What better way to kick off the summer holidays than pull apart pieces of poo?
That was what children at Kingston Museum tried their hands at last Saturday, July 25.
But before the health and safety police descend, the “poos” were not real, but created out of flour, salt, oil and Oxo.
The poke a poo activity was held to commemorate Archaeology Week and the 40th birthday of the Kingston upon Thames Archaeological Society (Kutas).
Children learned how human cess pits are often excavated, with the poos - or coprolites - analysed to discover what people ate in the past.
Caroline Burt, the museum’s learning and access officer, who filled the poos with the remains of Roman, Anglo Saxon and Tudor meals, said: “First reactions were mostly ‘eugh!’ but once they got stuck in, the children loved it.”
About 100 people visited the Medieval Madness exhibition, which also included pottery excavated by KUTAS, stained glass window making and playing with a medieval catapult.
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