The Benefits For Children Of Working With Archaeologists: reading answers

A group of excited children are instructing community archaeologist Colin Shepherd when to drop a china mug on the floor so that they can see how it breaks on impact. They will use the results of this experiment to better understand an archaeological find: the broken pieces of an old marmalade jar, last used for breakfast around 100 years ago. The children had recently excavated the jar from woodland as part of an archaeological investigation.

When schoolchildren are invited to visit archaeological excavations, they rarely have much specific knowledge about the site's history. They are normally given straightforward tasks like washing and sorting finds, that is, any discoveries that are of archaeological interest. What is less common is to find primary school pupils working as partners with an archaeologist. Our project lets primary school children take a joint role in an archaeological investigation, working actively alongside an expert in the field.

The children's archaeological investigations were part of a larger project initiated by a community group which works to study and preserve the landscape of the Bennachie hills region in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The main project was developed with a team from the University of Aberdeen and funded by a Community Heritage fund and the National Lottery. It focused on the history and archaeology of an abandoned mid-19th-century settlement, located on common ground on the lower slopes of the Bennachie hills. Colin Shepherd set up two additional archaeological projects with local primary school children and their teachers. Each project investigated the history of the place in which the pupils live and go to school.

At one of the schools, the excavation took place in woodland where pupils usually take part in outdoor learning. Before the archaeology project began, the children viewed the woodland as existing only in the present. Through their work, they became aware of its history and the people who lived and worked on the land near their school in the past. Taking on the role of historians and working with primary source materials, such as maps, census returns and tax payments, the children were able to develop their own lines of enquiry. Their research suggested that there had been a water mill in the area, so their excavations set out to find it. The children, working with the community archaeologist, found evidence for this. They also discovered the remains of a 19th- or 20th-century midden, or rubbish dump, containing many pieces of broken pottery.

My role as a teacher educator specialising in history education was to work alongside pupils and staff to create an exhibition for their families and the general public. Following a visit to the university to see the museum there, the children produced a timeline of everything they had found to show the period in history to which each item belonged. They went on to invent a 'guess the object' game to engage visitors in their discoveries. The children were given the use of the museum's replica of a 17th-century collector's cabinet for their exhibition. During the identification of the pottery pieces, one was identified as coming from the distinctive Seaton workshop in Aberdeen, so a complete example was borrowed from the museum and included in the cabinet alongside it. Because it used a high-quality display cabinet, the children's exhibition gained a similar status to that of a real museum for the parents and community members who came to see it.

The project meant the children could lead their own historical investigations and expand their understanding of the places in which they live and the heritage of their family and community. This is a key principle in the Social Studies section of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence, the national framework for learning for children between the ages of three and 18. Not only did the children learn the history of the place, they learned to understand the process of creating historical knowledge. Through their museum visit, they learned how to select items for display and to think about how to talk to other people about the history they had created.

Setting up the exhibition and showing it to people aided conversations between children and their community. One of the children discovered that their great-grandfather had once owned the Seaton workshop. The grandmother of another child recounted her memories of making oatmeal porridge in a small bowl decorated with the same floral design as a pottery piece on display. The archaeological investigations carried out by the children created a real-life context for them to play an active part in learning – educating not just themselves but their community too.