IT'S a damp spring day and up to 25 young archaeologists are beavering away on a muddy site in Dublin's Temple Bar watched over by Transition Year students from St Mary's College in Naas, Co Kildare. The archaeologists are excavating a Viking settlement on Lower Exchange Street. The St Mary's girls are hoping that something exciting will be uncovered.
A few weeks ago a group of boys, having been warned by their teacher that there is a lot more to archaeology than the discovery of old bones, were delighted to witness the uncovery of a medieval skeleton.
Today, although there are no major finds, the remains of a one-thousand-year-old industrial area are clearly visible. "People were building fires to bake things," archaeologist Helen Kehoe explains to the girls. "And we've found a lot of whet-stones which were used to sharpen tools and stacks of small stones - heat stones - which were used to boil water."
The area was also littered with bone and metal pins which would have been used to fasten cloaks. Many of the pins are unpolished, indicating that they were being manufactured here, Kehoe says. Some of the better finds include a finely decorated bronze pin and an elaborately decorated bone comb which was made in three sections. Is this the Viking jewellery quarter of Dublin?, the girls ask.
The St Mary's students are clearly excited by their visit. "It's really interesting to see what actually goes on on a dig," comments Laura Gibson. "I was interested in Junior Cert history and finding out about the past," says Sinead Hanrahan, "but I'm surprised at where the site is situated - I didn't expect to find so much history in the city. And I'm really impressed at the way the finds are preserved."
Time was when visiting an archaeological dig was the sort of thing that most school kids could only dream about. This dig is the first research excavation to take place in Dublin since the early 1980s. Since October the dig has been visited by up to three schools each week. Although the viewing platforms are open to the public, schools can arrange to meet with archaeologists by appointment.
Visits to the site are preceded by work on the educational packs which are distributed by Temple Bar Properties. The packs - for both primary and second-level schools - include worksheets to be done before, during and after the site visit, a quiz and a pocket guide to archaeology. This latter is an invaluable little publication which defines the meaning of archaeology and explains the way archaeologists work and what they find.
The pack also includes teachers' information sheets and materials to create a model of a Viking town. Class models of an early Viking town will be displayed in a public exhibition to be held during May in Dublin's Viking Adventure, Temple Bar.
or the Transition Year students of St Mary's College, the Temple Bar project is part of a larger project they are undertaking on the history of Dublin. The educational pack and the site visit is building on work the students did in Junior Cert history, says teacher Kathleen Moran.
"They have studied archaeology in the past, but it can be quite a dry subject when you're talking about the theory of it in the classroom," she explains. "The site visit brings archaeology alive and it becomes more relevant. So often archaeological investigations seem to be something that take place elsewhere. The fact that the dig is ongoing means that students can come back and view it at a later stage.
