October 2015 - First World War trench art
At our October session we continued with our First World War theme begun last month with a visit to the trenches at Park Hall near Oswestry (see below). As the weather was mild we worked in the garden at Ysgol Maesydre in Welshpool where we created our own trench art.
Rather than using shell cases we used candles (which are a similar shape) and nails (which the soldiers might have used) to scratch patterns and designs, worked on last session, into the candles.
In the second part of the session we carried out a finds recording exercise. First we measured and described a range of items, then we practiced drawing them. Careful observation, description and drawing are all skills needed by archaeologists when working with finds, also known as artefacts. After this we played 'rot or not', which involved burying a selection of our 'precious artefacts' (banana skins and apples cores, flint pebbles, sticks, broken pottery and plastic) in big plastic boxes in layers of sand and soil and thinking about which ones would survive and which would rot away. We also learned about how long different types of material take to rot away.
September 2015 - Learning about the First World War - Visit to Park Hall, Oswestry
We were introduced to the site by curator Mark Hignett who gave us a tour of the site which includes a front line trench, forward listening post, machine gun position and sleeping shelters. Members then enjoyed exploring the trenches by themselves and in particular using the trench periscopes which allowed them to observe 'no-man's land' in safety.
Also at Park Hall is the Museum of the Welsh Guards and a special exhibition of First World War items and the session included time to explore both. YAC members were encouraged to look out for items of trench art, craft works made by soldiers to sell and earn extra money or to send home to their loved ones.
Before the session came to a close members prepared their own designs inspired by items of trench art that they had seen during the session.
A big thank you to Mark and his team at the Park Hall Trenches Experience and the staff of the Welsh Guards Museum.
A big thank you to Mark and his team at the Park Hall Trenches Experience and the staff of the Welsh Guards Museum.
July 2015 - Field trip to Acton Scott Historic Working Farm
We had a super day at Acton Scott for our July meeting. With an hour or so to spare when we arrived we had a good look around the farm to get our bearings and settled down for a picnic before our session on Farming Through Time, provided by Acton Scott and lead by our fantastic guide, Anna.
At the beginning of the session, Anna lead us out to some of the fields that surround Acton Scott Farm. Beneath the field we sat in, archaeologists have found the remains of Iron Age and Roman farmsteads. Here we are representing the posts of an Iron Age round house. We had a think about how the inside of the house might have been organised, what sort of crops the Iron Age farmers might have harvested and what sort of artefacts archaeologists might have found here.
Back at the farm, we had a go at some of the processes that might have been used in the past with the products from the farm. We carded some wool (this is where you comb out the raw wool to remove any knots and make it ready to be twisted into yarn for spinning). With our carded wool we had a go at making yarn and also used a quern to grind some of the grain from the farm to make flour.
Back out on the farm, we put ourselves in the place of some oxen and had a go at ploughing one of the fields. It wasn't easy keeping in a straight line and must have been very tiring walking up and down all day long.
We had a fantastic day at Acton Scott and would like to thank Anna for telling us so much about the history of farming. Here are a few more photographs from the day...
June 2015 - Marches YAC at the Welshpool Air Show
This month we thought it would be a good opportunity to give our Branch Members a chance to show off some of the brilliant things they have done and at Marches YAC over the years so we headed out to Welshpool Air Show and set up our very own Young Archaeologists' Club stall. We also hoped we might be able to lure in some new recruits at the same time! Our super members, in groups of three worked in shifts all through the day, manning our stall and showing members of the public what they have been learning about recently.
May 2015 - Prehistoric Grain Stores
We found ourselves in the garden at Ysgol Maesydre for our May meeting, which was themed around crops and how people in the past ensured they had enough food for the winter months.
Firstly we discussed how food can go mouldy and rotten and moved on to consider the idea of preserving food and techniques for preservation in times before fridges, freezers and supermarkets. We learned that bacteria cause food to go off but that by drying, smoking or pickling foodstuffs we can slow this down or even stop it from happening for quite a long period of time.
We set up two experiments to see if grain harvested now could be stored for a period of months and still grow when planted. YAC members dug two storage pits, lined them with clay and sealed part of our harvest of grain within them. They also made mini-grain stores using more clay to line plastic drinks cups and again sealed small quantities of grain inside. We hope to open the pits and some of the mini-stores in the future, plant the grain and see if it grows.
There was also time for children to do more work on their posters to promote the branch at the Welshpool Airshow in June.
We found ourselves in the garden at Ysgol Maesydre for our May meeting, which was themed around crops and how people in the past ensured they had enough food for the winter months.
There was also time for children to do more work on their posters to promote the branch at the Welshpool Airshow in June.
March 2015 - Secret Egypt, Unravelling Truth from Myth
Our March session was a bit different; we visited Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery and toured a wonderful exhibition called Secret Egypt – Unravelling Truth from Myth. The exhibition contained 150 objects including statues, coffins, stelae (upright stone slabs or columns bearing commemorative inscriptions or designs, often serving as gravestones), ceramics, jewellery and animal and human mummies. It was aimed at challenging some of the myths that have grown up about the remarkable civilisation of ancient Egypt.
We were very grateful for support from Anna of the learning team at Shropshire Museums and Archives who led a workshop inspired by the exhibition. YAC members used role-play, costumes and object handling to learn about ancient Egyptian burial rituals and investigate a range of everyday objects taken into the afterlife. They also learned about hieroglyphs and ancient methods of communication, taking part in a code cracking exercise and printing their names in hieroglyphs.
We were very grateful for support from Anna of the learning team at Shropshire Museums and Archives who led a workshop inspired by the exhibition. YAC members used role-play, costumes and object handling to learn about ancient Egyptian burial rituals and investigate a range of everyday objects taken into the afterlife. They also learned about hieroglyphs and ancient methods of communication, taking part in a code cracking exercise and printing their names in hieroglyphs.
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| A YAC member being prepared for mumification! |
February 2014 - Soldiers/Sailors Rations
Continuing with our foodie theme, this month we learnt more about rations - particularly what a Roman soldier, a Napoleonic sailor and a World War One soldier would have eaten and where they would have sourced their food. We worked as three separate groups and each looked in detail at one of the categories and created our own poster about it to present to the rest of the group later.
When on a march, a Roman soldier would have carried 15 days worth of emergency rations, such as Hard tack biscuits (Buccellatum), bread, sour wine (Acetum) and ordinary wine (Vinum), salted pork, cheese and mutton. Hardtack was a way to preserve the wheat rations. It would be carried in a linen cloth to keep bugs away and could be soaked in water or crumbled into fried bacon or added to stews. Some of the YAC leaders had prepared some Hard tack for us to try and it was quite tasteless and very very hard and dry!
Napoleonic sailors also ate a type of hard biscuit, otherwise known as ships biscuits. As food could be hard to get hold of once on board ship, sailors had to take a lot of preserved foods with them like the biscuits and barrels of salted pork and pease pudding. As fresh vegetables were often lacking, they also drank lemon juice to avoid getting scurvy due to lack of vitamin c.
And you'll never guess what... soldiers on the front lines in World War One also ate a form of hard biscuit, along with tinned foods like corned beef (otherwise known as bully beef) and a stew known as maconochie which the soldiers hated. They didn't think all that much of the hard biscuits either! They were so hard, sometimes the soldiers drew pictures on them or even put stamps on them and posted them home!
At the end of the session we were lucky to have been given a current soldiers ration pack to look and and see how it compared. Rather than the tinned food seen in WW1, the food is now in squishy packets and sachets and yet again, more packets of dry biscuits though certainly a slightly tastier and sweeter version than the earlier forms!
January 2015 - The archaeology and history of bees!
For our January session we focused on the archaeology of bees, beekeeping and honey. We learnt some of the amazing facts about honey - did you know that honey never goes off and honey that has been discovered by archaeologists in ancient Egyptian tombs would still be OK to eat today? We learnt that honey has been harvested since Palaeolithic times and looked at some images of people collecting wild honey.We also learnt that earliest known archaeological evidence for beekeeping comes from Rehov, a Bronze Age and iron Age city in the Jordan Valley, Israel. Archaeological excavations in 2007 revealed 30 intact beehives - and the remains of 100-200 more. We looked at the history of beekeeping right up to today, it has changed really very little over thousands of years.
We then had a special visit from a modern day beekeeper and got the chance to try on his beekeeping suit and use his smoker. In groups we made and tasted mead, a drink made with honey and apple juice that would have been drunk in the Medieval times (ours was non-alcoholic). As well as this we all made our own beeswax candles to keep. Some were a bit wonky, but it was pretty easy and they smelled lovely!
December 2014 - Classical Catering
This month we gathered for our annual Christmas feast, all prepared by our Young Archaeologists. Before we started cooking, we had a think about the sorts of evidence available to archaeologists to tell them about the sorts of foods Roman people would have been eating. We know a lot from looking at excavated finds including pottery and food residues but also written records, art work in paintings and mosaics and there is even a Roman cookbook 'Apicus' from the 4th or 5th century of Roman cookery recipes. We had a look at some of the foods depicted on Roman mosaics and we then had a go at making our own edible mosaics for our dessert!
Happy Christmas from all of us at The Marches Young Archaeologists' Club.
November 2014 - Who Dunnit?
I’m afraid this month we turned to toilet humour to engage the members’ interest. Most months we include something on ‘how we know what we know’, and one of the sources of information on past diets is, well, poo! So, before the session, our dedicated YAC leaders made poos (using brown dough) to three recipes – Roman poo which included grape, orange, melon and date seeds, a Viking poo which included fish bones and apple pips; and Aztec poo which included chili seeds, pumpkin seeds and corn kernels. All poos included wheat and oat grains which have been important throughout history and cooked spaghetti to act as intestinal worms, which delighted and disgusted the children in equal measure. Using toothpicks the members ‘excavated’ the poos and recorded what they found using a special sheet. We had a lively discussion about the sources of food, trying to get across the idea that not all foodstuffs were available everywhere in the world, and how we could pinpoint the location (and date) of the poos from what they contained.
Here is an example of a fossilised viking poo!
We also touched briefly on evidence of poor health (the worms) and during our break ran around outside trying to find natural objects that could be used to wipe your bottom – this produced some more lively debate! We then moved on to talk about wee (in for a penny, in for a pound!), and uses for it and poo in history. We had started the session by watching a clip from Horrible Histories which talks about ‘gong-farmers’ or night soilmen who collected human waste at night from privies and cesspits in Tudor times, which was then spread on farmland as fertiliser. We talked about the tanning industry which used urine to loosen and remove hair fibres from animal skin. And then we talked about how you can extract salt from urine for a variety of uses. And then we had a go! Like the poo, we faked it, but the looks on the children’s faces until we told them that was a picture! This very simple exercise involved boiling pre-prepared salt water (coloured with yellow food dye) until we were left with a salt residue.
Definitely a memorable session!
October 2014 - Bushcraft, wild food forage and fireside feast!
Out in the garden of Ysgol Maes y Dre, some of us set about gathering nettles for a soup, whilst others gathered materials for a fire and then set about lighting one without any matches! Once our sparks had turned into flames we set about making two fires, one to suspend our big cooking pot over and another fire in a pit to roast some hazelnuts in.
Our nettles were boiled up to take away their sting and after selecting the best bits, we added them to some other chopped vegetables to stew over our big fire. Some of us made dampers, a bread dough which we wrapped around skewers to toast on the fire. Once everything had cooked, we sat around the fire to tuck into our feast and contemplate just how much work it took to gather, process and cook our fireside feast without any supermarkets, planes, matches or microwaves involved!
We started our new term and our new ‘Food and Farming’ topic in style this month with a wonderful display and presentation by Yvonne Mason, a medieval re-enactor.
Our starter activity was making marchpane (marzipan) models disguised as other foods – one member made a beautiful ‘tart’, but many were taken with making fruit or bacon, egg and sausage!
We then played a game where we had to work out which foods were available in medieval times. Ice cream, which was being made in Italy (as gelato) at this time, caught us all out! Yvonne then gave an illustrated presentation explaining how paintings and tapestries are instrumental in teaching us about food customs.
Then, with help from the children, Yvonne set up a table for a medieval feast explaining the etiquetteof the day, and how many customs are still used today as examples of ‘good table manners’. We all sampled some gingerbread and griddle cakes she had made using medieval recipes.
On a beautiful sunny day in July, Marches YAC joined forces with the Ironbridge branch to help out with a Festival of Archaeology event at Wroxeter Roman City, just outside Shrewsbury. A large excavation sand pit was set up containing a skeleton and several artefacts. YAC members helped visitors by explaining how to excavate correctly. Then Dr Roger White from English Heritage (who has been involved in many excavations at Wroxeter over the years) gave a tour of part of the truly vast city, most of which lies invisible beneath the grass. Using measuring tapes we measured and marked out one of the large town houses, using plans that were drawn during excavation. We also had a chance to join one of the guided tours of the replica town house which was built by modern builders using Roman techniques and materials for a Channel 4 programme in 2010. YAC members were also able to handle Roman artefacts from the museum at Wroxeter, and listen to a Roman storyteller.
September 2014 - Medieval Food and Feasting
Our starter activity was making marchpane (marzipan) models disguised as other foods – one member made a beautiful ‘tart’, but many were taken with making fruit or bacon, egg and sausage!
We then played a game where we had to work out which foods were available in medieval times. Ice cream, which was being made in Italy (as gelato) at this time, caught us all out! Yvonne then gave an illustrated presentation explaining how paintings and tapestries are instrumental in teaching us about food customs.
Then, with help from the children, Yvonne set up a table for a medieval feast explaining the etiquetteof the day, and how many customs are still used today as examples of ‘good table manners’. We all sampled some gingerbread and griddle cakes she had made using medieval recipes.
July 2014 - Romans at Wroxeter
April 2014 - War Memorials
Using forms printed from a specialist website, we recorded its size, what it was made of, how it was mounted, any inscriptions and the names of the fallen from WWI and WWII. We then moved on to the large, very fine stone memorial in the churchyard at St. Mary’s Church. As well as recording those things mentioned above, we also photographed and drew the monument. Only one woman’s name was found, so we entered into a discussion about what roleshe might have had during the war. Most of the children said ‘nurse’, which of course might have been the case, but we highlighted all the other jobs women did during the war, which surprised several of them
March 2014 - Footprints in the sand
This was our final session looking at the Mesolithic period, so as well as summing up what we have learnt over the past few months, we also studied some of the amazing mesolithic footprints that have been uncovered along our coastlines. Lots of footprints have been found in the Severn estuary at Goldcliff and Uskmouth, some of which belonged to children, who might have been playing and also, a man with size 8 feet who is thought to have been walking in the mud around 6000 years ago. It was a hot day and his footprints were baked hard by the sun. Gradually they became covered by a layer of peat and have only been discovered recently due to coastal erosion.
Where there are a lot of footprints all jumbled together, archaeologists call this a palimpsest - a lot of activity that is all in the same layer which makes it difficult to tell what happened first. However, footprints can tell us a lot about the person that made them, such as their shoe size, how old they might have been, and we can work out from the length of their stride how tall they might have been. Some of the mesolithic footprints that have been found have also suggested what these people were doing at the time as well. One set of footprints made by some young men appear to have been following the footprints of a deer, so perhaps they had been hunting.
We had a go at making our own palimpsest, by painting our feet and making footprints on a big piece of paper. Each of us had a go at running across the paper in different ways and the rest of the group had to guess what we did.
As an archaeologist, making a record of mesolithic footprints on the seashore is quite a challenge! What archaeologists can do is to make a plaster cast of the footprint. Each of us made an impression of one of our own feet in sand, and then we poured over some plaster and left it to set. Once it had gone hard, we could excavate our cast to reveal a perfect impression of our feet! So, although mesolithic people lived thousands of years ago, what could bring us closer to them than having a plaster cast of their feet!
February 2014 - Fun Flints and Frustrating Fishtraps
The February session was a continuation of last month’s activities of Mesolithic flint making and fishing. As seen in the January blog, we made small flint blades (‘microliths’) of different shapes. This month we used plasticine to attach, or ‘haft’, these flints to sticks to make different tools (archaeologists think that glue made from pine sap would have been used in the Mesolithic period). In small teams, the members took it in turns to visit four different ‘hafting stations’ – hunting, butchering, fishing and gathering. Using worksheets provided, they selected the right shaped flint for the particular tool they were making, and it proved to be a very interesting activity. Arrows needed flints with sharp points, but butchery tools would need a line of straight-edged flints to form a knife-like edge. We also made small leather pouches to carry the flints in. Mesolithic people would have had similar methods of carrying their flints, and we had an interesting discussion about the similarities (and differences) with modern tool kits.
We then moved on to making fish traps. Following on from last month’s discussions about the importance of fish in the Mesolithic diet, we talked about the difficulty of harpooning fish. Mesolithic fish traps made from woven willow and birch have been found in Ireland , Denmark , the Netherlands , Germany , Sweden and Russia , and would not have been dissimilar to the lobster pots that are still used today. Fish-trapping would have been a relatively simple and efficient method to catch food, as once the trap is set, other jobs can be done until you return to collect the fish. All other methods of hunting and gathering food were active (therefore tiring) and time-consuming. Our respect for the Mesolithic people went up another notch as we attempted to make fish traps by weaving paper straws. Only three out of the nine members present could perfect the method, and only one of the three YAC leaders (proving that age wasn’t the problem!). After more than 30 minutes of lots of huffing and starting again we gave in and played ‘flap the fish’ instead.
January 2014 - Tools r us
This month we learnt more about the tools that would have been used by Mesolithic people. These were very small flint tools, known as microliths, which can be very sharp! They had quite a well stocked tool kit, which included tools for making arrow heads, knives, tools for making holes in things and scraping tools to name a few. We made ours out of fimo, and even so, they were very fiddly to make as some of them are tiny! We were also visited by Dewi Morris (thanks Dewi!), who showed us how to make mesolithic harpoons, like the sort that mesolithic hunters would have used to spear fish with. Once we had crafted our harpoons, we had a go at spearing a salmon with them (actually a cucumber on the end of a fishing line)!
December 2013 - Cave party!
We all had a go at cave painting and tried to use some of the things that paleolithic people might have used to make their paints from, like natural pigments, charcoal and chalk and we ground some of them up and used them for our cave art. Once we had all crawled into the cave, we had a go at painting inside it with no lights on to get a feel of how difficult it would have been to work inside a dark cave with only a small torch for light. As it this was our YAC Christmas party, we also had some party food and games to get us all in the festive spirit!
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| Here's our finsihed cave art! |
November 2013 - Hunting and Gathering
As Mesolithic people are usually known as 'hunter gatherers', this month we decided to look into how Mesolithic people would have sourced their food. To a Mesolithic hunter gatherer, managing to hunt down a large animal for food, like a wild boar or a red deer would have meant a great deal, and they would not only have eaten the meat they would have used the skins, furs, bones, teeth and lots of other bits too! To give us an idea of how difficult it could be to find food and how important different types of food might have been to a hunter, our YAC leaders had hidden some Mesolithic foods for us to find outside. A large animal or a fish gave us a lot of points, and things like berries and leaves were fewer points but still would have formed a vital part of a Mesolithic diet. Once we had gathered our foods, we made some Mesolithic style kebabs, cooked on a real fire pit and we also tried to cook some eggs, but they exploded! Finally, we crafted some bows and arrows and had a game of target practice aiming at some teddies!
October 2013 - A really long timeline
This month we began our study of the Mesolithic period or 'Middle Stone Age' - which began around 12,000 years ago in Britain. Life was very different then, so we had a talk about what it would have been like for a person living in the Mesolithic period. What did they eat? Where did they live? What did they wear? What tools did they use? What Mesolithic finds do archaeologists uncover? Once we had answered some of these questions we had a YAC quiz to test our knowledge on the subject. Then, to understand just how long ago the Mesolithic was, we made a super duper long time line (1cm = 1 year). You can image counting back 12,000 years our time line made it pretty long and we even had to take it outside to stretch it out as it was longer than the whole building, the play ground, and even the car park!
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| Trying to get to the Mesolithic |
Our really long timeline!
September 2013 - Medieval Montgomery
August 2013 - summer break
July 2013 - Festival of British Archaeology, Ironbridge Gorge Museums
June 2013 - It's all about buildings
This months YAC meeting was all about buildings. Archaeologists often have to record buildings and work out how they have changed over time. We started off with YAC leader Jeff giving us a really interesting tour of Welshpool, telling us all about the history of the town and some of the buildings in it. A lot of the buildings in Welshpool don't look very old as most are made of brick, but a lot of this brick work is actually hiding a much older timber framed building behind! Jeff told us how building fashions have changed through the ages and we saw some of the different styles as we walked up the main street. We also visited the Welshpool cockpit where people of the town used to come and watch cockerels fighting. It is the oldest surviving cockpit building in its original form in the whole of Wales!
We also learnt a bit about old fire plaques. In the 18th and 19th centuries, before the fire services as we know them today were formed, fire engines were owned by insurance companies. If a person wanted to make sure the fire engines would come out if their building caught fire, they paid an insurance company and the plaques showed the building was insured and by which company. Here is one of the plaques we spotted in Church Street (right). They are quite small so we had to look hard to find it! After our tour of the town, we headed up to St Mary's Church, where we had a go at doing some building recording, looking at the orientation of the church, what the walls and roof were made of, the types of windows and doors and looking for signs of how the building has changed over time. We each picked something we thought was really interesting around the church and made a sketch of it. Some of thing things that caught our eyes were the huge stained glass windows, a clock with Roman numerals, a war memorial, a crest and a tomb with a skeleton carved into the stone work. One of our members Rhys did a great sketch of this.
Finally, we made a start on a measured plan of the church, but we didn't get time to finish it. There is a lot more we can learn at the church so we hope to go back there in the future and finish off our plan and do some more surveying!
May 2013 - Marches YAC get 'Geophysing'
What a fantastic meeting we had this month thanks to Jimmy Adcock, the senior geophysicist at GSB Prospection Ltd. Jimmy came along to teach us all about Geophysics and let us have a go ourselves!
We had a go at using not one, but two geophysics techniques! Firstly, we used a resistivity meter, a machine which passes an electrical current into the ground at regular points on a survey grid. Things in the soils that might be archaeology can affect the readings that are taken by this machine, so a wall could give readings of high resistance, but a big ditch would give out a lower resistance. These readings plotted against the natural geology can make things really stand out on a geophysical survey and help the surveyors see where there might be an archaeological feature.
We also had a go at using a magnetometer, a machine that measures the magnetic field of features below the ground. Every kind of material has unique magnetic properties and magnetometers can react very strongly to iron, steel, brick, burned soil and can even pick up more subtle archaeological features. Once we had set out our survey grid, we each had a go and look what we found! The YAC letters we surveyed were made of metal, which is why the readings we took over each letter stands out so much.
Overall we all had a brilliant time and Jimmy explained everything really well. Thanks Jimmy!
April 2013 - Archaeology from the air
We had a great session this month looking at some fantastic aerial photographs of archaeological sites in the Welsh Marches. We learnt all about how cropmarks are formed and had a go at interpreting some images and identifying different sites, like Medieval moated sites, Bronze Age ring ditches and Iron Age defended enclosures. To really help us understand how cropmarks are formed, we had a go at making our own mini versions using gravel, compost and cress seeds! Our Young Archaeologists made some brilliant examples and we can't wait to see how their cress has grown at the next session! March 2013 - Archaeology - no trowels
This week, we took a closer look at the work archaeologists do that doesn't involve digging! There are so many resources available that can tell archaeologists about a site before they even set foot there, so we did a bit of detective work and had a go at collecting as much information as we could for three sites in the Welsh Marches, including Montgomery Castle, Wroxeter Roman City and Llanwddyn - a lost village, now at the bottom of Lake Vyrnwy. We found lots of information for each site, including old maps, aerial photographs, archaeological reports, finds from excavations, and written descriptions and learnt how all of this information put together forms part of the local 'Historic Environment Record'. We also had a look at some old maps to see how the landscape might have changed over time and learnt about Welsh place names.
February 2013 - Trip to Attingham Park
For our first meeting this year we thought we would give our Young Archaeologists a chance at doing some real archaeology, so we all met at Attingham Park, a National Trust property in Shropshire, to help the National Trust in a programme of recording the condition of the archaeological sites on the property.
We were hoping to visit some of the old airfield buildings in the woodland, but as the weather was so awful we were lucky to have a fantastic guided tour of the house at Attingham instead! The house is currently having some restoration work to the roof, and some of the rooms were in the middle of having a big clean, but it was really interesting to go behind the scenes and hear about what the National Trust have to do to keep the house in tip top shape!
December 2012 - Medieval Festive Banquet
We kicked off the party with some festive crafts, making pomanders to decorate the hall and some shield shaped jam tarts for our pud! Party games followed, with Medieval Musical Thrones and Musical Statues to some real Medieval tunes! Finally we sat down to a true Medieval feast of pottage on a trencher of bread and lots of other tasty treats.
A fantastic way to end our first year at Marches Young Archaeologists' Club! We look forward to seeing all of our members again in the New Year!
November 2012 - Archaeologists and Artefacts
At the November meeting we had a great time looking closely at some of the artefacts that archaeologists often find during an excavation. We had a go at recording some finds, measuring them, weighing them, photographing them and describing them. Archaeologists have to make sure that when they describe finds, that other people can understand what they are talking about - so to really test our ability we had to describe a potato or a parsnip, and the rest of the group had to work out which vegetable was which! It was really funny but it made you think hard about how you describe things!
October 2012 - Field trip to Beacon Ring Iron Age fort
September 2012 - The Iron Age
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| A view of Beacon Ring Hillfort from the air. Image courtesy of CPAT |
We also learnt more about Beacon Ring Hillfort on Long Mountain near Welshpool, where we will be visiting next month. We even had ago at making a mini Iron Age roundhouse and used straw and twigs to make a thatch roof, just like they would have had then!
August 2012 - The Roman Army
Transforma! Sinistra! Dextra! Sinistra! Dextra!
July 2012 - Fun and Games
June 2012 - Marches YAC is launched!
We had a local living history group, showing how people would have lived in ??? times and Time Teams Raksha and Matt carrying out a mini sand pit excavation!
There were also lots of crafts to try out, including making a Roman mosaic biscuit.
