Common Ground: Uniting Archaeology and Secondary Social Studies Curricula

Archaeologists have been attempting to establish stronger connections with communities for several decades. Concepts such as stewardship can be presented to a larger audience, and archaeology can be a valuable tool for public education. Public schools across the nation are struggling to improve with limited resources. Archaeology can provide teachers with inexpensive resources that improve student learning while simultaneously helping teachers meet more rigorous standards. Using historical, archaeological, and cultural resources from the World War II Japanese American internment camp, Amache, I created a new supplementary curriculum that focused on the experience of Japanese and Japanese Americans during that era. This thesis presents that curriculum and an accompanying case study that introduced archaeologically based activities in a secondary social studies classroom. Analysis of student responses indicates that supplementing with archaeology had no adverse effects to student exam scores on overall WWII history. In addition many students felt more connected to former Amache internees and their experience