One of my very many highlights in York was the work for my project group “Viking Heritage”. After having been prepared by the visit to the JORVIK Viking Centre, on Saturday morning we went to the DIG, an interactive museum. We were quite lucky, as the DIG had only opened a couple of months before.

Right at the beginning we were given small plastic shovels by our very nice and competent guide. I think we were all pretty curious, sitting there in the briefing hut with the guide giving us instructions and talking about excavations and “making really exciting troves” in the “digging-area”. Bravely, we did not hesitate when he opened the door to what turned out to be one of the most hilarious things I’d done in quite a long time:

Right at the beginning we were given small plastic shovels by our very nice and competent guide. I think we were all pretty curious, sitting there in the briefing hut with the guide giving us instructions and talking about excavations and “making really exciting troves” in the “digging-area”. Bravely, we did not hesitate when he opened the door to what turned out to be one of the most hilarious things I’d done in quite a long time:

Although our topic was Vikings, we were all so very keen on making our own troves that without further ado we jumped at the various sites. Equipped with the right tools, it did not take long before we made our first discoveries. In fact, as the areas were quite small, we were almost sitting on them. While the boys were busy taking pictures and asking the guide in-vestigative questions, we, the girls, rolled up our sleeves and carefully, with shovel and brush, uncovered the skeleton of a religious man. Our fantastic guide gave us a lot of background information about our troves. When he finally asked us politely to move on, we were all a little sad but also busy getting the soil out of our clothes (you can’t imagine where this stuff all got into while we were lost in “digging”).

The next part was the “ask the archaeologist”-zone. This time, the guide showed us genuine troves of excavations that had been made in and around York. We had to guess what animals the different skulls were from and he even handed us a small piece of the former pride of the museum: the guide told us that they exhibited the largest piece of fossil human excrement. Wow, he knew how to impress the ladies! Seriously, what really impressed me was his knowledge and how he was able to answer all our questions which were journalistically high-quality. After having pestered our lovely guide with questions, he left us and we had to dis-cover the last area on our own.

This area again offered interactive things to do. We could compare, draw, collect, analyse, preserve and examine items, not only of Viking origin, but according to the four “digging-areas” also from the Roman, Medieval and Victorian times. What I especially liked about the presentation was the video – in front of a real background. The screen for the film was a see-through glass pane, which was placed in front of a moving background. Something else that will stay in my mind for a long time was the activity where children were supposed to write their own will. Sort of weird…

Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the time at the DIG!