Intrigue of the Past
1.1 Why is the Past Important?
As an introduction to the study of North Carolina’s archaeological heritage, students will use personally owned objects to (1) share the importance if their past and (2) connect this importance with reasons why the human past is important.
In their study of culture, students will use a chart to show the different ways that cultures meet basic human needs; and recognize that archaeologists study how people from past cultures met basic needs by analyzing and interpreting the artifacts and sites that they left behind.
In their study of observation and inference, students will use activity sheets and coins to differentiate between observation and inference through a problem-solving approach; and demonstrate their knowledge by analyzing an archaeological artifact and creating their own observation-inference statements.
In their study of context, students will use a game and a discussion to demonstrate the importance of artifacts in context for learning about past people.
1.5 Chronology: The Time of My Life
In their study of chronology the students will use personal time lines and an activity sheet to demonstrate the importance of intact information to achieve accuracy; and compare and contrast their timelines with the chronological information contained in a stratified archaeological site.
1.6 Classification and Attributes
In their study of classification and attributes, students will use “doohickey kits” to classify objects based on their attributes; and to explain that scientists and specifically archaeologists use classification to help answer research questions.
In their study of scientific inquiry, students will use an activity sheet to make inferences about what activities go on at different places in school (desk, locket, etc.) and form an hypothesis about how space is used; and to simulate how archaeologists learn about past people by designing and conducting a research project.
In studying archaeological concepts, students will analyze garbage from different places to demonstrate competence in applying the concept of culture, context, classification, observation and inference, chronology, and scientific inquiry; and to explain how their study of garbage relates to the methods of archaeology.
2.1 Gridding a Site
In their study of how to grid a site, students will use a map and the Cartesian coordinate system to establish a grid system over an archaeological site, labeling each grid unit; determine the location of artifacts within each grid unit; and construct a scientific inquiry concerning the location of artifacts on the site.
2.2 Stratigraphy and Cross-Dating
In their study of stratigraphy, students will use an activity sheet to interpret archaeological strata using the law of superposition and to apply cross-dating to determine the age of other artifacts.
In their study of artifact classification, students will use pictures of artifacts or objects from a teaching kit to classify artifacts and answer questions about the lifeways of a group of historic Native Americans.
2.4 Tree-Ring Dating
In their study of dendrochronology, students will use activity sheets and a discussion to apply principles of dendrochronology to determine a tree’s age, to recognize climate variation, to analyze and experience how archaeologists can sometimes use tree rings to date archaeological evidence and study past climates.
2.5 Archaeobotany
In their study of archaeobotany, students will use pictures of seeds, an activity sheet, and a graph to identify seven seeds and the conditions in which they grow; to infer ancient plant use by interpreting archaeobotanical samples; to determine changing plant use by Native North Carolinians by interpreting a graph of seed frequency over time.
2.6 Measuring Pots
In their study of measuring pots, students will use an activity sheet or modern pottery rim sherds to compute circumference from a section of a circle and to construct analogies based on their own experience about possible functions of ancient or historic ceramics.
2.7 Experimental Archaeology: Making Cordage
In their study of experimental archaeology, students will make cordage and use an activity sheet to experience a technique and skill that ancient Native Americans in North Carolina needed for everyday life; to compute the amount of time and materials that might have been required to make cordage; and to construct a scientific inquiry to study the contents of an archaeological site.
2.8 Mending Pottery
In this exercise, students will mend broken pottery to learn what archaeologists learn by mending pottery.
In this exercise, students will analyze unfamiliar objects in order to observe the attributes of an objects; to infer the use of objects; and to discover how archaeologists use objects to learn about the past.
2.10 Archaeological Soils
In this lesson about archaeological soils, students will determine the components of a soil sample and evaluate how archaeologists use soils to interpret sites.
2.11 Inference by Analogy
In their study of inference by analogy, students will use historical sources and an archaeological site map to infer the use or meaning of items recovered from a North Carolina Native American site based on 17th-century European settlers’ accounts and illustrations; to describe prehistoric lifeways based on archaeological and ethnohistoric information; and to explain why archaeologists use ethnohistoric analogy.
4.1 Shadows of North Carolina’s Past
In their study of archaeological evidence cards, students will infer past Native American lifeways based on observation, construct a timeline of four major culture periods in Native American history, and compare these lifeways and discuss how they are different and alike.
4.3 Name That Point!
4.5 A Siouan Village