ABSTRACT
In the late 1980s in the United States, concern for the protection of cultural resources spurred archaeologists to attend to K-12 archaeology education. The overriding purpose of archaeology education focused in three areas: convincing archaeologists and educators of the importance of teaching archaeology, developing resource guides, curricula and lessons for use in the classroom, and presenting testimonials as to the effectiveness of these materials and programs. This chapter investigates a group of fifth-grade students’ archaeological background knowledge, and the impact of school and field-based archaeological experiences on their conceptions of archaeological questions, processes, and interpretations, and their perceptions of the purposes underlying archaeological studies of the past. Across the activities in the archaeology unit, instruction focused on the work of archaeologists. Students were exposed to archaeological processes in the context of an historic site and archaeological interpretations in two different contexts: historic artifact analysis during a classroom activity and prehistoric artifact analysis in the anthropology museum.
