Festival of Archaeology: Baffling Bones!
Last month, we decided to assemble a table of animal bones and activities for the Festival of Archaeology, which was held at the Roman Baths on Monday 17th July. This involved sorting through and selecting an appropriate variety of animal bones, that were suitable for the public to handle and use for the activities.
Once we had chosen the bones,
we then had a task of identifying what part of the skeleton they came from and
what animal it belonged to (this could be hard, especially if they were
broken!) After going through 5kg of assorted animal bones and fragments, we had
a huge mixture, that ranged from a pig’s vertebrae
(part of the spine) to a horse’s tibia
(upper back leg bone) and a cow’s mandible (jaw).
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| Vicky and Maddy with their 'Baffling Bones!' handling table |
We also set up an activity called “Baffling Bones!”, the
aim of this was to see if people could identify the bones provided, and try to figure out which animal they came from. For the younger children, there was a game,
where they were given a picture of a cow’s skeleton, and they had to put the
labels of bones in the correct places to win a
sticker!
On the table, we also had a
cow’s skull which was found in the Temple Precinct (thought to be medieval) and
photos of the Temple Precinct under excavation.
I brought the bones out again for Tuesday Times Tables the next day, and had a
total of 96 visitors in 2 hours!
If you missed the Festival of Archaeology or the start of our Tuesday Times Tables, don't panic! Handling tables continue every
Tuesday evening until the 29th of August.
Maddy
Placement Student
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