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Stonehenge, Britain's iconic prehistoric monument, continues to fascinate. Thanks to recent research including a new series of excavations undertaken over the last 10 years, the public's appetite for the story of Stonehenge is a voracious as ever, demonstrated by countless documentaries, popular books and a new visitor centre at the site. Here we wish engage new audiences with the remarkable detailed evidence for the consumption of food at Stonehenge, that has recently come to light through the Feeding Stonehenge Project (FSP) funded by the AHRC. Food is central to all our lives, forming the structure of our days and lying at the heart of many social events. At the same time, food is the focus of many health concerns, with advice on the quality, quantity, type and source of food never far from the front page or the screen. This project will tap into this public appetite for all things edible by providing a prehistoric perspective on how foods were treated (acquired, prepared and consumed) in Neolithic Britain. We will show how scientists have made these discoveries through examination and molecular analysis of bones and artefacts, focusing on those recently excavated from the Stonehenge monumental complex. Through these twin core themes (food and science), we aim to substantially extend the reach and significance of the original research. To do this we will embed a post-doctoral researcher within English Heritage (EH) during their temporary exhibition "Feast! Food and Feasting at Stonehenge''. As an archaeological scientist, the PDRA will train staff and volunteers, and collaborate with the EH interpretation team to develop creative engagement activities whilst ensuring that these are aligned to the original Feeding Stonehenge research. In addition to the exhibition, we will bring in specialists (food interpreters and artists) and work with the local community to recreate some of the food procurement and culinary practices at the visitor centre through a series of workshops designed to engage the public. Working with the EH educational team and STEM Learning, the largest provider of science education and careers support to schools, we will develop primary and secondary schools resources to enthuse young scientists in the scientific aspects of the original research. Finally, we will create and deliver workshops to engage families adn young people at national cultural events through expertise and networks developed by Cardiff University's outreach group, Guerilla Archaeology. Guerilla Archaeology takes archaeology to new audiences at music festivals; these hugely popular 3-4 day events are fast becoming the most exciting places to creatively engage with research, and provide the potential to bring entirely new audiences to prehistory. Guerilla Archaeology will help us to deliver pop-up, provocative and highly interactive events that make the past present for younger audiences, and stress the important role that both scientific enquiry and cultural reflection can bring to our understanding of ancient, modern and future lives. We will evaluate the effectiveness of transferring our key messages to the large number of visitors to the Stonehenge Visitors Centre, festival goers and the local community using embedded evaluation, face to face surveys and online questionnaires. By end of the project, will we have transferred knowledge to EH staff, artists and food interpreters, members of the community local to Stonehenge, and the Guerialla Archaeology team who will be well placed to continue the dissemination activities leaving a legacy to this project. We also will have created a series of online schools resources that will be freely available and preserved for the foreseeable future and which can be easily expanded or used as template by other cultural heritage agencies.
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