Tag Archives: Final Project

The Stone Walls of the Northeast: An Exploration of Their Origins and a Guide to Investigating Them

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Every stone wall winding through the woods and towns of the northeastern U.S. is an archaeological site. They may be commonplace, but by studying them we can gain a glimpse into the history of the region, from the geological formation and distribution of the stones to the rise and decline of farming in the northeast with industrialization. By studying these everyday artifacts, we can look into history through the eyes of the people who lived on and worked the land, often people whose voices and lives were never written down for future generations. During the course of my research, I purposely tried to find out information about many of the often unacknowledged participants in the story of agriculture in the northeast, for example, Native Americans, immigrants, children, and slaves. Another goal for this project is to contribute to the public’s knowledge and appreciation of the study of the physical artifacts of past cultures, and by emphasizing ways that people can go out and analyze these walls for themselves, I hope to encourage people to get interested in the archaeology of their own communities.

Without further ado:

Introducing: The Stone Walls of the Northeast

The History of Stone Walls in the Northeast

Why Are There So Many Stones in the Northeast?

The Abandoned Stone Wall

Analyzing Stone Walls

Stone Walls: A Case Study

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.