Summer SAVY, Session 3 Day 4, “Archeology 101: Unearthing Secrets of the Past” (1st-2nd)
Happy Thursday!
It was a busy day of learning for our young archaeologists! We started the day by discussing all that we had learned from our guest speaker, Ms. Lily, and our walking field trip to visit Professor Young and Mr. Markus. Students reported that they enjoyed seeing the 3,000-year-old artifacts and getting to put Mr. Markus’ microscopic artifacts into the machine!
We dove deep into the soil today and asked questions like: What is soil? How does it form? Are there different kinds of soil? Why/How is soil important to humans? Why do we find certain types of soil in places and not in others? We learned that soil originates from the weathering of rocks and that, because there are different types of rocks, there are also different types of soil. We explored characteristics of soil, learned about different kinds of soil, and used our knowledge to determine what types of soil samples were in our mystery bags. We put our samples into jars with water, shook them up, and let them settle so we could discover the various elements in soil and what a simple soil horizon could look like.
Then we took a look at a model of a soil horizon and discussed stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is like the layers of a big cake. When you dig down into the ground, you see different layers of rocks and dirt stacked on top of each other. Each layer tells a story about what happened a long, long time ago. This informed us about how archaeologists can date artifacts. The deeper in the soil horizon they are, the older they must be.
We also checked in on our materials and decomposition experiment. We saw a change in the cloth material for the trials that added water to the yeast. This lets us know that water, like rain, snow, rivers, and oceans, can impact how long certain artifacts can last. This helps explain why we can find artifacts like textiles in dry ecosystems and not wet ecosystems. This also helps explain why, when we find artifacts, they are often made out of materials that can last over long periods of time.
Below are some dinner-time discussion questions for tonight:
- What is soil, and what does it have to do with archeology?
- What happened when you combined your soil samples and water?
- How does knowing the layer of soil or dirt aid archaeologists in dating an object?
Finally, we ended the day with a practice dig to help us get ready for the big dig tomorrow! Ms. Lily will be back with us to help ensure we dig just like an archaeologist does! We’ll dig layer by layer, take notes on any artifacts we find, bring them back to analyze in our classroom lab, and determine if a school should be built on the dig site land or not. We’ll see what stakeholders think about our ultimate decisions!
Don’t forget to wear clothes and shoes you feel comfortable digging in! We’ll have safety goggles and a large t-shirt to wear over our clothes to protect us, too.
See you tomorrow!
Warmly,
Ms. Courtney and Ms. Andrea
