Bone Detectives

Bone Detectives

March 2016

As part of my ongoing work with Buxton Museum and Art Gallery’s Collections in the Landscape project, I have been organising some events for British Science Week. Here, we’ll be becoming natural historians, working with the skills that the early collectors who set the Museum Collections in motion used as they foraged across the peaks, rummaging in bone-pits, excavating a bit too enthusiastically at times in barrows, and generally being inquisitive and over-excited. This will also be part of an underlying thread setting out to encourage a sense of investigation, to question what is appropriate when collecting, and to get people looking, thinking, talking to each other. In April, at Castleton Visitor Centre (details will follow here very soon!), we’ll be making small Cabinets of Curiosity to start some portable museums in motion

a beautiful replica lynx skull*

Discovering the secrets of the skulls

Here are the clues that will help you identify the mysterious skull you found on the beach or the bones on the moor, or perhaps here is simply the skills to exercise a fascination with ancient remains, old bones and hidden histories

When we examine a skull, we can tell a lot of an animal’s story: diet, behaviour, age, senses: the clues are all there for the skilled osteologist to read

These workshops will introduce participants to some of those skills, offering activities and inviting questions, setting an investigative procedure in motion so that even if we know what the animal is, we can still find out more

Materials:

there will be skulls to handle, gloves to wear (for the wary), plastic skulls as back-up, paper to draw on, pencils, etc to draw with, information sheets to work on and keep

PUBLIC EVENTS

Saturday 12th March: Bone Detectives, 1: at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Terrace Rd, Buxton, SK17 6DA, Tel: 01629 533540. Sessions 10 - 12, 1 - 3

Free, no booking needed, children 7 years and under need to bring an adult and squeamish adults probably need to be accompanied too

These sessions are aimed at family groups

Wednesday 16th March: Bone Detectives, 2: at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Terrace Rd, Buxton, SK17 6DA, Tel: 01629 533540. 1 session: 10am - 1pm

This is a free session with activities and delivery aimed more at adults or young people of secondary school age

Again, this workshop is free and visitors are welcome to drop in. We recommend allowing an hour to work through activities but you are welcome to come for longer and spend more time handling, drawing and talking about the bones, skulls and shells we will have on display

Visitors are welcome to bring their own clean mystery finds with them - with no guarantee that we'll be able to solve the mystery but have confidence that we will be enthusiastic about them!

Our wonderful friends in the community group Stone and Water have achieved a grant from BSW towards the community participation in these events and to cover the costs of a similar session with a youth group. In fact, we’ve got 2 – so a local WATCH group is going to be going all skeletal and what will happen to Taxal Scouts, I almost dread to think.

These events are supported by BritishScience Week and are also part of Buxton Museum's Collections in theLandscape project

The replica skulls I'm using come from  an e-bay shop with the exquisite name CrimsonRichDesire. Go on. Indulge.

replica skulls come from Crimson Rich Desire