Contemporary Social Studies 2010
Updated: 2012-11-30 20:46:44
Ning Brought to you by Search Sign Up Sign In Teaching Digital History using documents , images , maps and online tools Main My Page Members Photos Videos Blogs Forum All Discussions My Discussions Add Contemporary Social Studies 2010 Posted by John Lee on December 6, 2010 at 3:03pm in Visual historical inquiry View Discussions Social studies is a big and sometimes unwieldy subject . Given with the massive body of content in the field and differentiation among pedagogical approaches , social studies educators have the space to be creative and expressive . There are certainly some agreed upon aims in social studies . In fact , there is something approaching consensus that social studies should aim to prepare young people for citizenship . But , what that process entails is a point of
Archaeologists working at Akko, one of the major ancient ports of the eastern Mediterranean, have found a fleet of early-19th century ships and ancient harbor structures that date back to the 3rd-1st centuries B.C. During the brief time the shipwrecks were exposed, the Israel Antiquities Authority investigated one of them: a 32 meter vessel which [...]
A British team of archaeologists are planning an excavation into Burma to dig up 36 Spitfire airplanes that were buried there during WWII. The aircraft are thought to have been shipped to RAF bases before being buried, un-assembled, in their crates. Having signed an agreement with the Myanmar government permitting him to survey and excavate [...]
Forty Roman coins have been found in the forum complex at the Odeon site in the city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The coins were said by archaeologists to have been minted during the Severan dynasty, while ruled from 193 to 235 CE and variously feature images of four different emperors. The Odeon site, dating from the [...]
Archaeological excavations ahead of a planned gas line in Bulgaria have unearthed a necropolis of more than 100 tombs. The site includes tombs from the Thracian times to the times of the First Bulgarian Kingdom. The oldest ones date from the 5th – 4th centuries B.C. Some reveal very interesting rites such as the tomb [...]
The Boston Globe has posted an interesting article about geoscientist Robert D’Anjou, who is looking for Viking excrement in order to better understand ancient climate change. Scientists often search for pollen, for example, but changes in plant life can be a sign not only of climate change, but agriculture. Similarly, erosion could reflect changes caused [...]
The famous Terracotta Warriors found in Qin Shi Huang’s tomb near Xi’an in China each had real weapons which were made in self-sufficient workshops. What has been a puzzle for scientists is how so many weapons could have been made so skillfully, so uniformly and so quickly. (Qin reigned for only 11 years; construction of [...]
DNA analysis suggests that Stone Age farmers first domesticated wine grapes in Turkey. “We wanted to collect samples from wild and cultivated grape vines from the Near East — that means southeastern Anatolia, Armenia and Georgia — to see in which place the wild grape was, genetically speaking, linked the closest to the cultivated variety.” [...]
Researchers in Italy have exhumed the remains of Giovanni de’ Medici, a famous mercenary soldier who lived during the Renaissance, in order to learn more about his death and the surgeries that were performed upon him. Although he had acquired a reputation for invincibility, Giovanni of the Black Bands (1498-1526) died at only 28 after [...]
A royal statue made out of black granite of an unidentified New Kingdom pharaoh has been found at Monthu Temple in Luxor, Egypt. The statue is 125 centimetres tall and made of black granite and depicts a standing king wearing short dress with hands aside. Christopher Tiers, head of the archaeological mission, said that early [...]
The Houston Chronicle has posted an interesting interview with Mike Edmonds, the project director for the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project. Q: Can you describe the mechanism? A: Imagine something the size of a shoe box. … There’s a circular dial representing the zodiac signs with pointers for the position of the sun and moon. Also, [...]
Police in Greece have arrested three individuals in connection with an armed robbery that took place at the Archaeological Museum of Olympia. The three men were arrested Friday in the western Greek city of Patras, close to Ancient Olympia. They were arrested after they tried to sell the most ancient of the antiquities, a golden [...]
Researchers have identified a company of elite archers that perished aboard the Mary Rose by looking for evidence of repetitive strain in their shoulders and spines. Alexzandra Hildred, the curator of ordnance at the Mary Rose Trust, has said the injuries could be the result of “shooting heavy longbows regularly”. “Many of the skeletons recovered [...]
A 2,500-year-old statue of a woman has been found in the ancient city of Metropolis in Izmir’s Torbali district, Turkey. The head of the excavations, Trakya University Archaeology Department Associate Professor Serdar Aynek, said the headless, dressed, female statue was found buried in the city wall and that the statue reflected the richness and magnificence [...]
Researchers in Australia are reporting that 15 million years ago the Nimbadon lavarackorum, basically a human-sized wombat, hugged trees and behaved like modern-day koalas. Previous analysis of the skull, teeth and jaw of nimbadon revealed the animal ate leaves, says Black. But this is the first time the full skeleton has been described, revealing nimbadon [...]
Researchers have diligently restored the “Penacho,” the last surviving feathered headdress of the Aztecs. Steeped in myth and legend, the “Penacho”, a feather headdress supposedly worn by Aztec emperor Moctezuma II, continues to stir up passion in Austria and Mexico as it goes on display again after a years-long restoration. Some say it was brought [...]
Happy Thanksgiving to all my visitors from the United States! A researcher from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute has compared the DNA of a modern turkey with a 19th-century bird from the museum’s collection, and found that modern turkeys exhibit less genetic variation than their ancestors and other modern livestock breeds. “Ancient turkeys weren’t your [...]
Analysis of charcoal found at a Bronze Age “sauna” in Scotland shows that there was a wider variety of tree species existing in the area during that time than there is today. He said: “It has been amazing to realise just how much charcoal we dug up, when what we thought we had was mostly [...]
Recently the remains of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe were exhumed to determine his real cause of death (he wasn’t poisoned). Separate tests have also revealed that his famous silver nose prosthetic was actually made of brass. In another finding, the team reported that the silver nose piece Brahe famously wore after losing part of his [...]
A study of Viking skeletons has revealed that the Norsemen ate plenty of seals. “Our analysis shows that the Norse in Greenland ate lots of food from the sea, especially seals,” says Jan Heinemeier, Institute of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University. “Even though the Norse are traditionally thought of as farmers, they adapted quickly to [...]
At least four ancient petroglyphs have been stolen from the cliffs at the Volcanic Tableland in California. The thieves also heavily damaged some of the other glyphs at the site. Federal authorities say at least four petroglyphs have been taken from the site. A fifth was defaced with deep saw cuts on three sides. A [...]
A Mesolithic site, complete with three houses, has been found in northwest England. The finding is a first for archeologists, who have always assumed that Mesolithic man was nomadic, but this site presents the possibility that several families could have lived in just one place. Radiocarbon dating that took place towards the end of last [...]