In the summer holidays, we were excited to be invited by Derbyshire Scouts to help at their inaugural excavation and activity weekend. So, our intrepid post-excavation expert, Rosie, attended the event – and ended up having such a great time she joined the Derbyshire Scout Archaeology team!
The Derbyshire Archaeology Badge was created a few years ago for the Scouts. As part of their drive to encourage children to think more about the past and their local heritage in particular, the team runs ‘Introduction to Archaeology’ sessions (for groups of all ages from Squirrels to Explorers), as well as the main annual events like the one we helped with. All of these help the attendees fulfil some of the badge requirements. Over 1000 badges have been given out so far!
It was a pleasure to be part of this amazing experience and we got to meet a whole lot of budding archaeologists, from the Cubs on the first day (8-10 years) to the Scouts on the second day (10-14 years). Overall, we had five stations they were able to visit, which got them involved in things like surveying, test pitting, finds handling and finds processing (washing), and Rosie had a great time discussing how to identify worked flint, as well as identifying different classifications of finds and how to date pottery.
All in all, it was an amazing weekend and we can’t wait for next year!
If you want to get involved with Derbyshire Scouts, you can find out more details here: https://www.derbyshirescouts.org/ and follow the Derbyshire Archaeology Team on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/DerbyScoutArch.