Young Archaeologists in the Pandemic

Metal detecting in Fordham revealed a surprising number of objects.  When Colchester Young Archaeologists' Club visited Fordham, they found out the village had been occupied since the Stone Age. They learned that ring ditches had been identified from satellite images, many flints had been discovered, together with a plethora of artefacts from more recent centuries. They learned metal detecting techniques and discovered a considerable number of metal objects, considering what a small site it was. They were instructed in magnetometry to discover more about changes to the environment and occupation of the village. They solved some archaeological puzzles and identified some animal bones from a bag. One YAC brought in the c. 300,000-year-old fossil bison bone she discovered on East Mersea beach to show our host, the chairman of Colchester Archaeological Group. Coastal erosion from exceptionally high tides had dislodged the fossil from the cliffs and washed it on to the estuary mud. Arch...

 Our April meeting of the Young Archaeologists' Club started with some interesting finds which members had brought in. One had found a flint scraping tool at Wrabness, which dated from the Stone Age or earlier. We compared life in Ancient Egypt with that in the British Isles, ending with Roman rule in Egypt and the Roman invasion of Britain. This we illustrated with pictures of the doctor or druids grave excavated in Stanway in 1996, which revealed the game interpreted as Aquila. Inspired with pictures of Egyptian artworks and hieroglyphs. The young people then set to and wrote their own names in hieroglyphs, or designed cards, or played Aquila. From the Stone Age, a flint scraping tool, which the young man who found it demonstrated it's serrated edge was still sharp and that it was easy to handle.

  The picture shows a young archaeologist making a detailed drawing of a Roman pot sherd, having created a Bronze Age hut from a kit. Young Archaeologists met at Roman Circus House to share their finds and treasures with us this morning. These included a piece of Roman tesserae,  Roman, Greek and English coins, fragments of clay pipes, fossilised creepy crawlies in stones, and a vole skull. They also shared the stories of where the artefacts had been found. Some were handed on from grandparents. The finds were arranged in trays and taken round the room for everyone to look at and handle.     We had a presentation from two volunteers, who told a story depicting Bronze Age life and showed pictures of Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age sites, which included, Skara Brae, Orkney, a Neolithic flint mine at Grimes Graves, Norfolk, and a Bronze Age copper mine at the Great Orme, Llandudno. The YACs were eager to share  their site visits. One had visited the Bronze Age s...

 Invited to bring in their treasures and discoveries to be identified and dated, the response from members of Colchester Young Archaeologists' Club was unexpected. Found near her school, one of our youngest members, had a Roman pot sherd and part of a vitrious enamel pot from centuries later. Another YAC had discovered some fossils from the Suffolk coast at Bawdsey and showed us some interesting finds from an organised archaeological exercise in London. We had an update from the YAC who had discovered the fossil bison bone at East Mersea. She brought in some other bones discovered on the Mersea Island coast, and was able to demonstrate how she had cleaned them up and show us what part of the animal they were from (picture above). None of our members minded handling, identifying and examining these. Our refreshment break was enhanced with a visual presentation of cave paintings from one of our volunteers. Following this, club members created their own cave paintings with pastels and...

 Colchester Young Archaeologists' Club met in Roman Circus House this month, January, and shared our discoveries and finds. We passed them round for identification and to handle them. We talked about the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods and looked at the short period for the life of man at the top of our "Life on Earth" time line. We looked at pictures of flint axes and arrows discovered at Fingringhoe and Walton and found flint shards and burnt flint among the finds we washed in November. After that we looked at the structures early man built, including Stone Henge, in Lego and round houses, which we made up from kits. Pictures below, henges in Lego and round houses from kits.

 Some members of Colchester Young Archaeologists' club bring fossils and artefacts they have found to show us when we meet. Our December meeting was no exception.    A 15-year-old brought in more fragments he had picked up for us to identify and to show other members of the club. He was particularly keen to match a fragment of an amphora with one of the exhibits in Roman Circus House.      As it was our last meeting for the year and a festive one, we decorated cards, filled out quiz sheets and played games. One of these, "Will the Barrow Survive",  is a game devised by Mike Corbishly who started Colchester Young Archaeologists' Club in the 1970s, one of the first clubs in the country. We found the game printed in an edition of the "Colchester Archaeologist". We enlarged it and adapted it to be played. It is a difficult game to win, as points are lost when barrows are damaged by various forms of human activity, including erosion, ploughing, infrastructu...