Students are presented real artifacts one at a time until they are able to correctly guess the function of an Ancestral Puebloan room from which the artifacts came. Students play a chronology game about each of their lives. In the fun they learn how scrambling their life's events messes up their own story. Similarly, disturbing a site can effect the stratigraphy thus destroying important archaeological information. Students then apply their knowledge to the study of stratigraphy in archaeology at the Pithouse exhibit in the main gallery.
Students use an activity sheet to interpret archaeological strata in a simulated test trench.
They use the law of superposition and apply cross-dating to determine the age of other artifacts. Confounding issues such as gopher and pot hunting holes are explored. They refine their skills by classifying images from a historic minors camp. Students learn how archaeologists identify and classify Ancestral Puebloan objects such as lithics, ceramics, and textiles. They classify real artifacts from the AHC collections and then discuss alternate classifications for gaining additional information.