Guy Fawkes and the Stuarts

Posted on November 30, 2009 by admin

This month we looked at the Stuarts and Guy Fawkes. We started off with a couple of games.

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We then split into 2 groups: One group looked at secret codes and made there own secret messages and a code to decipher the messages. The clever use of lemon juice made the messages invisible. The messages were sealed tight with a wax seal when they were complete.

The other group played Hangman with a difference, each correct clue would get them a part of the Guy Fawkes story which they then had to put into the correct order to find out what happened to Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder plot.

Each group then swapped over and everyone got to do both activities. We certainly learnt a lot about Guy Fawkes.

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Visit to Truckle Hill

Posted on October 13, 2009 by admin

For our October session we made a visit to the excavation at Truckle Hill.  Typically the weather had been fine for all the other days of the excavation but for our visit it rained a lot! We all walked down to the site together then we had a tour of the site by Phil the site director.

Phil and YAC members sheltering from the rain

Once we knew about the site and what had been discovered this year, we were able to do some digging for ourselves. While one group dug in a test pit, the other group were searching for artefacts that the archaeologists had missed in the spoil heap.

Tour of the site

We were very pleased by what we found – particularly the small pieces of painted wall plaster, which we all thought were great.  A big thank you to Phil and Wessex Archaeology for letting us come and take part, we had a fun time despite the weather!

YAC members digging a test pit
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Trip to Old Sarum

Posted on July 31, 2009 by admin

The July session, (ok, it was actually in June) saw us take a trip to Old Sarum.

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We had two activities organised, one was to use some surveying techniques to carry out a survey of the Old Cathedral and the other was to do some landscape archaeology by walking around the perimeter of Old Sarum and having a look at what else we could see.

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Everyone got to do both activities and it was nice to be out in the summer sun!

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Geophysics

Posted on June 30, 2009 by admin

Geophysics was the topic for this month’s session; we had Ben from Wessex Archaeology come along and tell us what he does and how Geophysics works.

First of all we all went outside and Ben explained to us how to lay out a grid for surveying.

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We then split into groups to take it in turns to carry out activities:

Outside Ben, allowed everyone to have a go at some actual geophysical surveying.

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Inside we had two activities: one looked at Geophysics results and tried to put pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together to give a geophysics plot and then to interpret what we could see.  The other activity was to excavate a geophysics anomaly and see if it matched the plot we had been given.

Everyone really enjoyed the session: A big thanks to Ben for all his help.

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Old Sarum with Julian Richards

Posted on May 31, 2009 by admin

For this month’s session we had a special visitor: Julian Richards came to talk to us about Old Sarum and the project English Heritage had asked him to do. First Julian gave a short talk on Old Sarum. Then we sat and talked about what would make Old Sarum more interesting to visitors and drew some pictures to illustrate our ideas which Julian took away with him.

YAC members with Julian Richards

Julian then set us the task connected with Stonehenge: we had to try to make a raft to float stones on water.

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This proved to be not that easy, but there was definitely a winning design.  Very Clever!

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Stone Circles and Henges

Posted on April 27, 2009 by admin

Stone Circles and Henges were the topic for this month’s session. We started with an introductory talk by Cally, then after looking at aerial photographs and plans we made our own mini stone circles using our favour maize chips!

We then were very ambitious and tried to make a much bigger stone circle!

This proved not as easy as it was meant to me and ever so slightly messy!

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Food through the Ages

Posted on March 27, 2009 by admin

This month we had a look at different foods from the past. We looked at the Roman, Tudor and World War II food and how different it is from today’s food.

For the Romans, we made dormice and stuffed dates:

For the Tudors we made Marchpane:

And for the WWII we made condensed milk Jelly!

Lots of fun, I wonder if the food dye came out!!

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Death and Burial

Posted on February 27, 2009 by admin

For this month’s session we were looking at death and burial. First Cat gave a short talk on how burial practice changed through the ages.

Then it was time to make our burials.  It was a tricky busy cutting out all the parts of the skeletons then assembling them with paper fasteners!

Once the skeletons were made we then had to decide what age our burial can from and make grave goods to go with them.

After this we had a look to see if we could work out what time period everyone’s burials were from.

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Wet, Wet, Wet!

Posted on February 2, 2009 by admin

This month Gemma White came to talk to us about the work of the Coastal and Marine Department at Wessex Archaeology.

She explained why it is important to look underwater and we found out what sort of things the divers find. In fact we found a few objects ourselves!

We had a go at indentifying a whole range of finds – from fossils to bits of aeroplane.

Finally we made our own underwater seascapes, with fish, wrecks and divers.

Gemma works on a project called Time Travelling by Water and you can find out more about it on her website.

Thanks for coming Gemma, we had a great time!

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Christmas Capers

Posted on December 17, 2008 by admin

It’s that time of year again, when all the members of South Wiltshire YAC dress up as people of the past, eat too much, play vaguely historic games and generally have a good time.

The costumes were as brilliant as ever. Cally looked very imperial as a Roman, but couldn’t give herself a prize of course.  In fact the choice of a winner was so difficult that we gave two prizes, one for younger (Bayley )and one for older (Charlotte) members.  

The food was delicious – thank you Richard and Cally – and there wasn’t much of it left by the time we sat down to decorate our festive, archaeological snowmen.

It’s been a great year and now we’re looking forward to all the meetings to come in 2009.

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