Students Dig Deep to Uncover Lessons From the Past

Bejeweled slabs of marble from India’s Mughal empire, maps on parchment recording silk-trading routes through ancient China, mukluks worn by Inuit fishermen in the Arctic--all of these, plus artifacts from 14 other early civilizations, were unearthed recently in the dusty foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

The novice archeologists who discovered these objects had also created them, as part of an annual history project for freshmen at The Webb Schools, two private high schools--one for boys and one for girls--that share a campus in Claremont.

The project, which began in December and ended last week, randomly assigned 17 groups of students to research different cultures and re-create characteristic objects.

These forgers guarded their assignments tightly, mindful that another group would be assigned to dig up their creations and guess at their origins.

The prep schools’ boarders--who make up about 65% of the 365 students--hid their artifacts under their beds, away from roommates on other teams. Code names were used to throw off any snoops. The Tibet group toiled undercover as the Mongols. And the students researching the Mayas paraded through the library with books about the Aztecs.

‘Oldest’ Objects Buried at Bottom of Holes

Last month, to simulate their civilization’s evolution, the students buried the supposedly oldest objects at the bottom of holes near the football field and layered “newer” objects on top. When the time came to swap pits and excavate, the students, like professional archeologists, used twine to mark their turf, the better to document their discoveries in their logs. Then the digging began.

Into the dirt the Tibet group plunged its shovels, immediately striking something hard--a round, but now chipped, piece of brightly painted terra cotta.

“It looks like some sort of calendar, maybe,” surmised Thea Hinkle, 14, a boarder at the all-girls Vivian Webb School. The object appeared Mayan or maybe Aztec.

“It’ll take a little more research to figure out exactly,” she said.

The team of four bagged every shard of the pottery and, with trowels, more carefully continued digging.

Webb students dig digging. On field trips over the years across California, elsewhere in the West and abroad, they have collected tens of thousands of fossils for the third institution in the Webb Schools triad, the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology. Students serve as interns at the museum, and paleontology is heavily covered in their ninth-grade science class and upper-level courses.

Though rarely as elaborate as Webb’s project, similar hands-on archeological lessons are popular at many other schools, and at many grade levels, said Skye Weaver, who designs educational programs for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

“It’s easy for kids to only think about living in the sense that they do every day. Studying archeology opens up a whole new mind-set, that there were many, many people and ways of life that came before us,” she said.

In California schools, Chumash Indian, Egyptian and Mesoamerican cultures are studied most often.

Students’ romantic notions of archeology, formed by movies like the “Indiana Jones” series and “The Mummy Returns,” make the lessons appealing.

But, as the Webb students discovered, “there’s definitely an aspect of extraordinary tedious, hot, boring, sweaty, in-the-jungle work,” Weaver said.

After spending several days in their pit, and sifting out bead after little bead, Thea’s group learned that “you really need to comb every inch of dirt,” she said.

After “restoring” broken objects and searching books and Web sites for clues on what they had excavated, her team determined that their pit contained Aztec relics.

Danny Elghazi’s group buried artifacts from the feudal Tokugawa regime of Japan and uncovered Inuit, or Eskimo, objects. For the 16-year-old day student at the boys’ Webb School of California, digging was easier than determining what his group dug up and where it came from.

“It could be a rock,” Danny said, “or it could be an ancient thing--an ancient artifact.”

Webb’s history teachers have organized the schools’ archeology project for the last seven years, using it as a tool to cover early civilizations but also to stress the broader skills of research, analysis and teamwork.

“There are lots of things that get worked out, which then tie into things later,” said Ingrid Gustavson, one of four teachers who supervised the project.

The project culminates in an evening fair attended by several hundred parents, teachers and older students. The freshmen set up elaborate displays of their uncovered civilization’s government, commerce and customs. The event is the “one time when ninth- graders get to stand out in the community,” Gustavson said.

Costumes, Music and Flashy Graphics

At this year’s fair, held March 13 in Webb’s student center, the freshmen wooed visitors to their team’s table with costumes, music and flashy computer graphics. The group that excavated Tibetan artifacts handed out a sweet, milky tea and balls of barley procured by a Buddhist monk; the Maya group offered nacho chips and salsa.

Webb’s boys and girls mix throughout the school day, in places like the cafeteria, the library and the newspaper office. But in science, math, English, history and some foreign language classes, the schools segregate boys from girls to tailor teaching to the sexes’ different learning styles and interests.

Those differences were apparent in the archeology project. Generally, the girls seemed to take great care in creating their artifacts, favoring clothing and household objects made with peacock feathers, gold trim and much painted cloth and pottery. The girls who buried Tibetan objects charred scraps of paper and soaked them in tea to suggest a back story of a Buddhist monastery burned by invaders.

The boys, in their groups, tended to bury weapons. They seemed satisfied with Styrofoam and scraps of wood.

“We found a shield,” one girl sniffed, “and the foil was taped on.”

At the end of the fair, some proud students saved their artifacts as souvenirs. Others threw their re-creations of the past in the trash, burying them, perhaps, for a future scavenger.