| Subject Areas |
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Art and Culture
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Anthropology |
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Archaeology |
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History and Social Studies
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U.S. History - Colonial America and the New Nation |
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| Time Required |
| | One to two class periods for each of five lessons |
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| Skills |
| | critical thinking
historical interpretation
information gathering and analysis
primary source analysis
public speaking and presentation
collaboration
analysis
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| Date Posted |
| | 4/12/2002 |
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Traces: Historic Archaeology
Introduction
"None of
the dead can rise up and answer our questions. But from all that they have left
behind, their imperishable or slowly dissolving gear, we may perhaps hear voices,
'which are now only able to whisper, when everything else has become silent...'"
-- Bjorn Kurten
"It is terribly important that the
'small things forgotten' be remembered. For, in the seemingly little and insignificant
things that accumulate to create a lifetime, the essence of our existence is captured."
-- James Deetz
Humans always leave behind traces of themselves.
Analyzing the things people forget or discard and the things they preserve for
others, archaeologists recover the voices of those who came before. What they
hear is the "essence of our existence."
At this moment, we of the present
are in the process of accumulating and leaving behind traces of our existence.
What will archaeologists of the future hear when we whisper?
In this
unit, students will "recover" and analyze artifacts from sites in use from the
settlement period to the second half of the 19th century. They will look for similarities
and differences among the artifacts and the lives they reveal. In conclusion,
students will look at today's artifacts of the future and consider how we will
be viewed.
Guiding Question: What artifacts do archaeologists recover
and what do we learn from them?
Learning Objectives
After completing the lessons in this unit, students
will be able to: - List at least five different
kinds of artifacts archaeologists have found in U.S. excavations.
- Cite artifacts when describing life at a particular
archaeological site.
- Hypothesize about how
an archaeologist of the future might interpret a common contemporary object.
Preparing to Teach this Lesson
Before you begin to teach this unit, review the suggested
activities and familiarize yourself with the websites involved. Bookmark or download
and print the artifact images you will use in Lessons 2-4. (A complete listing
of resource links is included at the end of this unit.)
You may wish
to provide students with a copy of the Artifact
Analysis Worksheet, available through EDSITEment at The
Digital Classroom, to guide them as they review the artifacts in this unit.
Suggested Activities
Looking Back
What They Left Behind
What They Preserved
Voices Across Time
Looking Forward
Extending the Lesson
Lesson 1 Looking Back
Begin this unit by encouraging students to share stories about old things
they have found. ("Found" items may have been discovered outside, or may have
come from a relative's attic or basement, a garage sale, an antique seller, etc.)
What were the items? How and where were they found? What uses did the items have?
Could the students always tell what they had found? What did they think about
when holding something so old? You may wish to share a story about an object you
found, or display an unusual object to students to spark their interest and help
fuel the discussion.
Introduce to students the Reed
Farmstead archaeological site, available through the ArchNet website on EDSITEment. This is the site
of a 19th-century rural farm, containing the remains of at least four and possibly
as many as six buildings—three log houses, a possible springhouse or cold storage
building, a possible barn and additional outbuilding, plus several cultural features.
A raised earthen berm that may have enclosed either a barnyard and/or a cultivation
plot was also observed. The site is located in an isolated area in mountainous
country in Hardy County, West Virginia. Because of its isolated location, the
site has been protected from disturbances and maintains its archaeological integrity
-- giving scientists and historians an exciting chance to learn about farming
techniques and other information that may not have been documented. Excavations
at this site have unearthed household and farm-related artifacts.
Ask
students what they think life might have been like on a farm during the 1800s.
Write their ideas on the board or a sheet of paper and save for later reference.
Lesson 2 What They Left Behind
Show students
images of several artifacts found at the Reed Farmstead. You may wish to show
the following artifacts or select others from the site you feel will be of interest
to students. If appropriate, have students work in small groups to view the images
of artifacts. The groups may fill out Digital Classroom's Artifact
Analysis Worksheet and/or begin to discuss the artifacts' use and how they
are similar to items used today for the same purpose.
Household-related
items: Personal
items: Structural/farm
items: You may also wish to show one
or more of the unidentified
artifacts from Reed Farmstead (and students may like to guess what they may
have been used for).
Once students have viewed the artifacts, initiate
a class discussion with the following questions: - What
similarities were there among the artifacts?
- Are
any of the artifacts like something you use today?
- Do
these artifacts show how much life has changed in America? Or how little it has
changed?
- What do these artifacts tell you
about the people who might have used them?
After
the discussion about artifacts has progressed, ask students again what they think
life was like at the Reed Farmstead. Have students' ideas about life at Reed Farmstead
changed since they viewed the artifacts? If so, how?
Finally, ask students
how they know what life was like at the Reed Farmstead. This question should pinpoint
for them the impact of archaeology—studying items used in the past helps us
understand what life might have been like in the past.
Lesson 3 What They Preserved
Archaeologists
also learn from objects which have been preserved. Governmental or commercial
entities preserve official records. Family members pass objects they value from
one generation to the next.
Introduce the town of London, Maryland to
the students. Founded in 1684 on the shores of the South River, London became
a thriving port. From 1710 through 1750, London Town grew significantly and rivaled
Annapolis and Williamsburg, Virginia, in economic vitality. Though it was the
county seat from 1684 to 1695, London Town's importance centered on the trade
that flourished there. Ships would arrive with merchandise from Europe and the
Caribbean and then carry the year's tobacco crop home.
From the EDSITEment-reviewed
website Learning
from London Town--London, Maryland, download the inventory
of the household goods of Captain Anthony Beck made in 1750 shortly after his
death. Share the list with the class. (NOTE: Online, explanations of many of the
objects are linked directly to the name of the object. If practical, have a computer
available during this lesson to access such information.)
Once students
have viewed the list, initiate a class discussion with the following questions:
- What do the objects on the list tell you
about Captain Beck's lifestyle?
- How did
Captain Beck's life differ from life at the Reed Farmstead?
- By
comparing the objects, can you discern (or hypothesize) whether Captain Beck lived
before those who lived at the Reed Farmstead, around the same time or after?
- Are any of the objects in Captain Beck's house
also in your house today?
- What objects in
Captain Beck's house do not seem familiar to you, based on what you use today?
- Do these artifacts show how much life has changed
in America? Or how little it has changed?
(NOTE:
Students might be interested in seeing a digitized version of the original
inventory list, also available through Learning from London Town.)
Lesson 4 Voices Across Time
Divide students
into groups and provide each group with a list and pictures of artifacts recovered
from a specific archaeological site, from the following list of resources. (Note:
in many cases, you can click on a thumbnail picture to view a larger image. In
classes with sufficient access to technology, student groups could gather around
a computer to view the artifacts.) Proceeding in chronological order, let the
first group describe/show a type of artifact from their site they think will not
be on any other list. See if any groups have the same kind of artifact. Continue
by asking each group to show an artifact they think is unique to their site.
Conduct a second round in which the groups describe/show a type of object
they think might be found at every site. See which groups have the same artifact.
Allow further discussion about any particular artifacts students find intriguing.
Discuss: - Do the students feel it is
more correct to say that the kinds of objects people used at these sites tended
to change over time or did they tend to stay the same?
- What
kinds of artifacts were fairly constant throughout time? Why do students think
that was the case?
- What can we learn about
lifestyle from various objects? How?
- Which
artifacts tend to show the difference in time from one site to the next? How?
Lesson 5 Looking Forward
Just as artifacts from the past help archaeologists (and students)
of today learn about the past, items that we use today will become artifacts of
the future, giving archaeologists a glimpse into our lives. Have students ever
considered that something they use every day will one day seem ancient and maybe
even unexplainable?
If time allows, you may wish to give some examples
of items that once were commonplace and now have been replaced through technology
or other advancements. You don't need to go too far into the past to find examples
-- vinyl records, roller skates with metal wheels (instead of inline skates) and
metal lunchboxes are just a few items students may relate to.
Give everyone
in the class a penny to scrutinize. What might an archaeologist of the future
conclude if this were the only artifact he or she had of an unknown civilization
of the past? Ask students to discuss their theories and provide their reasoning.
Now the students are ready to work independently. Divide students into small
groups and assign each group (or have them select) a present-day "artifact" for
analysis. Each group should keep the identity of its artifact a secret. Students
should use the Artifact
Analysis Worksheet (or an adaptation of the worksheet) available from The
Digital Classroom site to note pertinent information about their artifacts.
After the artifact analysis is completed, each group should make a presentation
of its findings to the class. As information about the artifact is revealed, other
students will try to guess the identity of the artifact being described.
Extending the Lesson
Standards Alignment
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