Cirencester YAC
Cirencester YAC is open to everyone aged 8–16 years. YAC clubs get involved in all sorts of activities, including visiting and investigating archaeological sites and historic places, trying out traditional crafts, taking part in excavations, and lots more.
Cirencester YAC is based at Corinium Museum. The club usually meets once a month. It is an affiliated club of the YAC network, and is YAC is run by Corinium Museum staff and volunteers.
If you’d like to get involved with Cirencester YAC, or find out more about how the club is run, get in touch with the team using the details below:
Contact: Michaela Lennox
Tel: 01285 655611
Email: michaela.lennox@freedom-leisure.co.uk
Corinium Museum, the home of Cirencester YAC.
Cirencester YAC is grateful for support from the Friends of Corinium Museum.
News from Cirencester YAC
June 2026 – Ancient Egypt
For June we decided to have a look at something further away than the local archaeology we have been studying for the last few months. We turned to one of the most ancient civilisations, Egypt. We covered a variety of topics, starting with a discussion around where objects should live, especially those that have come from other countries. There were some really good ideas that helped us to get started. Next, we looked at the writing system of the Ancient Egyptians, the hieroglyphs. We showed off an object in the collection with hieroglyphs of a small wooden stele as something ‘local’. We talked about how they worked, and how would we know how they worked? How was the language lost and how was it re-translated? We took the Rosetta stone as the centre of our discussion and how important it was to understanding hieroglyphs. Naturally, we had a go at writing our own names in cartouches in hieroglyphs.
In the second half of the session we looked at a timeline of important Egyptian events as well as local ones and had a go at putting them in order and seeing how relative everything was to each other. We also had a go at handling some objects, with a few things relating to Egypt brought out of the stores for a rare outing. They were all really respectful with the objects, especially since they knew they were well over 2,000 years old!
Next time we will be meeting during the Festival of Archaeology, and explore the theme of Nature in Archaeology!
Next time, Nature in Archaeology!
