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Nancy Detchon

Oct 15, 2012

What? When? How? Where? with Calow C of E Primary School

Year 5s at Calow C of E Primary School, Chesterfield had their first taste of archaeology on Friday. During the workshop – the first of a series of five – we concentrated on the question “What?”: What is archaeology?; what is the point of doing archaeology?; and what do archaeologists do with the evidence they find? Through a number of activities we got our ‘archaeological imaginations’ going as we attempted to interpret objects, both modern and ancient, and pretended we were

Nancy Detchon

Oct 12, 2012

FitzHerbert’s and the Peak District Award Part II

The FitzHerbert C of E Primary School in Fenny Bentley have just completed the second part of the Peak District Award. The excavation is complete, the barrow is more or less there and the ground has been prepared for sowing the seeds to create their wild flower meadow. Again, the children surpassed themselves in their presentation of everything they had done and learnt. This is what Mrs Froggatt, their class teacher, had to say about the experience: “Doing the archaeological

Nancy Detchon

Oct 8, 2012

Being creative – Being resourceful

One of the enjoyable aspects of my work is the preparation I do for workshops and projects in terms of finding and making resources. Lately, this has involved sourcing artefacts from places such as the University of Manchester, the University of Birmingham, and the Derbyshire School Library Service and liaising with the wonderfully helpful staff there – Hannah Cobb, Jo Wright, Ken Wardle, Clare Mullett, Emily Millward and Marilyn, to name but a few. I have also increased my

Nancy Detchon

Sep 29, 2012

The Trojan War at Derby High School.

“Thank you so much for the Archaeology Workshop on Monday 24 September. Having hosted several workshops in school (though never for Archaeology!), I was struck by your outstanding level of preparation: the resources were superb; the day was very well pitched, structured and timed; everything was beautifully tailored to the work the students are already doing on Troy. This is not always the case! I cannot thank you enough for the support you have given us in the delivery of ou

Nancy Detchon

Jul 22, 2012

Rainy walks, barrow building and the Peak District Award

The last week saw my continued work with the Park Rangers, Rose and Steve, at FitzHerbert Primary School in Fenny Bentley, culminating on Thursday 19th with the presentation of the 1st part of the Peak District Award to the KS2 children who had taken part. On Thursday 12th we began to dig in the school field. After a lesson in stratigraphy, the children were set to work, under the watchful eye of Steve Bell, de-turfing the patch that is to become a wild flower meadow. They

Nancy Detchon

Jun 29, 2012

Digging, barrow-building and the Peak District Award

I spent a lovely afternoon with pupils and teachers from FitzHerbert CE Primary School in Fenny Bentley yesterday. I was there with two National Park Rangers, Steve Bell and Rose Clarke as part of a new scheme with which the school is involved – the Peak District Award. To achieve this award the school is learning all about the special qualities of the National Park and as part of this will be improving their hay meadow and building a Bronze Age barrow in their school ground

Nancy Detchon

Jun 21, 2012

The Megalithic Portal Live in the Peak District…

Some of you may already know about the The Megalithic Portal, a website which describes itself as the top destination for Prehistoric and Ancient sites worldwide. It is indeed a veritable feast of images, descriptions, locations etc. of sites around the world and well worth a perusal. Well, the Megalithic Portal is coming to the Peak District over the weekend of 28th and 28th July to host a variety of free guided walks, public lectures and other events. Details can be found h

Nancy Detchon

Apr 26, 2012

Wonders of Archaeology in Blackburn!

Last Friday saw me travelling to Blackburn to introduce parents and children of St Albans primary school to the wonders of archaeology. The day began with me telling everyone that archaeology is rubbish, which started off an exploration of objects that had been recently thrown away. We talked about what they could tell us about the people and society that had once used them. We then moved on to excavating a range of objects from Neolithic flints to 20th century pottery and ap

Nancy Detchon

Apr 8, 2012

Easter Sunday digging

Thanks to Vicki, Ian, Matthew and Robbie for joining me and my children today and for all their hard work. I hope they enjoyed themselves as much as we enjoyed having them on site. Whilst the other Ian and Lesley drew sections and figured out contexts in the main field, the rest of us began to tie up loose ends in the Horse Field. I never knew backfilling could be such fun but Gabriel, Leila, Matthew and Robbie loved it! Although Matthew and Robbie won’t be there in the next

Nancy Detchon

Apr 5, 2012

Arbor Low Environs Project – Back to Work!

All systems go! Tomorrow, the Arbor Low Environs Project Open Day will go ahead as planned so please do come along and visit us. For those groups whose tours were cancelled: I will be contacting you all, via various means, to see if any of you can come on Sunday 8th afternoon (Easter Sunday) or Monday 9th am or pm. http://www.arborlowenvironsproject.org/2012/04/05/progress-update-22-2/ #excavation #children #HomeEducation #ArborLow #Easter #education #PeakDistrict #Archaeolog

Nancy Detchon

Apr 5, 2012

Snow!

Unfortunately, the Arbor Low Environs Project has been put on hold due to the snow. We have been told that at Upper Oldhams Farm the snow has reached over the walls! This has meant that we have had to cancel group visits for the rest of this week. We will be keeping our eye on the weather today to see if the Open Day will go ahead tomorrow and we are talking to farmers to see about whether we can continue the dig into next week and reschedule some of the visits. We will keep

Nancy Detchon

Mar 27, 2012

Schools visit the Arbor Low Environs Project

The first two days of the Arbor Low Environs Project dig this year have been a resounding success. I’m not so much talking about the archaeology here – although I’m sure many exciting things will be unearthed as the days go by -no, what I am talking about are the school visits we have had so far. I have had the pleasure and privilege to introduce and re-introduce many young people and their teachers to Arbor Low, Gib Hill and the wonderful world of archaeology. The children (

Nancy Detchon

Mar 12, 2012

Outreach at Arbor Low Environs Project

The week beginning the 25th March 2012 is the first week of the ALEP excavations this year and we have invited local schools to come and join us. We are so pleased with the response, with enquiries from Monyash Primary School, Curbar Primary School, Harpur Hill Primary School, Fairfield Endowed CE Junior School and Buxton Infant School, as well as Melland High School in Manchester and the The Institute of Life-Long Learning at the University of Sheffield. In fact there is onl

Nancy Detchon

Mar 1, 2012

Local schools to visit Arbor Low Environs Project

The Drs Parker Heath are currently very busy organising this year’s archaeological investigations close to Arbor Low and Gib Hill. The licenses from English Heritage have arrived, permissions from landowners have been given, but most excitingly local schools are beginning to sign up to come and have a tour around the ancient monuments, visit the dig site and get their hands dirty! So far we have heard from Monyash Primary School, Curbar Primary School, and Harpur Hill Primary

Nancy Detchon

Mar 1, 2012

Dearne Valley Archaeology Day 2012

Yesterday, 25th February 2012, saw the 2nd Dearne Valley Archaeology Day at Wath Trinity Methodist Church. What a great day! I heard some very interesting papers on the South Yorkshire Archaeology Service (Andy Lines), the (missing!) Minoan town at Knossos (Colin Merrony), community archaeology (Tim Cockerell), charred plant remains (Angela Walker), stable isotopes results from the Ukraine (Malcolm Lillie), Archaeology at Staveley Hall (Mike McCoy), excavations at Vimy Ridge

Nancy Detchon

Feb 16, 2012

Buxton Area Home Education Group

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 thing

Nancy Detchon

Feb 13, 2012

Discovering Prehistoric Buxton!

The brief from Burbage Primary School was quite specific – a day that would take the children away from the school grounds, discover the archaeology of the area but without the need for transport. To fulfil this I developed a walking field-trip to some of the prehistoric sites of Buxton. The children, using picture clues, led the way to the site of Lismore Fields where Neolithic structures were excavated before modern housing was built in the 1980s. After considering the sim

Nancy Detchon

Feb 13, 2012

Romans in the Peak District

The activities carried out at St Anne’s RC Primary School were designed to complement the Y3/4 Romans topic. After discussing the Romans in the Peak District and looking at maps of Romano-British settlement in the area, the children enthusiastically excavated genuine Roman pottery out of sand trays. They took their excavated sherds, washed and recorded them and developed ideas of how they may have once looked and for what purposes they may have been used. At the end of the d

Nancy Detchon

Feb 13, 2012

Hollinsclough Primary School

Hollinsclough is a very small village school which has opened its doors to home educators and their families every other Friday. The workshops were carried out over two of these Fridays with children ranging from 4 to 14 years. We considered stratigraphy, the Law of Superposition, tried out archaeological tools, and excavated artefacts ranging from Neolithic scrapers and Roman mortaria to recent door numbers. We washed what we had found and recorded details about them on for

Nancy Detchon

Feb 13, 2012

Sheffield Elective Home Education Group

A flexible approach was needed with a group so disparate in age and previous knowledge, but everyone was able to get their hands dirty as soon as possible after a brief introduction to the tools of the trade. Luckily for the home educators, Highfields Adventure Playground in Sheffield, where they meet once a week, did not mind us digging up their grounds. The children soon found many artefacts, such as hinges and cupboard door handles. We were able to consider what they were

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