Social Education 71(5), pp 272–277 ©2007 National Council for the Social Studies Archaeology in the Classroom: Using a Dig Box to Understand the Past Amelia G. Chisholm, Mark P. Leone, and Brett T. Bentley

Mock excavations, or “dig boxes,” to 12. Visiting children dig and find arti- concrete things that archaeologists dig offer students a hands-on opportunity to facts, discuss how our society uses these up that are sometimes our only remnants explore artifacts and their importance materials today, and then extrapolate on of a bygone culture. and to learn the principles of context and how the material, may have been used in Our normal reaction to something stratigraphic association. the past (see Box on page 274). that comes out of the ground is to name The dig box can be central to discuss- In 2006, high school science teacher it based on what is familiar to us: “Oh ing differences that existed between Brett Bentley instructed seven college yes, this is an arrow head,” or “This is a classes, races, ethnic groups, and the undergraduates on how to teach children bottle.” But these instant identifications sexes at different times in history. By about archaeology, highlighting the con- do not analyze the actual meaning of the setting up each excavation to represent cept of past cultures with a concrete set artifact. When an artifact is a million a site, the comparisons of status between of objects that the children could relate years old, or 10,000 years old, or even peoples become evident. For example, to. The visiting children were actively 400 years old, we truly do not know what one excavation site could represent a engaged in discussing their ideas on the it is. It may resemble an artifact that we plantation house in the South, which artifacts coming out of the layers of sand are familiar with, but our assumptions would have considerably more wealth or soil. The undergraduates said they, too, do not provide real or accurate informa- and more elaborate artifacts than another found the experience enriching because, tion. Archaeology involves understand- site created to represent the slave dwell- as they taught the material and presented ing the context in the soil and the ground ings on the same estate. The flexibility of it to a new audience, they were forced to in which the artifact is discovered, which, this approach allows teachers to create reformulate and internalize their own properly studied, helps us understand an activity that complements a specific understanding. the artifact. lesson, regardless of the topic, by increas- Layers in a dig box are created by ing student understanding of how various The Mock Excavation using sand, mulch, peat moss, or kitty peoples lived during a particular period The first principle teachers should litter. The layers are visually distinct of history. emphasize prior to leading a mock and have different textures. These dif- Each year in late April, the University excavation is that the artifacts that are ferences mimic layers that are found in of Maryland’s Anthropology Department recovered have little or no meaning the ground when an archaeologist works. organizes mock excavations that are without their soil context. Artifacts are Because the ground is made up of soil, open to the public on Maryland Day in items that have a meaning in the time and clay, rocks, and sand, students can move College Park.1 This day-long experience place in which they originate but have conceptually from artificial construc- is presented by anthropology majors and lost or have had that meaning altered as tions differentiated by color, texture, arranges excavations for children, ages 6 cultures have changed. These are the and width, to an understanding of how

S o c i a l Ed u c a t i o n 272 Elementary school students search for artifacts on Maryland Day in 2006, during a mock dig organized by the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland-College Park. Sponsors include the City of Annapolis, the Anthropology Student Association, and Archaeology in Annapolis.

(Courtesy of Archaeology in Annapolis)

the ground anywhere actually looks and screens, set over a tarp or over an empty exist for common artifacts. Following must be approached. bin, in order to recover any remaining are some examples of how broken dishes Artifacts, and the context in which artifacts. Lastly, each child gathered up or discarded animal bones can be inter- they are found, are one major source of the artifacts and brought them to one preted. Broken dishes can include plates, our understanding of culture. By discuss- of the college student volunteers, who serving dishes, and bowls. Modern din- ing both what artifacts were found and then engaged the child with questions ing habits involve place settings, dishes where within the soil they were located about the artifacts (e.g., where the items of uniform size, and dishes that match students gain an understanding of the could have come from, and what they in terms of color and style. This is a way materials a culture used at a particular mean, especially when taken together, of eating that uses equipment which first time in history. This reveals much more as a whole). came into use in the early eighteenth cen- about the past than what types of things The purpose of this exercise is for the tury in the American colonies. Modern people were using. For example, if a num- undergraduates to help the younger learn- table settings were first used in cities, ber of artifacts were found together, the ers figure out on their own what they have and less in the countryside, but they do combination of items may reveal impor- discovered. A wide variety of compari- not reflect economic class because many tant information about what activities sons can be made in which students relate dishes were inexpensive. They reflect people were engaging in. If these arti- the pieces of artifacts to things that they the use of European manners, the use facts were found together in the remains know (for example, the pieces of bricks of courses to make up a meal, and the of a building, or in a trash pit, an even looked a lot like the buildings around use of separately prepared foods that broader understanding of the site and them; pieces of ceramic compared to their were served as portions. When we find time period can be created. parents’ dishes or knick-knacks). a large number of bowls, along with large During the Maryland Day excava- After students dealt with each artifact cooking kettles, it means that people tion, students worked through three basic separately, the artifacts could be grouped preferred preparing stews as opposed stations or physical locations. First, the to make a statement about how people to roasts, with vegetables prepared sepa- students started at the dig box and exca- lived in the past. By creating a story about rately. Thus, different kinds of dishes vated using a trowel or spoon to find large how one particular family lived in the reflect different eating habits and dif- artifacts. They also saved any soil that past, the information was much more ferent ways of making up a meal. They they dug up in a bucket, in case they had comprehensible and the children felt a do not necessarily reflect wealth, status, overlooked artifacts while digging. They greater connection to the activity. education, or ethnic groups.2 carried the collected soil to the second If a mock excavation uses animal bones station, where the students sifted their Interpreting Common Artifacts as a discovery technique, students will dirt through wood-framed, wire-mesh Many different levels of interpretation learn how bones from cows are differ-

S e p t e m b e r 2007 273 ent from bones from pigs; or how bones out of the same household, archaeologists numbers at home. Studies and homework from pigs are different from sheep, or can conclude that people ate stews, soups, were carried out on such slates. chicken. Such bones are always found or porridges. This is a characteristic of Buttons are a modern form of fastening in historic excavations, usually the dis- medieval cooking when a stew was made clothing and represented an improve- carded remains of meals. Because bones of many vegetables simmered together, ment over pins. Buttons meant tighter can easily be distinguished by species, sometimes with a whole joint of meat fitting clothes. A dig with many buttons and wild species from domestic species, cooked slowly in the pot. may be a sign that people at that location students will note the proportion of beef, Matched plates of the same size had been taking in laundry and washing pork, lamb, and poultry eaten in the and decoration are a mark of modern clothes for their livelihood. Fancy but- area of the excavation. These can also middle-class etiquette, or table man- tons suggest a form of decoration. In an illustrate the amount of domestic versus ners that came into use around 1750 in African American historical context, but- wild food people had available. It is also the American colonies. Matched dishes tons and strait pins may represent special possible to tell whether a cut of meat was mean individual place settings. They also kinds of decoration and an invocation of prepared as a roast, or as chops (a much reveal a meal with multiple courses. family memories. more modern way of preparing food). A teacher can include broken slates in Whole glass bottles can show medi- a dig box. These can be acquired from cines, soft drinks, and liquor use. Because Constructing an Archaeological a roofing company. Slates are frequently bottles can be recycled for canning and Dig Box found in nineteenth-century archaeologi- storage, they often have two or more use- Artifacts all tell stories. If a dig box con- cal sites of former houses and represent lives. Just because a bottle has a label, tains fragments from many broken bowls children practicing penmanship and does not mean that was its only use.

Artifacts and Their Meaning Buttons. Use ten. labels are off, much less information is available. Be sure Interpretations: to use some with and some without labels to show how • Used for fastening clothes for the last 10,000 years. information is lost. • When found with many common pins, an uncommon • National brands guarantee quantity, quality, and price. way of fastening clothes prior to 1700 (when common Some people prefer national brands to local merchants’ pins were more frequent). supplies where there can be shortchanging by the gro- • May indicate a hand laundry business done at home. cer. (A local grocer may overcharge, under weigh, or use • The absence of zippers may indicate a date before 1950 inferior quality.) (when zippers were introduced). • In large numbers, may indicate decorative use or to ward Mirrors. Use one. off the evil eye in some cultures. Interpretation: • Cheap mirrors have only been available since the nine- Plastic Pieces of dishes, bottles, or sheeting. Use two or three teenth century. At that point, those in poverty could use pieces, not complete vessels. them whenever they wanted. Many African Americans Interpretation: used them on graves. • A date after World War II, clear evidence of twentieth- century life. Oil Lamps. Use a base or a chimney. Interpretation: Bottles Use three or four. • These were far better than candles in terms of providing Interpretations: light at night. They represent easy reading at home. They • If all are from the same date, they were used all at once. If also represent the ability to work for wages and piece- they were used all at once and discarded simultaneously, work at home at night. this implies they were not reused for canning or storage. • Many bottles come with brand names and contents Matched Sets of Dishes. Use two or three plates, or pieces of molded into the glass. This will reveal date, patent, com- the same pattern. pany name, and contents. Interpretations: • Styles of decoration always reveal a date. Tin Cans. Use three or four. • Dishes that match represent a set. Sets of the same size Interpretations: and decoration indicate modern table manners. Modern • If the labels are kept on, they will reveal contents, manu- table manners denote eating in courses, sitting in chairs, facturer, date, quantity, and many other facts. If the eating together, and not using fingers to eat with.

S o c i a l Ed u c a t i o n 274 Tin cans can be included in a dig History and Culture in Annapolis.3 box, including labels that don’t peal off A dig box can be created in a plastic easily. Labels show national brands or gardening trough (approximately 3 feet local brands. National brands come long, 2 feet wide and 8 inches high). Fill with guaranteed contents, weights, and each box with three separate layers of prices. Though national brands tend to soil to represent the natural stratigraphic be more expensive, poorer people often layers of the earth. This requires 1 bag bought them to avoid being cheated at Courtesy of Archaeology in Annapolis (2 cu. ft) of mulch, 1 bag (50 lbs) of sand, the local grocery store with poor quality 1 bag (40 lbs) of topsoil. Bury a vari- goods for greater prices. National brands ety of artifacts within the soil such as don’t denote prestige; they can simply ceramic dishes and figurines, seashells, represent a guarantee of uniform quality. wooden items, brick, toys, or animal bones. Items should be broken to simu- Steps for Setting up a Dig late the condition of most actual archae- The following method for constructing ological finds. Insert broken items into archaeological dig boxes was adapted each layer, after each bag of soil (sand from the work of Maisha Washington, or mulch) is put into the box. The arti- formerly a science coordinator at facts should not be so tiny as to be too the Banneker-Douglass Museum, in hard to find, and they can be buried in Maryland’s Center for African American whatever manner is deemed appropriate.

Bowls. Use three or four cereal bowls, or soup bowls, of differ- Toys and Doll Parts. Three or four metal toys; pieces of dolls, ent patterns. some toys made of plastic. Interpretation: Interpretations: • Bowls suggest stews in the seventeenth and eighteenth • Toys indicate children, families, and domestic life—as centuries in the American colonies, particularly if the distinct from work or factory sites. patterns are not matched. Stews precede meals served • Plastic toys all date from after 1950. in courses. They also precede cuts of meat served as • Pieces of ceramic dolls, especially limbs and heads, are chops or roasts. Stews imply a common meal with a the most common relic of Victorian childhood. joint of meat stewed with vegetables, and then ladled • The majority of eighteenth-century toys were miniature out into bowls and eaten with a spoon, or with fingers, versions of well-known objects and similar dates can with the remaining liquid drunk from the bowl. be used for them, especially for items such as dollhouse furnishings and tea sets. Marbles. Use five or six commercially available marbles. • Occasionally, doll pieces can connote magical practices. Interpretations: • Marbles signify children playing a game as a group, All of these artifacts are easy to acquire, either through per- sometimes only boys. In some settings they indicate sonal possession, or at a discount store. Since most artifacts black and white children playing together. found in the ground are broken pieces, and not whole, it is • Sometimes marbles can be used to establish chronol- better to break the items, if possible beforehand, especially the ogy. Clay marbles come earlier than banded glass ceramics. If teachers do not want to incorporate broken glass, marbles, which come earlier than marbles with curved small whole bottles may be added to the dig box. linear stripes. A good source of information about historic artifacts is listed below: Coins and Tokens. Use four or five U.S. pennies, nickels, bus or Hume, Ivor Noel. A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America. subway tokens, or even a stray coin from another country. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969. Interpretations: • All coins are dated and therefore nothing in a stratum with a coin can be earlier than the date of the coin. • Tokens represent modes of public transportation, sub- stitutes for cash. • Both men and women may have worn coins of no obvi- ous value or with holes drilled in them as jewelry. • Coins signify losses and are rarely deliberately depos- ited for safety.

S e p t e m b e r 2007 275 They can be spread somewhat evenly as the teacher chooses. They should be tions about the past. It can create an across the site, or placed in clusters to tailored to the age of the students work- activity where students can teach each simulate features such as buildings or ing on the project and the information other, thereby internalizing more fully trash deposits. Each box should repre- that is being covered in the unit. For the information, and it can create con- sent a different site that is significant to some examples, please see the sources nections between different classes in the your studies, with the artifacts being site in the notes.4 high school or middle school curriculum, specific, if feasible. Once the excavations are completed, most especially physical sciences and Each group of students needs a tape the artifacts and data can be used for a social studies. Artifacts and the process measure, string, garden trowel, some variety of projects. The artifacts can of discovery can bring history into the type of screen or colander, notebooks, be incorporated into history discus- lives of students, spur curiosity, and eas- artifacts, Ziploc bags (for artifacts), sions, comparing the sites that the boxes ily allow the students to slip into the role Sharpie markers, and 8 dowel rods. were supposed to represent, discuss- of personally exploring and explaining As the archeological dig begins, the ing a regional history, or comparing the the past.5 Above all, archaeology, like student-archaeologists will need to break regional history discovered through the primary source documents, can augment the dig box into sections (depending on excavation to a national historical con- historical discussion. the size of the boxes they are using—two, text. Other potential projects include four or eight quadrants may be appro- creating a presentation or mock museum Notes priate) so that they will be able to deter- exhibit to showcase the artifacts and 1. Explore Our World: Maryland Day 2006, www. marylandday.umd.edu. mine the location of artifacts found in the connections between the history 2. James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: An the soil. A student will place one dowel and the actual methods and products Archaeology of Early American Life (New York: rod firmly into each of the four corners of archaeology. Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1996). 3. Maisha Washington and Amelia Chisholm, Banneker- of the dig box and connect each dowel Douglass Museum Summer Camp Archaeology rod to the adjoining dowel rods using Conclusion Curriculum (unpublished, n.d.); Washington taught an archaeological course to Annapolis youth, most string. The students should then use the The purpose of modular archaeology is of whom were in the Banneker-Douglass Museum tape measure to determine the center of to teach archaeological procedures that Summer Camp Program, which aimed at teaching elements of African and African American culture, each side of the unit. Place dowel rods can be used to understand excavations including history, food ways, and crafts. The children at each of these midpoints to create two around the world. We do not teach stu- were mostly African American, aged 6-11. This course took place over six weeks, and therefore was able to quadrants by tying string between these dents the principles of excavation with go into much greater detail than the one-day project two. This process can be repeated to the idea that they will go off and excavate that we use for the Maryland Day event. create four or eight quadrants as desired, anywhere. In most countries that would 4. Archaeology and Public Education, Society for American Archaeology www.saa.org/pubEdu/A&PE/; by including dowel rods in the center be illegal, and in the United States, spon- Barbara J. Little, ed., Public Benefits of Archaeology of the box. This gives students a grid taneous excavations are illegal on public (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, system to make measurements for deter- lands. We teach students to excavate so 2002). 5. See Social Education 67, no. 7 (2003). mining the location of artifacts in the that they can understand that artifacts dig box. bring no understanding with them when After the grid is set up, students can unaccompanied by other information, begin to dig. It is often easiest to split and have the most to contribute when students into teams and each team excavated in context. Essentially, we use member will have a specific task. These archaeology to recreate the social rela- tasks include the person digging in the tions of past cultures. When we under- Amelia G. Chisholm is the curator of archae- box, the person mapping artifacts and stand the materials used by past cultures, ology for Archaeology in Annapolis, a public archaeology project run with the support of The bagging them, and the one who takes we can hypothesize how these groups University of Maryland, College Park, and asso- notes. Forms can be created to provide a related to one another, how individuals ciated with the Banneker-Douglass Museum in uniform description, although informa- lived, and compare to our own culture Annapolis, Maryland. Mark P. Leone is the tion can simply be recorded in a note- and life. We also teach modular excava- director of Archaeology in Annapolis and profes- sor of anthropology at the University of Maryland, book. The information should include tions so that students can understand that College Park. For the past 25 years, he has created soil color, the artifacts included in the they, community members, and scientists, a program strong in public outreach for archaeol- level, and the depth at the beginning of must bring questions to an excavation ogy in Annapolis. Brett T. Bentley teaches the level and at the end. It can include before it starts. chemistry at Thomas S. Wootton High School, Montgomery Public Schools, in Rockville, Mary- any features discovered, like pits, fire- Beyond these archaeological and his- land. For the last 3 years, he has been involved in places, or burials, if the teacher has the torical concerns, modular excavations the Maryland Day excavation with the Anthropol- time or desire to add them to the box. and the use of archaeological data can ogy Department at College Park, Maryland. These modular dig boxes are modifi- bring a lot of depth to a lesson. It can able and can be as simple or complex help students create their own ques-

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