Pictures and posters are great decorations as they do not use a lot of space while transforming a room immediately. Posters with themes related to archeology are available from several sources. Travel agencies and tourist offices of countries with historically important sites often have posters and pictures that depict Egyptian graves, Greek temples or Norwegian Viking ships, among others. In most circumstances, the posters will be available for free, or against payment of postage and packaging. Museums and archaeological societies sell posters related to exhibitions and artifacts, as do commercial poster retailers operating online.
Create a variety of archaeological artifacts with your students and transform the classroom into a museum. Break a terracotta flowerpot and decorate the shards with symbols from Maya or Native American civilizations. Use large Styrofoam pieces to display temple stones or build 3-D pyramid models from paper or cardboard. Paint torn linen textiles with patterns found in Native American excavations, or carve decorations into wooden pieces to represent knife shafts. Raid the biology department for skulls and bones, and find some plastic coins and princess jewelry in a toy shop. Display the artifacts in cardboard boxes with the front panel removed and attach labels containing information about fictional origins.
Traditional equipment and tools can be interesting decorations for classrooms. Ask for permission to attend a local dig with the class to get a look at the tools used in the trade and start investigating the tool box. A basic archaeological tool kit includes a trowel, various hand tools, measuring tape, pens and pencils, rulers, nails and a selection of find bags and clips. Most of the equipment can probably be found in students' garages or sheds. Add brushes in various sizes, gardening trays to collect artifacts and chisels. To use the items as decorations, place them on surfaces or suspend them from walls.
Decorate the classroom according to how you and your students expect a future archaeological dig might look like. Inspire the class to think about how archaeologists in 1,000 years will evaluate current society and what items they might find. Encourage the students to bring items from home that they think might still be intact in 1,000 years, and decorate the classroom with those. Collect posters and pictures of national landmarks and buildings, including the Pentagon, the White House or the Empire State Building, and discuss with students which structures they think might survive the next 1,000 years.