Time Travelling by Water

During a recent visit to Chilmark and Fonthill Bishop primary school in Wiltshire Time Travelling by Water became the accidental subject of an Ofsted inspection. The school, which was rated as ‘Outstanding’, was praised for its focus on enrichment. ‘For example,’ states the Ofsted report, ‘in one history lesson both pupils and adults were enthralled by the task of discovering the use of various artefacts brought in by Wessex Archaeology.’ High praise indeed!

Time Travelling by Water workshops are still available for 2009. If you would like your school to benefit from a hands on approach to history, please contact education officer Gemma Ingason to make a booking.

Last Saturday Time Travelling by Water visited the South Wiltshire branch of the Young Archaeologists’ Club to help them to learn about marine archaeology.

After an introduction to the topic, our intrepid archaeologists set about exploring some underwater artefacts hidden in buckets. They couldn’t see the finds and used a reference collection to work out what they were. This is what our divers sometimes have to do when diving to great depths or in murky water. For realism and to give the YAC’s a feel for what it is really like to be submerged in British waters, the water was not heated!

We finished the session by using everything we had learnt about marine archaeology to create some marine themed snow globes to remind us of the day.