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 applied the same kind of thinking. This was followed by a game of stratigraphy where the group decided which artefacts belonged to which soil layers.
After lunch we then ventured out to the site of Castercliff fort and thought about what further information we would like to know and where we would like to put trenches if we had given permission to dig. We also caught glimpses of lambs being born, which was nearly as exciting as the archaeology!
After being asked about the day this is what some of the children said:
“I liked it all” “It was fun!” “Digging in the sand was exciting” “We were looking and finding interesting things”.