WINTER 24-25
PEABODY LESSON BOOKLET
A MESSAGE FROM THE PEABODY
We believe archaeology provides a platform for teaching challenging histories and for understanding the world as it is today. Our interdisciplinary programming brings course topics to life through the perspectives of anthropology and archaeology, fostering discussion and enlivening classes across the curriculum.
Our lessons, which draw from collections of more than 600,000 cultural items, are designed to support what you are already teaching in your classrooms, offering your students an educational experience that cannot be found in any other secondary school in the United States.
To schedule a lesson or ask a question, please contact:
Lainie Schultz (lschultz@andover.edu), Curator of Education
Ryan Wheeler (rwheeler@andover.edu), Peabody Director
PEABODY LESSONS
GET ME TO THE PEABODY
How do collections get to places like the Peabody? How do these routes impact what and how we can learn from them? This lesson introduces students to some common museum histories and an introduction to the Peabody Institute itself, through engagement with select items that represent the different kinds of collections in the Institute’s care and their pathways to the Andover campus.
This lesson is particularly helpful to classes engaging in institutional histories and/or building students’ critical engagement with research methodologies, processes of documentation, and interpretation. Most recently used in HSS200.
PEABODY LESSONS
THE TAINO: THE PEOPLE WHO DISCOVERED COLUMBUS
We all know Christopher Columbus never met any “Indians,” but we don’t all know the peoples on whose lands he did arrive when he sailed to the Caribbean. This lesson engages students with examples of Taino material heritage predating the arrival of Columbus, connecting them to aspects of Taino lives and beliefs prior to colonization. This lesson additionally addresses the perceived “disappearance” of the Taino in the centuries following, and affirms the ongoing presence and resilience of these people and culture today.
This lesson is particularly helpful for courses addressing topics in US history, colonization, and bias in the documentation and writing of history.
Most recently used in HSS200 and ART225.
PEABODY LESSONS
PUEBLO REVOLT
In 1680, Ohkay Owingeh leader Po’Pay united people from diverse Pueblo communities and led a revolt to drive the Spanish colonizers from what is now commonly known as New Mexico. Through student-paced discussion of cultural items created and used by Pueblo peoples, this lesson centers the lived experience of the Pueblo throughout this history in its leadup, aftermath, and memory today. Students will also learn new terms and practice applying them to cultural materials, offering different perspectives from which to consider the relationships built between Spanish and Pueblo peoples.
This lesson is particularly helpful for courses addressing themes of culture contact, political resistance, or cultural change and continuity.
Most recently used in HSS200.
PEABODY LESSONS
NATIVE AMERICAN GRAVES
PROTECTION & REPATRIATION ACT (NAGPRA)
The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) marked a turning point for archaeologists, museums, and Native peoples. This law requires museums to consult with tribal nations and repatriate ancestral remains, funerary objects, and other sacred items previously allowed to be excavated and held by museums, and has fundamentally changed professional best practice for archaeologists and museums alike. Students will learn about this law and the participation of Phillips Academy and the Peabody Institute in its implementation, and the ongoing effort led by Native peoples to undo colonial legacies and heal the considerable wounds caused by these violations of the past and present.
This lesson is particularly helpful for classes engaging in topics relating to civil rights, decolonization, or histories of academic practice. Most recently used in HSS300 AND PHR533.
PEABODY LESSONS
THE WAR FOR THE BLACK HILLS
The end of the 19th century marked the end of the socalled “Indian Wars,” as the US government succeeded in the removal of Native American nations from their lands and onto reservations, and ending their military engagements with Native nations. In reality, these wars continue to persist today, as Native peoples have never ceased to assert their sovereign rights to the lands promised to them in treaty by the US. This lesson plan addresses the ongoing nature of this war using as case study the “War for the Black Hills,” a year-long conflict best known in the history books through the “Battle of the Little Bighorn.”
Engaging with Lakota collections from the late 19th century, students will have the opportunity to reflect on how this war was waged; the ways in which it has imprinted on the American memory; and the enduring nature of Lakota resistance as they keep battling for their rights to this sacred land.
This lesson is particularly helpful for classes engaging in topics relating to Indigenous sovereignty, religious freedom, civil rights movements, or American history and memory. Most recently used in HSS320.
PEABODY LESSONS
RESERVATION RELATIONS: STORYTELLING AND STORYWORK
Storytelling is a vital practice for Indigenous peoples, preserving and communicating history as well as shaping cultural expressions and artforms. Storywork is an Indigenous methodological framework that takes seriously the process of meaning-making contained in the cultural work of sharing stories. This lesson practices storywork by sharing with students the story of Peabody curator Warren K. Moorehead and his investigation of the theft of lands from residents of the White Earth Reservation, connecting students to associated collections to convey the emotional resonance of the relationships built between Moorehead and the people of White Earth. Students further get the opportunity to practice their own storywork through a creative writing exercise in response to a photograph created by visual storyteller Lee Marmon (Laguna Pueblo).
This lesson is particularly helpful to any class engaging students in skills of listening, reflecting, building or communicating narrative. Most recently used in ENG300.
PEABODY LESSONS
BETWEEN EDUCATION AND GENOCIDE: INDIGENOUS RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES
This lesson addresses the realities of Indigenous boarding and residential schools as experienced by Native nations in the US and Canada. Students will investigate the origins of Native boarding schools, intent on “improving” the lives of Indigenous people through the assimilation of their youth and the eradication of their cultures, languages, and lifeways. This lesson also addresses the current Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in these countries, asking students to consider how a nation can collectively heal from the traumas of its past.
This lesson is particularly helpful for classes engaging in themes of governmental approaches to difference, structural inequality, and critical race theory. Most recently used in HSS300.
PEABODY LESSONS
HOMININ CRANIAL EVOLUTION
This interactive lab gives students the opportunity to explore, handle, compare, and contrast casts of skulls from hominids spanning the famous, 3.2-million-year-old “Lucy” to modern humans. Students learn about what physical features scientists look for when examining crania and how they use these to distinguish between species. They lesson also reinforces the meaning of the term “evolution” as an adaptation to environmental needs, as distinguished from a descriptor of complexity.
This lesson is designed as a part of the Biology 100 curriculum, and is additionally particularly helpful for any courses addressing topics of racism in science.
MAYA HUIPILS
The most commonly worn Indigenous garment of Central America, the huipil is more than just a piece of clothing. Through the symbols in the designs they weave, women convey their ties to their histories, cultures, and communities, creating works of wearable art rich in meaning. This lesson begins to connect students to these artists and cultures through close examination of huipils created by the Guatemalan Maya in the mid-late 20th century.
This lesson is particularly helpful to classes engaging in themes of visual communication and symbolic expression, global markets and cultural appropriation, and anyone looking to build their vocabularies en español.
Most recently used in SPA501.
PEABODY LESSONS
ANCIENT ARTIFACTS
This skills-based lesson is designed to push students to think creatively and expansively by working in small groups and engaging in close looking with select items of material culture dating from the Roman Empire, imagining the different ways in which they may have intersected with a diversity of people in their daily lives. Instructors should plan on getting their hands dirty by putting on a pair of gloves and handling collections to help students with their examinations!
This lesson is particularly helpful for classes seeking to build students’ skills of critical thinking and working collaboratively. Most recently used in HSS100.
