Satori Smiles

0 – Introduction: How Do We Know What Happened?

Topics: history, archaeology, archaeologists, timelines

Spine Readings

• The Story of the World Volume 1: Ancient Times: 1-6 (INTRO How Do We Know What Happened? – What is History? | What is Archaeology?)
• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia: 104-105 (Looking at the Ancient World)
• Kingfisher History Encyclopedia: viii-ix (What is History?)
• A Child’s History of the World: 3-10 (CH 2: How Things Started – Prehistory)
• A Little History of the World: 1 (CH 1 Once Upon a Time)

Additional Books

• Archaeologists Dig for Clues, by Kate Duke
• The Magic School Bus Shows and Tells: A Book About Archaeology
• Me and My Family Tree, by Joan Sweeney
• Archaeology for Kids: Uncovering the Mysteries of Our Past, 25 Activities, by Richard Panchyk – (Activity Book targeted for 9-12 age range)

DVD/Videos

• Magic School Bus “Shows and Tells” episode

Activities (I’ll link to blog posts of the activities we’ve done so far)

• SOTW AG: Make a History of My Family Book
• SOTW AG: Make a “This is My Life” Timeline
• SOTW AG: A Dirty Dig!
• History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations – What is History

Internet

• Mysteries of Catalhoyuk

Today Satori performed an archaeology dig on top of Mount Maddie (named after our dog) in the Colorado mountains. It was a sunny, hot day with occasional gusty winds. To start off, we sectioned our dig, named the squares A1 to C3, total of 9 squares. Satori did very good keeping track of which square was which.

sectioning off our dig

Here she digs in (or excavates) square C1! After she dug with her shovel, she would hand the sand to mom who would help sift, and Satori would brush off any artifacts found.

Excavating Square C3

It is important to have a clean square in a real archaeology dig. Normally you would dig layer by layer. Here you can see the “walls” of the square, we used very moldable sand!

Neat squares

When we found any artifacts, they would go in a labeled artifact bag.

Artifacts from dig

Our book showed tiny brown bags, which were so cute when they stood up and were easily labeled. But they were expensive compared to the thousands of zip bags I had for my business, so we only used one sample paper bag.

Labeled artifact bag

We charted our artifact finds and then discussed the “ancient” civilization of the peoples of Mount Maddie. What did they eat? What tools did they use? What did they do? We figured they were a pretty advanced civilization because we found a battery (they made their own power), a screwdriver (metal/plastic advanced tool), pencil (communication),  gold coin (used currency) and so on. They knew how to farm, as we found some corn. They liked to look pretty as we found a ring, an earring and a brush.

Artifact Description sheet