Peanut Butter and Jelly Archeology
Subject: Archeology
Time: 45-60 minutes
Location: Pre- or Post-site
Strands: Culture
Materials: For each pair of students:
3 slices of any type of bread
2 tablespoons of jam or jelly
2 tablespoons peanut butter
raisins
sprinkles
hard candies or M&Ms™
2 paper plates
plastic knife
plastic spoon
large straw
Objective: Students will discover how time is recorded in layers in archeology.
Method: Students will examine stratigraphy through building an edible archeological site.
Background: This may be a student's first experience with stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is defined as the arrangement of rocks or materials in layers. As layers are deposited, the oldest is usually on the bottom and the youngest on top. By examining materials found in these layers and their relationships to each other, archeologists can determine what are older or younger than others.
Suggested Procedure:
To keep costs minimal, have students bring ingredients from home. This activity works best if the students are paired. Dispensing ingredients onto paper plates about the room also facilitates this activity.
Tell the students they are going to conduct an experiment in archeology and then it eat. Pair the students and have each pair obtain a paper plate with the above ingredients.
Use the following narrative to tell the students what is occurring.
Here we have a field somewhere in southern Ohio. (Lay down a slice of bread.) Along comes a flood and leaves behind a layer of mud. (Spread the peanut butter.) Shortly after the flood, a group of Archaic peoples camp in the area and build a fire. Their fire leaves behind charcoal and rocks that cracked from the heat. (Have students slice raisins in half and arrange them in a circle on the sandwich, and sprinkle chocolate sprinkles about inside the circle.) The Archaic peoples leave and through time, a layer of dirt and rock forms over their campsite. (Lay down another piece of bread.)
Eventually another group, this time of Hopewell peoples, comes to the same field. The Hopewell build shelters. (Have students gently cut small indentations or holes in the last slice of bread. These represent the holes dug to hold posts for the shelters.) The Hopewell make fine pottery, but some of the pottery gets broken. (Have students dig two more small holes in the top of the bread, one on each side [this will prevent later arguments]. Into these small holes, they throw the broken "pottery" (broken M & Ms™ or candies). The Hopewell leave the site and because it is close to the river, the site is flooded. (Students spread jelly, which may cause some redistribution of pottery, a situation which can also occur on a real site.) Through time, other layers are laid down until the present and final layer of dirt covers the site. (Students put on top layer of bread.)
After the students finish making their "sites" or sandwiches, have them exchange sites. Tell them as time passes the land changes hands to other American Indian groups and to the European settlers.
In 1997, an archeologist suspects this field was a prehistoric habitation site and conducts random core samples and surveys. (have students push large straws randomly through their sandwiches. If they find a sprinkle or hit something, they may have found a habitation site.) The archeologist conducts a test excavation at the site. (Students cut a square into the sandwich and remove layers, one by one. If they find something, they have found the habitation site.)
From the test unit, students can see their layers. This is stratigraphy. Ask the students to identify the oldest layer. Which habitation site is older? This is similar to what happens when archeologists examine a site.
Evaluation: Ask students if they could read their layers if they put the sandwich in the blender. Explain to students that this is what happens when we plow, loot or bulldoze a habitation site. To fully excavate this site, students would have to remove each layer, one at a time. Would they have the sandwich then? Excavation is a destructive process. For the final excavation, students may divide and eat their sandwiches, layer by layer, or all at once. (Alternatively, if they eat it all at once and find a pottery sherd before it is eaten, it may be considered salvage archeology - archeology done in the face of impending loss. If it gets in their mouth before they "discover" it, it is lost in the action of modern use.)