8 Conceptualizing the Past

The Thoughtful Engagement of Hearts and Minds

M. Elaine Franklin

Since its founding in 1983, public engagement has been a fundamental aspect of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center’s mission. This chapter presents a synthesis of the Center’s education work and contextualizes it within the constructs of cognitive theory and social semiotics. Included in this discussion are essential aspects of educational practice that have characterized Crow Canyon’s public education programs for four decades; among these are experiential education and inquiry pedagogy, situated learning, multivocality, and the inclusion of descendant communities.

When novelist L. P. Hartley (1953, 17) said, “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there,” he summarized the challenges of understanding other times, cultures, and places from our situated position in the present. I begin with this quote because it lays bare the task that heritage professionals face—whether they be historians, archaeologists, educators, or museum specialists—when they work to help others conceptualize the past, or even to conceptualize it for themselves. To successfully work in one of these fields, it is necessary to not only understand the complexities of conveying accurate information about the past but also to recognize the equally complex realm of how people learn, how we construct knowledge, and how we make sense of our world. Crow Canyon has deep roots in bringing these domains of archaeological research and education together through an integrated mission that places value on intellectual engagement, rigorous research, and inclusion.

Each word in the title for this chapter is essential to a discussion of the educational work Crow Canyon has conducted over the last forty years, with engagement perhaps being key. Outreach and engagement are not the same. The two terms are often used interchangeably; however, they differ in some significant ways. In the most basic sense, outreach is done for others and engagement is done with others. Outreach generally occurs in one direction, with the organization offering educational information, whereas engagement is a collaborative, relational process. Both are equally important, but regarding public impact, outreach and engagement are qualitatively and quantitatively different. While Crow Canyon does conduct some outreach activities, it is, to its core, a publicly engaged institution.

As the title reflects, I look at the work the Center conducts in heritage education through both a cognitive and affective lens. From a cognitive perspective, I discuss the characteristics of educational practices that are informed by our knowledge of how people learn. Through the affective lens, I focus on the social, emotional, and cultural facets of the human past. These aspects can evoke the kind of caring that leads to conservation and preservation, but they can also lead to conflict and pain in the present. History—the human past—is sometimes passionate, often contested, too often political, and, undeniably, can be a source of present-day trauma and division. Effective public engagement and responsible heritage work require a commitment to acknowledging this complexity and to encouraging critical thought among learners of all ages as they grapple with making meaning of the past. In this chapter, I depict the work that Crow Canyon has undertaken over the last four decades to achieve this goal.

Thinking Our Way into the Past

Constructing Knowledge

Archaeologists study dinosaurs; “Indians” live in teepees; and societies continually progress toward greater complexity and sophistication. These are obvious and, perhaps, not so obvious misconceptions about archaeology, society, and culture. As Crow Canyon educators have long noted, these ideas are often expressed by children, but they are not exclusive to children. Some of us go on believing naive and inaccurate information as adults because we have not been confronted with information powerful enough to shatter and destroy these erroneous mental constructs. A significant body of research has explored and explained why this happens, why we form these misconceptions, and why they appear to be so intractable (Guzzetti and Hynd 1998).

To gain insight and consider the pedagogical approaches that might be most useful for moving past such misconceptions, it is necessary to look at some basic understandings about how people learn. To begin, it is important to recognize that we all possess conceptual maps that have been forming from our lived experiences since the day we were born—the proverbial “blank slate” does not exist. We carry our past with us, and we are generally not conscious of how our past affects our present-day concepts of reality, or how it impacts the way we process new information (Berger and Luckman 1967; Bowers 1987). The literature on this cognitive theory, generally known as constructivism, is far too vast to properly summarize in this chapter; however, it is useful to recognize two fundamental positions—cognitive and social constructivism.

Cognitive constructivism is often associated with the Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget (Scheurman 1998). Key to his theory of learning is the notion that knowledge is acquired as a result of the individual’s attempt to maintain intellectual equilibrium. According to Piaget, new information is assimilated within a paradigm of what we already know and understand about the world. When we confront new information that is incompatible with our prior understanding, which he referred to as perturbations, we are left in a state of disequilibrium. In order to restore equilibrium, we are forced to recast our mental models (Guzzetti and Hynd 1998; Scheurman 1998).

The undoing or disruption of deeply ingrained prior beliefs, such as stereotypes, generally requires new information of such a powerful nature that it can often make the learner feel uncomfortable or perturbed. This is the disequilibrium to which Piaget referred (Montangero and Maurice-Naville 1997). When the new information is incorporated into the learner’s conceptual understanding, they experience a paradigm shift and equilibrium is again achieved. When new information lacks power or credibility for one reason or another, the learner simply holds onto their prior understanding.

The social constructivist perspective is generally associated with the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (Scheurman 1998). He accepted Piaget’s views of how individuals build private understandings, but he moved beyond the individual to say that knowledge is co-constructed in social contexts, resulting in public understandings of objects and events. From this perspective, knowledge is not objective but is a product of the interactions and agreements of society. To understand this, one might think of humor and the way it is socially and culturally situated. Humor generally involves a great deal of insider knowledge and, if absent, we simply do not get it. While all the members of a cultural group are not likely to agree on what is funny, they will generally understand why something is supposed to be funny. Researchers who have focused specifically on the teaching and learning of history have documented the challenges that our social and cultural lenses can impose on our ability to learn about the human past.

Educational psychologist Sam Wineburg (2001) says that historical thinking is an unnatural act because of our desire to make the past familiar rather than become amazed at its strangeness. In interviews with both high school students and adults, he found that their natural inclination was to explain historical events in terms of existing beliefs or according to the rules of their culturally bound logic. Numerous instructional strategies have been informed or influenced by constructivist learning theory, focusing particularly on the importance of prior knowledge and the need to have the learner confront their misconceptions (NSTA 2021). The work of American philosopher, psychologist, and educator John Dewey, a contemporary of Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s, is perhaps the most notable and influential. Dewey recognized the crucial place held by experience in the learning process (1938). He argued that in order for education to be most effective, the student must be an active participant and that content must be presented in a way that allows the student to relate the information to prior experiences. Dewey’s ideas laid the foundation for experiential education and informed the modern theory of experiential learning, as well as other approaches such as inquiry and Problem or Project Based Learning (PBL), in which experience and reflection are also at the center. The coupling of reflection with experience was, according to Dewey, critical. He said we do not learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on an experience (1938). Throughout the experiential learning process, the learner should be actively engaged in posing questions, investigating, experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative, and constructing meaning (Association of Experiential Education 2021).

Caring about the Past: Everyone’s History Matters

Conceptualizing or thinking our way into the past is both an intellectual endeavor and an affective one. “Current scholarship on cognition recognizes the inseparable relationship of thought and feeling in cognitive development” (Barton and Levstik 2004, 236). Historians and archaeologists are careful to point out the danger of letting feelings enter our understanding of the past—the stories we tell need to be fully grounded in evidence obtained through rigorous scholarly inquiry. However, an empirical understanding of past events does not demand the exclusion of feelings or of a caring frame of mind. “Care is the motivating force behind nearly all historical research, and it shapes our interest in its products: we attend to books, articles, documentaries, museums and historic sites only because we care about what we find there” (Barton and Levstik 2004, 228).

Studies conducted with the general public have documented a high level of interest in the human past. This connection holds true as long as the studies are describing experiences out of school. When referring to history in school, adjectives such as “dry,” “irrelevant,” and “boring” are common (Rosenzweig and Thelen 1998). The approach to history in school experienced by many of these respondents was generally of the survey variety, with a fact-filled march through time, from war-to-war and king-to-king. They simply could not find a way to connect—a reason to care. Emotion has often been seen as a threat to objectivity, and passion does pose a threat to historical understanding, especially when the forces of emotion cause us to hold on to deeply held beliefs in the face of evidence to the contrary. Yet it would be difficult to imagine a serious historical work in which emotion played no role (Wineburg 2001).

In the early 2000s, educators at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center made explicit a fundamental belief that characterizes the Center’s values: Everyone’s History Matters. This is true for groups of people, just as it is for individuals. This phrase acknowledges that what we have been, where we have been, and what we have experienced are all factors in carving our path to the present. How we care—or do not care—about the past informs actions and reactions in the present. Everyone’s History Matters also recognizes that caring about the past is integral to how we go about studying it in the present and how we thoughtfully engage others in that study.

Throughout this section, I have highlighted some essential aspects of sound educational practices and how they relate to studies of the human past. In the following section I use these lenses to look at the work of Crow Canyon’s public education programs from 1983 to the present.

Roots

In the 1960s, classroom teacher Dr. Edward F. Berger frustrated with the restrictions he felt existed in the traditional curriculum, began creating supplemental education programs for his Denver-area students (Berger 2000; Lightfoot and Lipe, chapter 2 in this volume). Experiential curricula that engaged students in authentic community-based projects was central to the programs he designed. After a time, these supplemental programs grew into more intensive service learning, and by 1968 his local history project evolved into a summer program in southwestern Colorado (Berger 2000). Archaeology and the study of past cultures became the core of these programs as he felt these studies can give us unique insights into our own lives and culture (2000). In 1972, Berger founded a nonprofit organization called the Interdisciplinary Supplemental Education Program (I-SEP) to formalize this work, and in 1974 he purchased eighty acres of land in Crow Canyon, near Cortez, Colorado, to give that program a home (see Lightfoot and Lipe, chapter 2 in this volume). Although originally named the I-SEP school, according to Berger, locals began calling it the Crow Canyon School (2000).

The curricula were thoughtfully constructed, with attention to both hands-on experiences and reflection on those experiences. He saw that a student needed to be able to make associations between what they were learning and what they already knew and understood. The Crow Canyon School provided, in Berger’s words, “concentrated, thematic, experiential immersion programs” (Berger 2000, xii). By 1983, the Crow Canyon School merged with Northwestern University’s Center for American Archaeology and became known as the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. The merger lasted for two years, and Crow Canyon emerged from it as an independent nonprofit organization (see Lightfoot and Lipe, chapter 2 in this volume). In 1986, the Bergers left the Center feeling that the educational mission and programs of the institution were well established (Berger 2000).

This account is but a brief overview of Crow Canyon’s roots. My purpose in including it is twofold: to shine a light on the educational nature of Crow Canyon’s genesis and to illuminate the quality and character of that work. The fact that the earliest programs were designed and conducted by educators who were committed to experience-based, immersive programs that truly engage learners has had a lasting impact on the Center’s mission and has helped shape it for the last forty years. In the following sections, I look closely at key strategies that grew out of, and beyond, these roots to actively involve learners of all ages in conceptualizing the past.

Citizen Science and Inquiry Learning

Since 1983, Crow Canyon has unarguably been a national forerunner in the practice of citizen science. As defined by the National Geographic Society, “Citizen science is the practice of public participation and collaboration in scientific research to increase scientific knowledge. Through citizen science, people share and contribute to data monitoring and collection programs” (National Geographic 2021). This definition well reflects the research partnership that Crow Canyon holds with members of the public. Tens of thousands of individuals, from middle-school-age students to senior citizens, have contributed to the Center’s ongoing research into the ancestral Pueblo history of the Mesa Verde region. They have contributed through participation in excavation and survey, as well as through artifact analysis and classification. Lessons learned in these authentic research experiences are vast, some simple and others more complex. Distinguishing between a piece of sandstone and a pottery sherd is surely one of the more basic lessons, but embedded in it is knowledge about the construction of pottery (temper, firing, slip), geology (local and nonlocal clays and minerals), and even some simple geometry and awareness of spatial relationships (curvature, arcs, and relation of parts to the whole).

Lessons about the nature of archaeology and the nature of science in general are woven throughout Crow Canyon’s programs. Participants are made aware of research questions and design, and why a particular approach was selected, and are informed about technologies involved in the research process. Preconceptions about archaeology abound, some exciting, some not, and many inaccurate. After spending a few hours methodically scraping dirt, taking measurements, and recording findings, any delusions of glamour fall away (figure 8.1). Confronted with powerful data of a contradictory nature, learners find that it becomes impossible to hold on to old ideas, and their concepts of what archaeology is and what archaeologists do are revised.

Students participating in field excavation at the Haynie Site in southwest Colorado. People crouch over the earth — Figure 8.1. Students collecting data from the field, Haynie site. Courtesy of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center.

Some of the more sophisticated lessons learned are of the big picture variety and may be as informed by setting as by the activity. Many of Crow Canyon’s citizen science participants are from places that are far less arid than the Mesa Verde region. As they spend time in this environment and learn about village population sizes and subsistence patterns, their curiosity about things such as how ancestral Pueblo people survived, and even thrived, is reflected in the growing complexity of their questions. As is the goal in inquiry instruction, learners become intrinsically motivated to pursue further study. For a significant number of participants, the desire is strong enough to bring them back to Crow Canyon again and again, some as alumni, some as interns, and sometimes as staff members.

Immersive Environments

In 1985, the first replica structure was built on the Crow Canyon campus. This was the Basketmaker III period (AD 500–750) Pithouse Learning Center, a partially underground building constructed of adobe, wooden posts, and brush or twigs. The pithouse has gone through numerous rebuilds over the decades, often with newer strategies for extending the life of the building but always with a commitment to stay true to the authentic look and feel of a seventh-century AD household. This structure has served as a classroom to thousands of students who have visited the campus over the last thirty to forty years. Their time spent in and around it involves learning about the lifestyles of people who would have lived in such houses, including subsistence, clothing, and technologies appropriate to the era. The educator guiding them through this exploration helps them develop their conceptual understanding through a series of thoughtful questions such as, “How would you build this house?” “What would you do first, second . . . ?” The educator would also respond to the numerous student questions that are inevitably inspired by the pithouse itself: “What’s the floor made of?” “How did it get so hard?” On colder days, the students might comment on how much warmer it is inside than out. Other observations might refer to textures and smells.

Since its inception, the pithouse has been an important instructional tool for student groups, along with a simulated excavation, a visit to Mesa Verde National Park, and “Windows into the Past” (an inquiry lesson with replica artifact assemblages). This series of lessons is designed to build understanding around the cultural history and chronology of the region, as well as about archaeological research methods. In 1998, when I served as director of education at the Center, we designed a research plan to investigate if, and to what extent, fourth and fifth grade students were meeting these learning objectives. We suspected that some time periods might be more firmly established in the students’ minds than others, which was what we indeed found, but not in the way we expected. Results of the study pointed clearly to the fact that students were remembering far more about the Basketmaker time period than any other. We had anticipated that knowledge of the Pueblo III period (AD 1150–1300) might be most prominent because of the students’ visit to Mesa Verde National Park and the impressive structures they saw there. Instead, their illustrated timelines were much richer with details from the Basketmaker period. When they could not remember the kind of house associated with a time period, they simply drew a pithouse. After a close analysis of the activities included in the curriculum, the explanation became readily apparent; the pithouse was their only immersive experience, and the weight of it skewed their understanding. Given that knowledge of ancestral Pueblo cultural continuity and change is a cornerstone of the Center’s education curriculum, a case could be made for expanding the campus’s immersive learning environments. Thus, in 2003 the Pueblo Learning Center (PLC) was constructed. The PLC was based on a twelfth-century AD site in Mesa Verde National Park and, like the Basketmaker Pithouse Learning Center, was constructed with a commitment to the authentic look and feel of structures from the era. After the integration of the PLC into the curriculum, we conducted a follow-up study in 2004 that indicated a far more balanced understanding of the time periods and of changes across time (figure 8.2).

Students engaged in lifestyle activities at Crow Canyons Pueblo Learning Center — Figure 8.2. Students engaging with Crow Canyon educator Rebecca Hammond at the Pueblo Learning Center. Courtesy of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center.

Immersive environments are powerful teaching tools because of their ability to make multisensory impressions, which is one of the reasons that Crow Canyon places so much emphasis on authenticity. The more information that can be embedded in a particular source, the greater its power to shape conceptual understanding. In this sense, one picture truly is worth a thousand words. If that picture is incorrect or carries confusing information, faulty ideas can be formed that may be difficult to undo. In a larger sense, the natural setting itself can be seen as an immersive learning environment. This could be said for all variety of programs at Crow Canyon or any location where the past is studied in the place where it happened. The arid climate, the brilliant blue of the sky, the aroma of juniper and sage, and the color and texture of the sandstone are as much a part of the present as they were of the past and contribute to what learners think and feel about the history they are studying.

Experience is integral to all programs at the Center, but, as Dewey noted, we do not learn from experience, but rather we learn from reflection on experience (1938), which is the way educators end the lessons held in the Basketmaker Pithouse and Pueblo Learning Centers: “Many of the students’ comments reveal that they are in the process of comparing their own daily lives to those of the ancient people they are learning about and are on the verge of changing the way they conceptualize life in other cultures and earlier times. Watching students change their attitudes toward people different than themselves is always a powerful and rewarding experience” (Parks 2000, 36).

Multivocality and Inclusion

If everyone’s history matters, then the inclusion of members of descendant communities in the telling of those histories and in the research process itself is essential. For Crow Canyon, this has meant developing relationships with Indigenous peoples of the region including Diné, Ute, and especially the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona. In the 1990s the Center formalized these connections through the establishment of an advisory group comprised of individuals who share expert knowledge and insights on research and education issues, as well as serve as scholars on various programs, both on and off campus.

The consultations and collaborations that have grown out of these relationships have served to dramatically enrich Crow Canyon’s work in countless ways, but the conversations haven’t always been easy. Complications come from several directions. Archaeological and Indigenous approaches to understanding the past differ; the border between the sacred and the secular is often less defined in some Indigenous cultures than in Western societies, and, perhaps most important, great diversity exists among the Indigenous people of the Southwest, even among the groups collectively referred to as Pueblo (see Suina, chapter 7 and Kuwanwisiwma and Bernardini, chapter 5 in this volume). Today there are thirty-two Pueblo communities in New Mexico and Arizona, representing five different language groups. Cultural traditions vary between the Pueblos, just as they must have 800 years ago, and knowledge of traditional practices within a Pueblo may be gendered.

There are numerous examples of how traditional Pueblo knowledge has informed the work of Crow Canyon, but two are particularly notable in the way they shaped education programs at the Center. The first involves the grinding of corn. For many years, students who visited the Center would have an opportunity to experience corn grinding with stone manos and metates when they visited the Pithouse Learning Center. This was deemed a valuable experience by Crow Canyon staff since it helped students develop an appreciation for the work that went into processing a major source of ancestral Pueblo food. After the formation of the Native American Advisory Group in 1995 and increased consultation, educators at the Center became aware that some of the Pueblo advisors considered this an inappropriate activity, particularly for males. In many of the Pueblos, corn grinding is still very much a part of traditional ceremonies and is only performed by females. As a result of numerous discussions, both internally and with Pueblo advisors, the decision was made to continue including the manos and metates in the two learning centers but to cease the act of corn grinding. The grinding stones themselves provide an opportunity to not only talk about the importance of corn and how it was processed traditionally but also to talk about why the Center does not include corn grinding in the lifestyle activities.

The other example involved the construction of the Pueblo Learning Center, which was modeled after a Pueblo III period site on Mesa Verde proper that included a roomblock, tower, and kiva. In the interest of authenticity and conveying accurate details about Pueblo houses and communities in the eleventh and twelfth centuries AD, Crow Canyon designed a plan to incorporate all of the architectural components, including the kiva. This was problematic from the perspective of the Pueblo advisors, as kivas continue to serve ceremonial functions today and should only be built by certain people and may only be entered by people who are initiated into a particular group. The difficult conversations that transpired eventually led to the decision that a kiva would not be built but that its absence would inspire a teachable moment. This takes the form of reflective discussions that engage students in thinking about what is missing from the household layout and requires them to make inferences about why there is no kiva. The lessons taught through the omission of the kiva might well be more profound than any that could be conveyed with its inclusion.

The impact that collaboration with the Native American Advisory Group and other American Indian partners has had on Crow Canyon’s educational programming is immeasurable. Their advice on educational content has helped shaped the Center’s curricula for all age groups and for both on- and off-campus programs. Perhaps, even more significant than their advice has been their actual presence as coinstructors in numerous programs across the years, from High School Field Schools, to College Field Schools, to Cultural Explorations, to National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes and Workshops for K–12 teachers (figure 8.3). This multivocal approach adds diversity and dimension to the stories of the past and encourages learners to engage in critical thought about culture, history, and what it means to be human across space and time.

Zuni educator, Dan Simplicio, explains the architecture of a kiva to students — Figure 8.3. Crow Canyon educator Dan Simplicio teaching students about kiva architecture. Courtesy of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center.

Concluding Thoughts

Delivering a true synthesis of Crow Canyon’s educational work over the last forty years is a daunting task, and what I have presented here is in no way comprehensive. My primary goal has not been to show that the Center’s educational work is sound but to show why it is sound. In this chapter, I hope to have provided an educational frame for viewing some of the Center’s approaches to teaching about archaeology and the ancestral Puebloan history of the region. These programs have prioritized depth of understanding, authentic engagement, and an ethic of respect over methods that might have been simpler or more expedient. A deep appreciation for the challenges presented in conceptualizing the past and a dedication to engaging the hearts and minds of learners are rooted in Crow Canyon’s past and will undoubtedly guide it forward as it embraces new ways to make the human past accessible and relevant.

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