SS Chapter 3

Houghton Mifflin Social Studies
Lesson at a Glance Outline

Chapter 3, Lesson 1: Understanding History (pp. 56-61)

I. Historical Evidence

A. Historians use both written and non-written sources to learn about the past.
B. Written sources include books, letters, diaries, writings on monuments--anything with writing.
C. Non-written sources include fossils, artifacts, music, and oral tradition.
D. Historians must examine information and decide how to interpret it.

A. Historians ask questions about a source to determine how accurate and useful it is.
B. Primary sources are materials created in the same time period as the events described.
C. Secondary sources are materials created later by people who studied the original or primary sources.

A. Each generation has historians who gather and interpret sources of information about the past. The interpretation varies from generation to generation.
B. Historians work to understand not only what happened in the past, but also how and why it happened.

Houghton Mifflin Social Studies
Lesson at a Glance Outline

Chapter 3, Lesson 2: Examining Sources (pp. 64-70)

I. Unlocking the Archaeological Record

A. Archaeology is the recovery and study of artifacts, ruins, bones, and fossils from the past.
B. By studying the archaeological record, archaeologists can learn many things about people of the past.
C. Archaeologists slowly remove earth at a site and carefully record the exact location of everything they find.

A. Archaeologists use two methods to determine the age of an artifact, cultural dating and scientific dating.
B. Cultural dating compares the objects found at a site with objects whose dates and information are already known.
C. Scientific dating techniques bring small samples of the objects found at a site into a laboratory for detailed analysis.

A. Archaeologists must interpret the evidence they collect just as historians do.
B. Different archaeologists come to different conclusions about the materials they examine.

Houghton Mifflin Social Studies
Lesson at a Glance Outline

Chapter 3, Lesson 3: Examining Archaeology (pp. 71-75)

I. A Classic Excavation

A. Today, the purpose of archaeology is to understand the lives of all people.
B. To study the lives of people, archaeologists study all the objects left behind, including rubbish.
C. Archaeologists also work with other specialists to learn more about the climate, soil, plants, animals, and age of the area they are studying.

Chapter 3, Lesson 4: Interpreting Sources (pp. 80-83)

I. Evidence of Cultural Contact

A. Clues about contact between ancient cultures are found in the archaeological record.
B. Whenever different cultures come in contact, they exchange goods and ideas. This is known as cultural diffusion.

A. Different cultures can make similar developments without coming into contact with each other.
B. Similar developments can arise when people in different places work to solve similar problems.
C. New methods of evaluating and understanding evidence can change archaeologists' interpretations.