On Friday 10th February, I visited parents and children from the Buxton Area Home Education Group with my archaeological tools and artefacts for a 1 hour workshop.
After receiving a lovely warm welcome, I introduced the group to the idea of stratigraphy and set them a task of deciding which artefacts belonged to which layer. They thought hard about this, including whether some of shiny gold items were necessarily newer than other items less shiny. I was also given a few things to think about: for example, one individual placed the image of a Victorian rocking horse alongside images of a mobile phone and a Royal Wedding mug. This hadn’t been my intention, but after asking why she had decided to put it there, she answered she had one just like it at home! It reminded me of how we
ought to be aware of how long some items can stay in circulation, and how artefacts can be curated and reused over long periods of time. I find children always leave me with food for thought!
Following this, the group found out about the tools archaeologists use and put them into practise digging up some Neolithic and Roman artefacts. Using rim charts and observation children thought about how the pots may have looked when complete and considered what some of the flint tools may have been used for – were they all really arrowheads or spearheads, or were they used for other purposes?
As an hour workshop, it all seemed to be over in a flash, but it was long enough to meet some inspiring, budding archaeologists!“Would have loved longer!” “I enjoyed everything”“I just wanted to say a big thank you for the workshop yesterday…hopefully we can organise another event sometime soon.”
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