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Making a Stink with STEM in the Classics Classroom: Exploring Ancient Roman Writing Through Experimental Archaeology by Nathalie Roy

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Making a StINK with STEM in the Classics Classroom: Exploring Ancient Roman Writing through Experimental Archaeology by Nathalie Roy ave you ever wondered what it would teacher, could not do the same thing with record keeping (abacus, finger signalling, Hbe like to take notes for Pliny the my students. After all, the Romans were wax tablets, papyrus, ink, sundials), food Elder? Surely he had a secretary to assist STEM geniuses. I had seen countless (wine flavourings, bread), hydraulics him with his writing, or did he take his own television shows about Caesar’s army (aqueducts, water screws, baths), warfare notes? He left a huge body of material in building bridges (Cannon, 2005-07), (shields, catapults), and construction his Historia Naturalis. What must his home Trajan’s architects designing and building (concrete mixing). office have looked like with all the detritus his column (Weise, 2015), and modern The culminating project of last year’s of constant writing and research scattered engineers trying to reproduce the elevator class was building a 20-foot interactive about? I have often wondered these things system that made lions appear on the analemmatic sundial with decorative and many others about the process of floor of the Colosseum (PBS, 2015). And mosaic designs. When standing on the ancient writing. As a Latin teacher, I what about all the aqueducts and the current month, the viewer’s shadow decided to try out ancient writing with my heated baths? The more I thought about indicates the correct time. For this students as a STEM project. it, the more I was convinced that I could project, the students read about the STEM, an acronym for science, integrate STEM into Latin classes. analemma described by Vitruvius in Book technology, engineering, and math, has Fast forward two years, and I’m now IX.7 and the horologium Augusti (the sundial been an educational buzzword for the teaching a full-year class called Roman of Augustus located near the Ara Pacis) past ten years or so in the United States. Technology. The goal of the class is to described by Pliny the Elder in Book With its growing need for engineers of all reproduce the products and processes of XXXVI.72. They learned to use kinds, the US has stressed the importance ancient Roman daily life using compasses, oriented to true north, and of developing STEM programs at all experimental archaeology. Every measured the hour markings on the levels of education so that children get 90-minute class consists of two segments: sundial using x/y coordinates. In addition, accustomed to STEM thinking at an early 1) a short lecture about how we know they learned to use mosaic hammers and age. Many schools hire science about a particular aspect of the ancient hardie wedges to cut marble stone “instigators” (education speak for world whether it be through the tesserae, designed mosaics, laid the stone coordinators or facilitators) to assist archaeological or literary record, and 2) a into mortar, grouted it, and cleaned it. teachers with integrating STEM activities hands-on interactive lab in which students Our monument, even though small in in every area of the curriculum. For get to experience, first-hand, a product or comparison to Augustus’, stands as a example, students in a middle school process of the ancient Roman world by testament at our school to the power of social studies class might throw projectiles actively reproducing it. Dr. Alan K. STEM integration in a humanities course. with atlatls, a Native American hunting Outram calls experimental archaeology As you’ve probably guessed, these tool, to learn about the lives of our early “‘actualistic’ experiments that test out projects are costly. Luckily, there are ancestors. Students in elementary physical hypothetical scenarios using potentially grants available to assist with STEM education class might learn to track heart authentic materials and conditions” integration projects. With such grants, I rates using graphs and charts. These (Outram, 2008, p.1). was able to fully fund my Roman activities relate to the content area of the In the class, we explore units of technology class for one year, purchasing class but add a little STEM into the mix. study such as household crafts (spinning, some equipment and supplies which will At a school of just this kind, I found weaving, making Roman leather bullae), be reused from year to year. To find myself wondering why I, as a Latin personal beauty (hairstyling, makeup), STEM grants in your area, be sure to ask The Journal of Classics Teaching 20 (40) p.14-19 © The Classical Association 2019. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and Downloaded14 from https://www.cambridge.org/corereproduction in any medium,. IP providedaddress: 170.106.33.42 the original ,work on 01 is Oct properly 2021 at cited.09:33:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631019000278 your school administrators or grant by an adult with a sharp knife. The actual softness when examining a moistened sea writer if one is employed in your district. process of assembling papyrus strips into sponge. A wet sea sponge is effective as If your area has petrochemical or other sheets is fascinating to see in action. After an eraser too, and students should industry nearby, visit the websites for being presented with this information, experiment with this process. their companies and look for grant students should come to an After introducing students to at least opportunities. If the grants specifically understanding of how time-consuming one or two of the above sources for how ask for STEM connections in your and expensive papyrus production was. If we know about ancient Roman writing, curriculum, be sure to draw attention to you don’t want to try making your own, it it’s time to introduce a short text on the use of ancient sources for STEM. It is still made regularly in Egypt and readily ancient writing. Since most ancient seems to catch the eye of the grantors available from online stores. writing about technical things is not (or so has been my personal experience Students should also know how canon literature, it’s difficult to find texts so far). papyrus sheets were glued together into that are annotated and glossed for Responses to my presentations on long rolls, attached to a wooden dowel beginning students. To help with this this class from fellow Latin teachers with knobs at each end, and written on process, I copy and paste the text from generally have been, “That sounds horizontally to express chapters worth of the Perseus Digital Library into fantastic, but I don’t understand math” or text. They should also be introduced to NoDictionaries.com, create a simple “but I’m not qualified to teach science” or the work being done to read the vocabulary, and discuss any odd Latin “but I don’t have the money to do Herculaneum scrolls, charred by the 79 forms with the students as we go through projects in my classroom” or “but I’m on CE eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. They are the text together. Reading unusual texts a strict curriculum timeline, and we don’t only now being read in the past couple of with no commentary can be a time- have time for lengthy projects”. If you’re years, without the destructive process of consuming and frustrating process one of these teachers, or you just want to unrolling, using sophisticated x-ray sometimes so choosing texts far in try out a STEM project for the first time technology (Marchant, 2018). advance is a wise choice. in your Latin class, this article is for you. I A very interesting papyrus Suetonius, in his Divus Augustus, 85, will detail two simple, inexpensive, and phenomenon is the palimpsest, or a describes Augustus discussing a tragedy quick projects that are light on the science papyrus which has been recycled by he was writing about the mythological and heavy on the fascinating and fun. erasing it and writing over it. The residue character of Ajax. Evidently, the Both these projects, from my Roman of the original writing leaves traces experience did not go well: technology class’s unit on record keeping, detectable by scholars, and the manuscript are tried and true favourites with my then becomes a double one with multa varii generis prosa oratione students and involve writing in the ancient remainders of both texts. The word is composuit, ex quibus nonnulla in coetu world: writing with reed pens and squid ancient Greek for “scraped”, and students familiarium velut in auditorio recitavit, sac ink on papyrus and writing with a enjoy seeing pictures of these and asked sicut “rescripta Bruto de Catone,” quae metal or wooden stylus on wax tablets. to reflect on why they were recycled, volumina cum iam senior ex magna parte which writing came first, and how legisset, fatigatus Tiberio tradidit modern scholars are able to interpret perlegenda; item “hortationes ad them. A Nova television programme tells philosophiam,” et aliqua “de vita sua,” Project 1: Papyrus and reed pens. the story of the Archimedes palimpsest quam tredecim libris Cantabrico tenus and how it came to be (Tucker, 2002). bello nec ultra exposuit. poetica summatim I begin the unit by asking how we A number of frescoes from Pompeii attigit. unus liber exstat scriptus ab eo (modern people) know about writing in contain images of writing utensils hexametris versibus, cuius et argumentum the ancient Roman world.
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