“Field School” ~ Summer 2009

For three weeks this summer, I had the pleasure of working with a dedicated group of student artist-archaeologists (ages 9 to 12) enrolled in my “Dig This!” summer camp at the Fine Arts Association in Willoughby, Ohio. These seven young people invented civilizations, mapped them, and designed writing systems for them…  excavated and analyzed artifacts… and created art in a variety of media.

Working individually and in small groups, these four girls and three boys brought an abundance of imagination, creativity, and dedication to their work. As I shared what I understand about art and archaeology with them, they revealed to me their unique talents as artists and investigators.  I am very grateful to them, and to Nisha Ramnath, who joined the team as a volunteer assistant and quickly became a valued co-teacher.

Students enrolled in "Dig This!" summer camp carefully remove soil one layer at a time, to expose buried clues.

In archaeology, context is everything. The relationship among clues – artifacts, ecofacts and features – tells the stories of people’s lives. In this “field school,” students learned to carefully follow procedures and take detailed notes, because once a site has been excavated, the original context is lost forever.

Teaching about the human experience through the discipline of archaeology can be a powerful method for engaging students with our shared past, while deepening their experience of the present and strengthening their vision for the future.

There are excellent resources for teachers who want to introduce the practices and insights of archaeology to their students. Several of these can be found under “Links: Online Culture Resources,” to the right. I wholeheartedly recommend these, particularly Archaeology for Educators, an excellent primer from the Society for American Archaeology, and Time Team America (from PBS), which is relevant, well-produced and full of cutting-edge science.

More to come…

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Jeanne Figueira Grossetti

First reflections

One of the first “aha” moments in my educational life came during the second or third grade, at the Pacific Grove (California) Museum, when I looked into a display case at a basket made by a Native American artisan. I remember wondering who had created it, how it could have been woven so tightly, how it had been used, and how it came to the museum. These questions, and my initial excitement in articulating them, continue to inspire me as a teacher, researcher and curator of works of art and craft. I delight in sharing this enthusiasm with others – students, colleagues, and visitors to art spaces.

To this end, I have developed courses which blend presentation (of images, objects, and ideas), discussion, and hands-on activities (writing, creating art,  excavating artifacts, and preparing exhibitions), to actively engage students with the arts and cultures of our world. Several of these courses have included field trips to the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. During a visit to the art museum, one of my students (who was age 12 at the time) told me that “the best way to understand a culture is through its art.”

Read more…

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Jeanne Figueira Grossetti