Taken directly from this archaeological study written in 2017, can your class work out the mystery of the bones of 10 people buried in a pit away from the village churchyard in Wharram Percy?
They will soon discover that the remains show signs of head severing and the bones show signs of damage. All of this happened after death. So what actually happened to these people and why were the corpses damaged?
This lesson is based on principles for enquiry Although this touches on beliefs this enquiry fits into our Ordinary lives unit really well.
Your students will give given sets of clues and they will hypothesize and re hypothesize in the light of the new evidence they encounter.
They will be using all the skills we want from historians: asking questions, generating hypotheses, using tentative language, investigating further and adapting their first ideas.
And, they will pull all of this work together at the end via answering the big question.
This enquiry really models the enquiry process for them and it will help them to get into the mindset of medieval peasants.
Download lesson
- Lesson presentation: PowerPoint
- Lesson write-up: word
- Resource 1 clues: PDF
