Program Teaches Students to Think Like Archeologists

PETIT JEAN MOUNTAIN, Ark. (Dec. 9, 2009) — Fifth- and sixth-grade gifted and talented students from two local elementary schools participated in an exercise at Winthrop Rockefeller Institute that gave them an opportunity to create their own culture and to discover and interpret an unknown culture. The program, “Project Dig,” is a curriculum designed by Jerry Lipetzky of Interact and orchestrated by Joe Foster and Dr. Skip Stewart-Abernathy of the Rockefeller Institute.

During the program, students from Pine Forest Elementary of Maumelle and Wooster Elementary of Greenbrier invented their own cultures and brought them to life by creating artifacts from oven-baked clay. These artifacts represented various core values and principles they chose for that culture, including marriage and death rituals, the structures they built as houses, and how the members of the cultures obtained food.

Each team then brought their culture’s artifacts to the Rockefeller Institute on Petit Jean Mountain, where they were broken and spread on the surface of the semi-indoor tennis court building. Guided by staff members from the Arkansas Archeological Survey Station at the Rockefeller Institute, the students conducted controlled surface collection using the correct forms and methods. The students returned to their schools with their findings and spent the next several weeks reassembling the artifacts, and from them, reconstructing the culture.

The concluding event was a formal research symposium held Dec. 8 at the Rockefeller Institute’s Rock Theater. Based on their archeological findings, research teams from Pine Forest and Wooster “Universities” gave an “etic,” or outside, analysis of the fictional societies they discovered. The students from Pine Forest interpreted their findings of Wooster’s “Triburdia” Culture, a coconut-loving, cargo-capturing island located near the Bermuda Triangle. The Wooster students explained the evidence they found of Pine Forest’s “Mearth” Culture, a peaceful, technologically advanced, environmentally friendly world created after a collision between Earth and Mars. Each team then provided their own “emic,” or inside, analysis of the culture they built.

The Rockefeller Institute and the Arkansas Archeological Survey thank Debbi Jones of Pine Forest Elementary and Angela Hartman of Wooster Elementary for giving their students the opportunity to participate in the second annual Project Dig. For more information about this program, contact Skip Stewart-Abernathy, Arkansas Archeological Survey Station Archeologist, by phone at (501) 727-6250 or by e-mail. Click here for more information about other archeology programming at the Rockefeller Institute.

Winthrop Rockefeller Institute of the University of Arkansas System is an educational institute and conference center. Committed to acting as a catalyst, its vision involves combining the legacy and ideas of Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller with the resources and expertise of the state’s largest university system. Its mission is to develop diverse programs that nurture ideas, policies and activities to make life better in Arkansas.

The Rockefeller Institute accomplishes its mission by offering a variety of workshops, seminars, public lectures, conferences and special events. Program areas include agriculture and environment, arts and humanities, economic development, and policy and public affairs. To learn more, call (501) 727-5435, visit the Web site at www.uawri.org, or stay connected on Twitter and Facebook.