La Plata Museum

Interactive guided visit at the Museo de La Plata: Agriculture, at the beginning
The Museo de La Plata preserves the valuable natural and cultural Americanist heritage; for this reason the issue: “Agriculture, at the beginning” was chosen with the purpose of delving into the way of life of indigenous populations of Mesoamerica, to learn the importance of domestication of American species and the value of the history of our continent. These contents present difficulties to be taught at school; the teachers tell us about their difficulties of access to specific bibliography, then they ask us for didactic orientations to work with them. Thus the museum has chosen this topic to complement the teachers’ work. The specific contents selected are articulated with curricular contents on the Curriculum of the Buenos Aires Province. These contents address the topic of indigenous peoples and they are appropriate for first and second years in high school and fourth year of primary school. The topics are: the organization of work, transformations in nature, techniques employed in agricultural activities, use and appropriation of spaces, different kinds of food production methods and other methods of consumption, exchanges between cultures, distribution and appropriation of surplus, modes of coexistence between shepherds, farmers, hunter-gatherers and forest product collectors, selective domestication of plants, biodiversity and cultural diversity, the relationship between crops and the environment, the resources of South America, technological change, the processes of identity construction, the different worldviews, among others. The main cross themes of the proposal are the time and space dimensions (the construction of the knowledge of the past and present of the indigenous people), the continuities, changes, notions of process, complexity, dynamism and the interaction between social phenomena. The general proposal includes three moments:

First moment at the interactive classroom (approx. 30-40 minutes):
it addresses the concept of agriculture and domestication of plants in Mesoamerica using different digital resources from the interactive classroom (video, survey, Google apps); the students will construct different hypotheses that will be refuted or ratified at the Museum halls.

Second moment at the Museum ‘halls (approx. 50 minutes):
the students visit the halls for watching, interpreting and analyzing the exhibition of objects and data about them: ethnographic and archaeological ceramics, textiles, lithic material, archaeological fruits and seeds, maps and models, household utensils, agricultural tools; this work allows to reformulate the hypotheses built by the students and to contrast the information with the objects, registrations, traced designs and other resources available at the Museum.

Third moment (approx. 15 minutes):
closing of the lesson, a synthesis is drawn up with the main ideas constructed by the students, integrating the earlier moments of the class and reaching conclusions at the end.