bernard’s archeology blog, visit http://archaeologybriefs.blogspot.com.

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