2007 Winning Entry - St Wilfrid's School

The children modelled their interpretations of Indus Pottery, in papier mache, creating a lovely display and props for their show.

St Wilfrids 'Ancient Harappans' and 'Archaeologists' presented much information about the way of life and amenities of Mohenjo-daro in their show, and different interpretations of the Civilisation's decline. The script was based on online information from archaeologists (harappa.com), and teaching materials with a fictional reconstruction of Indus life from San Diego Institute of Education. The latter usefully discuss how we make inferences from facts. However the authors also misleadingly include several theories as hard "facts", eg interpretation of buildings as Granaries, though other theories, eg. 'warehouse' or 'palace' had been published. Recent excavations at Harappa to ascertain the function of the 'Granary' sadly proved nothing. The questions "How do we know the building was...? Why did archaeologists think..?." are a pointer to children's research and questioning education sources which often confuse fact and interpretation. Children could be asked to create dramatic devices to present different interpretations or inferences when acting scenes for a topic which gives us no narrative sources. Perhaps 'Ancient Harappans' have to be circumspect about anything we cannot prove!