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KS2 British Prehistory – Dorstone Hill excavations

Nancy Detchon

Jul 8, 2015

KS2 British Prehistory – Dorstone Hill excavations

Hello again! Now, as I blogged briefly the other day, a team from the University of Manchester led by our friend Prof Julian Thomas, has started this year’s excavations at Dorstone Hill in Herefordshire. With the aid of modern technology, we are going to keep you up to date with what’s been going on. We want to thank Prof Thomas, Dr Irene Garcia Rovira and Ms Janey Green for permission to use their images. The team arrived last week and, as with most excavations, the first co

KS2 British prehistory – a summer of action!

Nancy Detchon

Jul 6, 2015

KS2 British prehistory – a summer of action!

If you are a Key Stage 2 history teacher/co-ordinator, this summer sees some really important excavations on famous and less famous sites. Right now there are excavations in Wiltshire and Herefordshire which are hoping to shed further light on life and death in the Neolithic (or New Stone Age) between 4,000 and 2,000 BC. We hope you can get to visit some of the excavations we will feature over the summer, including those we highlight today! The much eroded ditch and bank at M

Archaeology in Anglesey – There’s just so much! (Pt2)

Nancy Detchon

Jun 29, 2015

Archaeology in Anglesey – There’s just so much! (Pt2)

Ok, as promised, here is some more of the archaeology we got to see in Anglesey on our weekend away! As last week we focused on the historic period, this week I think it only fair we look at some of the prehistoric archaeology of the island. We hadn’t been before and we were not disappointed – its a fantastic site, one of the best chambered tombs either Ian or I have seen. I’ve made a gallery of images that can be downloaded and used in lessons about the Neolithic in the reso

Nancy Detchon

Jun 19, 2015

Iron Age Orkney – follow The Cairns Project now!

Thank goodness for the internet. Can you imagine the trouble we’d have catching up with excavations from all corners of the country without it? I say this as a really interesting project has just started this season’s dig. In archaeology-speak season really means year! Anyway, what I want to draw your attention to is The Cairns Project which is based on South Ronaldsay. As with many other projects, there is a history of excavation going back many years, in this case over 100;

Places we visit – A weekend at Bryn Celli Ddu and more!

Nancy Detchon

Jun 17, 2015

Places we visit – A weekend at Bryn Celli Ddu and more!

As we hit summertime, well in theory anyway, archaeologists up and down the country can be found out doing what most people think they do all the time – excavating! Well, it is the traditional time for excavating, especially for University departments and volunteer groups. So for the next few months Ian and I will be trying to get to more excavations around the country covering as many periods as we can to let you know what’s happening. We kick off this weekend with a visit t

Nancy Detchon

Jun 15, 2015

Tools and evolution – worth revisiting.

Back in January BBC Radio 4’s History of Ideas broadcast a piece by Dr Matt Pope of University College London in which he explored the idea and use of technology and how it helped drive human evolution. If you missed it, don’t worry as you can now access it on the Radio 4 website and listen to the podcast. It is only 10 mins long but it packs a lot into it! There are themes in there which can be linked to a number of areas of the National Curriculum which can feed into progra

Another busy week with KS2 workshops in Halifax and Buxton!

Nancy Detchon

May 21, 2015

Another busy week with KS2 workshops in Halifax and Buxton!

Well its been another busy week here at Enrichment with KS2 workshops in Halifax and more locally – at the school where three of my lovely children go, and there was no favouritism asked for or given before you ask! My first workshop was at Christ Church CofE Junior School in Sowerby Bridge, W Yorks. As part of their ‘History Week’ I was asked to deliver a full day of activities for the whole school, which included excavation workshops with me and a range of teacher-led activ

KS2 and Mesolithic Britain: “what did they eat?”

Nancy Detchon

May 19, 2015

KS2 and Mesolithic Britain: “what did they eat?”

In this peek into the Mesolithic of Britain we are going to look at how the archaeology of the period can tell us how how people subsisted – that’s to say how they supported themselves in terms of food. For the most part, the general picture of life in the Mesolithic was that people lived a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, living off the land hunting, fishing and foraging for edible plants. One feature which has been found in a number of sites from the Hebrides to Dorset ar

Stone circle found on Dartmoor but which is it?

Nancy Detchon

May 14, 2015

Stone circle found on Dartmoor but which is it?

Barbrook I stone circle in the Peak District. There is a great deal of interest currently in a stone circle, which has been found on Dartmoor. Stories about the find have made the mainstream press e.g The Plymouth Herald and The Guardian which of course is good news – we like to see archaeology in the news from time to time. Well, we’ve been sifting through the various elements and presentation of the story and have come up with a few interesting things. Let’s begin with the

Nancy Detchon

May 13, 2015

Mesolithic Britain: First things first!

Welcome to part one of our look at the Mesolithic period in the Prehistory of Britain! In this, we try to include the basics – what you really need to know – and some interesting things that you might never have thought of. By way of an introduction, it might be useful to consider the words of Prof Penny Spikins of the University of York, who wrote that “Mesolithic Europe was a world in which there were towering glaciers, cataclysmic floods, tsunamis, and rising and falling

Nancy Detchon

May 12, 2015

What’s in your school grounds?

Hey, we couldn’t resist this one – a school in Reading has come up trumps – a hoard of Roman coins has been discovered in its grounds! Roman coins shown here in situ – the scale is 30 cm. Courtesy of Reading Borough Council. Excavated Roman coins. Once excavated they will be sent for conservation and then to Reading Museum. Courtesy of Reading Borough Council. The Ridgeway Primary School are the lucky school in question. As part of development work at the school, archaeologis

Stones of Power? Megaliths and Politics.

Nancy Detchon

May 11, 2015

Stones of Power? Megaliths and Politics.

War Memorial at Saltburn, N Yorks Hot off the press is the latest blog from one our favourite archaeologists – The Urban Prehistorian (Miliband’s Megalith) in which the role of megaliths (trans. big stones) in a modern context is explored You may be surprised to learn that #Ed’sStone is just the latest in a long line of big stones used by politicians. Some of you may be asking is this relevant to, say, teaching prehistory at KS2? All of us recognize monuments don’t we? They

KS2 teachers, what can you find out about . . . the Palaeolithic?

Nancy Detchon

Mar 26, 2015

KS2 teachers, what can you find out about . . . the Palaeolithic?

You might think that finding information on the archaeology of the Palaeolithic of the area you live and work in might be difficult. Well, think again. Each county in England and Wales for example is required to maintain a register of all archaeological sites, find spots, listed buildings etc. It is known as the Historic Environment Record or HER. It used to be called the Sites and Monuments Record or SMR – you may come across this at some point! As with many other things, th

Nancy Detchon

Mar 11, 2015

Beer: its been good for you since they brewed it in Ancient Sumer.

KS2 pupils and teachers are just so lucky – they get to study heaps of interesting things in the History curriculum. One of these can be Ancient Sumer. What, I hear you ask is Ancient Sumer? Well I’m glad you asked me. Ancient Sumer was the region where the first cities developed. Anywhere in the world. In fact, Sumer was the site of a considerable number of ‘firsts’ including writing. Sumer has often been called the ‘cradle of civilisation’ as many of the things we associate

Nancy Detchon

Feb 19, 2015

Teaching the Stone Age to Iron Age – where to begin?

Teaching ‘Changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age’ is now required as part of KS2 History curriculum in England. For many teachers, this means tackling a completely new subject and facing the task of finding appropriate sources to build up their knowledge. Whilst there are many sources of information out there, they can be difficult to navigate and know which to trust. So, as promised in an earlier blog post and encouraged by teachers we have spoken to, we are h

Nancy Detchon

Feb 16, 2015

Classics Day in Loughborough

I was privileged enough to be invited to take part in the Year 9 Classics Day at Loughborough High School. Designed to encourage the girls to think about the relevance of Classics beyond the classroom and to try to promote the three Classical subjects (Latin, Greek, Classical Civilisation) that they offer at GCSE, the day involved a number of workshops focusing on different ways of engaging with the Classical World. Alongside in-house workshops and one delivered by Sonya Nevi

Nancy Detchon

Jan 19, 2015

Stone Age to Iron Age in Cheshire

What a wonderful day we had in Cheshire! Armed with our trenches, tools and artefacts, Dr Ian Parker Heath (trusty archaeologist husband and colleague) and I, made our acquaintance with Lower KS 2 at Offley Primary School in Sandbach. We explored prehistory from the Palaeolithic to the coming of the Romans, covering what the new primary history curriculum calls ‘Changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age’. After ‘training’ to get the children thinking like archaeol

Nancy Detchon

Jan 17, 2015

Prehistoric Levenshulme!

After delivering a workshop covering the Stone Age to Iron Age to Y4s at St Andrews CE Primary School in Levenshulme in October, the beginning of 2015 saw me returning to delve deeper into the Stone Age with Y3s. The second visit saw me ensconced in a brand new ‘dance studio’, which proved to be the perfect place for our excavations of the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic. Animal bones, charcoal, waste flakes and artefacts of each period (with ‘toolkits’ provided by the

Nancy Detchon

Nov 30, 2014

Back to the Stone Age for Ormskirk!

Y3s at Aughton St Michaels CE Primary School in Ormskirk became archaeologists for the morning when they excavated artefacts from the Stone Age. Over three hours, the children were ‘trained’ to become archaeologists, to think like archaeologists and to understand how we excavate. Armed with these skills, they dug up objects from the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic and analysed what they had found, thinking about what objects can tell us about how people lived in the pa

Nancy Detchon

Nov 19, 2014

Archaeology Day at Garstang

I love delivering Archaeology Days, because Archaeology Days allow time for me to really develop children’s interest and enable them to progress from one activity to another. Hopefully, by the end of the day they leave for home with a good grasp of what archaeology is, what it sets out to achieve and some information about the period they are studying, as well as smiling faces at a day well spent! One such day was had at Garstang Community Primary School in Lancashire, when w

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