Archaeology

Archeology is a Science course in the CTY program with no prerequisites. Its course code is ARCH.

Course Description

Archaeology is a really fun course. It involves lots of hands on activities and lots of time outside the classroom. At the Lancaster site you take three field trips to downtown Lancaster, The Penn Archaeology museum and to an actual dig site. There is one research project and one midterm. The curriculum included the book In Small Things Considered.

Class History

Session 2 '06 ARCH classes had Molly as the instructor and Rosanna as the T.A. During session 1, there was a different instructor, Jenny, but the same T.A. We were not required to read Small Things Considered but there were two or three excerpts from it to skim through. The following information is relevant to 06.2.

First of all, the performance that the Paleobiology kids did about hominid evolution and culture at the closing ceremony was really mostly about archaeology (study of past cultures and their artifacts), not paleobiology (a branch of paleontology that deals with the origin, growth and structure of fossil animals and plants as living organisms). The overwhelming majority of physical remains of hominids have been artifacts, not fossils, and most paleontologists stick to their own turf-- other animal and plant species that have mostly fossil remains-- dinosaurs, much?? They're mooching off of our syllabus!

Activities

At the beginning of the second week of Session 2, Molly took a survey and found out two things:

• We don't like to read the textbook stuff. (Skim, yes. Read, huh?)
• We don't like to write papers. (Bullet points, sure. Complete sentences, what?)
• WE LOVE ACTIVITIES!

She couldn't/didn't exactly get rid of textbook stuff or the papers (even though she did shorten the minimum page amount to write) we got to do more activities in class.

We went to the public park next to F&M and made a Wheeler box grid in the grass with string and nails. Then we pretended to be skeletons and had other people plot where our heads, feet, knees, etc. were. We also had to plot where Molly and Rosanna had hidden marbles in our box grids.

Another activity was taking about ten scraps of paper with pictures of different pottery vessels and how they evolved over time, and we had to put them in order.

We also got to make things out of clay! That's right—CLAY. Maybe I was the only one who got excited about that. But it turns out white clay has no minerals in it and red clay has iron in it and that's what gives them their colors. That might actually be wrong, so don't take my word for it, but we got to play with red and white clay so that's all that really matters, right? We made little pots with two methods: the pinch pot and the coil. Any clay we didn't use we got to make into anything we wanted. The table in the side of the room filled up very quickly with random pottery items.

We also did an activity where we made jewelry out of beads and twine and string and did this Kula-ring trade. (It was Kula, right? Sorry, I don't have my notes with me right now...)

Field trips

The first field trip we took was to the UPenn Museum of Anthropology & Archaeology. It was a great museum and our tour guide was helpful-- possibly overly so. The Etruscan, Chinese, and Egyptian exhibits were particularly interesting. For lunch, we got to choose between ham and cheese sandwiches, turkey rolls, and spinach veggie wraps. In case anyone plans on choosing this course in the future: DO NOT GET THE VEGGIE WRAPS. They were nauseating. We also had to go to the museum auditorium and listen to a balding, scantily dressed old man who talked like a walrus educate us about Roman warriors and weaponry. The auditorium was full of kids from day care on a field trip, and the only point during the presentation that wasn't a waste of time was the part where little kids got to go on stage and play with the weapons and fight each other, and one of them accidentally drew blood.

The second field trip was to the Shenk's Ferry American Indian (We learned it's incorrect to say Native American because no people are native to America since australopithecus originated in Africa-- unless you believe the whole Noah and the flood spiel) dig site in Lancaster. We had some archaeologists show us artifacts they found and tell us about their excavation methods and mapping techniques. They had build a palisade around the settlement and reconstructed a longhouse. Pictures are linked to in the "External links" section.

The third trip was to Muncy, Pennsylvania, a town that had thrived during the Revolutionary and Civil War periods thanks to their elaborate canal system and their strong mules. Our first stop was at the Muncy Historical Museum, which turned out to only have one toilet, but was otherwise very intelligently designed, once due consideration was given to the fact that it was inside somebody's crumbling colonial house. Afterwards, we went to a dig site on the Susquehanna Riverbed and got to dig and sieve through some dirt (and worms). Pictures are linked to in the "External links" section.

We also...

We also watched a few movies. One was 45 minutes of a man sitting and chipping away at a rock trying to teach us to make Oldowan Clovis spearpoints. Even if everyone hadn't fallen asleep, we probably wouldn't have been able to do much better in the following lab where we had to make spearpoints and arrowheads from chunks of obsidian and flint. There is an actual very intelligent and difficult method to this. It's very frustrating and takes a lot of skill that no one possessed and everyone's hands were bloody by the end because we had stupidly ditched our gloves (and safety goggles). But it was exhilarating (ooh, big word! It's probably spelled wrong) getting all prehistoric and smashing rocks together. Cavemen must have been easily amused.

We also watched a documentary about the Maya during the last week and "Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark" on the last day while drinking Root Beer Floats. Who doesn't love ice cream at nine in the morning?

We also learned about Howard Carson's discoveries in Motel of the Mysteries, a great, entertaining book that you should read.

We also did independent research projects on a civilization of our choice, and spent a lot of time lugging books back and forth from the library and making posters. Then we got to "type up information for our posters and Google pictures up", so we got to go on AIM. But SHH, let's keep that between you and me, k?

We also had to conduct interviews and write ethnographies of CTY to demonstrate the point of ethnoarchaeology, which is to make inferences about past cultures based on the customs of the modern people who live in the geographical area or are direct descendants of the past band, tribe, chiefdom, or state.

External links

Dig Pictures

• Picture 1
• Picture 2
• Picture 3

Museum Pictures

• Picture 1
• Picture 2