|
Why study about the Emeryville Shellmound? What does a Native American site last
occupied hundreds of years ago have to tell young Californians? It is hard for
students--
and even for many adults--to imagine that life was ever any different than it is today.
However, most modern Californians would hardly recognize California of a century
ago. Imagine a time in the Bay Area when seeing an automobile drive by was a big
event! The only things in the sky were birds, and the shores of the bay were vast marshes
and oyster farms. There were no bridges across the bay, and no freeways
along its
shores. Few roads were even paved! At the City of Emeryville, a grand amusement park
operated on the bay's shore, complete with carousel, tintype gallery, rifle range, dance
pavilions and a racetrack. Shopping malls and condominiums had not yet been
invented.
But people lived at the Emeryville site long before this
time. The first people occupied
the site of the Emeryville Shellmound, on the shore of San
Francisco Bay, over 2800 years ago. While the
lives of these rural
hunters and shellfish gatherers and the environment in which they lived were very
different from ours, we would easily recognize many of their concerns. At this site, they
worked to make a living for themselves and their families, they celebrated the good
things of life, and they grieved as they buried their dead.
Studying the long history of this one nearby place may provide students not only with
insight into change as a continual process in our lives, but also with an
appreciation for
the great variety of the ways people live and have lived on the earth. A focus on the
Emeryville Shellmound -- a site in or near their own communities -- can provide students
with the understanding that history indeed is happening all around us, even in our own
backyards. By learning about the process through which archaeologists
investigate an
archaeological site and study its contents, students may also develop some understanding of
scientific method and the painstaking process of assembling and interpreting data.
From this page, you may access resources for teaching about the Emeryville
Shellmound,
a significant prehistoric Native American archaeological
site.
[ Background for Teachers ] [ Lesson Plan ] [ Correlations with California curriculum standards ] [ Glossary ]
|
