Stage 1 - imagine an alien civilization

What kind of planet does your civilization live on?  (desert / jungle / ice-covered / water-covered with small islands /etc)

Apart from your aliens, what other kind of creatures live on the planet?

What kinds of plant life are there?

What do the aliens eat? Do they use special kinds of weapons and tools to catch / prepare /eat their food?  (spears / fish-hooks / traps / cooking-pots /cutlery etc)

What kinds of structures do they live in?    (tents / domes / houses / ships etc)

What makes these structures suitable for the environment they live in?

Are they nomadic or do they build towns?

What kind of transport do they have?     (carts / boats / sleighs / etc)

What kind of clothes and jewellery do they wear?

What sort of gods do they believe in and what religious artefacts and ornaments to they have? (altars / statues / etc)

What other artefacts do they use ?   (weapons of war / musical instruments / toys / communication devices)

Ask yourselves as many other questions as possible about your civilization. How did they count and write? Did they live in family groups? What kind of leaders did they have? What kind of money?

Make drawings, maps and a panoramic view of your alien world.

Stage 2 - decide what destroyed your civilization

What disaster wiped out your civilization. Was it flooding, volcanoes, asteroids, disease, or something else?

What sort of archaeological remains would be left thousands of years later?

What would be left of buildings and means of transport?

What would be left of the bodies of aliens and animals; their weapons, tools, ornaments, money, jewellery, crockery etc?

Stage 3 - make models of the artefacts that would remain for future archaeologists to find

Remember your aliens were only 12 inches tall; make all your models the right size for your tiny civilization!

Use air-drying clay, acrylic paints and anything else you need to make your artefacts and remains.

Remember that some of your artefacts will have been broken, burnt and damaged in many ways over the centuries that they have lain buried.

Stage 4 - bury your artefacts and remains

Another group of children will dig up your buried civilization and attempt to interpret what they have found. Will they be able to work out what your civilization was really like?

Your group will be digging up the artefacts buried by another group so that you will also be able to try and reconstruct a different civilization.

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