Using Artifacts to Foster Historical Inquiry

Same or different?

The lesson was introduced using a photograph (shown opposite) of a clay model of a sheep’s liver. Explained in a manner intended to make the practice seem odd, students were told that in ancient times, fortune tellers or soothsayers would sacrifice an animal, slice open its belly, and pull out its organs, which were then “read” for any clues they offered about the future. This clay model was a teaching tool used in Mesopotamia to train would-be fortune tellers about what to look for when reading animal entrails. Each of the squares outlined on the clay model represented a different prediction. For example, a scar or blemish appearing in one part of the grid might indicate five years of good luck or suggest that the person would have many children. A mark in another area of the liver would signal poor health or great financial misfortune. After hearing this explanation, students were asked to indicate whether ancient soothsaying is very similar to or completely different from what happens today. The most common and predictable reaction was reflected in remarks such as “totally weird” and “strange.”

The teacher then asked students to more directly consider contemporary fortune-telling. The teacher and students discussed various modern forms (for example, horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, and palm reading) and the basis for predicting used by each (for example, the position of stars and planets, the configuration of leaves in the cup, the symbols on cards, and the length and intensity of lines on the palm). The teacher then observed that instead of the location of the scars on the liver, modern fortune tellers consult the location of the stars in the sky or the lines on the hand. Students were asked to reconsider how different this is from past practices. For many students, what was once a bizarre practice now seemed much less foreign.

The lens guiding their inquiry was now in place—students would look beyond the obvious differences between present and past practices to uncover more basic commonalities and differences. Students were then shown clusters of pictures of Roman objects on a common theme—pictures about entertainment showed the coliseum, gladiators, and chariot races. The stories behind each of these pictures were shared by the teacher. In small groups, students identified what they saw as the contemporary parallels for each practice—the parallels for entertainment included football stadiums, kick-boxing, and demolition derbies. They then considered whether or not the differences between then and now were significant. This routine was repeated several times with other aspects of Roman civilization (for example, water systems, architecture, transportation, politics). In each case, students looked at photographs of artifacts from Roman times and identified parallels in their own society. The fact that statues of famous Romans often had their noses and ears broken off was of particular interest to students. One reason for this originated in the time when Christianity took hold in Rome. In the eyes of some Christians, these statues encouraged idolatry and had to be destroyed. Because there were so many marble statues and they were difficult to remove or destroy completely, a common strategy was to mar the face of the statues by breaking off the noses and ears. Students were amused to realize that we still “deface” property—although now more frequently by graffiti than by knocking off appendages.

The culminating activity invited students to offer an overall assessment of the extent to which life in ancient Rome was similar to or different from contemporary society. As they debated their conclusions and shared their evidence, students understood that they were not simply talking about old relics but were engaged in an inquiry into the roots of Western civilization. As one student remarked, “I know why we study ancient Rome. Everything we do now, well, they did something just like it.”

Photo by Susan Duncan. Courtesy of the photographer.