Archives: Projects

Ancient Worlds is a concept-resource for teachers, home schoolers and parents to help deliver high-quality prehistorical and historical education to children from 6-16.

Products include guidebooks on specific time periods – completed guidebooks include Mesolithic Britain and Neolithic Britain, Ancinet Egypt and World War I in Sussex.

Each handbook can be enhanced with tailored products – lesson plans, worksheets and suggested activity packs, Powerpoint presentations and schemes-of-works.

“For-a-Day” packages are in the-offing and will help educators prepare and provide a fun-filled day of enhanced learning for specific topics, for example:  Ancient Britain’s First Farmers For-a-Day and Ancient-Egyptian-for-a-Day.

Other resources will also be available to purchase from the site, including flint-tool-kits, posters and craft kits.

This website is due to launch this winter 2018.  If you would like to be added to our mailing list, please send your request to info@ancientworlds.org.uk.

http://www.ancientworlds.org.uk

Click the link below for a sample of the Mesolithic Handbook.

climate and landscape for blog

I started managing the Sussex School of Archaeology in 2014.

The school provides archaeological training, courses and events for adults across Sussex and has taken inspiration from the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) program at the University of Sussex.

We run the annual Sussex Archaeology Symposium, featuring guest speakers from across the region delivering the latest in archaeological news, projects and research, from academics to professional archaeologists and hobbyists.  The event has been very popular and a highlight of the archaeological program, here in Sussex.

We have also held the Holleyman Lecture each Spring, in memory of George Alfred Holleyman, a well-respected Sussex Archaeologist, on topics as diverse as Mesolithic land surfaces, the Legend of King Arthur and medieval maritime trading posts.

Our annual fieldschool has been established at Plumpton Roman villa since 2014, with students attending the excavation from all around the world.  This year, we greeted an 81 year old and her daughter from Canada, as well as multiple 17 year olds working out the Duke of Edinburgh Award Residential Projects.  The villa has been a delight to work on, a true blend of academia and exploration.  Students and volunteers have contributed to the amassing of a wealth of archaeological data – which will be subject to post-excavation analysis and a seasonal report.

We have run workshops and day schools on all aspects of archaeology, archaeological theory, artefact identification and period synopses.

We have held workshops for other organisations, including the South Downs National Parks Association (SDNPA) and have taught experimental archaeology to schools.

Coming soon – 2017 Newsletter PDF

Coming soon – Plumpton Roman villa

Coming soon – event photos

A year at Archaeology Club – a week-by week account featuring lesson plans and inspiration for you to run your own club or inspire your own children – COMING SOON!

Last year, I ran an archaeology club at my children’s infant school.  It was challenging and ever-so-slightly-mind-blasting and so much fun!

I’ve been inspired by experimental archaeology ever since coming across ESAMP East Sussex Archaeology and Museums Project) while I was studying for my Masters in Field Archaeology at the University of Sussex.  From pottery making to round house construction via foraging and flint knapping, experimental archaeologists get to explore the results of archaeological excavation – in the hope of interpreting the behaviour and methodology – and in turn , the psychology of our ancient ancestors.  It’s heady stuff.  And it needs to be passed on to future generations.

Education is not just about curriculum.  There are many, many ways to learn and many wonderful concepts to explore and many wonderful ways to learn them.  Experimental archaeology is the perfect tool for ancestral inspiration.

The year at Archaeology Club was full of experimental fun and fun-fun, games and activities, cooking and den-building, story-writing, collaging and drawing, digging, metal-detecting and artefact identification.

The children were featured in the local paper – the Eastbourne Herald – when they took part in a Heritage Eastbourne Excavation at the site of a medieval dovecote in Motcombe Gardens, Old Town, Eastbourne.

We wanted to understand chronology – not the piecemeal, disjointed history taught in school – the chronology of the world as we know it – humankind in its place in the history of everything.  So we explored the concept of the Big Bang and rode time-and-space-waves through to the formation of the solar system and planet earth and the evolution of cells and fish and reptiles and dinosaurs and mammals and birds.. and through extinctions and evolutions until we arrived at the ancestors of chimpanzees and humans.  From there, we followed human evolution through to the evolution of homo sapiens, the Ice Ages and the Stone Ages, through cultural and material evolutions into the Bronze and Iron Ages – we glimpsed the Egyptians, Romans and Vikings and explored cave paintings, hunter-gathering and farming.  We grew our own ancient wheat strains (Emmer and Einkorn) and invented our own pictographic languages.

Photo 1: Turning the soil over before planting Emmer, Einkorn and Modern Wheat for comparison – Archaeology Club Members.

 

I adore writing articles for Aquila Magazine!

The magazine is “an advanced and philosophical magazine that’s perfect for curious young humans of 8 – 12 years!”

Each month, a new topic is explored, introducing children to scintillating and humorous concepts and a thought-provoking blend of arts and sciences, history and general knowledge.

I have written numerous articles for the magazine, including Euclid of Alexandria (Here’s Looking at Euclid!), Lunar Cycles, Chinese Moon Myths, Heracleion and underwater archaeology, Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules, A walk-through Elizabethan London, Game Theory, Growing your own vegetables, wild camping, how to become a millionaire, fossil hunting, Australopithecus and our shared ancestors, fire control by early humans, Odin and his Ravens, Yggdrasil, Thor and Loki, Ancient Gods in the days of the week, Childhood Growth from foetus to 10 years old, Thinking like a Detective, The formation of Planet Earth and Yellowstone Supervolcano, Evolution of the Cute Factor and the Mechanics of Birdsong.  I’m currently working on articles on a new commission.

Through enhanced education, we place the future of humanity in capable hands.

You can take a look at some of my articles here:

Diving Heracleion

Elizabethan Streetwalk

Here’s looking at Euclid

How to find a Black Hole

How you grow 2

How you grow

 

This was a fun project to work on!  I was collaborating with a paper craft expert and visual artists, through Ivy Publishing (now Quarto).

The book – aimed at Primary-age children – is an introduction to archaeology and archaeological theory, an appraisal of the later medieval period, castles and sieges and an archaeological exploration (in paper) of a medieval castle, as well as a 3d model to construct.

It’s available at amazon (and other book retailers) with the feature enabled, here: Build! A Knight’s Castle

First Published in the UK in 2015 by Ivy Press and distributed worldwide (except North America) by Thames & Hudson Ltd.