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Ashover Rock Art - Editorial
Building a Bronze Age Roundhouse
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Building a Bronze Age Roundhouse
Location: Derbyshire
A group of 10 year old wandering around the playing field, carrying lumps of wood, big saws, chisels and spades sounds like most teachers’ idea of a health and safety nightmare. But if the group are involved in building a replica Bronze Age roundhouse (and are supervised by their teachers, we need to add), then they are probably taking part in a Local Heritage Initiative school archaeology project.
When a large rock with Bronze Age carvings was found in the grounds of Ashover Primary School, the children were involved from the start in the preservation of the rock art and even helped to make replicas.
Reproducing the drawings on the stones was part of their art classes, and in history they looked at the way people lived 3000 years ago. What really fired their enthusiasm, though, was the opportunity to build a replica roundhouse in the school grounds. Not a model to look at in the classroom. A real, big, wooden roundhouse just like the one people would have lived in. The Local Heritage Initiative provided the funds to do it, but the school and the children put many hours of hard work into making it a reality.
 It wasn’t just for fun, though. Ashover teacher, Marisa Signora and project leader, Frank Parker looked at how the project could fit in with the curriculum, and they came up with ideas to include the roundhouse in lessons. So, year 4 pupils , who are requested in the curriculum to learn about and use ancient technology, got the chance to make wooden 3 legged stools for the roundhouse. The art topic for year 1’s was to investigate natural and man-made material. Weaving fitted in perfectly with this topic and the building of the roundhouse.
Art was very well represented, with children going as far as carving decorative patterns on the wooden posts of the roundhouse. Year 5 and 6 got to improve their knowledge of technology by marking out the circular floor of the roundhouse, measuring it with tape and putting in the markers. They also got to study early varieties of wheat and built a clay oven to bake small bread cobs. Talk of bringing history to life, from seeds to sandwiches in one easy lesson!
Archaeology is a fun way of learning for children. It lets them come into contact with the past and excites their imagination. They can explore the past for themselves and imagine what life would have been like. Children can marvel at the differences and similarities between the people in the past and our own time.
Archaeology is not, in itself, part of the National Curriculum, but the activities supporting an archaeology project include Design and Technology, History, Art, English and Sciences. Most schools would not attempt to take their pupils on a ‘real’ archaeology dig, but the rewards of a large archaeology project can be better results for the students and very good publicity for the school. St Bede's Comprehensive School in Cherry Hinton near Cambridge, took the challenge head on, and focussed the student members of 2XL, the support group for able students, towards a full dig at a site known locally as "Giant's Grave".
The summer dig, run with the help of professional archaeologist and under the supervision of the Country Archaeologist, collected tons of information about a spring that has always been part of local folklore. The dig didn’t find any treasure, just boxes of pottery and artefacts dating back to early mediaeval times. For the teachers at the school this is a treasure indeed: it will keep the students busy for month cataloguing, researching and displaying the finds. And this year’s project in Design and Technology is a very large website to display the hundreds of photographs, maps and drawings.
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