USask teaching fellowship winner invites students to press papyrus and grind barley

By Chris Putnam

Dr. Caroline Arbuckle (PhD) will use the funds from a teaching fellowship to give University of Saskatchewan (USask) students hands-on experience with tools and technologies of the ancient world.

Arbuckle, an assistant professor of Classical and Near Eastern archaeology at St. Thomas More College’s Department of History, is the winner of the 2024-25 Lesley Biggs Early Career Teaching Fellowship from the College of Arts and Science. This recently created fellowship provides funding to a promising early-career instructor for a project that will help them improve or innovate as a teacher.

Arbuckle specializes in teaching courses at USask about the archaeology of ancient West Asia and Egypt.

“While students are often captivated by the incredible monuments, they often have a harder time connecting to the common ancient individuals. They cannot quite find appreciation for the significance of pottery shards and splinters of wood,” she said.

Archaeologists sometimes turn to experiential and experimental archaeology—approaches that involve recreating and testing the actual tools and techniques used by ancient people—to better understand the cultures they study. Arbuckle wants to bring more of these kinds of experiences into her classrooms.

In an upcoming offering of her course ANTH 257, Arbuckle will invite students to make their own sheets of papyrus. Over several weeks, using papyrus stalks Arbuckle hopes to obtain from USask’s own greenhouses, students will husk, slice, soak, pound and press the plants until they have papyrus sheets like those used as writing surfaces by early civilizations including ancient Egypt.

In another course, ANTH 258, Arbuckle will offer a one-day grain processing workshop. Students will gather locally grown barley stalks and thresh, winnow and grind the barley using the same methods as the ancient Mesopotamians.

Arbuckle takes a wide variety of approaches to her teaching, but believes there is no substitute for learning by doing. She wants to share with her students the same kinds of hands-on experiences that shaped her own academic path.

“I still fondly remember from my undergraduate years a professor who brought a facsimile of a cuneiform tablet into the classroom, and the impact that handling the object had on me,” she said.