BECTA project on Anglo-Saxons: Sutton Hoo ship burial

The material in this section is reproduced by kind permission of BECTA.

It supports the following sections of the QCA Scheme of Work for History unit 6b ‘Why have people invaded and settled in Britain in the past? An Anglo-Saxon case study’:

· What was in the Sutton Hoo grave?

· Whose grave was it?

First produced for BECTA, this activity consists of a range of tasks based on pupils searching an NGFL approved Internet site for information on historical artefacts. The British Museum web site contains the Compass database with over 3000 entries including the Sutton Hoo artefacts used in this investigation.

Pupils work through, individually and collectively, a number of tasks:

· Use an online database to find out about the past

· Examine in detail a range of artefacts

· Collect information about an artefact

· Make inferences about artefacts

· Sort artefacts into categories

· Interpret and present the results of their investigations

· Summarise the general characteristics of artefacts from one historical period

The activity supports the development of generic research processes

There are a number of downloadable worksheets:

What do artefacts tell us about the past - context

What do artefacts tell us about the past - delivery

What do artefacts tell us about the past - resources

Artefact enquiry sheet

BECTA artefact enquiry - full activity doumentation

All of the above material - and more - is available from the BECTa website. To visit the History and ICT section of the BECTa website, click here:

Visit the BECTA
'History and ICT' section

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