Recently it was 'Archaeology Week' at work, and I made a cake for one of our events. Cake seems like the perfect way to interpret archaeology, since as you eat the cake you are excavating it! Of course it was a layer cake to represent the soil stratigraphy seen on a real site. There were three layers (or strata): chocolate, yellow cake with chocolate fudge, and vanilla (or we could call them modern topsoil, a cultural layer, and subsoil!).
I created a fondant archaeologist, excavating part of the cake. She has a screen to look for artifacts, a bucket of dirt (cookie crumbs) and rocks (chocolate rock candy) and a fondant trowel. I used various colours of fondant that I rolled out to create the look of the stratified soil that she is excavating.
I even included a wooden floor that she is just uncovering. Maybe there are some artifacts down there too!
Everyone loved excavating their piece of cake!
