Widening access

Activities have been developed for National Archaeology Week, the Festival of History and pupil workshops with help from both internal and external staff. 

In zooarchaeology, we continue to develop our teaching collection of reference material and range of activities, which include:

• Identifying bones: matching fragmented bone with reference material to learn about zooarchaeological methods
• Building skeletons: placing bones in anatomical position, by comparison to an articulated reference skeleton to learn about anatomy and bone identification
• Identifying small mammals through recognition of tooth shape to learn about owl diet and palaeoenvironment
• Ageing pig teeth: learning to recognise eruption and wear in a series of pig jaws to understand animal use, food and social status
• Taking measurements on bones to learn about animal type, size and shape

Other activities include:

• Soil texturing and description
• Sieving soil samples and recording their contents
• Wildlife safaris, looking at how plants and insects  were used in the past ,and how and when they arrived in this country
• An introduction to stratigraphy using soil sections
• A wood quiz, looking at how wood can be altered by humans and animals