Ultimate Field Trip 2: Digging Into Southwest Archeaology - Softcover

Goodman, Susan E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0689838913 ISBN 13: 9780689838910

Publisher: Aladdin, 2000

Synopsis

Can this Ultimate Field Trip solve the ultimate mystery?
Ancestral Puebloan people lived in the Mesa Verde region of Colorado for over a thousand years, then suddenly moved away around A.D. 1300. join this group of eighth-grade students as they go on the Ultimate Field Trip and search for answers to this ancient mystery.
The students help archaeologists digging in the ruins for clues. As they spend a week at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, they learn about life in the desert, and the history of the ancestral Puebloans. And the kids' study of archaeology leads them to the biggest question of all about the ancient Indians: What happened to them, and why did they disappear?

About this title

About the Author

To research her various books and magazine articles, Susan E. Goodman has snowshoed through mountain forests, tried using a blowgun in the Amazon, and scared a moose at rest -- and herself in the bargain. Years ago, she went to U.S. Space Camp as a participant and loved the 1/6 Gravity Chair. Ms. Goodman lives with her family in Boston, Massachusetts.

From Kirkus Reviews

This scrapbook chronicle of an archaeological field trip combines photo album with scientific inquiry, following a format identical to Goodman's previous venture, Bats, Bugs, and Biodiversity (1995). Packing water bottles and smelling of sunscreen, a group of eighth graders from Hannibal, Missouri, embark on a field trip much more than a bus ride away to the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, aiming to dig up the past of ancestral Puebloans (formerly called Anasazi), who lived on mesas and canyon tops of the Southwest desert over 700 years ago. Corn-grinding tools masquerade as stones, an ancient fingerprint hides in the mortar of bricks, a small animal skull poses the puzzle--pet or food source? Inklings of a way of life unfold for the participants and readers, as the adults emphasize that it's not ``what you find, it's what you find out.'' The dialogue sounds scripted and stiff; information and theories are detailed in a more successful narrative form. Speculation as to the fate of the ancestral Puebloans is addressed in periodic insets titled ``Why Did They Leave?'' Interspersed with sweeping full-color postcard views of canyon and kiva are more candid snapshots. Readers will vicariously follow along as the joking junior archaeologists piece together fragments of history both scientifically and experientially. (glossary, further reading) (Nonfiction. 9-12) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Aladdin
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0689838913
• ISBN 13: 9780689838910
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 48
• Illustrator: Doolittle Michael J.