[accessibleimage] Museum offers archeology fun (including for VI children)

excerpt
Turkish Daily News, Turkey
Future projects

Visited by over 400,000 people annually, the museum has ambitious projects. Categorized as the "national museum" of Turkey, the museum's finances were recently handed to the Ministry of Culture, an opportunity that allowed the museum to "think big," according to Denizli, who says the museum now has a chance to find funding for grand projects that it would not be able to dream of before. 

 The museum is close to realizing a long-held dream of expansion. "The problem of financing 
has been solved," says Denizli, after a law stipulating that 10 percent of property tax is to 
be allocated to the nation's cultural assets. According to Denizli, both local and national 
administrators in Turkey are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of protecting historical 
and cultural artifacts. The museum is set to start two major projects, excavations at the Phrygian 
Valley and at Hacý Tuðrul, in cooperation with Japanese archeologists.

Denizli thinks Turkish museum administrators have failed to make viewing historical and art objects interesting for either children or adults. "For example, we have the pottery that King Midas ate from. We could hold a food festival, we have recipes from the Phrygians," he enthused, while acknowledging the challenge such ideas presented. 

 As parents and administrators' awareness increases, museum visits have also seen a rise, 
he observed. "A museum should meet all its visitors' requirements: Food, drinking, 
music, internet, places to rest and even medical facilities," he said.

Denizli's museum certainly differs from the dry and dusty archeological scene in Turkey that he complains about. 

An unforgettable learning experience:

Kids can now be archeologists for the day, thanks to an archeology workshop created at the museum where children can participate in a number of fun educational activities. These include building their own models of the objects in the museum; pressing coins the way the Lydians did and learning about the barter system used before money was invented; solving a puzzle by matching a given pattern with the correct civilization; make jewelry similar to the artifacts of personal adornment worn by different civilizations of the museum; write their own name in hieroglyphs on tablets; work to restore new findings of excavations; as well as drawing pictures and digging like true experts.

Under a new project, the museum has brought students from some schools to excavate objects previously buried by museum staff in a designated excavation ground in the museum's yard. After being told about how archeological digs are carried out, every child is given a unique responsibility as part of the excavation team and digs to reveal pieces of history.

The workshop also offers aid for visually impaired children, such as actual Hittite lions that can be touched and felt. 

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=54164


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