Fifth grade teacher, Vernon Caldwell describes the project, “In the archaeology unit students are given the opportunity to work cooperatively in groups and to think critically as they seek to answer questions of the ancient past. They are taught how to make inferences derived from simple observations and learn about the methods and tools used both in modern and classical archaeology. The students also learn the essential concepts of archaeology, such as context (the relationship artifacts have to each other and the situation in which they are found) and chronology (the arrangement of past events in the order in which they occurred).” Christian Whyte, one of the student archeologists, noted some of the challenges he faced on a dig, “I learned that archaeologists have to dig very deep down and sometimes they might not find anything, even after a lot of hard searching.”

Once the students were done with the dig, they returned to the classroom to piece together their shards and to evaluate what they had found. For some students the thrill was in the searching, for others, like Annie Lovett, the thrill was in those little pieces of a puzzle. “On our dig I really enjoyed putting together different pieces.” And for others it was the mystery of who was there before. One student decided to critically analyze the site on which they were digging by making “inferences” from what they had uncovered. He speculated that the site was formerly a foundation for a house since many household objects were found. Whether or not that was actually the case isn’t relevant; what is relevant is that he was thinking critically—like an archaeologist—taking the pieces of the puzzle he had found and putting them together to try to understand the past.

November 2005

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