This month at YAC, following a Halloween-y theme, bones were the focus of the session. The task for the day was to cut out and assemble a skeleton. Then members learned about different burial rites and practices, including what different grave goods were associated with different archaeological periods.
After that they created a burial for their skeleton and filled out a burial record sheet describing what objects they had chosen to bury with it and why. Once they had created their burial they had to take a blank record sheet and look at someone else’s. Then as an archaeologist fill in the sheet from the evidence within the burial.
After this they compared their interpretation of the evidence with that of the person who created the burial, to see how accurate it was. Members learned that it’s not easy being an archaeologist and that there can be lots of different reasons why the same objects might be placed in a grave!