We have just finished our second year of summer actvities, using osteoarchaeology to teach children about health and wellbeing. This year we focussed on oral health, using 'toothy tales from the past' to help children make the right choices about looking after their teeth.

In collaboration with the North Northamptonshire Council's Public Health Team and the Northamptonshire Archaeological Resource Centre at Chester House, we developed activities that allowed children to learn all about the skeleton and the teeth, whilst teaching them the dangers of vaping, smoking, lack of dental healthcare, and poor diet on their oral health.

We delivered six sessions in four primary schools across Northamptonshire, as well as our usual three week's of intensive sessions at the Irchester Fieldschool at Chester House. This means that in the last two years we've reached over 3,000 children, teaching them about the joys of archaeology, osteology, and also preventative care for keeping their teeth healthy.

It has been a joy to see the enthusiasm children have for our discipline, and also to work with such a fantastic team, both in delivering our bone-related sessions, but also in the wider Irchester Fieldschool, which is instrumental for teaching local children about archaeology!

We've collected questionnaire data from all these children, to track how our sessions can have an impact on their learning and healthy choices. Watch this space for a future publication on the health-related impacts of bioarchaeology!