The document provides an overview of a presentation by Deborah Kozdras on using artifacts in trace-based cases for teaching history. It discusses using artifacts as traces of the past to spark questions from students and have them investigate the context around when, where, who, how, and why regarding the artifact. Examples are provided of using an earthenware sculpture of a horse from China to discuss the importance of horses to the Han Dynasty and the development of the Silk Road. Guiding questions are suggested for how to structure an investigation and argument around an artifact. Resources like timelines, textbooks, poems, and articles are recommended to supplement the students' research.

1. USF Stavros Center Presents:
Deborah Kozdras
Using Artifacts in Trace-Based Cases
Tinyurl.com/usfstavrosresources

2. Using Historical Thinking
• SS.6.W.1.1Use timelines to identify chronological order of
historical events.
• SS.6.W.1.2Identify terms (decade, century, epoch, era,
millennium, BC/BCE, AD/CE) and designations of time
periods.
• SS.6.W.1.3Interpret primary and secondary sources.
• SS.6.W.1.4Describe the methods of historical inquiry and
how history relates to the other social sciences.
• SS.6.W.1.5Describe the roles of historians and recognize
varying historical interpretations (historiography).
• SS.6.W.1.6Describe how history transmits culture and
heritage and provides models of human character.

3. Using Place-Based Literacy
• SS.6.G.1.1Use latitude and longitude coordinates to understand the
relationship between people and places on the Earth.
• SS.6.G.1.2Analyze the purposes of map projections (political,
physical, special purpose) and explain the applications of various
types of maps.
• SS.6.G.1.3Identify natural wonders of the ancient world.
• SS.6.G.1.4Utilize tools geographers use to study the world.
• SS.6.G.1.5Use scale, cardinal, and intermediate directions, and
estimation of distances between places on current and ancient
maps of the world.
• SS.6.G.1.6Use a map to identify major bodies of water of the world,
and explain ways they have impacted the development of
civilizations.
• SS.6.G.1.7Use maps to identify characteristics and boundaries of
ancient civilizations that have shaped the world today.

4. Content & Economic Ideas
• SS.6.W.4.10Explain the significance of the silk roads and
maritime routes across the Indian Ocean to the movement
of goods and ideas among Asia, East Africa, and the
Mediterranean Basin.
• SS.6.E.1.1Identify the factors (new resources, increased
productivity, education, technology, slave economy,
territorial expansion) that increase economic growth.
• SS.6.E.1.3Describe the following economic concepts as they
relate to early civilization: scarcity, opportunity cost, supply
and demand, barter, trade, productive resources (land,
labor, capital, entrepreneurship).

5. Economic Questions
• What was produced?
• How was it produced?
• How did what was produced get allocated?
Or . . . Just ask . . .why?

6. Economic vs Economic Historic Thinking
Economics
• Economists practice
something few historians do
look to the future and
predict
• Economists isolate
independent variables to
find regularities that predict
Economic Historians
• Historians don’t try to
predict the future.
• Historians feel that isolating
variables is unattainable
because all variables are
interdependent. They
consider as many variables
as possible.

7. Trace-Based Cases
Trace as Noun
• For example, the Merriam-
Webster dictionary defines
a trace (noun) as a a sign or
evidence of some past
thing.
Trace as Verb
• As a verb, to trace means to
discover signs, evidence, or
remains, and to follow or
investigate in detail.

8. What do you see?
Trace-Based Cases begin with
a trace of something from the
past, like an artifact, photo,
painting, or other visual
source. During initial cases,
utilize teacher-generated
questions. Then, gradually
release the responsibility to
the students, so they can
eventually ask their own
questions.

9. What do you see?
Who?
When?
Where?
Anonymous
China, Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.)
Standing Horse
Earthenware with traces of pigment
Gift of Dr. David and Enid Owens
2007.33
Horses were important to Han rulers and
aristocrats, who took representations of
them into their elaborate tombs, for
service in the afterlife. During Emperor
Wu’s reign (141–87 B.C.E.), a superior
breed of horse was imported from the
Western Region to China’s Central Plains,
to counter the onslaught of nomadic
tribes from the North. The majestic
stance of this tomb sculpture expresses
the vitality of these animals known as
“celestial horses.” This sculpture may
have carried a mounted cavalryman. The
tail, which was molded separately is
missing.
http://mfastpete.org/obj/standing-horse/

10. When? (Textbook Resources Intro)

11. Where? Textbook Resources Chapter 3

12. Who?
When?
Where?

13. Next, ask:
How?
Why?

14. Add Other Sources “The explorer Zhang Qian had told
Emperor Wudi that there was a special
breed of horses of great stamina in the
Fergana Valley, which would equip China
with a formidable cavalry. Delighted, the
emperor allowed the trading of silk with
the inhabitants of the Fergana region,
which led to what would become the Silk
Road. A first-century B.C. poem, part of the
chronicle of China’s history, the Shiji, marks
the arrival of the first of these steeds: The
heavenly horses arrive from the Western
frontier / Having traveled 10,000 li, they
come with great virtue. / With loyal spirit,
they defeat foreign nations / And crossing
the deserts, all barbarians succumb in their
wake! Later, during the Tang period, the
horse became a status symbol, a kind of
sports car of its day. The breed, however,
no longer exists, and is preserved only in
paintings and sculptures.”
The Shiji
http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/rarebook/02/index.
html.en
The heavenly horses have arrive from
the Western frontier
Having traveled 10,000 li, they arrive
with great virtue
With loyal spirit, they defeat foreign
nations
And crossing the deserts all barbarians
succumb in their wake!
--The Shiji, Chapter 24 (“The Treatise
on Music”)
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-
and-history/magazine/2018/01-02/silk-road-
history/

15. What if?
So What?
What Now?
What Next?

16. Building an Argument
Here are my reasons!
1. _________________
_________________
_________________
2. _________________
_________________
_________________
3. _________________
_________________
_________________
You could argue that…
_____________________
_____________________
_____________________
_____________________
_____________________
. . .but here is the
weakness . . .
_____________________
_____________________
_____________________
Here is what I think . . .
Evidence to back up my reasons
Strong Finish!
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________

17. How did agriculture change from 1800’s to
1920?
Oliver plow, 1877 Fordson tractor, 1918

18. http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/mobile-apps/timeline-b-31047.html

19. http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/inquiry-charts-charts-30762.html
http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/inquiry-charts-charts-30762.html