From the Royal Tombs of Ur in Sumer

 

Use your class notes and this video to write your summary paragraphs.
Standard of Ur Video: Please watch this 8 min. video before you write your Standard of Ur Summary Paragraphs.

THE STANDARD OF UR: What was the role of women?  What did fashionable men wear?  What type of technology was used? Musical instruments? Did they take live captives after war? What was the social structure? After examining the artifact carefully and analyzing all images, the 8th Grade Ancient History scholars are writing a summary paper explaining their inferences about Sumerian society based upon the evidence found on this primary source. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Mesopotamia - The First Civilizations

 Watch these for FUN and INFO!

MR. NICKY'S MESOPOTAMIA

                                                                              

LEGO MESOPOTAMIA PART #1

LEGO MESOPOTAMIA PART #2

4 River Valley Civilizations

 

JUST FOR FUN!

Our Q & A on Zoom with Dr. Hunt!

 Click here for the link to part of our Q & A with Dr. Hunt!   

(I am so sorry that I didn't hit "Record" until halfway through! So many of your excellent questions and answers are not here.)

Dr. Patrick Hunt is from Stanford University, Stanford Alpine Archaeological Project, and National Geographic Hannibal Expedition. He is an Archeoethnobotonist with the Institute for Ethnomedicine. 

This is a follow-up Zoom after our class attended an Archaeology Institute of America webinar by Dr. Hunt.  We are so appreciative of Dr. Hunt's invitation to meet with him and answer many more of our questions.

Culmination of Archaeology Unit - Let's DIG!

 THE DIG!

Using proper excavation techniques (at least at the beginning), the Eighth Grade Ancient History Scholars made measurements, recorded field notes of their observations, plotted coordinates, and were, at first, puzzled by what type of artifacts might be in their dig site.  Before long they recognized that they had found a terracotta warrior made to protect the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, after his death.

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. 

After measuring, drawing, and cataloging each artifact, they gave their best interpretations of the culture which produced the
artifacts, and what was important to that society. 

 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

  

• Teams of students have studied cultural universals that represent a society, such as their 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 made two artifacts that would best represent those aspects of their society. 
• They also created a written language, leaving behind a "Rosetta Stone" with their culture's language, English, and Latin or another language on it, and artifacts with only their language on them that must be deciphered.

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

 

8^th Ancient History

Independent Research Projects

·     Eighth Grade Ancient History Scholars were required to find a topic they were curious about

·     They could research anything, from anytime period, anywhere in the world (or outer space)

·     All they had to do was tie it to archaeology

·     They became the expert on their topic

·     They created visuals to help their “students” understand the information they presented to the class and be as enthusiastic as the presenter

The target skills for this project

·     Evaluating web sites – NO WIKIPEDIA AND NO GENERAL ENCYCLOPEDIAS

·     Use of Tables of Contents and Indexes in books and magazines

·     Proper documentation using the Chicago/Turabian Bibliography format

·     Creativity and thinking outside the box 

  Public presentation skills

Cooper M. Maya Video

The Terra Cotta Warriors and the First Emperor of China

 *Here are two China Videos.  Please use your earbuds to watch these and answer the questions on your paper.  Please do as much as possible during class. Write a five-sentence paragraph about one of the topics on the back of your question sheet. Do not print it, just save it to your History Folder.

#1 Video Terra Cotta Warriors – National Geographic

4 Min.

#2 Video  Secret History New Secrets - Of The Terracotta Warriors Documentary HD     

47:31   Min.