A Glimpse of the Bronze Age at Cathedral School

Not every 6th grade Social Studies class begins with a show and tell involving 5,000-year-old amphora fragments, but that's just what happened in Mr. Saldana's classroom Monday. Anthropologist, archaeologist, and Cathedral parent, Professor Alex Bauer discussed his several-decades experience excavating Bronze Age (and later) settlements in Turkey. He described how archaeology now uses technologies like underground radar to discover buried structures, and how a simple walk through a cornfield, looking at the tilled soil, can reveal ancient settlements through the amount of debris churned up in a plow's wake. 

Professor Bauer helped Mr. Saldana's 6th graders to understand how tiny fragments of information, when considered together, can help anthropologists develop theories on how ancient people lived, traded, traveled, and died. Small clues -- the smoothness of the inside of a pot, or the shape and size of a pile of stones -- have much to tell scholars, if they are willing to make assumptions and inferences. And of course, they learned about the very cool ancient catapult projectiles Professor Bauer found. 

You can see more photographs of Professor Bauer's visit in the photo gallery.