An Archaeological Dig
History · Year 1–Year 6
Drag a lens down through the ground and go back in time as you go.
About the archaeological dig
An ordinary field with a hedge and a footpath across it, and underneath it every period of its history stacked up in order. Drag the lens down and the ground goes back in time: the plough soil that is turned over every year, then Victorian ground, then medieval, then Roman, then Iron Age, and at the bottom natural ground with nothing people made in it at all.
THE DEEPER IT IS, THE OLDER IT IS. That one idea is what the whole of history rests on and it is very hard to say in words. Here it is a gesture: a drinks can near the top, a clay pipe under it, a horseshoe under that, a Roman coin below that again. A class that has dragged the lens down once can say why an archaeologist digs slowly and writes everything down.
There are nine things to find and one of them is not a thing. A post hole is a dark round stain in the soil where a wooden post rotted away, and most of what is dug up is like that rather than like a coin: a difference in the colour of the ground where something used to be. A round house leaves a ring of them and nothing else, which is how a building with no walls left is found at all.
Nothing is dug up, on purpose. The lens shows you where a thing is and leaves it there, because an archaeologist records where something was before touching it: a find with no layer is a curiosity and a find in a layer is a date. That is the one professional rule worth teaching, and a tool that let a class pull things out of the ground would teach the opposite of it.
The depths are not to scale and the layers are not measured. How deep a period lies varies enormously from one site to another, so the layers here are drawn evenly at a size a class can read rather than pretending to a number. What is always true, on every site anywhere, is the ORDER, and the order is the lesson.
Press Hide under Names and the board stops saying what anything is, so the class does the naming. Press Away under Ground to take the field off and see all five periods and all nine finds at once.
How to use it on your whiteboard
- 1Drag the lens down through the ground, or press anywhere on the picture to move it there.
- 2Read the period the board names, and count the layers between the grass and the natural ground.
- 3Hunt for the nine finds. Ask which is oldest before the class has looked, then let them check.
- 4Ask why there is nothing people made in the bottom layer.
- 5Press Hide under Names to let the class do the naming, and Away under Ground to show the lot.
Questions
- What is this for?
- Showing how we know about the past. Every other history tool shows a period; this one shows where the evidence comes from and why it is in the order it is in. It works as an introduction to a unit on any period, and as the answer to the question a class always asks, which is how anybody knows.
- Why is the top layer all mixed up?
- Because it is ploughed. A field turned over every year has this year's rubbish and last century's in the same soil, which is why the plough soil is the one layer where the order cannot be trusted. Everything below it has been left alone.
- What is a post hole?
- A dark round stain where a wooden post stood and rotted away. The post is long gone and the hole it was standing in filled up with darker soil, so what survives is a difference in colour. Round houses, halls and fences are found this way: a ring or a line of post holes and nothing else.
- Are the depths right?
- No, and they are not meant to be. How deep a period lies depends completely on the site, so the layers are drawn evenly at a readable size rather than claiming centimetres this tool cannot know. The order of the layers is the part that is always true.
- Do I need an account?
- No. Trove Tools is free with no login, no subscription and no limits.