Adventures in Anthropology
Suggested grade level: 4th-8th
Suggested Length of Activity: 1 – 1.5 hours
Welcome everyone! Today, we’ll be exploring the field of anthropology. Don’t forget to print out the Research Notes in the downloadable file, as these notes will help guide you through the tour and are a good place to write down your findings!
First, what is anthropology?
Anthropology is the study of people. When people live together in groups, they develop similar ways of doing things; we call this culture. You can learn a lot about a person’s culture just by observing how people go about their normal, everyday lives. Today, you will be learning about writing systems, economic systems, belief, housing, transportation, clothing, and food; real-life anthropologists study all of these things and more!
To begin, read through the Intro Questions of your Research Notes on page 2 and answer them! How are cultures similar? How are they different? How do different cultures go about solving the same problems? How do you solve those problems in your culture? How do their solutions compare to how we do things in our culture? Let’s see if your answers change by the end of this tour!
You can move through the activities using the links at the bottom of each page to move to the next page, or use the navigation menu on the left. You can click on any image in this activity to see a larger version. If you’re curious, you can also click on the item numbers in the captions to see the Hudson Museum Online entry for the items you see in the exhibits!