The 21st century skill of inventive thinking includes a clear focus on activities that prompt curiosity, creativity, and risk-taking. Archaeologists regularly use these skills on digs as they explore the past, seeking to understand how it influenced today’s global and complex environments. The dig experience is interdisciplinary, with science, literature, history, mathematics, art, and languages used to understand artifacts found in excavations. In this session, the presenters, including a practicing Middle-Eastern archaeologist, describe a middle school curriculum that immerses students in the dig experience through group activities in which students experience a dig, design a seal, and reconstruct pottery.