This month's Illinois State Museum Science Lecture Series will focus on early Spanish exploration of what would become the United States. Dr. Kathryn Sampeck is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Illinois State University.
She has been doing archaeological research in the southeast to get a better idea of those expeditions and how they changed history.
It wasn't until 1540 with Hernando De Soto was given permission to conquer areas that included Florida and the Carolinas. He later went into Tennessee, Georgia and Arkansas. We talked with Sampeck about how the work and historical accounts paint an image of what life was like in that time period....
Sampeck speaks at the Paul Mickey Science Lecture Series. It will be held at the Illinois State Museum's Research & Collections Center, 1011 East Ash Street in Springfield. It's free and begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday March 12.
