Archaeology with Ms. Rademacher

The project begins with a slide show of a dig conducted in the 1920's by Dr. Robinson, an archeologist trying to unearth the Ancient Greek city of Olynthus. In his dig, he unearthed a villa containing the remains of six rooms. Children work in six teams and are assigned one of the six rooms of the villa. They are not given the identity of their room. Throughout the five days, they are given various artifacts and photographs of items found in their particular room. As a team they have to try to deduce what the objects are and how they were used by the Ancient Greeks. After they have examined everything, they try to find the commonality of these objects in order to determine the identity and use of each room. When they have their final predictions, they read to find out what the true identity of the objects and rooms are, and see how close their predictions are. On the last day we hold a seminar where each group shares a few artifacts from their room, explains what they are and how they were used. The rest of the class then tries to guess what their room was used for. By the end, children not only have a complete picture of the villa, but a better understanding of what life was like for the Ancient Greeks.

The children are writing notes in preparation for their seminar.

These girls are observing a loom weight, one of the artifacts.

Brainstorming and then writing about a special clay jar... gathering ideas of what to say to the class.

These children are preparing to give their presentation for the seminar.

After examining and discussing the commonalities of the artifacts, the children present their findings to the class. The class correctly guesses that the artifacts came from the kitchen of the villa.

Last update: 4-17-01/mgl