One of the most challenging concepts for our students to understand about the ancient city of Ashkelon is that it wasn't just one city. Instead, Ashkelon is one city built on top of another built on top of another to create a tel (basically, a mound of ancient cities). Because the students we are skyping with are learning about many different civilizations who lived in Ashkelon, it can be tricky for them to know what "level" of city an artifact is from. In order to help our students understand this concept we introduced the vertical time line of Ashkelon. Many classes have the timeline hanging in their rooms and reference it when skyping and completing their archaeology challenges. One challenge we presented to classes was to create a vertical timeline of their life. We posed the question, if someone were to excavate your life, what artifacts might they find? What experiences have you had? Every class chose to approach this in a different way. A 5th grade class opted to create large scale, and in some cases 3-d, timelines of their life. They are AWESOME! What incredible work. Enjoy these pictures of the "interesting histories" of some our archaeology students!
