GEOS 220: Environmental History of Southwest
Outside Activities
Outside activity #1:
Crossdating Tree Rings by Skeleton PlottingAccess this activity on the web through this page.
First, read the explanatory pages that lead up to the fun page: Try skeleton plotting for yourself.
When you succeed at crossdating a virtual sample:
- Line up your winning skeleton plot with the master chronology, and show the answer box; make it obvious that you succeeded.
- Capture an image of the crossdating applet:
- For PC users, do an "alt-print screen" to take a snapshot of the screen.
- For Macintosh users with OS X, there are two options for importing a screen shot into your word processor.
- Press this combination of keys: crtl+cmnd+shift+4. This will turn the mouse icon into a cross hairs with which you can select the portion of the screen which you wish to capture.
- Use the "grab" application. The easiest way to locate it is to open spotlight and type grab. Since this is an application, it will be separated from documents that contain words, etc.
- Open your favorite word processor.
- Edit-Paste Special into a document.
- Re-size the image to be reasonable.
- Fill in page with text (should be about ½-page typed): What you learned about crossdating.
- For example, in what cases might a tree-ring sample not be crossdateable?
- The explanatory pages have many pearls of wisdom in this regard.
- Writing tip #1: Avoid superfluous subjects doing stuff:
- Instead of: Dendrochronologists crossdate tree-ring samples.
- Try: Tree-ring samples are crossdateable.
- Writing tip #2: Absolutely no "I" or "we" first-person subjects.
- One page total (with your figure), due Tuesday Sep 15, 2009
Outside activity #2:
Arizona State MuseumThe University of Arizona has many museums, most of which are on the main campus and free of charge to students. In this activity, you are to visit one of them, the Arizona State Museum, in order to learn about recent human-environment interactions in the Southwest. The actual assignment is as follows:
- The Museum is on the north side of University Blvd, across the street from Centennial Hall and west of Old Main.
- Museum hours are 10-5 PM on Monday–Saturday; closed Sunday.
- Visit and learn at the museum. Expect to spend about an hour at the museum. Visit the "Paths of Life" exhibit.
- Write a summary:
- Pick one modern tribe featured in the Paths of Life (but not Yaqui)
- Focus on human-environment interaction
- Include a compare/contrast with a prehistoric culture as discussed in lecture
- Required: 1 page, typed, double spaced.
- Graded on depth and writing.
- Due Thursday, November 19, 2009.
Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721 USA
Main Office: (520) 621-1608, Fax: (520) 621-8229
Comments to Paul Sheppard: sheppard @ ltrr.arizona.edu
Copyright © 2001-2009, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona
Revised — September, 2009
URL: http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/geos220/activities.html
