We collect information that is especially pertinent to the classroom.
You might find our glossary of words relevant to archaeology in Georgia useful. Click here to go to the glossary.
Submitted by Sammy Smith (sammy@thesga.org)
The Florida Public Archaeology Network has been established by the Florida legislature to provide, among other things, public outreach. The East Central Region of FPAN has posted online various teacher resources, including PDFs of two books of hands-on archaeology activities that teachers can use. Both are titled Beyond Artifacts….
The link directly to the page where those books can be downloaded is here.
The Society for Georgia Archaeology’s ArchaeoBus is a Mobile Archaeology Classroom.
Teachers in Clarke County, Georgia, can make reservations now for January through June of 2010.
Click here for Guidelines for Educators, which includes a request form and student response form.
Click here for the document Standards, Skills, Domains, and Learning Styles addressed by the ArchaeoBus Program for 8th Graders.
So, why should you have the ArchaeoBus visit your school?
A Georgia teacher answers: Do your students groan every time you ask them to take out their social studies books? Do you get blank stares when you ask students to discuss specific time periods in history?
If so, Georgia’s Mobile Archaeology Classroom—the ArchaeoBus—will provide hands-on and minds-on activities to enthuse your students about learning. Archaeology is a great tool for turning on the minds of students, as well as a great motivational tool. More important, it is a discipline capable of instruction in a wide variety of skills. Archaeology is a holistic academic and intellectual approach that involves all subject areas, social skills, and conceptual skills. This is a unique approach to teaching traditional material and will expand your students’ abilities to think and reason.
Archaeology is fun! The name evokes an image of adventures to far-off and exotic places. Students become enthusiastic learners as they become detectives to learn about their past. Archaeology provides an opportunity to apply skills and knowledge from other disciplines and strengthen them through application. Archaeology can be used to teach critical thinking skills and problem solving. Plus it enhances small group instruction and cooperative learning. Teachers can use archaeology for instruction that pertains to their specific pedagogical needs. A social studies teacher can emphasize how artifacts provide information about different cultures and historic time periods; the math teacher can focus on mapping and the measurements and gridding that are involved in the process; the science teacher can use archaeology to demonstrate how the scientific method is used; the language arts teacher can focus on the historic research component and report writing. The application possibilities for the teacher are endless.
Georgia’s Mobile Archaeology Classroom is an innovative approach to student learning. It offers the opportunity for students and teachers to leave the traditional four-walled classroom and use a new approach to learn state standards!
Submitted by Sammy Smith (sammy@thesga.org)
The Digital Library of Georgia website includes a page of links titled “Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842″ that you may find useful. Links include the official websites of Southeastern tribes, and some museums, archives, and libraries, etc.
The Digital Library of Georgia has many useful resources for anyone interested in Georgia’s past. It has been described as a gateway to Georgia’s history and culture through digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, government documents, newspapers, maps, audio, video, and other resources.
The Digital Library of Georgia is based at the University of Georgia Libraries, and is an initiative of GALILEO, the state’s virtual library.
Click here to go to the Digital Library of Georgia main webpage.
Click here to go to the “Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842″ webpage.
Click here to go to the main GALILEO webpage.
Submitted by Sammy Smith (sammy@thesga.org)
To compare the archaeology of Indiana Jones and of “real” archaeologists, the National Science Foundation presents a web experience called “Archaeology from Reel to Real: A Special Report.” For the activities of “real” archaeologists, the presentation draws on the research projects the NSF has funded.
In the Introduction, the NSF website accurately notes:
Unlike Indiana Jones, there is nary a fedora to be found in their field kits and their grants certainly don’t cover the costs of Webley revolvers or bullwhips, but it could be convincingly argued that in some respects NSF-funded archaeologists are “shadowy reflections” of their big-screen counterpart.
And yet, they go on, there are parallels between what Jones does on-screen, and what professional archaeologists do in real life. They teach, they study vanished civilizations, and they also “seek rare and precious artifacts that tell important stories about the past.” And:
Rather than relic hunters and adventurers, they are scientists, whose work is aimed at answering key questions about the past, answers that may even inform policy about contemporary problems such as how societies adapt to climate change, ecological shifts, political upheaval or mass migrations.
Most of the pages you can click through detail how archaeologists do research, including field methods, and what kind of data they recover.
The final page is a list of useful on-line resources, although the “Special Report” does not seem to have been updated since spring 2008.
Click here to visit the NSF web experience about “real” archaeology.
Closeup of Etowah, c. A.D. 1325–1375, © 2004 by Steven Patricia; courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Society for Georgia Archaeology is proud to offer the 2009 Lesson Plan, Learning through Archaeology: Etowah Indian Mounds. This is the twelfth in our series of Lesson Plans, offered to teachers and others as part of the Society’s mission to work actively to preserve, study and interpret Georgia’s historic and prehistoric remains.
This Lesson Plan coordinates with the theme of our 2009 Archaeology Month meeting, Mounds in Our Midst: Monuments of Prehistoric Culture in Georgia. Georgia’s archaeological landscape features numerous abandon prehistoric communities with artificial, human-constructed earthen mounds. Created by diverse Native American cultures, mainly between 500 BC-AD 1550, these remarkable monuments are evocative reminders of prehistoric societies that once flourished in every corner of the state.
Archaeology Month 2009 is devoted to a celebration of the survival of prehistoric mounds, and a meditation over their purpose and meaning. The Spring Meeting will be held May 16th and 17th at Wesleyan College in Macon. $10 per person registration fee. Review the program and see a map of the meeting location by clicking here.
Download the 2009 Lesson Plan by clicking here.
On March 21st, SGA Vice-President Catherine Long attended the State Social Studies Fair on behalf of the Society and the Georgia Council of Professional Archaeologists. She judged student projects addressing archaeological topics. Winners were 5th grader Destiny Jackson, with her project entitled “What Archaeological Remains Did King Tut Leave Behind?,” and 8th grader Jack Doresky, whose project was titled “Southeastern US Indian Removal.”
Destiny Jackson attends Charles L. Gideons Elementary, Atlanta City Schools. Her directing teacher was Darlene Dobbs.
Jack Doresky attends Blackmon Road Middle School, Muscogee County Schools. Chuck Yarbrough was his directing teacher.
Each winner received a $50 check and educational materials from the SGA and the Georgia Council of Professional Archaeologists. The Fair was hosted at Dutchtown High School in Hampton.
Submitted by Tom Gresham (searcheo@aol.com)
Long time SGA member and primitive technology researcher Scott Jones has just published a book that is a compilation of his articles from the past decade related to primitive technology and experimental archaeology. Scott has practiced primitive technology for two decades and now makes a living presenting the subject to the general public (always with lots of examples and demonstrations) and by conducting experimental archaeology with CRM firms. He is a long time board member of the Society for Primitive Technology and is currently its president. He lives with his wife and son in rural (i.e., primitive) Oglethorpe County.
The book, entitled A View to the Past: Experience and Experiment in Primitive Technology, is a 277-page, soft bound collection of about 40 articles, most of which were originally published in the Bulletin of Primitive Technology. The articles are illustrated with numerous photographs and a few drawings and charts. They are organized into six chapters: foundation skills, making things fly, shelter, stone tools, regional perspectives in experimental archaeology and other musings. While there is a good bit of “how to” in many of the articles, Scott also addresses the “why” and “what does it mean” aspects of experimental work. The fact that Scott has an anthropology degree (UGA) and works with professional archeologists allows him to make a great many more anthropological observations from his work than most primitive technologists. Thus, while the articles on building a shelter, making a long bow, and fire starting will appeal to the general public, and especially young readers, these and most every article have important messages for the working archaeologist who is trying to interpret the anthropology of artifact assemblages. This is a very readable, interesting, and entertaining book that will appeal to a wide audience.
A View to the Past by Scott Jones is available from Createspace.
Submitted by Nancy White (nwhite@cas.usf.edu)
Wiley Publishing has just issued Archaeology for Dummies ($21.95) by SGA member Nancy White. The book tells how archaeology is detective work and traces over 2 million years of prehistoric human cultures. It demonstrates how archaeology uncovers things about historic times that history can’t, and shows how archaeological knowledge is useful for modern issues like global warming, environmental depletion, genocide or disaster victims, and recovering a people’s lost heritage. Included in the book are also some of White’s (awful) jokes and stories from fieldwork in northwest Florida, south Georgia and south Alabama. This book is useful for professional and avocational archaeologists as well as lay readers who want to learn about the breadth of the field and how to get involved. It’s available in many bookstores and at online outlets such as amazon.com.
Project Archaeology, based in Montana, has affiliated state programs around the USA, although not currently in Georgia. The mission of the PA is to use archaeological inquiry to foster understanding of past and present cultures; improve social studies and science education; and enhance citizenship education to help preserve our archaeological legacy—all using a hands-on approach. A few helpful teaching materials can be downloaded from the Project Archaeology website here.
Submitted by Sammy Smith (sammy@thesga.org)
David Macaulay is an author and illustrator who has written many interesting books. One of my favorites is Motel of the Mysteries, published in 1979 by Houghton Mifflin (Boston). The book is now out of print, so I always look for a copy at yard sales and flea markets—and every once in a while I’m lucky enough to find one!
The publisher’s blurb about Motel says:
It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson’s incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.
Thus, Macaulay imagines being an adventurer in the future, when civilization had been destroyed by being overrun with junk mail—remember, the book was written before there was internet spam! So, in the book, Howard is trying to understand the ruined walls and other architecture he finds. Can you guess what the “porcelain sarcophagus” is?
Howard is an intrepid explorer, and he is certain, based on the architecture and artifacts he finds, that he has found funerary architecture. In his eyes, he is seeing special ceremonial buildings complete with burial goods distributed in separate chambers, similar to the archaeological remains we see today that survive from ancient Egypt.
As you might guess from the title of the book, what Howard had found were the decrepit remains of a modest, twentieth-century, highway-side motel somewhere in this country. His interpretations of the remains are erroneous in extremely funny ways.
This book leads the reader to think about the processes of scientific thinking, and how scientists assemble a wide variety of data to attempt to understand complex systems and situations. Sometimes, theories are developed based on what turn out to be scanty data. Thus, the theories turn out to be wrong, sometimes in humorous ways, when more data are collected.
You may also be interested in other volumes by Macauley, such as Cathedral (1973), Pyramid (1975), Underground (1976), and Castle (1977). All have been reprinted in paperback. Macauley is probably most famous for his award-winning international bestseller The Way Things Work (1988), which he later expanded, updated, and renamed The New Way Things Work (1998).
Submitted by Christine Neal (christine.neal@dnr.state.ga.us)
The recent amendment to one of Georgia’s archaeology laws might affect you, whether you are an avocational or professional archaeologist.
Code Section 12-3-621 has always required a person who is going to dig on an archaeological site to first notify the Office of the State Archaeologist. This recent amendment has made that notification a lot easier. You can send an email from HPD’s website, at www.gashpo.org—see Archaeological Services, and under that click on “Notify State Archaeologist before you dig.” The text of the law is there as well. The other way is by calling the archaeology notification hotline phone number toll-free, at (866) 755-0014. Leave a voicemail message at that number anytime, giving your contact information and the location of your intended excavations.
If you have questions, please feel free to contact the State Archaeologist, Dr. David Crass, david.crass@dnr.state.ga.us, (404) 656-9344, or HPD’s Archaeology Program Coordinator, Christine Neal, christine.neal@dnr.state.ga.us, (404) 657-1367.
SGA’s 2008 Archaeology Month topic was “Archaeological Encounters in Georgia’s Spanish Period” and the Society produced an accompanying lesson plan for teachers. Part of the background text reads:
We may never know exactly how the first meeting went between Spanish explorers and Native American Indians in Georgia. However, archaeologists have found enough evidence to get a pretty good idea.
At first, it seems that Indian people tried to understand the Spanish strangers in traditional ways. Before the Spanish showed up, the Indians had given certain objects special meaning. Some goods were so unique that they were considered to have a really high value. Goods like these were owned and controlled by the leaders of the Indian chiefdoms. They included objects that were rare or hard to make like shell beads and monolithic axes. These items were so special that they were buried with their owners.
When the Spanish showed up, they brought brand new goods made of brand new materials that the Indians had never seen before. These new things were made of materials like iron and glass, and they included objects like beads and tools. At first, the Spanish only traded with the Indians leaders. The new European objects were considered to be just as special as the traditional high status goods. They too were kept in special places and buried with the few elite Indians who owned them.
Early Spanish visitors came with different plans. Some came to search the land for gold and riches. Others came to capture native Indians to be used as slaves. Still other Spanish visitors came to set up permanent colonies in Georgia so that they could stay and control the land.
The first known meeting between Indians and the Spanish happened in 1526. A Spanish explorer named Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón tried to start a new Spanish settlement on the coast of Georgia. He brought 600 people with him. The new town didn’t last for long however. After only six weeks, the colony broke apart because of many hardships and disagreements.
Archaeologists have no firm evidence where Ayllón’s colony actually was but European goods have been found near the coast. They were found through archaeology conducted on Indian burial mounds. These excavations revealed artifacts like beads, coins, and iron tools.
Click here to download the lesson plan on this topic.
The Society for Georgia Archaeology’s 2007 lesson plan focused on Fort Hawkins. As the lesson plan notes:
Fort Hawkins is located near the Ocmulgee River and served as an important center for the frontier of Georgia from 1806-1819. It was named after Benjamin Hawkins, a white man appointed by President Washington to be an Indian Agent. Hawkins determined the fort’s location and served the nation as a liaison between the U.S. government and the Creek Nation. Hawkins was given the title Principal Temporary Agent for Indian Affairs South of the Ohio River. His 21-year career was spent monitoring and working to maintain peace. Tensions between the Creeks and the settlers increased, as settlers continued to arrive illegally on Indian land. Frustrations soon boiled over to the event known as the Red Stick War. These events ultimately led to the signing of the Treaty of Washington in which the Creek Nation was forced to cede its remaining lands in Georgia. By 1827 the Creek no longer lived in Georgia.
The lesson plan describes the Fort and provides historic details about life at the fort and the archaeological and archival (especially military records) data on the Fort. Many “further reading” titles are also listed.
Click here to download a copy of this lesson plan.
The topic of the 2005 lesson plan, which meets CRCT Domains for 8th Grade History, is the Indian Removal of the early 1800s. The lesson plan details this period in Georgia’s history, suggests writing assignments, and explains how to make a puzzle called “Go Figure!” Click here to access the PDF of this lesson plan.
Euroamericans sought to remove Native Americans from southeastern North America in order to claim their lands, both for settlement and to prospect for minerals. The Native Americans had already ceded lands in what became eastern Georgia, and were occupying lands farther from the Atlantic coastline. The US government forcibly marched the Cherokees north and west to Oklahoma in 1838.
This entertaining, colorful cartoon book is about archaeology, particularly in Georgia; it is accurate and amusing. The book features hand-lettered text accompanied by eye-catching, vivid, often humorous artwork. The volume also provides various ideas for archaeological projects. Although oriented toward Georgia and Southeastern archaeology, this volume is useful for understanding general concepts in the archaeology of any geographical area, and is highly recommended for any audience.
Frontiers in the Soil begins with an introduction to the complex field of archaeology, which is often part of multidisciplinary projects and must deal with complicated issues related to chronological dating, and the meaning of the material evidence of past human behaviors. Dickens discusses the major prehistoric eras, and describes important locations occupied in prehistory. Dickens also describes an archaeological project at an imaginary sixteenth-century Native American community, including fieldwork methods, cleaning and analyzing artifacts, and finally authoring a report so that the information the site contained is preserved for the future.
The author of Frontiers in the Soil, Roy S. Dickens, Jr., was a well-known archaeologist who worked in Georgia, and across Southeastern North America. His engaging text is supported by the captivating artwork of James McKinley. The first edition, published in 1979, quickly sold out. SGA now owns the copyright to the book, and published a second edition with the assistance of the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government.
Concurrently with the second edition, the SGA published a new teacher handbook to assist teachers in instructing students in all aspects of archaeology, including methods and techniques (and advancements in the field since the original edition was published), preservation and stewardship, and archaeological ethics. The new handbook meets Quality Core Curriculum (QCC) standards for the state of Georgia (current at the time of its publication).
Click here for information for ordering this volume through the Carl Vinson Institute of Government online bookstore. The Teaching Handbook is available here.
SGA’s 2004 lesson plan centered on republication of Frontiers in the Soil: The Archaeology of Georgia. The author, Roy S. Dickens, Jr., was a well-known archaeologist who worked in Georgia, and across southeastern North America. His engaging text is supported by the captivating artwork of James McKinley. The first edition, published in 1979, quickly sold out. SGA now owns the copyright to the book, and published a second edition with the assistance of the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government.
Click here for access to the 2004 lesson plan.
Read more about the book by clicking here.
Georgia Archaeology Month 2002 focused on the prehistory of southwest Georgia, and especially the archaeology of the famous village and mound community we now call Kolomoki (pronounced ‚“Coal-oh-moe-key”), which is located in Kolomoki Mounds State Historic Park in Early County, near Blakely.
At Kolomoki, Native Americans lived, worked, played, and died. It was most heavily populated from A.D. 350-750, during what archaeologists call the Woodland Period. The Native Americans there built houses, buildings, and mounds; they hunted game and gathered plants for food. They made pottery and tools to help them in their everyday tasks. But life wasn’t all work. They played games, danced, and participated in religious ceremonies. The main settlement where Indians lived at Kolomoki is one of the oldest Indian communities in Georgia that has temple-mounds. This is one thing that makes Kolomoki unique.
The pottery of Kolomoki and contemporaneous settlements in that area have distinctive, complex designs on the exterior of the pots. The lesson plan contains discussion topics about Woodland Period pottery designs. An example of a type of pottery design archaeologists call Swift Creek is pictured here.
Click here to download a copy of this lesson plan.
Resources at Risk: Defending Georgia’s Hidden Heritage is a special issue of Early Georgia, published in May 2001. The goals of this issue were 1) to expand public perception of what archaeology is and what archaeologists do; 2) to call attention to the urgent need for the preservation and stewardship of archaeological resources, or at least the recovery of basic information before it is destroyed; and, 3) to spur discussion of new ways that Georgians can accumulate more archaeological knowledge and save more resources, and disseminate this new information to the public.
In short, this issue is a primer of Georgia archaeology, with these articles:
The articles work in concert as an overview of the besieged state of archaeological preservation in Georgia. Although this publication dates to 2001, its fundamental message about the desperate need for preservation and stewardship of archaeological resources has only become more acute with continued sprawl and land-use changes and forests and fields become become buildings and roads. As Charlotte A. Smith, author of the introductory article, notes:
All around Georgia, archaeological sites are being destroyed or are under threat of destruction. While it can be argued that ‚“development” is the natural progress of things, obliterating the past before it’s been recorded and understood is not ‚“natural,” nor does it have to be an inevitable by-product of progress.
In Georgia we lack sufficient infrastructure to implement a large-scale systematic project to record archaeological resources before they disappear forever. That infrastructure cannot be constructed without public support, and that support will not emerge without public understanding. And public understanding, in turn, stems from outreach by professionals and those committed to archaeological preservation.
Click here to download the entire issue in PDF format (2 MB).
Long-time SGA member Rita Elliott edited this 1992 special issue of Early Georgia; its full title is ‚“Archaeology in the Classroom: By Teachers for Teachers—Used Archaeology: Practical Classroom Ideas for Teachers by Teachers.” Notes Ms. Elliott in the Foreward:
Welcome to a new partnership. The past decade has seen a growing relationship between the world of professional educators and professional archaeologists-a relationship that can be mutually beneficial. The growing crisis in our schools, symbolized by low test scores, high drop-out rates, drugs, violence, and boredom, and fueled by economic problems, decreases in federal and state educational funding, latch-key students, single-parent families, students living below the poverty level, lack of role models, and over-indulgence in television, has thrown educators into a precarious and unenviable position.
At the same time, archaeologists are struggling with major assaults on non-renewable cultural resources throughout the country. Intensive development, particularly in the Sunbelt region of the southeastern United States, destroys countless archaeological sites daily-sites unprotected by federal and state laws. Site vandals and “looters” trash archaeological sites while searching for intact or unusual artifacts that they hope will bring a hefty price in the collectors’ market. An increasingly weak economy has led to major cutbacks in government and private grants supporting archaeological research.
The unpleasant dilemmas faced by both educators and archaeologists have resulted in an amazing revelation. These two seemingly unconnected problems can be addressed simultaneously. Archaeology is a wonderful medium for enticing students to learn because it is exciting, adventurous, and mysterious. Archaeology is the perfect vehicle for educators because its multidisciplinary nature allows it to address many of the Quality Core Curriculum objectives mandated by the state of Georgia, including visual arts, science, English and Language Arts, Mathematics, and Social Studies. It improves students’ skills in logic, interpretation, research, and problem solving while enabling students to become aware and tolerant of other cultures, work together in groups, improve self-confidence, and actually discover that learning can be fun!
Students, however, are not the only beneficiaries of an archaeology curriculum in the classroom. Archaeologists finally will be able to enjoy the rewards of a grass-roots archaeological education. An educated and informed public is a public that will support legislative protection of archaeological sites. It is a public that will slowly turn from artifact collectors to site recorders, from purchasers of illegally obtained artifacts to prosecutors of site vandals. Some in the archaeological community protest the introduction of archaeology into the school system on the basis that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. What better rebuttal is there than examining the status quo? Dedicated educators (and everyone who embraces an archaeology curriculum) know and stress the importance of site preservation, ethics, and professional supervision. What better or more numerous heralds could the professional community have than educators throughout the state and the country?
Volume 20, Number 1 of Early Georgia‚ “Used Archaeology: Practical Classroom Ideas for Teachers, by Teachers” has been prepared with the goals of both educators and archaeologists at the forefront. It is hoped that it will help fill a void in the state of Georgia and perhaps be a useful model or stepping stone for others with the same aims.
This issue has two main sections. The first has a series of first-person experiences authored by teachers who have used archaeology in the classroom. The second main section discusses a series of archaeologically-related activities teachers have found successful in their classrooms.
Click here to download a PDF copy of this issue.