Matt Glendinning | Digging Into History: Authentic Learning through Archeology | The History Teacher, 38.2

Digging Into History: Authentic Learning through Archeology

Matt Glendinning
Moorestown Friends School, Moorestown, NJ

FACTS, OR SKILLS? Content, or process? Teachers of history and social studies teachers often lock horns over these questions, trying to define the nature of their field and its role in secondary education. The question is one of both method and purpose. Teachers of history often focus on content, presenting the past as a series of important people and events, an accumulated cultural lore that should be mastered by all students. Teachers of social studies, on the other hand, tend to approach the past more thematically, drawing on students' own experiences in order to promote social awareness, multicultural perspectives, and academic skills. The dichotomy between history and social studies, emphasized in current journalism (e.g., K.M. Manzo, "History Invading Social Studies' Turf in School," Education Week, January 22, 2003) seems to boil down to this: should students learn about the past, or how to learn about the past, or both?

As a fairly traditional teacher, I had always been solidly in the "history-as-content" camp, until a recent experience teaching archaeology at the secondary level changed my outlook and methods dramatically. Initially, as I planned the course at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia, I had no idea that archaeology would spark such enthusiasm among students, or be such an ideal pedagogical subject. In retrospect, however, perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. Our culture seems to be imbued with a deep curiosity about the past, a passion fueled by endless streams of programs on PBS, books from TimeLife, and "live" coverage of tomb openings in Egypt. Teenagers I know share this fascination, even if it's based erroneously on Hollywood heroes like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. I knew I was in for a challenge on the first day of the course when one of my students said, "What? Textbook? Excuse me, where's my whip?"

As this student soon discovered, real archaeology is a branch of anthropology that uses physical remains to investigate the human past. As one of the few fields that bring the social, biological and natural sciences together with the humanities, archaeology engages the imagination and curiosity of adolescents in unique ways. And like a page from the progressive educators' playbook, archaeology offers learning that is experiential, constructive, collaborative, differentiated and fun. Archaeology is a perfect vehicle for learning how to learn about the past.

Bringing Archaeological Methods into the Classroom

Archaeology, by nature, is a hands-on discipline, and offers many opportunities for experiential and constructive learning. I have found that students thrive when they can dispense with textbooks and act as historians themselves by collecting and/or analyzing raw data. One of my favorite activities, for example, is adapted from the publication of an NEH Summer Seminar in 1997, entitled Cargoes from Three Continents: Ancient Mediterranean Trade in Modern Archaeology (M. Cleary and M. J. Meister, eds., Kendall/Hunt, 2000). Drawing on the book, I provide students with a list of the extensive cargo of a late-fourteenth century BCE ship, found wrecked off the southern coast of Turkey in the early 1980s. When it foundered, the ship was carrying raw materials and finished products from Canaan, Greece, Egypt and beyond. I will detail one experience with the use of this book.

Having studied the cargo, together with a map of the Mediterranean region, students came to class prepared to argue: 1) the date of the ship; 2) who was on board; 3) its trade route; and 4) patterns of cross-cultural contact. During the discussion, students quickly realized that, within the general parameters of the evidence, there is no definitively right answer for these questions. The "truth" of that ship's story depended on who saw the patterns in the data most clearly. Our understanding of the ship thus evolved during class, with interpretations posed, scrutinized, and then accepted, emended or discarded. My role as the teacher was limited to pointing out various artifacts that were being overlooked. The students therefore taught themselves; they constructed their own knowledge about a real ancient ship and an important period in the Late Bronze Age. Lively and engaged discussion resulted every time I give the students a new set of data to analyze, and then stepped out of their way.

Two books of simulated archaeological data offer a variety of puzzles for classroom use: The Archaeology Workbook, by Steve Daniels and Nicholas David (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 1982), and The Next Archaeology Workbook, by Nicholas David and Jonathan Driver (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 1989). When I used these, one class discussion of a fictional cemetery in the Balkans was particularly engaging.

    Annie began, "I think the Iardames people used extended burials, and existed at the same time as the Botachoi, who buried their dead in a flexed position."
    "I don't think that works," says David. "Look at burials 6 and 12. The flexed ones overlap the extended, suggesting that the flexed people came later."
    Ellen sees something else, "Has anyone noticed that skeletons definitely identifiable as female all have two or more safety pins, and the males only one? This could help us figure out the sex of the other, poorly preserved bodies."
    "Yeah," concurs Rob, "and check out the position of the pins—the extended skeletons wear it on the right shoulder, the flexed ones on the left."
    "I think the grave goods show a similar division," concludes Pete. "Bodies with one pin always have more weapons, and thus are probably male; those with two pins tend to have domestic items like pots, jewelry and weaving stuff, and thus may be female."

And so on. There were so many patterns woven into these fictitious burials, I'm certain that we didn't identify them all. But it didn't matter. It was the process of collaborative interpretation—a method often used by real historians and archaeologists—that was important.

Ethnoarchaeology

My students spent a lot of time during the year learning about anthropology, the study of human cultures. They learned that before archeologists dig in the dirt for the past, it is necessary for them to have some understanding of how human societies tend to be organized. Archaeologists often act as ethnographers—or ethnoarchaeologists—studying existing cultures in order to derive insight about past ones. In order to understand this aspect of the field, my class undertook an anthropological study of our school "culture." Working in teams of three, students scoured the campus looking for clues to how our micro-society works. Through observation, interviews, photos and diagrams, each team approached a different research question, dealing with power and hierarchy, classes (grade levels), subsistence, gender roles, physical space, religion, art, athletics, etc. Of course, the results could not be objective; the students were far too enmeshed in their own school culture to analyze it neutrally. But this in itself was an interesting lesson about interpretation. Juniors in the class saw things differently than seniors, and girls differently than boys. The students also gained valuable insight into the types of questions used to explore a society, and the ways human behavior is reflected in patterns of material culture.

We followed this cultural study with an analysis of school garbage. That's what archaeology sometimes boils down to, after all, trying to reconstruct a society based on what it discards. Having first read about an actual "garbology" study at the University of Arizona (W.L. Rathje, "The Garbage Project: a new way of looking at the problems of archaeology," Archaeology 27, 1974, pp. 236–41), students set out to collect bags of trash from discreet locations on campus known only to them. Assembling back in the classroom, each student received a mystery bag of stuff gathered in this process with instructions to sort, identify and catalog its contents. After studying the resulting data, students then tried to draw conclusions about what subset of our culture had produced each bag, e.g., Lower or Upper School, students or faculty, technology center or library, campus or sports fields. They also debated the types of human behavior reflected in the garbage. It didn't take them long to see the relevance of this exercise for the field of history. Obvious questions came to mind. What might archaeologists deduce about our school if this trash were all that was left of us in 3000 years? What aspects of our culture are over-represented in the trash, or underrepresented, or not represented at all?

Field Surveying

All archaeologists know that excavation, the traditional method of gathering field data, is expensive, time consuming and inherently destructive. Many researchers thus are turning to an alternative way to investigate the past: the surface survey. This method depends on the fact that artifacts (usually pot sherds) from most periods of a site's occupation will be present on the surface in some degree, and thus recovering and studying their type and distribution can shed light on the history of a site or region. While excavation can tell us a lot about a small space, survey reveals a little about a broader space, and thus the two methods are usually complementary.

As the following example will show, a simulated survey can be created with clay flower pots, four colors of paint, some plastic bags, a tape measure, graph paper and a large, empty plot of ground. I divided thirty pots into four groups of unequal size and painted them to represent distinct time periods: lavender, red, and green for the Early, Middle and Late Bronze Ages, respectively, and white for the early Iron Age. I then smashed the pots and scattered the sherds, one color at a time according to predetermined pattern, across an empty dirt lot near our school. I deliberately placed the sherds in association with several fictitious geographic features which I designated, e.g., a central habitation mound, a fortification wall to the east, and a stream to the west. Armed with a basic map of the area, students were then on their own to devise and carry out a field survey.

After initial confusion and several false starts, the group finally divided the lot into a 16-row grid (one row for each student). Spacing themselves evenly along a line, they then traversed the site, "bagging and tagging" all sherds (i.e., putting sherds from discreet grid cells in carefully labeled bags). Back in the classroom, the sherds were categorized and counted, and plotted on an overall density distribution chart. I then asked the students to analyze the history of the site, producing both a written essay and some sort of visual representation of the data.

Our discussion of the results was one of the more engaging of the year, and I have never been more impressed by students' curiosity, creativity and diversity. Ironically, this simulated exercise, completely devoid of real world historical "facts," nevertheless generated authentic learning. For example, students became intuitively familiar with notions of chronological and cultural change, without being asked to memorize that the fictitious Green Style pottery dated to ca. 1500–1100 BCE. As the students generated both the data and its analysis, evidence became the means to an end, not the end in itself. Learning history became more process than content.

The project also offered scope for differentiation, i.e., for students to engage at different levels and to demonstrate their learning in different ways. For example, some students struggled just to identify the patterns and anomalies in the density plot. Success for them meant recognizing that the site grew or shrank in size over time in relation to the geography. Others dealt deftly with the plot but had difficulty articulating its significance in writing. They nevertheless demonstrated total mastery of the concepts by producing informative, attractive histograms or color-coded maps. Still others had little difficulty grasping the overall method, and were encouraged to do more than identify chronological changes: they were asked to explain them. For example, when and why was the fortification built? Why did the site reach its greatest size in the Late Bronze Age? And why did the settlement shrink and move closer to the stream in the Early Iron Age? There were no right answers, since the entire scenario was fictitious. But as a teacher, I was delighted to watch the students push the limits of their interpretive and imaginative powers.

Designing a Simulated Excavation

The quintessential, hands-on activity in archaeology is, of course, the dig, and this too can be simulated for classroom use. Excavation, to my mind, is the perfect teaching and learning exercise: it brings together all the theories and methods studied in the classroom; it requires teamwork and physical effort outdoors; it rewards diligence and patience; and at its core it is an exercise in exploration, interpretation and imagination. The best scenario, of course, would have been for the class to conduct a real excavation, and given our location in Philadelphia, we might have found Colonial remains on our very campus. But as a teacher, I needed a dig that would be as educational as possible. I wanted students to encounter the full range of remains typical of most excavations, and thus I couldn't afford the chance that a real trench would prove sterile of artifacts. My solution was a simulated, multi-strata dig.

Having obtained the school's permission to sink a trench into the campus lawn, and having cleared the spot with all local utilities, I arranged to have a backhoe (generously donated by a local contractor) clear the initial hole, eighteen feet square and about four feet deep. I had spent the preceding two years, including several trips to Europe, collecting reproduction artifacts. Knowing that I wanted any site I would create to involve four distinct cultural layers, I had targeted my collecting to represent the Greek Dark Age (ca. 750 BCE), Classical Greece (ca. 400 BCE), the Roman Empire (ca. 200 CE), and the High Medieval period (ca. 1100 CE). Now I used sandpaper to rusticate the objects—pottery, glassware, coins, jewelry, sculpture and architectural fragments—and broke many to make them appear authentic. I painted Latin inscriptions on clay vases, and carved Greek inscriptions into marble and slate. These cultural artifacts were supplemented by more mundane objects—rotting timbers, stone rubble, rusting metal tools, crushed reed baskets, seeds and shells—all scavenged from flea markets, the woods, or my neighbors' trash!

Creating the site was backbreaking but fun. The process involved making a hard, recognizable floor for the first level with a tamper and cement powder, planting the appropriate cultural remains, covering everything with earth, then repeating the process three more times. Moving 1200 cubic feet of earth with a shovel took three weekends and a lot of sore muscles!

The stimulating part for me was creating a "story" for each layer, and linking the layers thematically. For example, I imagined that the burial of a Dark Age Greek chieftain and his wife in the lowest level had evolved over several centuries into a Classical Greek religious shrine. I simulated the scavenging and reuse of building material by incorporating a stone with an early Greek inscription into the foundations of a Roman house higher up. And I set the fence posts of the Roman house deeply into the Greek layers below, and dropped a datable Roman coin into one of the post holes, thereby creating a classic chronological and stratigraphic hazard.

I created the dig in the summer, when there would be no chance for the students to see what I had planted. The material then sat in the ground for seven months until the dig began in April. We worked for nine weeks, three and a half hours per week, during which time the students exposed and removed the four strata, mapped each accurately, catalogued the artifacts, documented the process with photographs, notes and drawings, and interpreted their findings in a class "publication."

The students themselves had done quite a bit of preparation for the project. They had learned record keeping by reading my dig notebook from a real excavation in Turkey. They had learned how to draw plans by offset measurement and triangulation. They had read about the variety of digging tools and how to use them. And like real archaeologists, they had even written mock grant proposals to our Head of School, detailing their research agenda and seeking funding for an itemized budget.

The Dig

The last layer I planted was the first the class came upon, and we called it Level 1 (see Figure 1). It consisted of a pebbled roadway and a small outdoor fireplace, next to which was a small leather satchel containing Medieval artifacts, e.g., a weathered Byzantine icon, a stone Celtic cross, a terracotta oil lamp with a cross insignia, several gold rings, and three English coins, the latest dated to the eleventh century. The students interpreted the remains as the temporary campsite of a pilgrim or Crusader.

Figure 1
Level 1 of excavation: the Medieval campsite.

In the opening days of the dig the students learned a great deal about the proper use and handling of tools, and the need to balance care with efficiency, safety with speed. Some became adept at using the big pick, others at the finicky work of finding and clearing floors. Others seemed to shy away from the dirt and labor, and focused instead on drawing, photography and "shooting levels" (i.e., using a transit to measure an artifact's vertical position).

The most poignant lesson of the first two weeks had to do with note taking. When Level 1 had been cleared and recorded, and four students had taken on responsibility for writing up an interpretation, we demolished the campsite and proceeded to dig deeper. Only then did the publication team discover that their digbooks lacked sufficient detail to reconstruct accurately what they had found. But by then it was too late; the context of the finds had been destroyed. Fortunately, the spatial relationship of most objects became clear when we had our photos developed. The students realized that they all needed to put much more time and detail into their daily notes.

In the third week the class came down upon Level 2, the remains of a Roman villa, (see Figure 2) including the entrance to a house with a mosaic floor (see Figure 3) and impluvium (water-catching tank), and an outside farmyard scattered with tools, roof tiles, fence posts and a horse skull. This level was so richly salted with artifacts that a number of students began to cross the thin line between archaeologist and treasure hunter. Overzealous digging resulted in several broken glass vessels and failure to recover a silver pendant from the floor of the house. While I hated to play the omniscient dig director who knew where everything was, I had to point out the errors and ask the class to slow down. Gradually, and with some difficulty, the students learned to be patient, and to view artifacts not as isolated treasures, but as related objects that provide clues about past human behavior.

Figure 2
Level 2 of excavation: Roman villa.

Figure 3
Junior Zach Perch and senior Alicia West cleaning mosaic of Roman house.

This level also highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of archaeology. At one point we had students huddled around the trench studying Roman coins, bronze figurines, blown glass vessels, marble mosaics, and a broken slate slab inscribed in Greek. The students became specialists who had to share their knowledge if they hoped to come up with a holistic interpretation of the level.

Archaeologists often seek media attention: press coverage publicizes their labor of love, and usually translates into continued funding for a project. We were thrilled to be featured on local radio and television, and a handful of local papers. We also entertained a steady stream of visitors from the school. While we were grateful for the attention, it did come at a cost. Work slowed and focus wavered as the project threatened to degenerate into a giant photo op. Real archaeologists continuously navigate this love-hate relationship with the press.

By week five, having documented and removed the Roman house, we went deeper and discovered the remains of a small stone altar, a number of clay vases inscribed in Greek, some architectural and sculptural fragments, and a low earth mound in the center of the trench (see Figure 4). The Greek IV class was consulted about the inscriptions, which turned out to say, "Helen, a gift to all the gods," "the hope of the Greeks," and "for Eileithuia" (Greek goddess of childbirth). Our fledgling archaeologists concluded that we had found a Classical Greek shrine. A relief frieze and a Corinthian column capital suggested that a temple might once have stood nearby.

Figure 4
Level 3 of excavation: classical Greek shrine.

The mound adjacent to the altar puzzled the students for quite some time, until we dug into it and found the joining half of the Archaic Greek inscription recovered several weeks earlier in the foundations of the Roman house. The Greek class dated the letter forms to ca. 700 BCE, and identified the text as several lines from Homer's Iliad: "Let there be one leader, one chieftain to whom the son of devious-devising Cronos has given the scepter and the authority, so that he might rule over them." When Alex, one of the students, suggested that this might be a tombstone, and the mound the burial of some great warrior, the class tore into the final stratum, determined to find a burial.

They ended up finding two! Level 4 (see Figure 5) consisted of the poorly preserved remains of a Greek house, its outline marked by stone slabs that once would have held wooden columns supporting the roof. The floor was strewn with broken eighth century BCE pottery, a number of metal tools, and the decaying remains of an upright loom, including ten clay loom weights. The Homeric verses on the tombstone, together with the loom, caused the students to recall the story of Penelope, wife of Odysseus and archetypical Greek woman, who put off her many suitors while she faithfully wove a burial shroud for her husband.

Figure 5
Level 4 of excavation: Greek Dark Age house and burials..

David, a senior, was the first to notice that the hard gray floor of the house was interrupted in several places by softer brown earth. The first patch covered a pit holding the skeleton of an adult male (see Figure 6). The body was adorned with bronze bracelets and a ring, and accompanied by grave goods such as Geometric-style oil vases, two Egyptian scarabs, an Assyrian bronze figurine, and a clay tablet inscribed in cuneiform. The second patch revealed a bronze amphora (two-handled vase) containing ashes and bone, evidently cremated human remains. What a puzzle! Both inhumation and cremation used at the same time? Burials in the middle of a house? Clear indications of contact with the Near East? I had anticipated having to help the students decipher these diverse clues, but in the end, they nailed it themselves. "This whole scenario reminds me of that hero burial we studied in tenth grade," said David. "In what way?" I asked? "Wasn't there a man and his wife buried in their own house," he said, "with stone column bases all around like this" (pointing to the slate slabs), "and a mound heaped deliberately over the whole thing?" I had to admit he was right. I had modeled Level 4 on a well-known tenth century BCE Greek house and shrine on the island of Euboea. The occupant had been a local chieftain—a basileus—the sort of aristocratic farmer/warrior/mayor on whom Homer probably modeled his famous heroes like Achilles and Agamemnon. The students had stumbled upon the very roots of Homeric epic society!

Figure 6
Detail of skeleton. Note bracelets.

Near the end of the project the class began producing its research results. Working in teams of four on each of the levels, students were responsible for analyzing and drawing artifacts, mapping, photographing and interpreting what had been discovered. With the help of the school technologist we created an extensive website based on class excavation notes and photos (www.gfsnet.org/history/mock_excavation.html). The students helped mount a museum-like display of objects and explanatory signs in glass cases in the school's front hall. And despite a devastating plague of senioritis that swept the school in June, the students' final reports were detailed, creative and scholarly.

Conclusion

Now that I have recovered my sanity after such an exhaustive project, I count the Archaeology course among the most rewarding experiences of my career. I hope that the students feel the same way. I am touched that several have emailed from college to say they're taking anthropology, or have called for advice with research. But regardless of whether they were ultimately turned on or off by the field, I think all the students would agree that archaeology is an effective way to study history—collaborative, multi-disciplinary, experiential and fun. That's what kept me going during the year, and what drives me even now, picking through garbage cans, secretly amassing treasures for next time.

Note for Teachers

The earlier exercises I have described can easily be replicated in a variety of school settings. However, for those who would like to replicate the excavation activity, here are some suggestions.

Digging the initial hole is best done by machine. What would be hours and hours of shoveling by hand can be done by a backhoe in short order. Contact local construction companies to see if one would donate a machine and driver for an hour; school parents might also have contacts. The location of the actual trench needs careful consideration, too. It should be enough away from pedestrian traffic not to cause a hazard, but not so far as to be a nuisance for students to get to. We surrounded our trench with a fence of plastic orange webbing (available at home supply stores).
Our dig had four distinct strata, or cultural layers. Four is not a necessary number, but any habitation surface must be hard and compact -as typical in a real excavation - in order for students to identify it. I hardened my floors/surfaces with an ordinary landscaping tamper, and then spread powdered concrete mix thinly over that. Activated by water in the soil, the powder formed a stiff, gravely membrane that students quickly came to recognize as a typical floor.
By far the most fun part of the project is amassing the artifacts, and placing them within the layers in a pattern that reflects an identifiable scenario or story: e.g., the decaying leather satchel holding small trinkets next to a road-side campfire. I found it helpful to plan all this in advance by making a list of my available materials and artifacts, deciding which would go in the various levels, and sketching out what each level would look like. It's also imperative to keep a roster of every artifact put in the ground, since you will inevitably forget where everything is by the time the dig takes place.
To make the dig as interesting and authentic as possible, try to think both horizontally and vertically, i.e., create a story not only for each horizontal level, but also one that connects the successive layers vertically, through time. In our dig, I imagined that the burial of the Greek chieftain and his wife had evolved through time into a Classical shrine. And the Roman level above made use of some Greek objects, as if the builders had scavenged the shrine for materials. In a real dig, fence posts, garbage pits and basements are common ways that later cultural layers intrude on earlier ones.
Having placed the artifacts in position, next comes the grunt work: covering the scene with earth in preparation for the next level. Here it's helpful to have a crew of volunteers, manned with wheelbarrows and shovels. Be sure to put enough earth over each layer so that, at the end of the process, you don't have any left over.
Some general tips for helping students carry out the dig. Earth should be removed by shovels and wheelbarrows, until artifacts begin appearing, at which point trowels and dustpans should be used. Students should keep detailed journals of their progress, including daily sketches of the trench, and all objects and features should be left in place until the entire trench has been cleared to the same level. Before proceeding deeper, students should draw a careful plan of the level, including the depth of each object/feature relative to a chosen datum (zero-point) outside the dig. They should also photograph the trench from various angles.
The last part of the project is the interpretive phase, where students should be able to demonstrate their understanding by creating several kinds of "products." Each level should be the subject of a narrative report that explains what was found and what the students think occurred there in the past. The report should be well illustrated, including scale plans and photographs of individual objects. Ask students to publish their work by mounting a display of chosen objects and interpretive signs. The same can be accomplished on a website.
List of tools/equipment: big and small picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, tamper, trowels, dustpans, string, line levels, brushes of various shape/ size, plastic tarp, work table, graph notebooks, camera, transit and range pole (optional).

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