Adventures in Archaeology

Welcome to our resources page all about archaeology! Use these talks and activities as you wish!

Kicking off with some news from the collections, travel from Egypt to Aberdeen to learn about early investigations of the Great Pyramid and how a long-lost artefact was recently rediscovered in the collections. Dr Abeer Eladany has the full story:

The Bone Detectives

The fascinating story of people who lived in the North and North-east of Scotland around 4,000 years ago was the feature of Channel 4's The Bone Detectives on Saturday 3rd October, 2020.The episode included items from the University of Aberdeen’s museum collection, which has what has been described as Europe’s best curated collection relating to these people, including some 80 skeletons and objects with which they were buried

Watch now

Online Exhibition: Ta-Kheru

In 2018 a major exhibition investigating the University's Egyptian mummy, Ta-Kheru, was held in the Sir Duncan Rice Library Gallery. It is now possible to "visit" this exhibition as part of the UoA Collections initiative to provide online exhibitions which never close.

This online exhibition shows images of Ta-Kheru’s mummified body in its original wrappings, and CT scans of the interior of her body.

Visit the exhibition

Life in Aberdeenshire 4000 years ago

A conversation with Chris Croly, Public Engagement Manager with Neil Curtis, Head of University Collections. This episode looks at research which has been done on aspects of the rich museum collections held by the University of Aberdeen. Recent research projects have engaged with pre-historic beakers, skeletal evidence and more to offer tantalising glimpses into life in the north east of Scotland 4000 years ago.

Listen now

Games & Activity Sheets

Dig in the collections

Come and dig for archaeological objects in the University collections. To get you started, we've picked out a few from the North East.

Online jigsaw

How fast can you piece together this picture of an excavation at Pompeii?

Wordsearch

Find the archaeological terms buried in this wordsearch.

Colouring in

Download colouring sheets inspired by George Tomlinson's watercolour of Nut the Sky Goddess.

No bones

We don't have any big dinosaur bones in the collection...so here's how to make some and create your own dig!

Archaeology Week online talks

Co-hosted with the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

Revisit the King's Dig

Take a look back at the dig that took place in 2017 as part of the University's MayFest.

A Heritage Lottery Fund award enabled Dr Gordon Noble and his team to embark on the dig at the heart of historic King’s College. The hope was to uncover evidence of a 16th Century grammar school for students wanting to enter King’s College, thought to have stood on a site close to the front of King’s College Chapel. Visitors to the festival were invited to get involved in excavation work alongside the professionals.

Watch what happened over the 7 days of the dig.

(Look out for a special guest appearance by Tony Robinson on Day 5!)

Revisit the King's Dig

Day 1

Revisit the King's Dig

Day 2

Revisit the King's Dig

Day 3

Revisit the King's Dig

Day 4

Revisit the King's Dig

Day 5

Revisit the King's Dig

Day 6 (morning)

Revisit the King's Dig

Day 6 (afternoon)

Revisit the King's Dig

Day 7, Final Day (morning)

Revisit the King's Dig

Day 7, Final day (afternoon)