Get hands on experience of Dartmoor’s archaeology at Bellever Day, Dartmoor National Park’s celebration of the Festival of British Archaeology on Saturday 25 July 2015.

Visit the National Park Visitor Centre, Postbridge between 11am – 4pm and get involved in a variety of family friendly activities with plenty of hands on opportunities. These include basketry and weaving workshops, using natural materials collected from Dartmoor, demonstrations of jewellery making, including prehistoric beads and tin studs, learning how to grind corn in a prehistoric fashion and wood turning.

Visitors to Bellever Day will see how prehistoric people created tools and weapons using flint as well as bronze casting. There will also be an opportunity to handle Bronze Age weapons. Learn how prehistoric people may have gathered plants and join in a foragers’ tea party. There will also be guided archaeological walks, games and a History Hunter quiz for children.

Two renowned Dartmoor musicians and instrument makers, Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer, will share a selection of the traditional flutes, drums and rattles that they create using indigenous woods, raw hides, leather, bone and other materials all sourced from the moors. As well as discovering how these instruments are made there will be a chance to play some of them, including bone whistles, wooden flutes, overtone flutes and a wide range of drums.There will also be a unique opportunity to visit a reconstructed prehistoric house.

Thirteen years ago a beautiful Bronze-Age style roundhouse was constructed by Nigel Shaw and Carolyn Hillyer, at Lower Merripit Farm, using granite, oak and other timbers sourced from the moor, with a rye grass thatch and central hearth fire.

The roundhouse was not made specifically as an archeological reconstruction, but rather as a creative exploration of how such a dwelling might have been built, maintained and inhabited by the ancient people of the moors.  The roundhouse hosts music, storytelling and workshops, including visitors from many traditional indigenous cultures. It is generally not open to the public but is being made available especially for Bellever Day.

This is a rare opportunity to learn more about roundhouse construction and life, try herb teas gathered from the moor, listen to the music of traditional flute and drum, and experience how it feels to sit beside the fire inside an ancient roundhouse.

The Life, Death and Landscape exhibition, telling the story of prehistoric Dartmoor, will be on show at the Visitor Centre with Bronze Age Dartmoor finds from the Royal Albert Memorial Museum’s collection - and, for the first time on Dartmoor, there will be a display showcasing replicas of items found in the internationally important Whitehorse Hill prehistoric burial. Some of these were part of the recent major exhibition at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, whilst some have not been on public display before.

This FREE event is organised by Dartmoor National Park with support from the Forestry Commission, Devon County Council and by the Heritage Lottery Funded scheme, Moor than meets the eye which is helping people to discover the Dartmoor Story.