From April 2021

Months ago, Project Archaeology’s Public Education Coordinator Kate Hodge asked me to prepare a blog post for the Modern Issues in Archaeology series. At the time, I wasn’t sure what I would write about, but I was confident I could come up with something.  Closer to the due date, I started musing on my blog’s focus. Kate had already covered many important issues: Museum Changes, Repatriation, Terrorism, Looting, and Illicit Trade of Cultural Property. What in the world would I blog about that held relevance for Project Archaeology readers?  I worried. I wondered. I tossed and turned. The deadline of April 23rd drew closer and closer.

A Last-minute Inspiration
Almost exactly a week before the blog was due, inspiration struck! What about the Society for American Archaeology forum I was going to participate in? Maybe a blog about that would interest readers…I explained to Kate that I was one of seven public archaeology/heritage education archaeologists who had been asked to participate in a 2-hour, virtual, live forum – Triumphs, Challenges, And Possibilities In Heritage Education – sponsored by The Heritage Education Network (THEN) at the Society for American Archaeology’s Annual Meeting on Thursday, April 15.  Would she be willing to wait until after that event, so I could determine if what I learned during my experience would hold any inspiration for Project Archaeology readers? If not, I’d have to punt. Or worse yet, Kate would have to step in and post a blog on short notice.  Kate said yes! The forum was fun and interesting and stimulating. And so, too, Dear Reader, I hope is the following blog.

What This Blog Is About
I will begin by telling you about the forum and its purpose, about the participants, and about how the live event played out. Then I’ll summarize the responses to two of the questions. And, in a bit of shameless advertising, this blog is illustrated with images linked to the  educational programs that the Kentucky Archaeological Survey has developed over the years. You can learn more about them through our new website    https://www.kentuckyarchaeologicalsurvey.org/.

Forum Purpose and Members
The forum considered the successes, challenges, and strategies of heritage education. Forum organizers acknowledged that despite "major accomplishments in heritage education, including the successful implementation of new and established public outreach programs and additions to the scholarly and popular literature on programming and its assessment," many challenges remain. "Heritage educators are still not reaching all the audiences they need to

Archaeology.  The word alone is fascinating and immediately brings images of far-off lands, fabulous artifacts, and ancient lifeways to our minds.  Fascinating, but you must be an archaeologist to study the ways of the ancients, right?  Wrong.    Archaeology is a perfect addition to upper elementary classrooms and provides a ready-made vehicle to implement the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

By its very nature, archaeology is interdisciplinary; it studies cultures, and past human lifeways, but it uses sciences such as geology, botany, zoology, and chemistry to analyze and interpret historical data.  At Project Archaeology, we have aligned our existing curricular materials to Common Core Standards and are developing all new materials based on the CCSS and Next Generation Science Standards.   Project Archaeology instruction helps build college and career-ready students in the following ways (NGA 2010):

• Students learn to comprehend and evaluate complex texts across a range of types and disciplines (oral histories, scientific explanations, and biographical texts). They are expected to construct effective arguments and convey intricate and multifaceted information to others.  They are required to build on the ideas of others and articulate their own ideas in a range of formats including speaking, writing, and graphic design.
• Students establish an in-depth base of knowledge about the processes of archaeology and content that is built through archaeological inquiry. They become proficient in archaeological inquiry and can conduct their own simple investigations with Project Archaeology materials. They refine and share their content knowledge through writing and speaking.
• Students cite specific evidence when offering an oral or written interpretation of a text, a bar graph, or a primary source such as historic photographs, artifacts, and archaeological site maps. They are expected to use relevant evidence when supporting their own points in writing and speaking, making their reasoning clear to the reader or listener, and they constructively evaluate others’ use of evidence.
• Students actively seek to understand other perspectives and cultures through reading, listening, and examining the archaeological record of their own or another culture. They examine similarities and differences between themselves and members of other cultures.
• Students adapt their communication to their audience, task, and purpose (for example, writing explanatory or informational texts; creating persuasive speeches; engaging in civic dialogue; developing media for specific purposes such as brochures or web pages; and creating graphics such as bar graphs, pie charts, and drawings to express information).

Project Archaeology is now celebrating 25 years of providing high-quality archaeology education materials and professional development to educators nationwide.  What are some of our Project Archaeology teachers saying about archaeology and the Common Core?  Evaluations from teachers at our professional development workshops indicate that Project Archaeology: Investigating Shelter, our main curriculum unit, aligns well to Common Core State Standards. Here is a sample of their evaluations:

• • “Project Archaeology is the Common Core” – Stella Estrada, California Council for

According to reports from the National Science Foundation, the recent archaeological discovery of the graves of two infants in Alaska has prompted researchers to conclude that this could lead to a new understanding of ancient people’s perception of death and burial. The 11,000 year old graves of two infants, possibly twin brothers, were disturbed during an excavation in Alaska, and the teeth and a few other remnants of the infants represent the youngest people ever discovered in the ancient Arctic. At least one of the infants had been cremated, and both were laid to rest with stone tools as their burial belongings. The chiseled stone points that accompanied the remains of the infants were strikingly reminiscent of another collection of ancient tools found at a similar gravesite in south-central Montana. The 1968 disturbance of the 10,600 year-old remains of a toddler boy, who was buried with over 118 stone and bone Clovis tools, indicated that ancient Americans believed strongly in ceremonial interment, and this more recent unearthing further demonstrates that point.

As a member of the Apsaalooke Tribe, and as a professional educator and historian, these ancient and richly endowed graves that were dedicated to very young children are not surprising or puzzling to me. In most traditional tribal cultures, the extended family, and in particular children and elders, are cherished. Despite the fact that all tribal communities in the Americas suffered catastrophic loss during the age of colonization, the remnants of that cultural heritage is still alive today, and is manifested throughout Indian Country in many ways; most of which are on display at every community event, including ceremonies, family reunions, and traditional dances, aka pow-wows. Elders are always given special care at tribal gatherings, and children are never excluded from participation. Celebrating the beauty of tribal culture and the strength of tribal families is still common in the 21st century, surviving in the face of the many social problems that continue to plague Indian communities. I believe that the roots of these earliest values are reflected in these ancient burials.

Theoretical speculation abounds about what the Indians were thinking when they placed important objects in the ground with deceased babies and covered them permanently. A growing strand of conventional wisdom says that the valuable tools included within the graves demonstrated that ancient Americans believed in an afterlife, in which these young lives would continue to grow and survive. Ostensibly, the afterlife required stone weapons, and the boys’ families wanted them to have those tools at his disposal, thus they respected the circles of life and death by behaving with good faith and true intention. This conjecture about the meaning behind the

In July, eight educators from Minnesota, Texas, California, Michigan, and Florida traveled to the prairies of Minnesota for a two-day summer workshop led by Courtney Agenten and Samantha Kirkley. Teachers connected literature to the past through a Project Archaeology shelter investigation of the Tinsley Farmhouse in the historical setting of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book series: Mankato and Walnut Grove, MN.

Educators visited the Blue Earth County History Center, where they learned about shelter and how archaeologists study the past, traveled to the Ingalls Dugout home site near Walnut Grove, and explored the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum – all while engaging in hands-on learning experiences that opened their eyes to the power of archaeological inquiry in engaging with the past. And, no workshop would be complete without a delicious cast iron meal of BBQ chicken, potatoes, and peach cobbler cooked over an open fire!