The concept of archaeology being a form of detective work is a fun way of setting the scene for further classroom work with archaeological material. Archaeologists are like police detectives – they look for clues, take careful records, use scientific techniques to find out more, ask questions and reach conclusions. They build up stories of our many different pasts. But the story if never fact – it is only a best guess based on the available evidence and on the interpretation of that evidence. If more evidence comes to light, the story may change.

Playing the Detective

The notes below suggest approaches you might take with your pupils for the following activity sheets attached – The Left Luggage Game and the Dustbin Game. In each game, you should introduce to pupils the idea of acting out the role of a detective, using clues, asking questions and reaching conclusions based on evidence and discussing hypotheses in groups.

Left Luggage Game

There are four pictures on the activity sheet. Each is from a different period of time – the Victorian era, the Second World War, the 1960’s and the present day. Tell your pupils that:

the bags have been found in the left luggage office at a railway station but nobody has claimed them

the left luggage staff have asked for help to find clues to the identity of the owners

You then ask four groups to investigate and then share the findings with the rest of the class. Question why the conclusions had been reached about the owners identity, and encourage the class to think about why the items have been identified with gender, occupation etc. You may or may not wish to tell your class that the bags are from different periods at the beginning. There is one object that is in the wrong bag – see if your pupils notice!

The Dustbin Game

The activity sheet contains four pictures of dustbins from different families. Ask pupils to match the families to their dustbins and be prepared to justify their answers. Get the pupils to think about whether the evidence from the dustbin suggests:

if there are any children in the family?

if there are any family pets and if so, what sort?

what season of the year it is?

what jobs do they think the adults do?

Remember to explain that the evidence may not be there to supply the answers.

You could also get the class to make a list of the objects they can spot in each dustbin and put them into a number of categories to help them work out who might be the owners, for example, food waste or evidence of pets. Make lists of what will rot down and what will remain – so the pupils will get an idea of what is likely to be lost in the archaeological record due to decomposing.

Archaeological Detective Games

Used with kind permission of Mike Corbishley, UCL.