Autumn is always a busy time at the YEAR Centre. The autumn of 2019 proved particularly exciting as we rolled out a series of workshops to a whole cohort of newly arrived undergraduate students, aspects of which are linked to the research in this project.

We created a workshop that would allow us to introduce students to some of the core materials used by prehistoric societies, focusing around stone, soft plant, and wood. These materials were explored through the production of stone tools that could then be used to process and work with other materials, providing a practical introduction to the concept of chaîne opératoire.

To this end, we led students in a flint knapping workshop in which scrapers and awls were produced. The scrapers we later used to help in the processing of soft plants, focusing on nettle, but with other materials provided for contrast. The fibres extracted were used to create string. The awls we later used to perforate soft stone (shale) to create beads. When taken together, this allowed students to explore the process of producing stone tools, using these stone tools to process other materials and create other artefacts or components of artefacts, and combine the produced elements into composites, in this case ending up with a string of beads or a strung pendant. Working experimentally in this way proved hugely helpful in trying to explore complex concepts, such as craft and chaîne opératoire, helping the students explore how elements of material culture sets in archaeological assemblages might be connected.