We’ve got another intern! Read Amber’s introduction here!

Hi everyone! My name is Amber, I’m a student at the Faculty of Archaeology at the University of Leiden. Before studying at the University of Leiden, I studied at CIOS which is a study for Sports and Fitness teachers. During my education at CIOS I had different internships, one of which included teaching at elementary school. At different schools, I taught gym class for one year. During this time I had to construct a lot of classes, and help with the physical development of 6 till 12 year olds. The classes needed to be thoughtful and playful at the same time.

After this internship I found out I wanted to become an archaeologist and stared studying archaeology. During my second year I took an extra course “Histories we Play”, where the final assignment was to create an original game which included and historical element. During this I started thinking of some game concepts which would include an more accurate representation of the job archaeology. 


As the classes progressed, my idea of an game also progressed, which started to develop more into a game for an specific age group (children). How could you make a game in which children learn more about what an archaeologist does? How do you make archaeology fun? And what does archaeology entail? These questions will be at the centre of the project I’ll be working at with VALUE. For the course I didn’t have to develop the game itself, but I shelved the idea because it was so interesting to me. So I’m happy to start this project with VALUE in order to fully realize a game in which children will learn more about excavations and how they look.

For now the game concept looks as follows: it will be like board game (with a race aspect) in which children will recreate and excavation done in real life in a fast manner in order to win. The game will consist out of a board which is divided into 4 playing parts, dices which will help pace the game in an efficient manner, and playing cards which hold information and illustrated excavations to recreate. The person that finishes the chosen playing card first wins the game. This way I hope to educate younger children on how an excavation looks and make it new and exciting for the children, which might eventually lead to curiosity for the discipline.


We will keep you all posted on the progress of the game in order to maybe so inspire others to also look beyond your discipline and into a future of more colleagues who started out getting more information about an discipline that need all the fresh eyes it can get in order to discover the past.