Archaeology and prehistory blogroll

Since it’s nearly the end of term, we thought you needed some Christmas reading so we’ve combed the internet for the best and brightest archaeology and prehistory blogs and regift them to you, neatly packaged with pretty ribbons, below. Give us a shout if your favourite blog is not featured, we’ll give it a gander and add it on if we think it’s as awesome as you do.

The reconstructed village at Castell Henllys

The reconstructed village at Castell Henllys

Past Horizons collects news stories about archaeology from around the world and doesn’t just focus on prehistory, but has loads of great articles. Go there first for archaeology news.

Digital Digging, created by Henry Rothwell, is a great place to look at various aspects of archaeology and prehistory. There are three main areas of the website we would recommend.

  • Hillfort map – this will be a complete gazetteer of English, Scottish and Welsh hillforts but as yet only has a few counties online.
  • Digital models. These are not supposed to be complete visualisations of prehistoric monuments but do give a sense of what archaeological features, only found in plan form, could look like 3D
  • Grave goods – this is a great series of interviews with interesting archaeologists and others about what they would like to be buried with. It could start a very interesting discussion in your class!

Guerilla Archaeology is a collective of archaeologists, artists and scientists who are keen to bring the past to life in new ways and spend a lot of time having fun at festivals, as far as we can see *jealous face*. Their pages on shamanism in prehistory are really interesting. That’s the religion box ticked!

The Urban Prehistorian, Kenneth Brophy, is dedicated to finding prehistoric monuments in the least likely of places – the middle of towns and cities. It’s amazing how much there is to find! Maybe you could find something in your local town to visit in the new year.

Not always on prehistory but always with a wealth of sumptuous images and thought-provoking posts, Gavin MacGregor’s heritagelandscapecreativity blog is pretty awesome to read.

If you like a dash of feminism in your archaeology cocktail (and let’s face it, who doesn’t? Seriously, who?), then you’ll love Trowelblazers, collecting stories of awesome women in archaeology, palaeontology and geology.

Stonehenge bauble from English Heritage

Stonehenge bauble from English Heritage

Fun and strangely addictive is Clonehenge, a blog that collects images of replicas of Stonehenge from around the world, and ones made of chips, chocolate and even fish-fingers! Set your students a challenge to try to get their own Stonehenge replica on there!

Mike Pitts is the editor of British Archaeology and particularly interested in Stonehenge and archaeology in the media, plus has some lovely photos on his site, making it very attractive.

To go a little further back in time, you could look at John Hawks’ blog, which is about early human species. Recent posts have been about potentially the earliest art found dating back about 500,000 years and the loss of skin pigmentation as human populations moved north.

The Day of Archaeology happens every year in July. There are loads of blog posts that showcase a day in the life of lots of different types of archaeologists from around the world. Have a browse.

Me in a replica headdress of a possible Mesolithic female shaman from Bad Dürrenberg, Germany, made by James Dilley of Ancient Craft

Me in a replica headdress of a possible Mesolithic female shaman from Bad Dürrenberg, Germany, made by James Dilley of Ancient Craft

Caroline Wickham-Jones is an archaeologist with particular expertise in Mesolithic Scotland and runs a blog simply called Mesolithic, though she does stray into other periods. And why not.

Staying on a Mesolithic theme, the inimitable Spencer Carter runs a blog called Microburin on his work in archaeology and, whenever he can, especially in the Mesolithic of Teesside.

Excavation blogs

Here are a selection of blogs about excavations happening on prehistoric sites around the country, although most are quiet over Christmas but you can read about what they were doing in the glorious summer.

Multimedia

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Prehi/stories podcast with Schools Prehistory’s Kim Biddulph on the Archaeology Podcast Network

And if you don’t feel like reading anything but want a few videos to while away the time, then look no further than Archaeosoup, run by Marc Barkham-Astles. He has videos on just about everything from the Great Orme copper mines in North Wales to the Iron Age chariot burials of Wetwang in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

Finally, if you want some soothing audio on an archaeological theme, have a gander at the Archaeology Podcast Network. There you’ll find podcasts on Archaeological Fantasies, Women in Archaeology, and the Archaeology of the Caribbean among others.

Running a mini archaeological excavation with a twist

To understand why archaeologists say certain things about prehistory it is important to understand how archaeologists work. Many museums and heritage sites try to do this by running sandpit digs. So often a sandpit dig is just about finding objects, but here at Schools Prehistory we think it’s important to know that archaeologists try to work out where the artefacts were originally deposited in the ground.

So today our Director, Kim Biddulph, ran a little experimental dig with a couple of four year olds. Not exactly the equivalent of a Year 3 class, but with a bigger sandpit and older kids it could work for half a class. If anyone wants us to try it out with you in September, just let us know.

Set-up for the dig with bits and pieces from around the house

Set-up for the dig with bits and pieces from around the house

Archaeologists don’t know what they’re going to find but if they dig carefully they can find and record even the minutest traces of past human activity, like footprints preserved in clay. When kids dig, they’re not being careful being they don’t have the experience of looking for things. To give them that experience in our minidig we tried building the excavation with them first and then digging it out again. It gives them clues of what to look for. In a class of thirty 7 year olds, you could get each half of the class to create a dig and then swap digs so children still get the sense of discovery, but have some idea of the things they might be looking for.

rsz_IMG_3374It helps if children have some idea of the timeline of prehistory and particularly how houses change over time before you start. We started out with a plastic box and some clay, which was spread on the bottom as the ‘natural’. ‘Natural’ is technically a layer below which there is no human activity, but sometimes this doesn’t work in practice. Let’s ignore that for the moment.

rsz_IMG_3377Children can built an early house, maybe choose a Mesolithic tipi shaped house, or a Neolithic stone built house like at Skara Brae on this layer. We let the 4 year olds leave footprints with play figures, and you can gauge whether your older kids would still like to do that. The figures are also useful because they can accidentally drop objects that get embedded in the clay layer, in this case a replica bone flute, a shell and a flint core.

rsz_IMG_3383Discuss out of those things, which would still be around in 10,000 years time for archaeologists to find. If it rots, take it out.We took out the tipi, leaving post-holes behind to look for later.

 

 

rsz_IMG_3389We covered this up with sand and built a Neolithic stone rectangular structure (out of Lego) above. Artefacts left by the Neolithic inhabitants included some antler, a flint tool and, new for the Neolithic, a sherd of pottery.

 

 

rsz_IMG_3402When covered with wind-blown sand it left quite a lump. The hollows around were filled in with gravel from a meandering river.

 

 

rsz_IMG_3406On top of this gravel layer a roundhouse was built. Roundhouses were in use during the Bronze Age and Iron Age. If you want to make sure it’s Iron Age and not earlier, throw some iron in there. Once again we discussed whether the house would stay. As it was built of wood, mud and straw we decided it had to go, again leaving post-holes behind.

 

rsz_IMG_3424We finally covered the whole thing up with compost, pretending to be topsoil. As topsoil is generally a mixed layer, because of ploughing or just worm action, we had objects dating from the Roman period to today in that layer. Obviously, sometimes these periods are represented by sealed layers that haven’t been touched by the plough. Each of the previous periods would have had its topsoil, so as a variation you could put a thin layer of compost over each successive layer.

A green towel served as the grass and then the children were allowed to deturf and start digging. Digging is not the best word for it, though, as archaeologists usually use pointing trowels, not garden trowels, and employ a brushing motion, rather than digging. As we were working with 4 year olds, we decided it would be safer to use brushes. Any soil that was disturbed by the brush was scooped out. Any artefacts were put in a tray to look at later. The diggers soon noticed when they got down to gravel – it felt different to brush, it looked different and it even sounded different. We removed the last of the topsoil and had a look at the gravel layer.

rsz_IMG_3501Unfortunately we couldn’t see the post-holes of this layer as the gravel had been slightly disturbed, but that’s why archaeologists have to dig so carefully! When digging through the gravel, we put our finds in a separate tray. We soon found the sand, which looked, felt and sounded different again, and stopped to clean up the top of that layer. Soon we exposed the house and dug up the finds in the sand, which were put into a third tray. Coming down onto clay was another change and we cleaned up that surface to see whether we could see the post-holes. We could, faintly, and if a thin layer of compost had been put on top of the clay to start with, before the sand, they would have shown up beautifully. If the clay layer at the bottom had been smoothed out before building on, that would have helped too.

After cleaning up each layer, children should draw their dig, especially any post-holes or walls they have found. Older children could extend their learning by digging down through the layers to make a ditch around a house. The challenge for the other group would be to work out which layer that ditch was dug from.

rsz_IMG_3546After the dig is finished, go through each tray of finds to examine what came out of each layer. What was in the lowest layer? Is that the earliest or the latest layer? What is missing from that layer? Can children hazard to decide which time period it might have been?

Digging in this way gets across four main points:

  • Archaeological excavation is more than just digging for artefacts
  • That it matters about where on a site the artefacts were found
  • How layers built up on a site and how archaeologists recognise, investigate and record them
  • How artefacts can help work out both relative dating and what was happening in each layer

This session will be written up for the Hamilton Trust and the full instructions will be available from them, along with a whole block of lessons, so do get your school to subscribe to their service if they haven’t already.