After years of debate, rare Adena artifact finds home
November 19, 2014 | In the PressFrom The Columbus Dispatch (http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/11/19/low-tablet-finds-a-home.html)
The Low Tablet, a rare Adena cultural artifact at center of a long-time fight between the Ohio History Connection and a Reynoldsburg man, will find a temporary home in Marietta.
The carved stone tablet, a valuable piece of pre-history created 400 years or more before the birth of Jesus, will be displayed at Campus Martius Museum in Marietta at their “Night at the Museum”’ fundraiser Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. Next year, the Low Tablet will begin a year-long run at the Marietta museum before returning to the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus.
The 5-inch-by-3-inch tablet, one of just a handful of its kind in existence, was discovered by Edward Low as a 12-year-old boy while he and some friends played on a sandy hill in Parkersburg, W.Va., overlooking the Ohio River.
Low, who died in 2010, kept the tablet for many years before, in his words, “loaning” the artifact to the then-Ohio Historical Society in 1971. Officials with the historical group said it was a donation, not a loan, and refused to return the table to Low.
Low filed a lawsuit against the Historical Society (now the Ohio History Connection). The case was decided in 2012 when a Franklin County Common Pleas jury voted 6-2 in favor of the Historical Society after a six-hour deliberation.
Burt Logan, executive director of the History Connection, said plans for the display ends the long-running dispute.
“It will permanently be part of the collection and be on display,” he said.
“It is one of a handful of these types of tablets that have been found through all the archeological expedientions,” he said. “It’s extremely rare and offers great insight into the culture.”
The tablet’s carvings depict two human faces and four abstract birds. Created between 500 B.C. and A.D. 100, its value has been estimated at up to $200,000.
Information about the Adena culture can be found online here.
