A tradition at Sophia Academy is for World Cultures students to learn the concept of culture by participating in an archeological dig while studying ancient history. Our 2017-18 DIG began in the beginning of the year as we learned to think like historians and archeologists. Next, we studied the concept of culture and seven key markers that reveal culture as we looked at the civilizations of the Ancient Near East. After that, we created our own cultures, including a Rosetta Stone that provided the key to our language. On one rainy day in early November, we buried our cultures and left them to be found by our fellow archeologists. When they were dug up, some of our artifacts had been destroyed by the ravages of time (3 days!) while others were in great shape. Each student had enough artifacts, however, to ably analyze and decipher the unknown culture.
Creating a Rosetta Stone and laying out our plots.
