Historians

Archaeology and History

1. Draw the following chart in your book or folder and the write out the points.

Historians

Archaeologists

Historians write about the past - they get their information from two Sources:
   - the two types of Sources of information are:
        1.Primary Sources- these are the 1st, original documents and items, for eg a letter, drawing, old report, cave painting, diary...from the time being studied.
        2.Secondary Sources - these are recent modern writing such as text books, or encyclopaedias.....
Historians find evidence in these sources to back up and support their arguments about past events.
They use documents from the time after writing was invented 3000 year BC

Archaeologists dig up the past - they use artefacts for their source of information
- artefacts are any objects made or changed by human hands-for eg a knife, coin, pottery bowl, button, stone axe....
They can find out about a society from before writing was invented, before 3000 years BC in pre-historic times..
(or about any society that did not have writing)
Archaeologists can find out about everyday life- the peoples clothing, houses, food, jewellery, tools, weapons....

2. Write out the following sentences, and then write in the missing word for each sentence. The missing word will be either : 'historians' or 'archaeologist'.

a) The literary sources (primary sources documents) that ___________ study from ancient times, were mostly written by men.
b) ___________ need to keep in mind, that these ancient written sources were also written by wealthy men, from the upper class in their society.
c) These ancient documents mostly describe important people or events from that time, rarely do they describe things like what children did for
entertainment, or what they ate for breakfast! This is where we need a good _______________, to find and analyse artefacts from the ancient
society being studied.

3. From the interactive timeline at this site -
     a) List in your book the first five 'Ages'. They are written across the top of the time line.
     b) What three large animals once roamed Britain during the Palaeolithic age? (hint: click the flint hand axe)

4. Work as an archaeologist and reassemble this piece of broken ancient pottery.
     a) From the above site, and the extra link on the chemistry of clay, explain the meaning of the following terms:
           i. pottery shards. ii. fired pottery iii. glaze

5. Test your skills as an archaeologist with this simulation of an archaeological dig .