It’s amazing what you can pick up…….

Graham Harrison of Sun Jester, a partner of Schools Prehistory, gives us a tantalising glimpse into his handling collection of Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age real and replica artefacts.

After our recent training day at the Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury, I decided to treat my prehistoric tools handling collection to some new storage boxes. As it has expanded over the past fifteen or so years, I’ve ended up with a variety of containers, some not ideally suited to the purpose. I also thought that as I was emptying all the boxes out I’d take the opportunity to sort and re-catalogue the artefacts.

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Where did it all come from? That would take a whole batch of posts to tell!

The picture shows most of the collection, with the exception of some of the bigger items. I’ve also got an antler pick, a hafted bronze axe, a couple of bronze swords, a sword mould, a mammoth rib and bison vertebra! The right hand two thirds of the table are reproductions and the left hand third are original artefacts, by volume it’s about a 50/50 split, but the archaeological artefacts include a lot of smaller items. The plastic bags at the back of the table contain a variety of archaeological material, mostly waste flakes and partly worked flint.

Look at our recently created Workshops page to see if you’d like to book Graham or James Dilley of Ancient Craft to come in to your school or museum.

Training day on 19th June in Aylesbury

Our first training day took place on 19th June at Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury. We welcomed eleven delegates from schools and museums and ran three workshops on using pictures to teach prehistory, becoming familiar with objects and some of the practical activities that can be demonstrated to children or done with them.

We had a lot of fun and have had some valuable feedback, both complimentary and with ideas for improvement, so we’ll work on that. Some of the positive feedback includes:

“Has given me the confidence to go away and plan a session.”

“I haven’t had to teach this topic before. (I’ll) make a more detailed timeline which begins a lot earlier!”

“Knowing more about the objects makes the whole period so much more interesting. Useful to see the tools mounted on their handles.”

“Seeing the flint tool made very quickly – really interesting.”

“Gave me rough outline + ideas for how to plan/where to get resources/where to go on trips.”

Here are some images from the day.

Delegates at the training day - great venue

Delegates at the training day – great venue

Graham from Sun Jester brought in a replica handaxe (underneath) and an original that had broken in half

Graham from Sun Jester brought in a replica handaxe (underneath) and an original that had broken in half

James from Ancient Craft demonstrating how a bow drill creates an ember from which you can start a fire

James from Ancient Craft demonstrating how a bow drill creates an ember from which you can start a fire