Humans, the Environment, and the Great Plains

Excavating the Past on the Web

Background:

Study of prehistoric lifestyles can provide good examples of how people lived within their environment, as part of the environment, interacting with and coexisting with the environment. The Great Plains region has been home to humans since as early as 12,000 years. Various tribes settled on the plains through time, making the plains their home. The earliest human settlers on the plains were hunter-gatherers; slowly changing over time to horticulture, then agriculture, and then, with the coming of the European settlers, to traders too. All these people made the environment their own. They depended on the environment for subsistence, yet protected it because they understood that a healthy environment was vital to human existence.

Objective:

This lesson plan will familiarize students with the prehistoric populations of the Great Plains and the various ways these people interacted with the environment. The past can teach us important lessons which can then be adapted for a better future. The plan can be injected with a healthy dose of the Internet to expose students to the rapidly expanding world of the information superhighway.

Plan:

1. Students will choose a prehistoric culture pertinent to the Great Plains (Paleoindian, Archaic, Woodland, or Plains Village) and then choose individual topics of study pertaining to lifestyles within the culture chosen. The plan will work better if the class is divide into two groups.
2. Ask each group to gather information and write a small esearch paper on the topic the group has chosen. At this time, the groups also choose some artifacts from the culture being studied and create them out of clay or cut from cardboard for a class dig.
3.  When this is complete, each group "plants" its artifacts in a box filled with sand or shredded newsprint for the other group to "unearth."
4.  The lesson is then finished in reverse mode with the two groups swapping artifact boxes (dig sites) and repeating the research process in reverse. Thus, each group researches two cultures.
5.  Artifacts are plotted as to the location in the site and a general hypothesis is developed as to which culture has been uncovered. Students will interpret the possible name and function of each artifact. They will then research the artifacts and try and re-construct the lifestyle of the culture being studied.

Testing, Grading, and Evaluation:

The Internet can be a useful source of information on the prehistoric cultures of the Great Plains. Have students make up a list of keywords pertaining to the topic they are researching (e.g. Paleoindian, Archaic, Plains Village, projectile point, prehistoric ceramics, hunter-gatherers, etc.). Next, introduce them to the World Wide Web on the Internet and one of the various search engines used to locate documents on the Web (search engines AltaVista, Webcrawler, Yahoo, Infoseek). Have them enter one or more keywords in the search engine being used and then browse through the various documents the search has produced.

 Students who already have been exposed to the Web can go to other activities on the Internet like subscribing to newsgroups on archaeology, environment, conservation (Arch-L, Museum-L, SciArchaeology, etc.). They can also use ftp protocol and get simulated dig software, or use veronica searches to enhance their research.

You can also send students to ArchNet where they will find hundreds of web links to both archaeological sites or topics about environment, dating, and other subjects.

Primary Course: Social Studies

Applicable Grades: 6 - 12

 Materials Needed: Computers with Internet hookups, cardboard shoeboxes, old newspaper, writing paper, pencils, modeling clay

Related Courses: History, Language

Time Required: 2 - 3 hours

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