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Bioarchaeology

Before attending the Valley and Ridge Workshop, I thought all of the activities would be focused specifically on sustainability. While this was a welcome experience, as my goals were to better integrate sustainability into one of my Anthropology courses, “Bioarchaeology”, the workshop provided much more than a means for integrating sustainability. From the workshop, I feel that I’ve gained vocabulary to describe my teaching techniques as well as new ways to use place-based learning in all of my classes.

My proposal for the Valley and Ridge Workshop focused on augmenting my summer course “Bioarchaeology” to consider the ways sustainability and the environment could be better incorporated. From the first day of the workshop, I began to see new ways to consider the environment specifically for the context of my course. The discussion with peers, particularly those outside of my discipline, and examples from previous Valley and Ridge participants were influential in rethinking my course. From these discussions and the various activities we participated in, I reconfigured the final assignment in my “Bioarchaeology” course to frame the course material. This has resulted in a reorganization of the course around student’s final projects which will help them to reflect on the material their learning in real time for their scaffolded final project.

The project students will complete is an osteobiography for an ancient Egyptian individual from the site of Lisht. Student’s will use already collected skeletal data along with pictures of skeletal remains and archaeological artifacts to compile a narrative on their individual’s life history. The project and course will start with the skeletal remains sharing with student’s how a biological profile is comprised. Over four weeks, students will learn about methods and theories for estimating age-at-death, sex, stature, and identifying diseases in skeletal remains, which will culminate with a workshop focused on applying these methods for their own individual. They will then spend the next four weeks learning about the methods and theories for assessing a mortuary context and applying these methods for their own individual’s mortuary context. The final five weeks of the semester will then focus on the environmental and cultural context. Students will learn about the ways environment and culture influence both the biological profile and mortuary context of past peoples and apply this content to interpreting the environmental and cultural context of their individuals. The class will culminate with student presentations on their individual.

While Valley and Ridge helped me formulate and reconsider my “Bioarchaeology” course, the workshop also helped me think of new applications for my other classes. In particular, finding ways to integrate place-based learning into activities on a regular basis and more holistically integrating the environment into coursework. My initial conception of the workshop was that I would struggle to think of ways to integrate sustainability into my courses; however, the workshop provided meaningful and tangible resources that made this much easier than expected.