 | Wilson Butte CaveA NATIONAL REGISTER ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE |
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Archaeological ContextObjective: In their study of context students will use a game and discussion to demonstrate the importance of artifacts in context for learning about past people. Materials: Index cards Background: The things that people own or have made can tell something about the person. The objects a person has chosen to have can indicate the person’s age, gender, and interests. For example, a baseball bat and a football helmet in someone’s bedroom could suggest that the owner probably likes sports. Posters of pets and a collection of stuffed animals could mean that the person is an animal lover. The objects (artifacts) can only tell a complete story if they are found together, where their owners left them (in context). Archaeologists rely on the objects that people made (artifacts) and where they left them (in context) to learn the story of past people. Think of a prehistoric pottery bowl, beautifully painted. It has a very different meaning if it is found at a prehistoric site buried with someone than if it is found full of corn in an ancient storage room. Its meaning changes further if it is found in someone‘s modern living room – the bowl has now lost its original context and all connection with its prehistoric owners. It has become only a thing, no longer a messenger from the past. Archeologists preserve the context of artifacts they recover from sites by recording the location of everything they find. The artifact and its context provide more information to the archeologist than could the artifact alone. When context is lost, information is lost. 1. Ask the students: If I had never met you and walked into your room, what would I know about you from the things you have there? Would I know if you were a boy or a girl? Would I know what your interests are? Would I know if you share your room? 2. Think of something in your room that is very special to you. How does that object tell something about you, along with everything else in your room? Everything together tells about you because it is in context. You have selected certain things to have, and these things tell about you when they are all found together. 3. Now imagine that your special object has been taken from you and is found in the city park. How does this change what could be known about you? When it is removed from your room, the object alone tells nothing, and your room is now missing an important piece of information about you. Context has been disturbed, and information about you is now lost. 1. Tell the students they are going to play a game requiring that they think like archaeologists. Divide the class into groups of 5 to 6 students, and assign each group a different number. Give each student an index card and pencil. As a group, they are to choose a room or type of building such as a hospital operating room, a kitchen, or a hardware store. What objects (artifacts) in the room make it distinctive; then each student writes one clue on his or her card, for a total of 5 to 6 clues per group. Each card also has the group number written on the back side. 2. The stack of cards from each group is passed to the next group, until every group has seen every stack and tried to infer the function of each place. Be sure the other 3. The teacher reviews each group’s stack, asking how many groups correctly guessed the rooms’ functions. 4. Ask: Is it possible to know the function of the room now? Is one object taken out of context (like a card removed at random) able to give as accurate a picture as are all of the objects in their place of origin? This demonstrates that removing artifacts from a site removes them from their context and makes it very difficult to get a complete understanding of past people. Artifacts in context are the basis for all understanding about prehistoric people; archaeology is a science of context. Imagine that an archaeologist finds your classroom a thousand years from now. Can you make a statement about how artifacts in the context of your classroom will enable the archaeologist to learn about your class? On a separate sheet of paper, ask the students to answer the following questions. Possible Answers for Context Activity: 1. List could include items such as ruffled curtains, posters, collection of dolls or model cars, certain types of clothing, photographs, other art work, the color of furnishings, number of beds and dressers, souvenirs. 2. The listed items could indicate the student’s sex, age, interests, places they have visited, their dreams and hopes, hobbies, amount of allowance, habits, and whether or not they shared their room. 3. Since these things are out of context, they tell nothing about their owner. In fact, it cannot be established if the artifacts once belonged together, so the story of their owner cannot be learned. 4. Artifacts and their context provide the evidence archaeologists need to learn about the past. If clues are removed or moved, information about the past is lost forever.
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