Archaeology Unit Phase II

Eighth Grade Ancient History Scholars Make Inferences about "Rescued" Artifacts!

After creating their own unique civilization and creating artifacts representing their culture's universals, the students received a box of "found" artifacts and after measuring, drawing, and cataloging each artifact, they gave their best interpretations of the culture which produced the artifacts.  There were many discussions about the evidence left behind, and some of the languages were very difficult to decipher.

You can visit the "Museum of Unique Treasures" in the Middle School Library this week to see the inferences they made about the civilizations they analyzed.

ARCHAEOLOGY UNIT - PHASE I

Creating a Civilization: 

(Group activities with individual components)

• Teams of students have studied cultural universals which represent a society, such as government, economics, attitude toward the unknown, ethics and values. 
• They then did "backward" archaeology by creating a civilization in the past, present, or future, and deciding which cultural universals were the most important to that society. Each team member will make two artifacts which would best represent those aspects of their society. 
•  They will also create a written language, leaving behind a "Rosetta Stone" with their culture's language, English, and Latin or another language (for extra credit!) on it, and artifacts with only their language on them.

• Soon another team will try to interpret their artifacts, decode their language, and make inferences about what was important to their culture.

Wichita City Archaeologist - Rowena Butner
Came to give a presentation for our class!

Mr. Elmore's Kansas Presentation