Young Archaeologists Club Meeting: Rapa Nui

Young Archaeologists’ models of the statues from Rapa Nui or Easter Island

The subject of April’s meeting of the Young Archaeologists Club at Manchester Museum was the latest temporary exhibition Making Monuments on Rapa Nui: the Stone Statues from Easter Island. After showing the children around the exhibition we set up a creative session. The children made models of the moai or Easter Island statues using grey self-drying clay for the volcanic tuff of the heads and bodies and red for the scoria of the pukao or hats. The line-up in the photograph above shows how engaged the children were, and, for adults, it provided a then topical satyrical side-swipe at the line-up of candidates involved in the debates leading up to the General Election…

Making moai

Forming the heads and bodies out of the grey self-drying clay was challenging but the pukao were easier because they could be rolled out and then cut to size. They always remind me of the coconut sweet in the Liquorice All-Sorts packets (the cylindrical one with liquorice down the centre). The children used pieces of plastic drinking straw to attach the heads to the bodies to hold them in position until they dried (otherwise the heads sag). The children captured the long ears and noses of the statues and some even made separate eyes to insert in their statues, using the red clay for the irises.

Making moai

As leaders we always find that the best sessions are those that have a practical activity of some sort. The children are more interested and engaged than if we spoke to them as part of a presentation. At the end we lined up the various models to copy the moai that can be seen on the ahu or ceremonial platforms on Rapa Nui or Easter Island.

Making moai at Manchester Museum

The Young Archaeologists Club meets at Manchester Museum on the second Saturday of the month but children have to registered with us in advance before they can attend for insurance reasons and each session has to be booked separately beforehand because we have more members than we can accommodate all at once.

Young Archaeologists Dig at Castleshaw

The path up to Castleshaw

It was a very wet day when I met members of Manchester Museum’s Young Archaeologists Club in the car park opposite the site of the Roman fort site at Castleshaw near Oldham last Saturday. Despite the weather, it was too good an opportunity to miss because the site is currently the subject of a four week community archaeology excavation, which is funded mainly by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

For those who are not familiar with the site, the fort was made of  turf and timber fort and was built around AD 79. It was abandoned about 15 years later but the Roman army returned to the site around AD 105 and erected a smaller fortlet, which in turn was abandoned after about 20 years. In the 1980s Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit (GMAU) led a project to investigate and landscape the site of the fortlet. More recently, attention has turned to the remains of the larger fort which are poorly understand and difficult to access. Features uncovered so far during the excavations include an extensive area of the Roman road exiting the east gate, the east gate itself, defensive ditches, internal roads and barrack blocks, a  workshop area overlying prehistoric features, and a 17^th century cottage.

17th century cottage converted into a cow byre

I understand that around 300 school children, 150 adult volunteers and various special groups are involved in the project which is being led by the Friends of Castleshaw Roman Forts supported by a small team of professional archaeologists. The dig finishes on Friday 1^st August so the Young Archaeologists Club visit last Saturday was a rare chance to see the excavations in progress before the trenches were backfilled. Incidentally, given that the vast majority of parents naturally  want to encourage their children to do well at school, one way of helping them is to register them for membership of the Young Archaeologists Club. One former member recently told me that his time in the Manchester YAC had a huge influence on his  interests and particularly on his desire to study archaeology at university and his enjoyment of History and Classics at A-level. He said the excavations he did with YAC at sites around Manchester were so exciting and inspiring for him, as well as the other events organised.at the Museum.

Young archaeologists digging at Castleshaw

The Young Archaeologists from Manchester Museum were allocated a section of a trench where the Roman road inside the fort had been exposed and cleaned. The photograph above shows the youngsters lined up and trowelling back from the cleaned Roman road surface. This was till within the plough soil and so the pieces of pottery that they found tended to be of post-medieval date. There on the surface I found a sherd of mustard yellow slipware with two concentric ribs, probably dating from the 17th century.

2000-year-old turves still showing in the rampart section

After seeing some of the objects that had already been found the Young Archaeologists were treated to a tour of the site with site Director Norman Redhead. In one of the trenches Norman showed us the section of the Roman rampart with dark linear stains. These were the tell-tale marks left by turves that the Roman soldiers had cut and stacked one on top of the other to create a defensive rampart. It’s amazing to think they are still clearly visible after some 2000 years.

Looking at finds afterwards

In view of the appalling weather and following site tour the Young Archaeologists decided that discretion was the better part of valour and finished early. Our sincerest thanks to Norman and everyone else who enabled the Young Archaeologists to go out and experience this truly wonderful piece of Roman frontier archaeology.

 

 

Turned Out Nice Again: The Young Archaeologists Club Outing to Formby (17th May 2014)

 

Young Archaeologists at Formby in June

It seems like a long time ago now but it is only a matter of a couple of weeks since I accompanied the Manchester Museum Young Archaeologists to Formby in Lancashire. We try to take the children out on a trip once a year and Formby was great because it wasn’t too far from Manchester, there was some fascinating archaeology to see and there was plenty of space for the children to run around. It was the first time I’d been to Formby but it is hard not to fall in love with the place. From the moment you draw up at the National Trust car park where you can see red squirrels running around the pine trees to the moment when you crest the rise of the sand dunes and you see the foreshore for the first time before you it’s a delight.

Dune crossing at Formby

We went to Formby to see the famous footprints in the ancient land surface preserved underneath the sand. They are only revealed at low tide so obviously we had to time our visit very carefully. Fortunately time and tide on this occasion were very favourable to us and we enjoyed several very agreeable hours on the foreshore looking for footprints. Nor did  our efforts go unrewarded because we found a track of foot shape impressions in the ancient land surface that could not possibly have been recent.

Human footprints track at Formby

 

Foot shaped depression in the ancient land surface at Formby

Many similar tracks have been recorded over the years and there is a dedicated website where you can see them. They  date from the prehistoric period and some of them may go back to the Mesolithic period about 8000 years ago. A range of different animals have been identified, not to mention the footprints of men, women and children who went out on the foreshore to hunt wildfowl and to gather crustacea and other sea foods.

Wolf print

On this occasion the Young Archaeologists discovered what we think was the imprint of a deer and what looked like a wolf’s pawprint. Afterwards we had a picnic in the pine forest and then called at Liverpool Museum to see the story of Liverpool displays which feature material from Formby.

Impression of human footprint from Formby in Liverpool Museum

This was an excellent day out and all thanks to Clare Pye for organising all aspects of the day including the warm sunny weather.

 

Young Archaeologists Club Meeting: Roman Shields at Manchester Museum

Roman Republican legionaries

It is already a year since the successful ancient Greek shields meeting at Manchester Museum. We always planned a session looking at Roman soldiers so January’s Young Archaeologists Club meeting  focused on Roman shields. I took along the Museum’s replica Roman shield, helmet and sword-and-scabbard as well as my hand painted Roman Republican legion to show the children. After explaining how the Roman soldiers were equipped and looking at the organization of the army using the painted figurines, we got the children making shields out of cardboard and old yoghurt cartons from the recycling cupboard. You always know when a session is popular because the children really concentrate on what they are doing and there is low background hum of activity. At the end of the session the children proudly showed-off  their legionary shields.

Mamucium’s finest. Young Archaeologists Club January 2014 meeting at Manchester Museum

It is a long-cherished dream of mine and Andy Fear in Classics and Ancient History to set up a University Wargames Club with the intention of engaging schoolchildren and students in the subjects of ancient history and archaeology. The availability of relatively cheap but historically accurate plastic figurines representing a wide range of historical periods makes it possible to explore ancient military history in a visual way that enhances students’ understanding of this aspect of the ancient world.

Roman Republican legion as described by Polybius: velites are in front, then the successive lines of hastati, princeps and triarii. Allied cavalry and slingers are on the flanks.

In fact only last Friday Cat Lumb from the Education team at the Museum and I met two teachers from Walkden School who were interested in using the Museum’s Classical archaeology collection to help teach ancient history, particularly Alexander the Great and the War with Hannibal. Being able to show visually what the Macedonian phalanx looked like using scale figurines was especially interesting for the teachers.

The Macedonian phalanx fought 16 ranks deep

It would be great if we could get young people painting the figures and wargaming battles from the ancient world. At a time when concern has been expressed about young people not socialising  because of electronic media it would provide a way for meaningful face-to-face interaction in a creative setting, Using hundreds of painted plastic scale figurines there is a real opportunity to demonstrate what happened in ancient battles and inject a sense of fun by role-playing the different commanders. It would also create a sense of spectacle that might well be of interest to visitors to the Museum (see below).

The Macedonian phalanx

Young Archaeologists and Ancient Etruscans or what to call your rabbit

Seianti Hanunia’s sarcophagus in the British Museum

In mid-January the first of the Manchester Museum’s Young Archaeologists Club meetings for 2013 took place. We were scratching our heads wondering what to do because it was too cold to take the children out on a site digging and we had already talked about the ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians in previous sessions. However, there was one people of the ancient world we hadn’t looked at and they are the Etruscans. The Etruscans lived in northern Italy and were very powerful and influential between about 1000 and 100 BC. The Greeks called them Tyrrhenians and the Tyrrhenian Sea is named after them. The Roman name Tusci gave rise to the modern region of Italy called Tuscany, favoured holiday retreat of a former prime minister.  The early kings of Rome were Etruscan. The Manchester Museum happens to have quite a good collection of Etruscan material and a few objects are shown in the new Ancient Worlds displays. A catalogue of Manchester Museum’s Etruscan collection was published by Jean Turfa in the early 1980s.

I got out a selection of Etruscan objects from the stores. I set up four tables and put out groups of bronze figurines, brooches, pottery, stone cinerary urns, inscriptions and votive offerings on each. We talked about the rich mineral resources that were the source of the Etruscans’ wealth and prosperity and how contact with ancient Greek traders stimulated a passion for imports of Greek things such as pottery. Not that they didn’t have their own graceful and attractive pottery called bucchero ware. We explored the role of Etruscan women who seem to have had slightly more freedom than their Greek and Roman sisters. A facial reconstruction of an upper class Etruscan woman made by Prof.John Prag and Dr Richard Neave of the University of Manchester is shown in the new displays. Her name was Seianti Hanunia Tlesnana and her beautiful sarcophagus can be seen at the British Museum. It offers one of those rare chances to compare a depiction of someone who lived in the ancient world with a facial reconstruction based on their physical remains.

We stopped in the middle of the session to go and see Etruscan objects on display including the facial reconstruction, a votive offering of a woman’s womb and a carved marble slab from a cinerary urn.  This gave the children a chance to get up and move around after about half an hour of sitting. We returned to the Discovery Centre for the last topics about writing and religion. The Manchester Museum has a few Etruscan inscriptions and one of them is all the more interesting for being longer (most Etruscan inscriptions are quite short and often do no more than mention someone’s name, status and family relationship). This one has been translated and it mentions ‘Hercle’ or Heracles. It may refer to the offering of a statue of the hero.  I distributed a photocopy of the names of Etruscan gods and goddesses compared with their Greek and Roman equivalents. The children were amused when they found out the Etruscan equivalent to Dionysos was called Fufluns. Someone said it was a good name for a rabbit!

Andrea’s rabbit Eric with one of Irit’s cabbages (March 2015)

Ancient Worlds Big Saturday 17th November 2012

Ancient Worlds Big Saturday: Shiree and Gaby with youngsters

Last Saturday 17th November was the Museum’s Big Saturday event to help celebrate the opening of our Ancient Worlds galleries. Anna Bunney, Curator of Public Programmes and Vicky Grant, Primary Outreach Educator, organised some events and activities for visitors. Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and the Sudan, and I spent some time on the galleries talking to the public. Members of the Museum’s branch of the Young Archaeologists Club also came in to help piece together pieces of broken pottery from excavations in Manchester. Shiree and Gaby who are conservation student placements at the Museum were on hand to glue together broken pieces of pottery that the children were able to find. We have run this activity several times and each time it attracts as much interest from adults as from children.

Now where does that piece go?

Meanwhile I was talking to visitors in the galleries and using the Museum’s handling collection of ancient Greek artefacts as a talking point. People were really fascinated to find out about the objects, which included Classical pots and a replica of Mycenaean dagger. One of my favourites is a pot known as a lekythos showing ancient Greek warriors called hoplites fighting. This worked well with the ancient Greek Corinthian helmet on display in the gallery and the plaster cast of a frieze from a monument at Xanthos in Turkey.

Young visitor Haily looks at the ancient Greek objects

One young visitor called Haily was very interested in the Mycenaean dagger and drew a picture of it. I’ll post that image shortly.

Festival of British Archaeology

The Manchester Museum’s contribution to the Festival of British Archaeology took place today (28th July 2010). With Anna Bunney, Curator of Public Programmes I had arranged to show a selection of pottery from the Museum’s rich archaeology collection.

I got together some ancient Greek and Roman pottery, some incredibly old sherds from a site at Yanik Tepe in northern Iran and some Victorian pottery discovered whilst excavating Roman Manchester.

Given a choice between finding out about 6,000 year old pottery and piecing together broken Victorian willow-pattern ware, guess which the children preferred? The Victorian pottery. This was something of a revelation to us but we quickly put the ancient material to one side and spread out the Victorian finds over the table.

Victorian broken pottery at the recent Festival of British Archaeology Event

Children gathered like bees round a honey pot and in no time at all they were busy sticking the fragments back together with stickly tape. The dedication and enthusiasm of the kids for this massive 3D jigsaw was amazing.

Where does this bit go?

Meddie, who’s on holiday at her gran’s (she told me she comes from Surrey), put together a fine tankard decorated with a wide blue stripe beneath the rim. Other children battled heroically with a transfer printed teapot .  By the end of the afternoon we had four or five pots two-thirds complete . The hands-on had won hands-down over the 6,000 year old pot.

Meddie and the Victorian tankard she pieced together

We can run this  sort of activity quite easily because we have lots of boxes of broken Victorian pottery from sites in the centre of Manchester. In fact this must be the first time it has been looked at since it was excavated in the 1970s. The excavators were more interested in the Roman layers but the more recent material is also of great interest as we found recently when we ran an event about food in Manchester. Visitors were as fascinated to see marmalade jars and lemonade bottles as they were Roman mortaria.

We should definitely consider making the pottery available as part of the Ancient Worlds galleries.