Document Analysis Worksheet: Artifacts

Primary and Secondary Sources are at the heart of all social students and history instruction at the secondary level. As educators, we must teach our students to take a close look at things that were left behind by past generations and critically analyze them to determine how they participated in and interpreted the events of that time.

These document analysis sheets sharply focus your students’ eyes to look deeper into the stories being told by the document.  One of the easiest ways to take a look into the last 10,000+ years of history is through existing artifacts. These are things that humans left behind in past generations that can be studied, particularly from prehistoric (before written word) times. This document analysis worksheet gives you and your students a quick history of artifacts and their purpose. The worksheet provides a guide to go step by step in analyzing an artifact to deepen understanding, depictions, and interpretations of a specific technological advance or time period being studied. Easy to use and applicable to any physical artifact or image of an artifact (i.e. museum curation site).