North Virginia Comunity College Historical Object Interpretation Essay

Purpose: To gain experience in interpreting historic artifacts.*

Historical artifacts provide insight into the society in which they were created. They are especially important for ancient history, because there is a lack of written documents as compared to modern history. Historical artifacts give those people a voice. They also bring to life those whose voices were left out of literate societies; the people who worked, who provided labor for the state, but who would have never had the ability to write about their lives, their circumstances, and their dreams.

Part I: Choose and interpret a historical artifact from ancient Europe:

Directions:

1. Visit this weblink for a virtual tour of the British Museum: https://britishmuseum.withgoogle.com/
2. Once the website loads, you will see a timeline. When you scroll, you can go back in time.
3. Stop when you reach the area from 3000 BCE to 1600 CE. You will see lots of colored bubbles, and they are organized by location. You should focus on the blue bubbles, which are from Europe, but you can also choose an object from the Near East or Egypt. You can click the bubbles to see information about various artifacts housed in the British Museum.
4. On the right side of the page, you can click on different themes to see a different group of artifacts.
5. Choose one of the objects located on the timeline between 3000 BCE and 1600 CE.
6. Once you have chosen your artifact, write down answers to the question on this worksheet: artifact_analysis_worksheet.pdf
7. Using your answers to the questions, write a paragraph so you can present your interpretation to the class. You will use this paragraph as part of your post for the discussion board. Your paragraph should be proofread for grammatical and spelling errors. Introduce your artifact and transform your answers to your questions from the worksheet into prose (a paragraph).
8. Be sure to include an image or a link to your image (from Google Image search, so it can be easily viewed.)
9. **If you have any trouble loading the virtual tour, you can browse the collections of the British Museum at the following link and you can choose anything created between 3000 BCE and 500 BCE: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection

Part II: Reverse It

To get a more clear sense of how artifacts reflect the society in which they were created, think about our own times. Imagine there is an artifact left behind by us that is found in 3,000 years from now. What object from today’s world would help the student in the future to understand us better? What object defines our cultural zeitgeist today?

Briefly explain your choice and include an image of the object from today’s world that will provide insight about us to someone in 3,000 years.

Include an image or a link to an image.

• it must be at least 600 words.