Are you a parent, teacher or elementary schooler looking to dig into archaeology? This cookie excavation activity is one of my favorite hands-on activities to give young archaeologists their first taste of the field!

Materials

• Toothpicks
• Brushes
• Chocolate chip cookies (use a chewy cookie to simulate soft soil and a crunchy one to simulate hard, crumbly soil)
• Pencil & eraser
• Printout of excavation log (access printable here: Excavation Log). If you don’t have a printer, feel free to make your own excavation log by drawing two 10 x 10 grids, one for the cookie, and one for a map of the cookie.

Instructions

First, take your chocolate chip cookie and place it on Grid A, labelled “Cookie Excavation Site”. Look closely at the features of the cookie and notice any chocolate chips and shapes you see. Then, begin drawing the cookie on Grid B, labelled “Excavation Site Map”. First copy down the shape of the cookie to establish the boundaries of the excavation site using the coordinates of the cookie’s position in Grid A. Afterwards, draw all the artifacts (chocolate chips) you can see. You’ve just created a plan for excavating your site!

Using your trowel, or your toothpick, excavate the cookie by carefully digging through the dirt, working from the edge across the cookie. Be very careful as you don’t want to damage any of your “artifacts”! Look carefully for any artifacts that might be hidden under the surface. Also make sure that your cookie is always flat against your paper, as archaeologists cannot “pick up” an archaeological site.

Every time you discover an artifact, make sure to record it carefully in Grid B and place it in your laboratory so it doesn’t get lost. Afterwards, count all the artifacts you discover.

Feel free to eat your “backdirt” once done!

Lessons/Discussion

Discuss the following questions:

• What does it mean to excavate?
• What have you learned about how archaeologists excavate?
• How do you think this might be different from how archaeologists actually excavate?
• What challenges might archaeologists face when excavating?

The main takeaways from this lesson is the importance of careful documentation in archaeology. Archaeologists have to precisely record the coordinates of every artifact because, once a site is excavated, it cannot be restored, just like how the cookie crumbs can’t be turned back into a whole cookie. This careful recording also ensures that no artifacts are lost or overlooked. Additionally, archaeologists often encounter different soil conditions that can make excavation easier or more difficult, similar to how the hardness of a cookie affects how easily chocolate chips can be extracted.

Some differences worth mentioning are that archaeologists have to record much more detailed information, like the qualities of the artifacts, their depths, etc. and also use advanced tools and technology to figure out more information about an artifact.

I hope this activity has been both fun and informative!

Citations

• New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. (n.d.). Archaeo cookie activity [PDF]. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/lpc/downloads/pdf/Archaeo_Cookie_Activity.pdf New York City Government
• Bishop Science. (2024, November). Archaeology cookie dig [PDF]. https://bishopscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Archaeology-Cookie-Dig.pdf The Bishop