AI-Proof Learning: Food-Centered Experimental Archaeology in the Classroom

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "AI-Proof Learning: Food-Centered Experimental Archaeology in the Classroom" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The session aims to discuss ways to engage students in hands-on, high-impact learning while delving into the captivating world of culinary archaeology. Food and cooking are a shared human experience and can be an essential entrée for students into understanding the skill, decision-making, and challenges past people navigated. Bring us your baked, boiled, and butchered! The session will provide a platform to share successes and lessons related to food-themed activities for students at various levels and modalities, with an eye for how these activities may help colleagues seeking to replace or reform assessments (exams, essays, online discussions, etc.) whose evaluation is problematized by AI text generators. We encourage you to contribute your expertise around the following themes: (1) Food-related Experimental Archaeology and Teaching Research Design for early undergraduate, late undergraduate, and postgraduate levels. How can we use food in the classroom as a lens to teach the research design? How can we use it to humanize and teach about social structures, technology, trade networks, and cultural identities of different periods? (2) Integrating AI-Proof (or AI-Cooperative!) Approaches. With the increasing integration of AI in education, many instructors are rethinking their usual assignments, presenting new opportunities for engagement.