The thing I find awesome is how a person can deduce characteristics and routines ancient societies had, by examining like 3 cooking utensils and what they built houses out of. I am starting an anthology project and I’m excited because I have always wanted to spend a summer in western America on an archeological expedition.
In the Launch activity I was shown a picture of an “artifact” and given the task of finding out what the object was and characteristics of the society it belongs to. The. object I was tasked with uncovering was a knife used for cutting frozen meats. When I saw the picture I first thought it was a tool for cutting bread, and it reflected a society of good craftsmanship. After doing this I realized anthropologists need to study the surrounding area to get the best idea of what the civilization was like.
My main goal for this project is to grow my ability to put my personal perspective aside and show that by observing and recording unbiased information. I feel like this is especially necessary because the project is about anthropology where fact checking isn’t always available, to do this I will ask at least 2 others what they said/what their interpretation is. To get in the mind of an anthropologist I want to look at objects and figure “what does this convey about the society?”.