Archaeologist or Palaeontologist?

Overview

This game explores the differences between archaeologists and palaeontologists. Archaeologists are interested in the way humans (and their ancestors) lived. Their evidence might be human bones or artefacts (human-made or human-altered objects).

Palaeontologists are interested in the story of all ancient life. This can be fossils of animals, plants or microscopic life forms like bacteria. They are not interested in things younger than the last Ice Age (less than 10 thousand years old).

Some discoveries might interest both archaeologists and palaeontologists. For example, a 40 thousand-year-old woolly mammoth skeleton would be interesting to an archaeologist if it could have been hunted by people and it would be interesting to a palaeontologist because it is an extinct animal.

Instructions

  • Adult supervision is not required for this activity.
  • Type of Activity : Game
  • How many people required (minimum) : 2+
  • Safety Measures : If doing the debate activity, establish some “ground rules” first – debate points must always be about the object and not about the person making the point.
  • Ages : 8+
  • Downloads: https://www.yac-uk.org/userfiles/image/1588849896_Archaeologist-or-Palaeontologist.pdf
  • Time Required: 30 – 60 minutes

Step 1

Download and print off the “Archaeologist or Palaeontologist?” sheets and cut off the information labels. Shuffle the cards so they are out of order.

Step 2

You can play the game “Higher or Lower”, where you hold up two cards, try to identify the object and decide which one is older and which one is younger (or if they’re about the same). If identification might be too tricky you can leave the name tags on when you cut out the sheets.

Step 3

Lay the cards down in the order that is decided by the game – this gives you a basic chronology. Now, you can vote on which ones are studied by archaeologists, which ones are studied by palaeontologists, and which might be interesting for both. The answers are on the original file – how close did you get?

Step 4

The third game you can play is “Devil’s Advocate”! Try to forget everything you know about what the objects are and what time they are from, pretending it is the first time anyone has ever found one. Split into two teams: one team of archaeologists, one team of palaeontologists. Each team takes it in turn to argue that the object should go to their museum for study. One person should be nominated to decide who gives the most convincing argument. See which team claims more for their side!