Project Archaeology: Pennsylvania Teaching Pennsylvania History through Archaeology

Project Archaeology is a program designed to teach students that:

that we all have a responsibility to see to its wise use.

The Program was developed by the Utah State Office of the Bureau of Land Management of the U.S. Department of the Interior . The Project Archaeology Teaching materials include two main components. The Intrigue of the Past teaching Guide forms the foundation and includes information on the fundamental concepts, processes, and issues of archaeology. A state supplement is then available for many states and is designed to provide local and regional information to complement Intrigue of the Past . The BLM Imagination Team designed Intrigue of the Past as a supplement to a workshop rather than a stand alone guide. Workshops provide a forum for experiencing the activities firsthand, for asking questions and exchanging ideas with teachers and for providing current information on archaeology in the area. The guides are not designed to aid in time and labor intensive activities such as mock digs or constructing dioramas. The Imagination Team designed a program that is built on the basic ideas of archaeological process and preservation.

PROJECT ARCHAEOLOGY: PENNSYLVANIA

In 1994, a Local History Project Support grant of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission(PHMC) was awarded to the Pennsylvania Archaeological Council (PAC) Education Committee for the development and production of a Pennsylvania archaeological curriculum for middle school grades five through eight. The Project Archaeology: Pennsylvania book is the result of that effort. The focus of the curriculum is Pennsylvania's past as learned through archaeological research. The target group is the middle school teacher who is often charged with teaching this material in the classroom.

The project was conceived in response to requests by teachers throughout the state. Since 1990, members of the PAC Education Committee have listened to the concerns of hundreds of teachers across the state in schoolrooms, universities, museums, and at exhibits staffed by PAC members at both state-wide annual science and social studies teachers conferences. Teachers consistently requested ideas which would help them teach the past, as discovered through archaeology, to their students. Many were only vaguely aware of Pennsylvania's lengthy and important archaeological heritage and were at a loss as to how to convey information about this heritage to their students. Because most university schools of education do not include archaeology in their course offerings, many teachers were even less aware of the fundamental concepts, processes, and issues associated with the science of archaeology.

The curriculum project directly addressed these needs by developing a two part solution to the problems identified by teachers. First, the teaching guide, Project Archaeology: Pennsylvania, was developed to focus on what has been learned by archaeologists about Pennsylvania's prehistory and history. Second, this guide was desired to articulate with Intrigue of the Past: Investigating Archaeology, a national archaeological curriculum developed by the Utah Interagency Task Force on Cultural Resources, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) (consisting of the U. S. Forest Service, National Park Service, the State of Utah, and led by BLM). BLM has made this curriculum package (developed for middle school teachers) available to professional archaeological organizations wherever a state-specific set of complements lesson plans has been developed. This partnership program between BLM and state organizations is known nationally as Project Archaeology. The Pennsylvania Archaeological Council Education Committee is among the first such groups to enter the Project Archaeological partnership east of the Mississippi.

Project Description

The Project Archaeology: Pennsylvania teacher's guide consists of 30 lesson plans organized around 10 topics:
Setting the Stage
Paleoindian Period in Pennsylvania
Archaic Period in Pennsylvania
Woodland Period in Pennsylvania
Early Historic Period: The Susquehannock Indians
Historical Archaeological in Pennsylvania: A Case Study
Industrial Archaeological
Preserving Pennsylvania's Archaeological Heritage
Archaeological Research: A Case Study in Pittsburgh Area
Archaeological Field Techniques (Appendix A)

Altogether, the curriculum addresses specific periods in Pennsylvania prehistoric and historic, preservation law and related issues, research, field methodology , and teaching methodologies. Each section provides background texts, vocabulary , summary of key points, suggested reading lists, illustrations where appropriate, discussions of specific sites if relevant, and lesson plans. The objectives and materials for each group of lesson plans are specified as are assessment activities. The lesson plans are organized in three sets of step-by-step activities:

Anticipatory set.
Procedures.
Closure.

Appendix A includes a lesson plan in archaeological field techniques developed for the U. S. Corps of Engineers Baltimore District and reproduced with the Corps' permission. Additional Appendices include the PAC speakers list, Archaeology Week and essay contest information, Internet addresses, as well as other resources. Although the curriculum package was designed to be used as a complete unit, individual sections can be used independently of the other sections.

The production staff included PAC archaeologists experienced in teacher and/or middle school education as well as those expert in specific areas of interest, a consulting middle school curriculum development specialist, and a consulting teacher/independent reviewer. The curriculum was introduced at the PA Science Teachers Association annual meetings in Valley Forge in December 1995 to positive comments from participating teachers about the "brains-on" as opposed to "hands-on" approach of the lesson plans. Positive comments have also been received from Crow Canyon and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) educators who previewed advance copies or the draft copy submitted with the SAA grant proposal. The lesson plans will serve as the Pennsylvania specific insert to the Intrigue of the Past lesson plans created by BLM and will be part of the Project Archaeological Workshop hosted by BHP under the SAA grant in May. Discussions are already in progress about revisions to future editions. Revisions will be based on comments we receive from teachers, archaeologists, museum educators and others who will actually be using the lesson plans.

Starting in the late summer of 1996, the archaeological curriculum Project Archaeology: Pennsylvania will be available to teachers at special workshops held at science, art and social studies teachers conferences as well as at teachers' in-service activities throughout the state.

Project Archaeology: Pennsylvania is a unique educational tool because it was produced by a partnership of PAC archaeologists expert in specific areas of interest and educators experienced in teacher and/or middle school education. Each lesson plan in the guide provides teachers with up-to-date interpretations of the archaeological record, in a format easily understood by them, in a format easily used by them in the classroom. It is also unique because it does not include major sections on excavation nor does it focus on artifact types. The intention of these lesson plans was to focus on what archaeologists have learned about the life of the people in the past and not on a few select objects made by them. In concert with Intrigue of the Past, teachers will be able to present a thorough and balanced view of archaeological and of the past.

Project Archaeology: Pennsylvania Teacher Workshops

In January 1996, The Bureau for Historic Preservation of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission was awarded a grant by the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) to fund a pilot program to introduce Project Archaeology to the state's teachers. Funds for the grant were provided by a partnership of Federal Agencies including the Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service. If the pilot program is successful, he SAA plans to continue awarding these grants on an annual basis, given continued agency support. The first stage of the grant was to organize a facilitators training workshop which introduced Project Archaeology to a group of museum educators, archaeologists and teachers. The workshop was held May 17-18 in Harrisburg. Megg Heath of the BLM Imagination Team, Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colorado and Shelly Smith of the BLM on assignment with the Army conducted the workshop. They were assisted by Renata Wolynec and Kathleen Bensen of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, authors of the Pennsylvania state supplement.

The group of 30 teachers, archaeologists, and museum educators spent two intense days attending the workshop. They represented a wide range of state organizations including: The Pennsylvania State Museum (Archaeological Curator and Education Staff), the Bureau for Historic Preservation of the PHMC (the Pennsylvania SHPO), the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, the University Museum in Philadelphia, Temple University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Elizabethtown College, the Pennsylvania State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Allegheny National Forest, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Heritage and Preservation Commission, The Ellis School in Pittsburgh, GAI Consultants, Inc., CHRS, Inc., Heritage Resources, Inc., Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School, the Baldwin School District, Warwick Middle School, and the Monroe County Historical Society. Of the participants, 14 are archaeologists, 8 are museum educators, and 8 are teachers. The geographic distribution of the facilitators is such that we will be able to hold on of the teacher workshops within 50 miles of 90 percent of the state's population. For the next stage of the project each of the facilitators or team of facilitators will organize a workshop for teachers and archaeologists in their region of the state.

As we completed the facilitator's workshop, we also began preparations for the series of regional teacher workshops in the fall. We have combined a number of lists of teachers into a single master list of 500 names. All of these teachers have expressed an interest in attending a workshop on teaching archaeology in their classroom. As you can seen from the list at the end of this report, nine workshops are tentatively scheduled; three others are in the initial planning stages.

The third part of the project is a partnership with the Pennsylvania State Museum in which the Project Archaeology curricula will be adapted as part of a long distance video learning project. This still in a preliminary planning stage which will first define the parts of the Project Archaeology curriculum that will be adapted to the video transmission system. They expect to start work on the project at the end of June with the actual transmissions beginning in November.

We invite all archaeologists and educators in Pennsylvania and adjacent states to join us at one of the Teachers Workshops in the fall. Our experience has been that any archaeologist who works with public programs or gives classroom presentations will find the workshop to be a great way to prepare for these activities. For specific information contact: Dr. Beverly Mitchum Chiarulli, Bushy Run Battlefield, P.O. Box 468, Harrison City, Pa 15636 (412) 527-5584/email bev@chert.pgh.pa.us.