Archaeology Unit Phase I - Creating a Culture

What does it take to be a civilization?  5 Characteristics!

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 and English, (and Latin or another language for extra credit!) on it, and artifacts with only their language on them that must be deciphered using their "Rosetta Stone."

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