Each year, students studying Ancient World Cultures participate in a hands-on DIG. After studying culture in general, and ancient cultures in particular, they create their own culture, produce artifacts that will reveal an aspect of their culture, bury it–and then the fun begins.
When students exchange archeological plots, they are required to dig carefully, clean the artifact, and study it for clues. How was this society ruled? What does the artifact reveal about the cultures’s religion? Economy? Family structure? Is there a “rosetta stone” to use to decipher the language?
Why do we turn ourselves into archeologists? Doesn’t it slow down the acquisition of knowledge? It is our goal to cement a broad general store of 
knowledge into each of our students’ minds. The best way to accomplish this is to have them learn by doing. And so we dig in the dirt.