Work Experience

On Monday I met all the other students taking part in work experience as well as Georgina and Ben the curators of the ARC.

We had a tour of the landscape and the ARC. My favourite item we saw was a Roman copper frog 🐸 .

In the afternoon we bagged up artefacts from Wood Burcote farm , which was dug in 1972-82 and we made sure all the information on the bags was correct, it was really fun organising all of the pottery sherds! 

On Tuesday we helped the volunteers sort out the metal finds, we recorded information on a spreadsheet and we made  sure the details on the bags were correct! After a while it was easy to remember the ENN code  , I know that I will be saying the code in my sleep! 

On Wednesday we sorted through all the documents from Wood Burcote Farm. I spent most of the day making sure the ENN numbers were written on every single document. In the Afternoon we removed all of the staples from the paperwork, I learnt that we do this because the metal is not archive friendly and could ruin the important information! We then placed all the paperwork into their new boxes and that was Wednesday done! 

On Thursday we met osteologist Dale Munn. Dale explained to us how to identify the age, Sex, Height and trauma of a person from their skeleton. As you can see from the picture I’ve attached, the friendly ARC model Stan is suffering with some head trauma. I learnt that you can assess how old a skeleton is from how worn down their teeth are! After our introductory talk we got to examine the remains of 6 Roman skeletons found on the Chester house site, It was a great opportunity to learn all about osteology! My favourite part of Thursday was talking about why we study the human remains and what it can tell us about the past and the people who lived in these walls.

On the last day we talked about how to make archaeology engaging for the community! I learnt about Loans boxes, Loans boxes are boxes of real and replica artefacts loaned out to Schools to teach and engage the students about archaeology.

In the morning we each picked an artefact that is going in the loans box and created a fact file about it to help the teachers and students. I decided to pick a replica Bronze Age button, during my research I learnt that buttons were used as decoration instead of buttoning clothes together.

In the afternoon we created games and activities to go alongside the artefact, I planned a crafty activity where the students could make their own Roman mosaic, cut it up and make it into a jigsaw! In the final hour of the day we got the opportunity to dig alongside some younger children as it was a young persons digging day!