Teachers Information Sheet by Nicky Milsted The book explores the daily life of an Anglo-Saxon peasant. He is a young farmer s son living in the kingdom of Northumbria in the early 7th century. He spends his time helping to maintain his home a small, dark and smoky timber hut with a thatched roof that is part of a village of around 20 similar houses which surround a larger great hall belonging to the village overlord. The Anglo-Saxon peasant boy helps to plaster the walls (with a mixture of mud, straw and pig dung!) and thatch the roof, and looks after the vegetable patch too. Other daily tasks include hunting, bee keeping, tending to the animals and collecting poo (yes, human poo!) for use as a fertiliser. It s back-breaking, never-ending work, and if the weather is bad and crops don t grow, everyone goes hungry. What is more, the villagers and their overlord must pay tribute to their minor king basically this consists of all their hard-earned food and supplies! The boy s family is involved in a blood feud with a family from a nearby village. There has been lots of violence and the whole family is at risk. Their home is set alight; when they escape the flames, the boy s father is killed. Eventually the feud is stopped at a meeting of people from all the surrounding villages, called a folkmoot, which rules that the other family is in the wrong. At the age of 12, the boy in the book is treated as an adult, and must join in with the fighting when a rival challenger wants to become king. It is a violent clash with hand-to-hand combat, and although the boy s side are victorious, it has been a bloody battle with many men dying. With the blood feuds, fighting, endless physical work just to get enough to eat, and uncertainty over religion and beliefs, it is clear that Who were the Anglo-Saxons? The Anglo-Saxon period covers the period of British history between about AD 450 and the Norman Conquest of 1066. Before this, Britain was part of the Roman Empire. After the Roman military presence in Britain was called back to defend Rome, Britain was invaded and settled by peoples from northern Europe. These invaders included Jutes (from Jutland, which makes up modern-day mainland Denmark and part of northern Germany), Saxons from northern Germany, and Angles from the border regions of Germany and Denmark. It is from the Angles and the Saxons that we get the term Anglo-Saxon. It is a confusing time for many Anglo-Saxon peasants; the old gods who have been worshipped for generations are being replaced by a new religion called Christianity. King Edwin (who rules over all of the minor kings of Northumbria) has now declared that everyone must believe in one god and change their ways of worshipping.
The Anglo-Saxons seized land from the native Britons and settled, building villages and farming the land. By AD 600, there were five main kingdoms, all ruled over by a different king: Wessex, Kent, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria. There was a developing social class system emerging too. Each village had an overlord, a band of thanes (highranking men who formed the overlord s loyal band of fighting men) and ceorls (pronounced churls ) who were the lowest ranking free people, and who were also bound to fight in the cause of their overlord and king. There were also slaves in Anglo-Saxon times; they were mostly people captured in battle. Christianity spread across the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms after the arrival of a missionary called Augustine in 597. Temples to the old gods were converted into Christian churches, with the addition of crosses, and many wooden temples were rebuilt in stone. Some of the Anglo-Saxon kings still maintained their old religion alongside Christianity, and erected Christian altars in their pagan shrines! It was during the Anglo-Saxon period that a concept of England as a nation developed. The different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were united under King Alfred as the Vikings first raided and then invaded, settling large parts of northern and eastern England in the 9th century. The AngloSaxons eventually defeated the Vikings, but in 1066 the Normans invaded from Normandy in France. This time, the Anglo-Saxon armies could not repel them and the Anglo-Saxon period came to an end. Apple Bath Child Dog Ear Field Give Hiccup Into Jump Keep Life Activity 1: What is archaeology? Month Name Ought Plight Queen Read Shop Time Under Who Why You Much of the information that we know about Anglo-Saxon life has been collected and analysed by archaeologists. But what is archaeology? Challenge your pupils to write down a list of words that they think of when they think about archaeology and what archaeologists do. These could be written onto a large sheet of paper or your class whiteboard for discussion. Words that your pupils may come up with or be prompted to list could include: history, past, digging, detectives, rubbish, treasure, gold, excavation, finds, trowel, evidence, questions, science and many more. During the reign of King Alfred, many of the Anglo-Saxon laws and customs were written down in Old English. This language is the origin of our Modern English, although it looked and sounded very different. Many modern words have their origins in Anglo-Saxon words, with later influences like Norman French, Latin and even Old Norse (spoken by the Vikings). Examples of Anglo-Saxon words we use today include:
For a good introduction to what archaeology is, see my blog post What is archaeology? on the Young Archaeologists Club website: www.yac-uk.org/news/what-is-archaeology Following your discussion, encourage your class to come up with an agreed definition of archaeology. Archaeology is Talking point: can your pupils talk about how archaeologists are different to historians? The main distinction is that historians largely use written sources as their evidence for what happened in the past, whereas archaeologists try to piece together stories of the past from a range of physical evidence left behind by humans including pottery, jewellery, weapons, coins, building materials and much more. Archaeology is Rubbish! Playing the Rubbish Game is a great way to get your pupils to think like an archaeologist. This game works by challenging your pupils to investigate the contents of an imagined rubbish bin, using the evidence to try to answer some simple questions about the people who threw away the objects. Below is an example bin for a family with young children and a cat: cat food tin wrapper from a packet of nappies old toy car / broken doll / pieces of Lego worn children s toothbrush TV guide magazine special-interest magazines e.g. football, fishing, craft, baking, kids comics empty nail varnish or make-up container pair of laddered tights blunt safety razor food waste e.g. apple cores, vegetable peelings, used tea bags food packaging e.g. empty food cans, wrappers, children s yoghurt pots takeaway menu and empty plastic/polystyrene containers What can your pupils tell you about the people who threw away this selection of rubbish? You could prompt them with questions such as did they have any pets? or do you think there were children living in this house? or do we know anything about what these people liked to do? Other questions to consider: How might the rubbish bin contents of a single person vary from that of a family? Can you tell anything about the family s wealth from the contents of the bin? Can you identify their ethnic group or any religious beliefs from the remains? How might the contents of this bin be affected by recycling or reusing items? Would any of the objects rot or decompose over time? What happens if you take away all the objects that could be recycled and those that would decompose what are you left with now? And how does this affect what you can work out about the people who threw these objects away?
The Jigsaw Game! This game is another way of trying to demonstrate the challenges facing archaeologists. Separate your class into small groups. Give each group a different number of pieces of a jigsaw but no indication of the pictures that they are trying to reconstruct, or the number of pieces in the complete jigsaw. Challenge them to build the puzzle and work out what the picture is showing. For example: One group should be give most of the pieces but missing an important part of the picture (like one of the characters, for example) One group should be given around half of the pieces from across the whole jigsaw One group could be given lots of pieces for one part of their picture but very little from other parts of the jigsaw One group should be given lots of pieces but from two or more jigsaws! One group should be given only a very small number of pieces What challenges have your groups faced in trying to complete their jigsaw puzzles? Can they describe the whole picture accurately from the few pieces that they have been given? How is this like being an archaeologist? Extension activity: having played both the Rubbish Game and the Jigsaw Game, can your pupils now identify any problems that archaeologists might encounter when trying to investigate past cultures? Challenge your pupils to write a short report to explain their ideas. Activity 2: Day in the life of an Anglo-Saxon peasant constructing and maintaining the timber buildings including thatching roofs and plastering with wattle and daub (made of mud, straw and pig dung!) building and maintaining fences around animal enclosures tending the vegetable patch looking after animals Anglo-Saxons farmed pigs, cows and sheep ploughing fields and planting crops hunting bee-keeping collecting manure (and even human poo!) to use as fertiliser grinding grain for bread using a rotary quern or hand quern preparing and cooking food Anglo-Saxons had stew pots that would be hung above the fire all the time, and added to regularly to make a dish called pottage, which consisted of a mixture of seasonally available produce (such as cereals, leeks, onions, peas and beans) weaving and spinning butter and cheese making and much more! An Anglo-Saxon peasant s day was full from dawn till nightfall. Men, women and children all had important tasks to do to ensure that everyone was kept safe, warm and fed. It would have been a packed schedule! Tasks would have included:
Anglo-Saxons used querns to grind grain into flour for making breads. A rotary quern consisted of two circular-shaped stones sitting one on top of the other with a small gap in between. The top stone had a central hole into which the grain was poured. The top stone was then turned using a wooden handle inserted vertically into a small hole. The turning of one stone against the other grinds the grain into flour. Hand querns were much simpler, consisting simply of two stones. The grain was placed on the surface of the flat bottom stone and ground by the action of rubbing a second stone on top. Ask your pupils to use the activity sheet to create an itinerary of an Anglo-Saxon peasant s day; they could choose to write as a woman, man, boy or girl. Talking point: how does an Anglo-Saxon peasant s day compare to your pupils daily itinerary?! Activity 3: Anglo-Saxon diet: archaeological poo! Anglo-Saxon peasants would have eaten foods that they either grew themselves or were able to gather from the countryside around them. Their daily diet would have been mostly vegetarian, and would have included: bread made from wheat and rye vegetables, such as carrots, parsnips, cabbages, peas, beans and onions usually as a type of stew called pottage fruit such as apples, cherries and plums fish caught in rivers and the sea (if the community lived on the coast) Anglo-Saxons did eat some meat, but it would not have been eaten on a daily basis. It was often reserved for feasts. Pigs were the only animal reared just for meat; cows were kept for milk (which was also made into cheese and butter), and sheep were farmed for their wool which was spun and weaved to make clothing and blankets. Both sheep and cows would only have been killed and eaten if they became old or ill. It is an unusual way of encouraging your pupils to think about how archaeologists are able to piece together past diets by identifying and excavating human poo, otherwise known as coprolites. Archaeologists that find toilet pits or cess pits like those dug and used in AngloSaxon villages are like pigs in muck (excuse the pun). The rich organic remains in the poo allow archaeologists to discover information about past climates and diets by recovering microscopic evidence including seeds and grains that have passed through the human gut. In this experiment, you can create some Anglo-Saxon poos for your pupils to excavate or dissect. The evidence that they recover will help them to piece together the diet of the Anglo-Saxons. This activity for investigating Anglo-Saxon diet is reproduced with the kind permission of the Young Archaeologists Club (www.yac-uk.org)
The method for making your archaeological poos is given on the activity sheet. You should include some of the following evidence in your poos: Cereal grains (e.g. rye and wheat you can buy these online or in a health food shop) Tiny pieces of stone or grit (the Anglo-Saxons didn t eat stones on purpose, but tiny bits of the quern stones used to grind the grains would have rubbed off and ended up in the flour used for bread this did mean that Anglo-Saxons often had bad teeth!) Apple pips Cherry stones Plum stones Fish bones Your pupils can excavate the poos using a wooden lolly stick. They should collect and record the evidence that they find. They might like to keep a tally of the different types of evidence (you could use these tallies to create bar graphs and pie charts or to look at averages). What can they tell you about what Anglo-Saxons ate? Can they explain the tiny stones in the poos?! Activity 4: Runes Anglo-Saxons wrote in runes. However, not very many Anglo-Saxons could write and certainly Anglo-Saxon peasants would not have been able to! The original runic alphabet was called the futhark after the first six runes (f, u, th, a, r, k) in the same way that alphabet is named after alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet. There are 24 runes in the futhark. (NB there were changes in the sounds made by some of the runes as the language developed. Some Anglo-Saxon scholars call the Anglo-Saxon version of the runic alphabet the futhorc.) As well as being used to write inscriptions, Anglo-Saxons used runes for fortune-telling and as charms. Fortune-tellers would have a set of rune stones, each marked with one of the runes. By choosing rune stones at random, and placing them in a set way, it was thought that it was possible to tell a person s future. Fortune-tellers also used bones thrown into the air to help to predict coming events; the way that the bones landed and the patterns they made could be interpreted to help tell the future. The activity sheet gives the names and meanings of Anglo-Saxon runes, and explains how they were used for rune casting (or fortune-telling). Your pupils can make their own rune stones (see Activity 8: Arty challenges). The activity sheet will help your pupils to write in runes. Can they decipher some of the runic messages and write their own?
Activity 5: Anglo-Saxon burial In 1939, archaeologists in Suffolk in East Anglia uncovered an amazing Anglo-Saxon burial in a landscape that has become known as England s Valley of the Kings. Sutton Hoo features at least 18 royal burial mounds that date to the 7th century AD. Archaeologists think that they probably belong to the royal family of Anglo-Saxon East Anglia, the Wuffingas. The Wuffingas claimed that they were actually descended from the king of the old gods, Woden. a ceremonial helmet a large round shield decorated with garnets and metal figures of a bird and a dragon a beautiful sword with a gold and garnet pommel inside a decorated scabbard a harness and belt for the sword with gold fittings a musical instrument called a lyre silver bowls and two silver spoons spears an elaborately decorated golden buckle a golden, gem-encrusted purse containing money a pair of drinking horns folded textiles including cloaks, blankets and hangings a long coat of ring-mail two hanging bowls leather shoes a cushion stuffed with feathers a wooden platter an iron axe with a long iron handle combs made of antler small metal knives a bone gaming-piece, thought to be the king piece from a set a wooden bucket with iron bands a bronze cauldron It is thought that the person buried in this grave might have been King Rædwald of East Anglia who reigned from about 599 until his death in about 624. Another burial mound at Sutton Hoo was found to contain the burial of a man and his horse! These Anglo-Saxon kings were buried with huge ceremony and all of the items that befitted a king. The grave goods were intended to provide the king with everything he needed in the next world. In one of the burial mounds, archaeologists uncovered the richest burial ever discovered in northern Europe. It was a ship burial; the king in this grave was laid to rest in a huge boat almost 30m long and over 4m wide. The boat itself rotted away over the 1,400 years that it was buried, but archaeologists were able to identify its shape as a dark stain in the earth. Items found within the burial chamber in the ship included:
Challenge your pupils to stock an Anglo-Saxon king s grave they can each put five items from the selection given on the activity sheet into the ship burial. What will they choose to include, and why? Talking point: what objects might a modern-day person include as their grave goods? Activity 6: A song for the scop Anglo-Saxon people enjoyed feasting. In the people of the village have a large communal feast in the great hall to celebrate their victory in a battle. An Anglo-Saxon scop (pronounced shop ) is a story-telling musician. They were very popular entertainment at Anglo-Saxon feasts. Challenge your pupils to write a song for the scop. Remember that their songs are stories so your pupils may find it easier to write a simple story and then compose a tune that fits. Their song could describe the village s victory over the challenger to the king s throne, or it could retell a story about earlier Anglo-Saxons who travelled to and invaded Britain from northern Europe. Why not try setting up your school hall as an Anglo-Saxon great hall (with a central hearth albeit without the open fire! and long benches) and performing your songs to an invited audience? Research challenge: the Anglo-Saxons were great storytellers. One of their most famous tales is that of Beowulf, which was first written down by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet at some point between the 8th and 11th centuries. The story would have been shared for many generations around the fire before being written down. It tells of a hero called Beowulf who helps Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, when his hall is attacked by a monster called Grendel. Can your pupils find out more about the story of Beowulf, and retell it in their own words? Activity 7: Cord winding Anglo-Saxons made cloth and cord by spinning and weaving. Woollen threads were dyed using plants colours available included blues, reds, oranges, and yellows. There are instructions on the activity sheet for making cord by a method called cord winding, which would have been used by Anglo-Saxons (and later Vikings). Extension activity: challenge your pupils to create their own play based on the story of Beowulf to perform to an invited audience.
Activity 8: Arty challenges Make rune stones. Use air-drying clay to roll out a set of 24 small pebble shapes. Once they have dried, use a permanent marker pen to inscribe each one with a rune (see the activity sheet for the rune letter shapes). Your pupils could choose to just make one rune stone for their initial, which could be used as a charm. Design an Anglo-Saxon shield. Use the activity sheet to design your own Anglo-Saxon shield. You could even make your own shields using strong cardboard from a packing box. The central boss could be made with either an upturned yoghurt pot or a ball of tin foil. Pupils pack contents An Anglo-Saxon peasant s day activity sheet How to make Anglo-Saxon poo Writing in runes information sheet Messages in runes activity sheet How to use runes for fortune-telling Anglo-Saxon burial activity sheet Anglo-Saxon cord winding Design an Anglo-Saxon shield Blank sheet with the border top and bottom for your pupils own artwork and writing Messages in runes: Answers 1) Runes are great 3) The dog ate my homework 2) I love learning