The past few months have been rather crazy for me which is why I haven't kept on top of the blog...but things have slowly returned to normal so I shall impart snippets of what I've been getting up to within my post!
Rouken Glen Highland Games
At the end of April, I went to this event with Cara where we were one of many stalls situated around the Highland Games to provide information for anyone who was interested in archaeology and specifically Archaeology Scotland. As you can imagine we had quite a large footfall past our little set up with many youngsters showing an interest in our dig box, clay pot making and quern stone! We didn't even manage to stop for lunch...that's how busy we were. It was great fun and we had huge numbers of participants and a lot of the public signed up to receive further information on archaeology in Scotland...grand day all round then!
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| My collage of the Rouken Glen Highland Games event...I was demonstrating how to use the quern stone here! |
Kilallan Kirkyard
At the start of June I helped Cara run a Kirkyard survey with a local school group of Primary 7's in Renfrewshire. We split the group up into smaller teams so they each had a specific activity to do. So there was recording of the stones via photography and written descriptions; there was sketching of the Kirk and stones; planning of the Kirk and Kirkyard using tape measures and I also took some of the school group into the Kirk to do some grave stone rubbings where it was difficult to read the inscriptions...obviously not on sandstone ones but granite! I asked some of my group if they were enjoying themselves and a fair few of them said it was the best day they'd had in a while, think it was down to the sunshine and the "fancy" camera but a lot of them were actually enthusiastic about their local history, so another great bit of fieldwork in the community!
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| Kilallan Kirk and Kirkyard |
Heritage Heroes
I have recently joined the Learning Team within Archaeology Scotland to help out on one of their new and exciting projects called Heritage Heroes. I have been working closely with Ríona, the project officer for this and the basis of Heritage Heroes is that it is a transitional project from Primary 7 school children who are going into secondary school in August. So myself and Ríona went out to a number of primary schools in South Lanarkshire and delivered a session on what an archaeologist does; we looked at aerial photos asking them to point out features; historical and contemporary maps of their area where they could distinguish differences over time and then we did some practical activities with them. Due to the fact the weather was pretty amazing we did the practical activities in the glorious sunshine! Ríona took a third of the group and worked with them in the dig box, the teacher took the second group and did environmental sorting whilst a led the final group with the Viking Artefact Investigation Kit. We rotated the groups so everyone got to have a go at everything and they were all extremely impressed with their day of archaeology.
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| One of my groups working on the Viking Investigation Kit...as you can see they were all in deep discussion about what they thought their objects were! |
We have done this with a number of feeder schools which leads me onto the second half of the project...
Myself and Ríona will be going into the two secondary schools in August and September. Other than their primary peers, we will be 2 familiar faces that have already worked with them on something they enjoyed. We will be doing an archaeological project with them whereby they survey a local castle and cemetery. They will do all the research, the recording, collating of finds and exhibiting their finds with the aim of adding to the archaeological record. This project will tick off many learning outcomes with the Curriculum for Excellence here in Scotland. I am currently in the process of doing some research and creating the activity plan for the survey of the cemetery...all very exciting!
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| Scoping out Boghall Castle with Ríona |
What Next...
Sooo I have been busy as you can see and I am currently working on a Sports Heritage Resource Kit which I hope will fit in with the run up to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow next year. I have a lot of research to do but I am brimming with ideas...I just need to make sure I can get it all done before my placement is up at the end of September. Seriously cannot believe how fast time has gone, it's really scary!
I will be going to Ardnamurchan for a few days to help out with the outreach on the Ardnamurchan Transitions Project. I will hopefully also get a chance to supervise some of the local volunteers who wish to participate in some excavation...YAY for Community Archaeology!
