Tag Archives: education

Practicing Praxis: An Archaeological Adventure

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For my final project, I wanted to find a way to overcome what I viewed as two major problems in K-12 archeology education:

  1. The necessity of costly material teaching tools, be they models of artifacts, materials for reconstructing digs, or the actual cost of taking a whole class to visit a site
  2. The site-specificity of simulation programs, which may make it difficult to impart thematic problems in archaeology

This screenshot demonstrates the user-input based interface of much of the game (Superstar Shia LaBeouf is not actually featured in this game).

Thus, the video game Practicing Praxis was born. Guided by Professor Praxis, a khaki-clad mentor, the user learns how to cooperate with different members of their field team (all of whom have very different goals), how to work with native communities, and how to ultimately present their work to the public. By using a choose-your-own-adventure format, the game simulates the reality of subjective problem solving and challenges the player to think about the stakeholders involved in each decision, and whose desires and opinions should be put above the rest– there is no right answer!

I had initially planned to give the user a letter grade at the end of the game, but working through the different scenarios made me realize that praxis (as it is implemented, not theorized) is inherently idiosyncratic, though we may hope to standardize it when it comes to ethics. Thus, I tried to constrain the chastisement in the game to instances of disrespect and thoughtlessness on facilitators’ parts as opposed to deducting points for preferring local news coverage to blogging.

This game is currently only for PCs and can be downloaded here (to install, extract all items from folder and click on the .exe file). Please forgive any lingering bugs and glitches– while I have been working on streamlining the system, this is still very much a first draft of a first attempt. Have fun!

Archaeology and Social Studies Education: My Final Project

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This course focused in part on presentation of archaeology to the public, both how and why. I believe that one of the strongest benefits that the discipline of archaeology can provide to the public is through education. Archaeology makes history tangible and local, so students who learn history through archaeology are learning in a way that makes history personally relevant to them.

I chose to create a classroom unit based on this belief. My project consists of five lessons created with fourth graders from my hometown of Weston, CT in mind. The lessons teach the history of Native Americans in the Connecticut area from the first inhabitants of the area 10,000 years ago to the colonial period alongside lessons in archaeological methods. Though students would by no means gain a complete knowledge of either archaeology or American Indian history and culture from this unit, the unit was created with the goal of having each topic reinforce the other, with the result that students are interested in retaining the information they learn and continuing to learn on their own.

One of the highlights of the unit I have created is the final lesson, a mock excavation in which students form groups to carefully excavate artificial plots of land, then record data about artifacts, ecofacts, and environmental conditions, and finally build a mini-museum. As a hands-on experience, the excavation should capture students’ attention and motivate them to carefully consider what they have learned. The mock excavation, with its focus on data recording and collaboration with teammates and stakeholders, also works to eliminate stereotypes and misconceptions the general public may have about archaeology.

 

All contributors to this blog are authorized to view the unit guide and the accompanying PowerPoint presentation, both stored on Vspace. Anyone else interested in seeing the project can contact me at caclevenger@vassar.edu for permission.

Indiana Jones and the Archaeological Dig

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While we’re on the topic of the use of archaeology in films, the ever-popular Indiana Jones series of movies deserves a mention.

I grew up on these movies, and for years we had a whip in our costume box so my brother could dress up as Indiana, who was the ultimate action hero with a mild-mannered professor for an alter-ego. When archaeologists want to discuss popular misconceptions of what archaeologists do, they tend to point towards Indiana Jones, who we first meet in The Raiders of the Lost Ark as he steals a gold treasure from a perfectly preserved ancient temple, dodging booby traps and the incensed natives. His catchphrase, “That belongs in a museum!” does little to counteract the fact that Indiana Jones is more looter than archaeologist.

How much does Indiana’s character affect what people think of archaeologists? When I watched the movies as a child, I already had such a strong association between archaeology and digging that the only scene in the movie in which I felt archaeology was being performed was the Nazi-funded excavation in Cairo. My impression of archaology was no more correct, then- (had you asked me for an example of an archaeological dig in a movie I night have pointed you to Jurassic Park) but it was not quite so shaped by the movies as concerned archaeologists might fear.

However, Indiana Jones is a powerful icon, and public archaeology tends to evoke him whenever possible in order to generate interest.

These two exhibits, one by the National Science Foundation and the other by National Geographic, both compare modern archaeologists to the famous hero, emphasizing discovery and unlocking secrets in particular. Visit them, and you’ll notice that one adopts a more critical stance than the other, but both focus on similarities over differences. Is this comparison harmful to public archaeology?