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Ian Parker-Heath

Jun 27, 2016

We’re busy Peeling Back The Layers!

Paperwork! One of the teachers getting to grips with it! What a busy week we’ve had as we started work in earnest on Peeling Back The Layers at Under Whitle near the village of Sheen in northeast Staffordshire. If you are new to our site, we are part of a community archaeology project which is exploring the history and archaeology of a small farm, and the link will lead you to the project’s background. Monday and Tuesday saw us getting volunteers and teachers together to intr

Catching up with Castleton: this year’s excavation.

Nancy Detchon

Jun 5, 2015

Catching up with Castleton: this year’s excavation.

Colin Merrony (with his back to us!) of the Archaeology Dept, University of Sheffield talking to Dave Barratt, Derbyshire County Archaeologist at this year’s Castleton excavations. As you may know ETA is based in the beautiful Derbyshire Peak District and we do like our local archaeology! We do try to get to see as many sites and projects as we can and we finally made it to this year’s excavation in Castleton. The excavation was part of an on-going project – The Search for Ca

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

May 30, 2013

Samian Ware Workshop preparations…

For the past few days, my house and garden has looked rather like a Samian Ware factory… For those of you who don’t know, Samian Ware is a distinctive type of pottery used across the Roman Empire. Its other name is Terra Sigillata and, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it is only British archaeologists that use the term Samian Ware. Why? Well, I’m not entirely sure. Anyway, the pottery is a glossy red slip-ware, sometimes plain but also decorated, and was used as tablewar

Nancy Detchon

Apr 17, 2013

Treasure Hunters

Recently, I was asked to work with a Y5 class at The Croft Primary School in Armitage, Rugeley, whose current topic was ‘Treasure Island’. As the school is only approximately 8 miles from where the Staffordshire Hoard was found, they had looked at this archaeological treasure quite closely and were now interested in finding out more about archaeology. Of course I said ‘yes’ to working with them, but didn’t want to encourage a belief that archaeology is all about finding trea

Nancy Detchon

Apr 16, 2013

Trojan War in Lancashire!

We took the Trojan War to Lancashire and gave pupils at Calder Vale St John’s and Scorton C of E Primary Schools a morning to remember. After a few tasks to encourage the children to think like archaeologists, that is exactly what they became, as they excavated items usually found in Late Bronze Age Greece and the Troad. The children also had the opportunity to handle genuine Mycenaean pots – yes, that’s right – pots that are over 3000 years old and which had been generously

Nancy Detchon

Mar 12, 2013

Gifted and Talented

Lately, I have had quite a few requests to work with gifted and talented youngsters and high achievers, with bookings from as far away as Hounslow. Archaeology is the perfect vehicle for stretching young minds, as some teachers have realised. Through archaeology we can ask basic epistemological questions – How is knowledge created? How do we know what we know about the past? Likewise, critical thinking can be practised as we assess our own interpretations and those of esta

Nancy Detchon

Mar 11, 2013

Twentieth Century Archaeology

I recently delivered a workshop to the whole of Brockwell Nursery and Infant School in Chesterfield. The theme was the 1920s onwards – not often a period of time that comes to mind when you think of archaeology. However, as I always say, archaeology is about the material culture of the past and, as such, everything up until yesterday is fair game! And what a great day we had. I think I have said this before somewhere, but I am always blown away by how much children as youn

Nancy Detchon

Dec 3, 2012

KS1 in Biddulph and Buxton

Working with KS1 children requires adapting a standard workshop without losing the integrity of a ‘genuine’ archaeological experience. In other words, I work hard to deliver workshops that are engaging and accessible to young minds, whilst not allowing it to turn into a ‘treasure hunt’ or ‘lucky-dip’ type of activity. It is also important not to limit children: I am very often amazed by the grasp some 4 & 5 year olds have on the concept of the past and how we can say someth

Nancy Detchon

Dec 3, 2012

Putting my new-found potting skills to the test!

I took my new found beaker-making skills with me when I last visited FitzHerbert Primary School in Fenny Bentley. Focussing the children on a particular task – in this case making Bronze Age beakers by making two thumb pots – really worked. The results were very rewarding, both for me as the facilitator of the session and for the children. If we’d had more time it may have proved useful to try two different techniques, coil-potting and thumb-potting (is there such a phrase

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 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

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