What can material culture tell us about the past?
Where does the information in social studies textbooks come from? And how can educators introduce students to the inquiry-based skills that produce our understandings of the past? How to Read an Object gives teachers an opportunity to learn about how researchers investigate the past through the analysis of physical artifacts. Participants will learn a method for introducing students to this sort of inquiry while increasing their knowledge of a particular time and place in World History.
Each interactive three-hour workshop includes:
- practice with a classroom-ready activity to teach students how to analyze artifacts
- a talk by a researcher with expertise in a particular region
- an opportunity to examine a selection of objects from the museum collections
Participants get electronic access the classroom-ready How to Read an Object activity and information about the artifacts they examined from the museum collections. Some researcher-presenters also provide participants with slides to remind teachers about the content of their presentations.
How to Read an Object is a collaboration between ORIAS and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, located on the UC Berkeley campus. Workshops take place once per semester at the Hearst Museum, unless otherwise specified. Repeat attendance is welcomed and encouraged!
photo credit: diffendale Painted tomb (1799) from Sarno: bronze belt and fittings from first inhumation via photopin (license)