Prepared by Robert Schmick, Ph.D.

Activity

Students will learn where to find primary sources

Materials: list of primary sources, trash can filled with trash, newspaper for desks, rubber gloves for students

Procedure:

1. Review definition of primary sources and the examples

2. Discuss with students where you would find these items. Discuss that primary sources are often donated to museums and local historical societies. Libraries often have some primary sources in their collections. Discuss what an archives and some of the things they have withing their holdings. Discuss that historians often seek out important details about people of the past in these places by examining primary sources that they have left behind and that have been preserved. If we were to have the opportunity to find the contents of a trash can once in their possession what might we learn about that person?

3. Tell students that today, they are going to work in groups to discover what primary sources a historian of the future would find in their trash. ( You might ask the custodians to not empty your trash the night before so you have enough to look at). Cover desks with newspaper. Give each student a pair of rubber gloves. Empty out your trash on the students' desks. Ask them to analyze their trash, using the worksheet, to find out what someone in the future would be able to find out about them by examining their trash.

4. Give about 15-20 minutes for the activity. When students are finished, discuss their findings.

                                                      Worksheet:  Trash Can History
       
      One of the ways historians learn about the people they study is through analyzing the material culture that they have left behind. In this activity, you will study a group of artifacts the way an historical investigator would.
     Below are links to what might appear to be trash left behind from someone from the past; imagine that this trash appears before you for the sake of this first exercise. Click the links and carefully examine these artifacts, and then answer the following questions. Unlike the real thing you can enlarge these scanned pieces of trash by clicking them once again.

1. List the items 

2. What do these items tell you about the people who left them behind?

3. Suppose you have been examining the contents of a specific trash can each week for an entire year, and it always  contained an average of eight soda cans each week. Suddenly one week, the cans stop appearing in the garbage. What reasons can you think of to explain this change?

4. How many of the items on your desk would survive if they were buried in the ground for two hundred years?

5. If you analyzed those artifacts that still remained, would you change your conclusions about the people that you made in question 2?