Eight weeks ago a group of year nine students excavated an area in the school grounds, burying a variety of real cattle and sheep skulls and bones, as well as pieces of crockery, stones, jewellery and other artefacts.

Head teacher Helen Herdegen said that despite the extreme temperatures the students were enjoying the hands-on project based learning.

“The students have to find the artefacts, analyse and identify them, and log the process,” she said.

“They will then form a process where the finds either go into projects, such as books or a museum – the final product should be awesome.

While this is the first archaeology program of its kind at the school, the area will now be classed as an official dig site, with the artefacts added to and re-buried for future classes.

“We had an archaeologist come and do a talk for the students, and the dig is about showing them what a day in the life of an archaeologist might be,” Mrs Herdegen said.

“The kids have been really excited about getting into the dirt, and have been looking forward to it all term – it certainly beats reading about it in books.”