Our outreach officers are bringing archaeology into schools across Wales. This month I was lucky enough to join Bethan in Denbighshire to learn about Caer Drewyn at the nearby school named after it, Ysgol Caer Drewyn. We learned about the Iron Age people of Wales living in round houses with thatched roofs, farming, making clothes and making offerings of precious things into rivers and lakes.
Caer Drewyn hillfort still has huge banks of stone left from the walls, and if you look carefully, you can see the areas of flat ground that people may have built their houses on. There are similar house platforms on the lower slopes too, one of which was being excavated by Heneb staff and volunteers. We discussed what tools archaeologists use and what they might find.
After our classroom session we took the class of children to visit the site of the excavation near the bottom of the hill, and we were able to walk up to the hillfort itself.
Ruth joined us from the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley National Landscape and told us about the special landscape we were walking through with a wide variety of habitats including acidic grassland, she pointed out the Hawthorne blossom you can see in some of these pictures and how to identify it.
Ian showed us what had been found, tiny fragments of medieval pottery, the class got to see archaeology happening and ask the archaeologists questions about their work. As we walked up the hill we talked about possible links to Owain Gwynedd, Owain Glyndwr, the hillfort being used in times of trouble to shelter cattle and legends of the hillfort being built by giants.
We paused at the top to look at the walls and try to spot the neighbouring hillforts on nearby hills. Bethan showed us where people have been piling the stones up, clearly a fairly universal human activity, but one that damages the archaeology, so we should resist the impulse! It was very windy and round houses that the wind might blow around seemed very sensible. That wind quickly brought rain and hail so our plan for a picnic at the top was swapped for a quick exit and of course, as soon as we were back on the main path down, the sun came back out and helped thaw us out.
The school children hurried back to class for their lunch and Bethan and I were able to join in the house platform dig. Both of us found small sherds of pottery that were likely 12th century, perhaps the people living there could have told us about seeing Owain Gwynedd ride by!
If your school would like a similar visit from an archaeologist, please get in touch, [email protected]
Alice Evans, Outreach South West
