investigators – West Earlham Junior School

Welcome to our 2023/2024 Year 5 Blog

Year 5 Trip to Norwich- ‘Our Fine City’

We went to visit the centre of Norwich. Once there we were given a number of challenges to complete on our trip. These included:

Visiting Norwich Market
Creating a map of key Norwich landmarks that can be viewed from the top of the market.
Going on a George Skipper building hunt to think about how one architect can make a difference to one city.
Viewing the George Skipper’s botanical tiles in the Royal Arcade.
Sketching the botanical tiles to provide inspiration for our printing designs once back in school.
Investigating the modern Norwich streets for historical clues as well as journeying underground to find out what hidden secrets lie beneath our feet.

**Looking for Norwich landmarks.**
**Here is the spire of our Norman Cathedral.**

What did they eat? How did they cook?

We discovered a possible answer to two more of our questions in our current guided reading book. The Neolithic people ground flour from seeds, mixed in with water to make a dough and cooked the bread on stones heated by fire. We were excited to try this in our Neolithic archaeology experiment!

First, we dug a pit in our Neolithic site.

Next, our adult lit a fire within the pit.

After that, we fed the fire with grass and foraged fire wood until the fire was filling the pit.

Then, we placed a flat stone on top of some bricks which heated up.
Initially, we tried to cook the dough we had made using long sticks but this didn’t work very well. The dough stayed uncooked in the middle!

Eventually, we discovered that the bread cooked quicker if it was really thin. We put it straight on the stone!
Finally, we found out the bread on sticks cooked if you held it in the fire. You had to be careful you didn’t set it on fire though!

It was the best bread that some of us had ever tasted even if we were a bit dirty afterwards!It must have been so much work just to make one little piece of bread!

Update: Did the houses have roofs?

We returned to our experimental model houses after a few days to see if they had survived the weather. Here are our results:

Things that went well

The roof sticks stayed in the ground as we had made sure that they were pushed in well.
Some of us had used leaves to cap off the roof. These stayed on because they were spiked onto the wood.

Things that didn’t go so well

The grass we used had mostly blown away. It was hard to attach it to the wood.
Some of the houses had not been tied tight enough and came untied

Conclusion

We have decided that loose dead grass is not the way. Although the leaves worked, it might have been hard to find leaves big enough for a real sized house.

Bella-Rose found a picture of a reconstruction where they had put material over the sticks.

We also now think they put dirt over the top of this a grew grass over like this…

We are starting now to make a model of Skara Bare using our ideas.

Pictures to follow.

Did the houses have roofs?

One of our questions was about the roofs of the houses that were built into the ground. We talked about the fact that it was so long ago that much of the house may have rotted away. We looked at how they may have constructed the roofs with wood.

Now we have a design that we think will work we have constructed our own house to experiment with how they were covered. We think they may have used grass and leaves.

We will leave our experimental house for a night to see if they survive the weather…

More updates to come.

Foraging and Gathering

Now that we have chosen to investigate our questions using experimental archaeology, we have begun to set up our site.

First, some our our archaeologists set up make shift shelters using the string and furs that the Neolithic people would have had at the time (we didn’t have furs so we used waterproof sheets!).

Meanwhile, the other investigators spent some time seeing whether it was possible to forage enough food from the surrounding area. Despite finding plenty of things we could eat, we decided that it would not last us very long.

This meant that the people of Skara Brae must have had something else that gave them food other than gathering as their ancestors did.

Questions…and Answers

We decided to categorise the questions we came up with about Skara Brae…

Questions about the houses of Skara Brae…

Did they have roofs?
Did they know how to make house they were not underground?
Why were the houses underground?
Were the houses comfortable?
How many builders were needed?
Where did they have the toilet?
Did the houses have doors?
How did they make the bricks?
How did they move the bricks?

Question about the Neolithic lifestyle…

What did they wear?
How did they make weapons?
What was the weather like?
How did they protect themselves?
What did they eat?
What animals were around them?
Did they have pets?
How did they cook?
Did they travel?

What’s next…?

We have decided to do some experimental archaeology in order to answer some of our questions. We will try to be like the Neolithic people that settled Skara Brae to find out more about how they lived their lives and why the village looks like it does now.