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Stonehenge on the TV: can we ever have enough?

Nancy Detchon

Jan 27, 2016

Stonehenge on the TV: can we ever have enough?

Members of the 2009 Stonehenge Riverside Project photographing the joints on the top of one of the uprights. Once again the nation’s favourite prehistoric monument features on TV with the Timewatch documentary that considers the many, and it must be said varied, interpretations of the site. I think I might be right in thinking this is a repeat, but nonetheless it is always worth reminding ourselves of just what we think it might be all about. Over the years there have been a

Nancy Detchon

Jan 19, 2016

Derbyshire Archaeology Day 2016

Assembling for the day! A full house anticipated. Saturday 9th January saw the 25th Derbyshire Archaeology Day unfurl its wings at its now traditional home of the Pomegranate Theatre, Chesterfield. Derbyshire Archaeology Day is a chance for many of us interested in archaeology and heritage, both professional and amateur, to catch up on events, projects and of course excavations over the preceding year, but it was a day tinged with sadness as the recent death of a long-time su

Nancy Detchon

Aug 24, 2015

Horizon’s First Britons

Last week the BBC aired the latest documentary in the Horizon franchise – First Britons. Since then there has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in discussion groups such as Britarch – a discussion list moderated by the CBA – and it has been interesting to see some of the points raised by the discussants – it has even moved on to include the Celts! For those of you who haven’t seen it, it is essentially an update of the work that has been carried out by archaeologists and scien

Nancy Detchon

Jul 20, 2015

KS2 British Prehistory – a summer of action pt2!

The summer of fantastic excavations on some of the most interesting sites from British Prehistory continues and now you can see some of what is being found! There are also some short video clips which reveal some of the life of people living in both the Mesolithic and Neolithic. Up in North Yorkshire, the team of Dr Nick Milner and her colleagues at the Mesolithic site of Star Carr have found even more of the fantastic Red deer skulls, which are thought by many to be part of

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

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

Mar 5, 2015

Why is finding wheat that is 8,000 years old exciting?

On the face of it, finding wheat DNA from a sample dated to 8,000 years ago shouldn’t be so exciting. After all, people had been growing it for a couple of thousand years already. Well, if that wheat sample comes from southern Britain, then yes, exciting is the word. Why? we hear you ask! Well the answer is relatively simple. Until now archaeologists in Britain have thought that the arrival of wheat and then agriculture did not happen until somewhere around 6,000 years ago, o

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

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 18, 2015

Teaching ‘changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age’

At the end of my prehistoric archaeology workshops, teachers often say to me that they have learned as much as the children have. Of course, they may just be being polite, but after further conversation, it transpires that many teachers are, in fact, learning alongside the children they are teaching. After even further conversation, it becomes apparent that they might just appreciate a bit of a helping hand. So, with this in mind we (my archaeologist husband and I) have set a

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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