Archaeology

Freddie Gay

Activity 1

How long have people lived in your country for？ What do you know about the earliest people who lived there？ How do you know this information？

Activity 2

a） object      b） culture

1. Which word means the different activities people do and ways people think in different areas and countries？

2. Which word means a thing you can hold in your hands？

Now complete the sentences below with these words. You may need to make them plural.

Archaeologists are people who study very old buildings and

3. ______ to learn about 4. ______ that lived many years ago. The subject is called archaeology.

Activity 3

Read the conversation between two friends and guess the meaning of the words below.

1. stone   2. realise   3. translation    4. publish

What are you studying at university？

Archaeology.

Thats a long and difficult word. How do you say it？

ar – kee – OL – o – gy

Where does this word come from？

From Greek. Its two words together， ‘ancient， meaning very old， and ‘history.

Why is it important then？

Well， it helps us to understand history. Ancient Egypt is a good example. We did not know much about this amazing culture before the 1800s. Then， archaeologists started studying the buildings and objects and now we know a lot about the ancient Egyptians.

How do they find out information from buildings and objects？

A good example is the Rosetta Stone， found in Egypt in 1799. This was an old piece of stone which had writing in two languages on it. People could read the Greek writing， but the other writing was from ancient Egypt. It used pictures， and nobody knew how to read it. But then they realised the Greek writing was a translation of the ancient Egyptian writing.

So they understood ancient Egyptian writing from this translation？

It took many more years before people could understand it because archaeologists had to study many more examples of Egyptian writing. But the translation on the stone helped a lot. About 32 years later an ancient Egyptian dictionary was published. Now many archaeologists can read this language and this helps them to learn even more about ancient Egyptian culture.

Now choose the correct meaning for each word

1. stone

2. realise

3. translation

4. publish

a） make a piece of writing available to buy

b） a hard object often found in nature

c） a piece of writing with the same meaning in two languages

d） begin to understand

Activity 4

Read again and choose the correct answer：

a）， b） or c）.

1. The word ‘archaeology comes from

a） Greek

b） Egyptian

c） Latin

2. Before archaeologists studied ancient Egypt ______

a） we knew a lot about its culture.

b） we knew nothing about its culture.

c） we only knew a little bit about its culture.

3. The Rosetta Stone ______

a） has Greek writing on it.

b） has ancient Egyptian writing on it.

c） has Greek and ancient Egyptian writing on it.

4. After the Rosetta Stone was found ______

a） archaeologists could read ancient Egyptian immediately.

b） archaeologists had to wait many more years to read ancient Egyptian.

c） archaeologists could understand Greek better.

Activity 5

How many words can you make using the letters in ‘archaeology？ Use a dictionary to find as many as you can.

a – r – c – h – a – e – o – l – o – g – y