Archaeology
ANT 207

Spring 2010
 

Article Outline and Summary Guidelines & Format

Below are examples of article outlines and summaries.  Be sure to follow the guidelines and format of the article outline and summary below exactly in order to have the potential of gaining the most possible points for each presentation.

Guidelines

Article Outline – you’ll use this during your presentation.  Minimally the outline should include an Introduction to the topic, the Goals/Objectives of the writer reporting on the work and/or the archaeologists who are conducting the work, and an outline of your main Discussion points.  You can also add Conclusions or Results to the end of your outline if you like.  The outline will help prompt you on which points you think are important to present to your classmates.  Remember, your oral presentation should be around 4-5 minutes long at most but should be no less than about 4 minutes in length.  Feel free to add to or diverge from the outline, though, as you see fit during your presentation.  Start by writing the outline first as this will help you to organize your thoughts and will no doubt make both your presentation and written summary more coherent.  Turn in your outline at the end of class each Friday, after your presentation.

Article Summary – you’ll turn in a one page, double-spaced text (typed) summary of the article you have chosen to read and present at the beginning of class each Friday.  The typed text should be in 12 point font with 1” margins all around.  One page of double-spaced text works out to be approximately 250-300 total words.  The summary should be one single paragraph with no indents (see below).  Points will be deducted for summaries that are significantly less than one page of double-spaced text in length.  Your article summary should be a concise description of the main points of the article you’ve read.  Be sure to include an introduction of the topic, goals/methods used in the archaeological research, and major findings/results of the work.  If the article is written by a journalist rather than an archaeologist (as in the example below) then be sure to state what the author’s goals were – why were they writing the piece?  Why did they think readers might be interested in their article?  Feel free to use your outline to help you write the one-page summary.

 Format for Article Outline

Name: David Gilmour (your name)
Date: 19 February 2010 (Friday date)
Article: “Trekking Hadrian’s Wall” by Andrew Curry.  Smithsonian.  October 2009, pp. 40-47.

Introduction

• AD 122-Roman Emperor Hadrian trekked to the edge of the known (Roman) world – ordered construction of wall to defend empire from northern ‘barbarians’.
• My presentation is about the famous Hadrian’s Wall, what it meant to the ancient Romans, and how this impressive 84 mile long archaeological feature was made and how it's preserved and used today.

 Goals/Objectives

• Author (Andrew Curry) says he is “in search of the island’s Roman past”
• Curry sets out to walk entire length of wall – 84 miles – from coast to coast!

 Discussion

• Trek begins at appropriately named English town of Wallsend, on east end of island
• Wall is disturbed/gone in some places, such as in parts of Newcastle, a large, urban city located just outside of Wallsend
• Center section of wall – in most rural area – was the most “unspoiled and spectacular part of the walk” according to Curry
• Curry tries to duplicate the 15-20 miles/day Roman soldiers are reported to have traveled (in leather sandals) but can’t do it.  He says he has ‘blisters on top of my blisters”

The Wall itself -
·        Estimated 15,000 Roman soldiers stationed along the wall
·        Castles placed at one-mile intervals along the wall (80 total).  Castles were like small forts
·        Wall dimensions - 15’ high by up to 10’ wide, all
·        Made of stones mortared with lime – a ton of material for each cubic yard for an estimated total of 1.7 million cubic yards of stone & lime - the Wall was an incredible accomplishment!
·        Roads, earthworks and ditches parallel the wall in a number of places – all made by Romans
·        Designated a National Historic Landmark by British gov’t in 2003

Why was the Wall Built?  Disagreement among ‘wall scholars’
·        Defense of empire to the south from attacks by northern barbarians – but archaeologists have little information so far on these people to the north
·        Controlling the movement of people – for administrative control, funneling people through designated access points (gates are found at regular intervals along length of wall)

·        Some archaeological investigations completed along the wall
·        Extensive pits excavated by Romans, possibly to hold sharpened stakes
·        Excavations at Vindolanda, a Roman fort that predated the wall, by a father and son team.  Well-preserved organic artifacts found in 1972 – leather shoes, animal bones (from food) and even wooden combs.
·        One of the most spectacular finds was about 1,400 wooden tablets with Latin writing dating to AD 85-160.

·        More than 27,000 people have walked the wall from end to end since designation as National Landmark

·        UNESCO designated Wall and ancient Roman border in Germany a World Heritage Site called the ‘Frontiers of the Roman Empire’

 Format for Article Summary

Name: David Gilmour (your name)
Date: 19 February 2010 (Friday date)
Article: “Trekking Hadrian’s Wall” by Andrew Curry.  Smithsonian.  October 2009, pp. 40-47.

This was a really interesting article about a topic I knew very little about – Hadrian’s Wall in England.  The author of this article, Andrew Curry, did a fairly good job in summarizing some of the main points about the wall – why it may have been built by the ancient Romans in the first place, how it was constructed, what materials were used in its construction, and its dimensions and associated features (forts, ditches, roads & earthworks).  But he wove in his own story of “trekking Hadrian’s Wall” so he wasn’t just giving dry facts about the wall.  The reader was able to follow him along his travels from the east end of the wall from a town aptly named Wallsend all the way across the country to the wall’s western terminus, at a town called Bowness-on-Solway.  I learned that there’s a bit of disagreement among ‘wall scholars’ about what motivated the ancient Romans to build this huge wall.  It may have been to keep ‘barbarians’ from the north out of the empire, but it might have also been a way for Romans to control the movement of the English population, who they had just conquered.  Of course, it may have served both purposes.  In any case, it’s really amazing to think of all the effort that went into constructing the wall - the incredibly back-breaking labor that went into hauling stones, stacking them carefully in place and mixing mortar.  It must have been really lonely and pretty boring for Roman soldiers stationed along the wall.  Now, it’s a really popular destination for English tourists and hikers – over 250,000 walk at least a portion of the wall each year and it has been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.  Overall, I really liked the article and enjoyed learning more about something I’d heard of but never really knew much about.