Cultural Understanding

There are many ways to understand and learn about the cultures and histories of the Mediterranean area and other ancient civilizations. The conceptual framework I created in this class fit what I felt was important for scaffolding student’s knowledge of cultural development. The framework was also dependent on what could be depicted with the artifacts I was able to collect, or create for the dig site bins. I was extremely fortunate to receive a generous donation from Dan Diamond owner of Facsimilies Inc. in Concord, New Hampshire ( see Resources section ) so was able to have quite realistic artifacts for the bins.

I wanted the artifacts to tell a story of how societies as a whole developed, and changed, with some provoked speculation about what the people who lived in that time might have been like. The artifacts had to tell that story, going from stone to bronze to iron tools and weaponry, hand built to wheeled pottery, evolving artwork and trade items.

I divided the cultures history into five periods of each geographic areas neo-lithic habitation through time to the reign of Constantine (around 300 AD). Then I made conceptual divisions depicting how a culture emerges from hunter/gatherer to a stable society, and evolves through impacts such as war, trade, technological changes, natural disasters, and interaction with other cultures.

The period distinctions were somewhat arbitrary, and depended on the timelines and artifacts available. For example in showing technological changes in Egypt I used the depiction of the Hyksos invasion in which they conquered the bronze age Egyptians with their smelted iron weapons and horse drawn chariots. In depicting the five cultures I felt it was important to emphasize that none of these civilizations existed in isolation, and instead create a dynamic picture of how this whole area interacted through time. At times teaching this class felt very much like running a five-ring circus.

Every cultures evolution from neo-lithic period to a stable society varied thousands of years from Mesopotamia being the oldest, to Rome being the most recent. Yet within that time through trade, conquest and migration each culture impacted the others. This interaction is one of the most crucial areas for a teacher to emphasize, and really comes into play in the early part of the excavation when students are discovering Roman coins and mass-produced red Roman pottery throughout all the sites. During Alexander the Great’s conquest of Europe and Asia students can again find clues of the far reaches of Greece’s domain. So too can Egyptian artifacts be discovered in the time of Cleopatra’s reign intermixing with Rome and Greece.