"The Dirt Diggers" Excavating the stone age with schoolchildren

The JFA 2019 field season includes several excavations with schoolchildren. What could possibly be a better way to teach history than letting the students participate, hands on, in an excavation of a neolithic dwelling site!

The excavation area prior to the excavation.

The Ölmosviken late Neolithic site was chosen because of it´s relative vicinity to all the participating schools. Some 100 schoolchildren (mainly 11-12 year olds) participated in the excavation during one week.

The Dirt Diggers at work!

Although we were aware that this would be a great site to excavate for the participants the amount of finds recorded was surprisingly high. During the week som 3000 potsherds along with hundreds of quartz and porphyre flakes were found along with burnt seal bones.

Late Neolithic so called "Kiukais" pottery from the dig. 

The many finds of course made the participants wery happy and added a lot to their interest in archaeology. Especially a stone axe found near the end of the five day excavation made many of the schoolchildren want to become archaeologists themselves. 

A complete late neolithic stone axe!

For daily updates from the dig click here!

https://finndinforntid-juurilla.blogspot.com/2019/05/utgravninigsdag-ett-ensimmainen.html 

The Ölmosviken excavation was financed with a grant from "The Finnish Cultural Foundation (Mullankaivajat)".