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From this exercise students will learn how archeologists make inferences about past cultures based on the artifacts they have excavated.
Create a civilization-- have various categories such as food, shelter, living conditions, clothing, where they live, (i.e. on the moon, in space, underwater), death rituals, religion, language/writing, transportation, etc.
Divide the room up into two equal teams. Each team will create their own civilization. Tell the students to be creative; their cultures can exist anywhere in the universe and at any time in the past or future. The group should collectively decide what their culture is in time and place etc. They should make team decisions on all the categories of the culture mentioned above. Within each team have teams of 2 or 3 students work on each of the categories (such as religion) and have them create an artifact that represents the religion. The artifact can be made out of anything they can get from home. The process of making the artifacts can take several days. In the mean time, discuss the field of archeology and hand out the definitions or have the class read the Helpful Terms page on this site. If there is time, have the students read some articles on archeological discoveries. The library study exercise below might be used for one of the class periods while the students are making their artifacts at home. After all the artifacts have been made the two groups exchange their cultures and they try to draw conclusions about each other's culture based on their artifacts.
Have sheets of paper for each of the cultural categories with a space for the students to write down the artifact they think fits in that category, and why they think it fits there. This can be done either as a group exercise, or individually. After everyone has finished analyzing the artifacts have each group present their conclusions to the other group. Sum up the exercise by examining their incorrect assumptions where the artifacts did not fit the categories they assumed. If there were artifacts that might have fit into more than one category, why do they think so? What are the reasons the artifact could fit into more than one category? Be sure to also emphasize the correct assumptions and sum up the exercise by explaining that archeologists make conclusions about cultures based on similar kinds of evidence. If the teacher has time they should try to relate this exercise to the kinds of information found in articles students have read about recent archeological discoveries.
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