Understanding Dartmoor’s Bronze Age past.
Enquiry Question:
How can artists help archaeologists?
Or more accurately:
“How can artists help archaeologists recreate Bronze Age life?”
Outline plan – for adaptation as required by schools
NB This history enquiry has a focus on what the national Curriculum calls
“Interpretations of history”. Ofsted inspections have identified this aspect of the
curriculum as being under-developed in many schools. It involves helping
children to understand that different people give different versions of the past in
different forms and some reasons why this happens. The enquiry builds up
understanding in this important aspect of work.
Enquiry title
How can artists help archaeologists?
Learning
objectives
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To know when the Bronze Age was
To know how people lived on Dartmoor in the Bronze Age and to be
able to see similarities and differences in their own way of life today
To understand how archaeologists work
To understand how artists use archaeological finds to reconstruct
the past through images – i.e. they make “Interpretations of history”
To understand how and why artists may interpret the past differently
from each other
To develop instructional writing
Starter
activity
Put an artist’s paintbrush and a builder’s trowel into a “feely bag” together.
Invite one or two pupils to try to work out what the bag contains just by
feeling it. Then get them to mime to the class what they think the object
would be used for. The class guesses what the objects are. Reveal them.
Discuss who uses them and how. Tell them that this next enquiry will show
how two people who use these need to work together closely and carefully
to help us to understand the past.
Step 1
Pause and ask the class if they know what archaeologists do. (Write the
word on the board and get the class to say it several times – it can help to
tell them they need to feel the word in their mouth!) The definition of an
archaeologist can be simple at this point eg “Someone who digs to find
objects left from long ago and who uses them to work out how people lived
in the past”. Tell children that they call the objects they find “artefacts”.
Ask if anyone can see a link to either of the two objects from the bag yet.
They may mention the trowel. If not, move on.
Step 2
This Step is not essential, provided pupils understand the way
archaeology works. If you want to spend time on the work of
archaeologists, there are some very good support materials available at :
http://www.canterburytrust.co.uk/schools/rubbish/rubbpg02.htm
“Why history is a load of old rubbish” – Helpful visual aids, explanations
and activities to help young people understand how archaeology works.
The link below has a range of activities that you could use to help
children grasp the essentials. There is a particularly useful cross section
picture of how different layers may contain clues about succeeding ages
of life on a site.
http://www.canterburytrust.co.uk/schools/discover/discov04.htm
Archaeology in the classroom – this offers more practical ideas and
activities for developing understanding of archaeology. Bringing in a
range of tools will make it more real. If you show a range of different
objects made from different materials you can get the class to rank order
them by which would rot away quickest, slowest, or not at all.
You can play an in-class archaeology game with some pictures of
objects and some sheets of A4 paper. Start with an empty table and tell
the children that it represents a particular field.
Invent several stories based on what might have happened there over
several centuries. For each story place a picture of an object from the
story on the table. For each passing quarter century place a blank sheet
of A4 paper over the object, explaining that it represents the grass and
vegetation that would grow up and then rot down to create a layer of soil.
Then add the next picture, then some more A4 sheets and so on to the
present day. Challenge pupils to recall which objects they will find and in
what order if they “dig” back through the A4 sheets. Can they recall the
story attached to each object? Lift the A4 sheets one by one to see if
they are right.
After this, challenge children to think of (or find in books) objects from
different ages that archaeologists might find. (E.g. Roman swords, or
medieval coins, or Victorian machinery). They can draw or write about
these on a blank timeline. The point is to establish that they understand
how archaeology works, when the Bronze Age was and what objects
may come from what age.
In doing this work, it is worth explaining that Dartmoor makes the work of
the archaeologist even harder as its soil is so acid that it eats away at
artefacts or natural materials that may survive in other places. One point
that may help children understand the Bronze Age hut construction is
that when wooden posts rot away, they leave a different colour soil in the
holes they stood in. This means archaeologists can work out where posts
would have stood.
Step 3
Show Slide 2 from the Powerpoint “Bronze Age Images” and issue
copies if you like. The artist’s reconstruction of a Bronze Age Round
House. (NB the copyright on this image allows copying for use only in
your school).
Now show slides 3 – 8: Ask the pupils to find features that fit with the
images they have in front of them – this is not entirely easy so may need
support. There should only be about two or three e.g. the shape, the wall
construction and the doorway. Raise the question – “How do we know if
the artist just made up the rest?”
Move to slide 9. Explain the process of ‘archaeology’ – digging up
artefacts and interpreting meaning from these.
Now show slide 10. Model for the pupils the next task i.e. they must
annotate the first box with things that they can see in the picture (a
descriptive task). Then they must add explanations to the outer box
identifying the object in the drawing that the archaeologist must have
shown the artist to prove that this actually happened in the Bronze Age.
Some harder examples are given on the slide.
After they have worked in pairs to annotate lots of examples, choose
several to mime an action that should help the class to guess which part
of the picture they are going to talk about (e.g. firing arrows). Once it has
been guessed the pair must explain what clue/artefact the archaeologists
may have used to show the artist that this really happened in the Bronze
Age. Extra points go to any pair that can identify clues that
archaeologists must have found on other sites because they would not
have survived in Dartmoor’s acid soil.
You could annotate a class version and count how many they found.
Step 4
Emphasise that in many ways the people living on Dartmoor over three
thousand years ago were very like us. If you wish you could use the
artist’s reconstruction as the basis for a comparison between Then and
Now / Similarities and Differences.
Tell pupils to base their observations on their own home. That way it may
be more similar for a farming family than for city dwellers. Above all be
sure to establish that whatever the age (or place) we live in, humans
have some common, timeless needs: shelter, warmth, food, and
companionship.
Step 5
By now the class should know the artist’s reconstruction and the
Dartmoor site very well. Set up some instructional writing in which the
pupils must make clear how to build a Bronze Age Roundhouse. This
could of course be done in time allocated for Literacy work.
You could divide the task between groups e.g. some write about
gathering materials, others write about making the walls, others do the
roof and others do the “furnishings” or other objects needed to make life
more comfortable.
There is fact sheet about prehistoric sites that has been produced by the
Dartmoor National Park Authority. It has line drawings of a Bronze Age
hut being built and some extra information and also further supports
learning about archaeological artefacts. It can be downloaded from –
http://www.dartmoor.gov.uk/learningabout/lab-printableresources/labjunior-factsheets
Scroll down to ‘Introducing Prehistoric Dartmoor’.
Step 6
Conclusion
To round off their learning, show the pupils the trowel and the artist brush
you started the unit with. Ask then to talk in pairs about what they have
learned about how Artists help Archaeologists bring the past to life. Take
several of their ideas in discussion.
End the session by holding up the trowel and paintbrush and saying that
each has to be used very carefully! Archaeologists can’t be sloppy or
they will miss vital clues. Artists can’t just put anything they like into their
“reconstructions”.
Resources
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Powerpoint with images from Dartmoor and annotated
artist’s reconstruction
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Downloaded factsheet for KS2 ‘Introducing Prehistoric
Dartmoor’
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Teachers’ resources – further background about
Dartmoor’s past can be downloaded from:
http://www.dartmoor.gov.uk/lookingafter/laf-culturalheritage/lafarchaeology/laf-prehistoricdartmoor