The Stone Age Meets the Information Age:
an introduction to archaeology
class
home page
Exploring Historical Archaeology at Five Points
historical archaeology in a 19th century urban New York
neighborhood
Interested in old New York? To learn more, search the online contents
of Archaeology Magazine
for "Five Points" to learn how archaeologists are investigating
the history of this site. (Or you can find the same article in the library
in the March/April 1997 issue of Archaeology Magazine.)
Five Points In-Class Activity
To do:
1. Click through the guided www tour to browse through the Five Points site. (about 10 minutes)
2. Look at the map of
the excavations, to orient yourself.
3. Choose one of the following features to investigate with a partner:
4. Read about the known historical context of your chosen feature by
reviewing the pages of the tour, and then go through the sample of artifacts on display for your
feature (click on the thumbnails to see a larger image and brief description
of each). Make a list of the types of artifacts illustrated for
your feature, and any manufacturing dates and locations associated with
them.
5. Sketch a timeline for your feature that shows the ranges of
known historical dates related to that part of the site, compared to the
dates for that feature that could be based on correlations of the known
manufacturing dates of the artifact types.
6. When we regroup in the classroom, be prepared to summarize
for others in the class the different inferences you could derive about
the date of the formation your feature, based on historical and archaeological
data.
Society for Historical Archaeology
"Historical archaeology is the study of the material remains of
past societies that also left behind some other form of historical evidence.
This field of research embraces the interests of a diverse group of scholars
representing the disciplines of anthropology, history, geography, and folklore.
In the New World, historical archaeologists work on a broad range of sites
preserved on land and underwater. These sites document early European settlement
and its effects on Native American peoples, as well the subsequent spread
of the frontier and later urbanization and industrialization. By examining
the physical and documentary record of these sites, historical archaeologists
attempt to discover the fabric of common everyday life in the past and
seek to understand the broader historical development of their own and
other societies. "
Jeanne
Sept does field research related
to the archaeology of human origins in East Africa,
and teaches in
the Anthropology Department
at Indiana University,
Bloomington.
visit her main web page Human
Origins and Evolution in Africa or the following topical pages:
Africa | Primates
| Human Evolution | Paleoecology | Archaeology
IU Anthropology
| Sept teaching interests | Sept research | Sept
Personal Home Page
Last updated: 4 August, 1998
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~origins/index.html
Comments: sept@indiana.edu
Copyright
1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 Jeanne Sept
IU
Bloomington Home Page