ROMKids Show: The One About Experimental Archaeology

Audience

Families, Kids

Age

Audience

Families, Kids

Age

Tune in every Tuesday at 2 pm on Instagram Live as ROM Kids Coordinator and Camp Director Kiron Mukherjee combines his passion for children’s education with storytelling to bring to life science, history and art for you and your loved ones in the comfort of your own home. Kiron will share activities, easy at-home crafts, behind the scenes anecdotes and fun facts—all connected to the ROM collections.

This time on the ROMKids show we dig into history and investigate the science of archaeology! Archaeologist Dr. Craig Cipolla joins us to talk about his current work and how experimental archaeology is helping us to understand the past. Then we’ll break out the cookie jar, and practise the archaeological practice of excavation on a chocolate chip cookie!

ROMKids Show: The One About Experimental Archaeology

chocolate chip cookie
toothpick

Steps

Step 1

This is one of my favourite activities and it really shows in very basic terms how the excavation process works for archaeologists. You may also wish to do this outdoors as you can simply blow the cookie dust away. And remember, the more you touch the cookie, the more you’ll warm it up, causing the chocolate to melt. So use your patience and take your time to not damage the objects, in this case, the chocolate chips, you’re removing from the cookie! Remember these objects can often tell us a lot about people from the past so it’s important to be respectful and careful.

Step 2

With your toothpick, carefully remove the cookie from sections around the chocolate chips being careful to not damage the chips. The chips will start to fall away from the rest of the cookie. If a chip breaks, keep like pieces together for repairing later. Once you’re done consider just how much was buried in the cookie, and how much more we can learn by examining things carefully!

As the ROMKids Coordinator & Camp Director, Kiron is the public face of the Royal Ontario Museum’s family and children’s programs. Kiron started volunteering at the ROM at age 14 and has never looked back. Though he majored in history at York University, Kiron also considers his early years as a ROMKids camper to be a highly formative part of his education. Now, he strives to provide engaging and educational kids’ programming so that future generations can look back on their ROM experiences as fondly as he has.