The Pryor Center Presents lecture series begins the 2025 fall season with 'The Valley Plantation Project' presented by archeologist Matthew Rooney at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25, at the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

The Valley Plantation Project was a multi-year, multi-component research project resulting in a microhistory of African Americans who lived on a single plantation in southeast Arkansas between the 1820s and 1950s. Matthew Rooney of the Arkansas Archeological Survey used archeological fieldwork, archival research, genealogy, and oral history interviews to tell the stories of multiple generations of enslaved people and later sharecroppers who migrated to Arkansas. Rooney will discuss how he identified key informants and descendants who helped him interpret their history and safeguard their legacy. Oral history components of the project are available on the Pryor Center website. 

Matthew Rooney is a station archeologist and assistant professor of anthropology for the Arkansas Archeological Survey's research station in Monticello. He has conducted fieldwork in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. His research focuses on colonialism in the southeastern United States with great emphasis on collaborating with descendants and other affiliated communities. Rooney is currently the board president for Preserve Arkansas, a trustee for the Arkansas Historical Association, and an associate editor for the Southeastern Archaeological Conference.

The Pryor Center is located at 1 E. Center St., Suite 120. The event is free and open to the public, and parking is available in the Town Center parking deck on East Ave.

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About the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History: The David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History is an oral history program with the mission to document the history of Arkansas through the collection of spoken memories and visual records, preserve the collection in perpetuity, and connect Arkansans and the world to the collection through the Internet, TV broadcasts, educational programs, and other means. The Pryor Center records audio and video interviews about Arkansas history and culture, collects other organizations' recordings, organizes these recordings into an archive, and provides public access to the archive, primarily through the website at pryorcenter.uark.edu. The Pryor Center is the state's only oral and visual history program with a statewide, seventy-five county mission to collect, preserve, and share audio and moving image recordings of Arkansas history.

About the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences: The Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is the largest and most academically diverse unit on campus with three schools, 16 departments and 43 academic programs and research centers. The college provides the majority of the core curriculum for all University of Arkansas students.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas' economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research News.