Introducting Anthropological and Archaeological Concepts into the Sixth Grade Cirriculum

This thesis describes the development and implementation of a curriculum augmentation for the 6th grade that utilizes archaeology and aspects of cultural, physical, and linguistic anthropology to integrate lessons from a variety of disciplines under the unifying concept of culture. The project seeks to demonstrate the utility of archaeology in the sixth grade core curriculum, while simultaneously using the formal educational system to introduce archaeology and the value of preservation to young students. The thesis project took place over an entire year, but can be divided into two major components. The first is the introduction of anthropological themes such as culture and evolution, introduced in lectures and exercises that enhance lessons presented within the core subject areas. The second is a group project where students imagine cultures, create artifacts for those cultures, bury the artifacts, excavate each others' cultures material remains, and deduce characteristics of the cultures that left the remains. This project was developed in conjunction with core subject teachers and was presented to all 177 students in the sixth grade at the Florida State University School (FSUS). A key premise of this project was that archaeology presented characteristics that could be easily exploited to help K-12 educators achieve critical educational goals. The extraordinary amount of personal and class time dedicated to this project by the teachers supports the validity of this premise.