24 with building a bridge. During its construction, the pupils must also take into account engineering designs, environmental constraints, sustainability and stakeholder management. As part of this, pupils take part in a workshop designed to introduce the concept of the historic environment as a key consideration within infrastructure schemes. A peat landscape was selected as the focal point because it is a type of local landscape familiar to pupils and one that is likely to be encountered by the A9 Dualling programme. Furthermore, it touches on a range of relevant themes, including carbon storage and climate change, complex ecological habitats and sensitive archaeological landscapes. In this scenario, pupils learn how peat deposits are formed over millennia and how humans have interacted with them over that time. From a science perspective they learn about gathering data in the field by collecting peat core samples for paleoenvironmental material and how past environments can be recreated through an analysis of ancient pollen and insects and through radiocarbon dating. A particularly enjoyable element of the workshop is giving the pupils the space to apply the scientific knowledge they already have – in this case, the preservation of organic material within anaerobic conditions. Bog bodies preserved with clothing, tools and personal objects are, of course, a popular subject and a dynamic case study to describe this process. Armed with their newfound expertise, pupils move quickly beyond the initial ‘ick’ and into a critical line of thinking by asking questions and interpreting the evidence. From there they are encouraged to think like archaeologists by Working with clay to reproduce pictish stones
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