| The Bruton Heights School is a historically black school off to one side of the main historic district at Colonial Williamsburg. It was also the site of one of our workshop-classes during the Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute in July. I wandered into the small museum display inside the school for a few minutes during break time and discovered some of the artifacts are from my own lifetime, including a yearbook, photos, and trophies from my own birth year and high school graduation year.  |  The facility was nicely renovated to house offices and classrooms. For our purposes, one large room served as the location of a workshop about archaeology. Our leader for the day was the intern who accompanied us for some of the week's activities. She began by defining archaeology, which was simple enough, but when she began drawing concentric circles on the white board, I came to an unexpected realization. Those circles conveyed an important message - that there is more to archaeology than finding treasures belonging to famous people. |
The smallest circle represented the few souls that we recognize as the founders (Washington, Jefferson, and the like), but they tell only a portion of the story. We might pursue searching for the lives of broader and broader groups of people in order to get a better picture of their ways of life as well as the greater inner and physical struggles that folks underwent as a result of the economy and lifestyles in which they found themselves. Placing importance on all of the lives includes not only the policy makers, but also the families of the white landowners; not only the landowners, but also their families, including women and children; not only the families of white landowners, but also the Whites who did not own land; also the people who were not Protestant Christians, but people of other faiths; not only White Protestants, but also the Indians; not only White Protestant male landowners, but also the Enslaved. The list probably goes on and on, each time requiring a larger circle to be drawn to include more.
Archaeologists have learned that different area bring differing results, and the mystery of a dig site can be a very compelling thing. Before us lay a great cloth with brick patterns stamped in certain locations. Inside and outside of those locations were artifacts that should tell us a story. In this classroom simulation, the story was a true one, from an actual dig site at Colonial Williamsburg, and it was our jobs to decipher that story to the best of our abilities. We had a recording sheet to assist us.
Archaeologists have learned that different area bring differing results, and the mystery of a dig site can be a very compelling thing. Before us lay a great cloth with brick patterns stamped in certain locations. Inside and outside of those locations were artifacts that should tell us a story. In this classroom simulation, the story was a true one, from an actual dig site at Colonial Williamsburg, and it was our jobs to decipher that story to the best of our abilities. We had a recording sheet to assist us.
As our group "dug" through the sediment in the well, indicated by the circle of bricks, we found broken pieces of pottery and other artifacts to let us know more about the people who lived here. Much of archaeology is speculation based on factual proof, and it can be quite a challenge to figure it all out. I found it compelling to see that when groups in other areas of the cloth reported their own findings and interpretations, our own interpretation changed (and vice versa). All of the areas of the cloth were related due to their proximity with one another.
| While we were at the Bruton Heights School, our master teacher also presented this manner of investigating an image (left) and having students look at only one quadrant of the picture at a time and making observational comments about each quadrant. Just like the dig site, the conclusions being drawn were fluid and changed when other quadrants were revealed. A worksheet could be used for this evaluation as well. | |
These concepts are simple ones, and some of the methods I've implemented in the past really fit in. Our archaeological dig can work in this way, as well as our burial dig, our investigation of police evidence bags, and other projects really call on students to infer based on the facts of their findings, to draw conclusions based solely on the image or the items their are observing, and making predictions based on the evidence in a text or other primary source. This was one of those times that I received some confirmation that the tasks I have created fit within the teaching styles being presented in a workshop for teachers from across the nation.
