Thanks to all the people who sent me their thoughts on this subject. Various people also asked about my 'findings' so here below is a compilation of them.

If you know of anything brilliant that has been missed off, please feel free to mail it to me!

All the best,

Jane

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Replies:

National Museum of Scotland

We recently developed a kind of handling box with knobs on, the purpose of  which was to enable visitors to understand more of the gallery in the Museum of Scotland about Scotland's early people. The box itself is deer shaped, contains raw materials and real and replica objects, plus sound effects. (there is a wee CD player inside the base of the deer box, which is activated by a remote control  by the facilitator. Not 100% reliable, unfortunately - it gets shoogled around a bit when we move it from storage to the gallery, but great when it does work.

It is wheeled out for schools and at weekends and though most people are a bit mystified initially, the response is good from people of all ages. It is a facilitated resource. We developed a complementary website to show more of the processes - you can look at it at: http://nms.ac.uk/education/deerhunt

ps I would also contact the Council for Scottish Archaeology  or whatever the English equivalent is; they have loads of prehistory workshop material and would be good for advice.

London
,s Transport Museum 

We did start work on a children's exhibition on power from the stone age onwards and had ideas about things to do with relative pulling power of people and animals. Somewhere like ARC in York is probably a pretty good start -  mind you most of their stuff needs interpreters.  

Re:source

You might want to look at the British Interactive Groups website  http://www.big.uk.com/

Salisbusy Museum
,s new Stonehenge Gallery

This has numerous prehistoric interactives which include physical demonstrations of how the stones were moved to create the monument, stone mauls to test the weight, flint handaxes to handle and a touchscreen computer. There were other things as well but I can't recall what they were- perhaps a visit might enlighten you...nice place, Salisbury! We have an archaeology interactive but it's probably far too basic for the Museum of London- just a sorting box with different compartments for the various materials. If you do try this sort of thing, my advice is- keep it simple! I have seen other finds sorting activities which are so complicated the kids won't touch them with a barge pole! Or there are too many objects so it looks like too involved an activity. And remember, with such activities, some poor person always ends up going round and sorting the bits and pieces out. We've got about 20 items out- ranging from an ox shoulder blade to Norman pottery- the only bits that keep being nicked are clay pipe stems which are easy to replace. The other place I can recommend is the ARC centre at York- not prehistory but good on simple interactives for archaeology. I understand that SEARCH at Gosport does hands-on archaeology workshops but I believe these are professional-led rather than things you can just put out for independent investigation. 

Harvard Consultancy

The Hunterian Museum in Glasgow are doing interesting things with interactives, both virtually (they are doing some leading developments with Quicktime VR) and physically - quite neat display on hominid evolution and they are exploring the use of "haptic" virtual-touch displays allowing you to "feel" objects with a "touchy-feely" mouse (?!). I know they are still working on many of their QTVR stuff and it is not all on their web-site yet. http://www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk/ 

Science Projects

Here at Science Projects we have a small touring exhibition called Medieval Machines which looks at innovation in Medieval times, we also have plans for a bigger version called The Castle Builders and would one day like to look at Islamic science. There are, I'm sure plenty of opportunities for prehistory interactives. I'm sure we'd be able to help you on this. What you do very much depends on what stories you want to tell, what objects you have and what you want to put over to the visitors. It is important to use the interactives in context rather than as bolt-ons to a traditional gallery, especially when they are approached from the angle of "something to attract the children". Good interactives work for all ages. It is also important to use experienced in
teractives developers rather than rely on design companies who often do not understand the complexity inherent in even the simplest interactive. Good interactives can enable your gallery to do things no other methods can. These lessons are still being ignored by major museums, a major refurbishment taking place near my hands-on centre has just done exactly that.

Epping Forest District Museum

At Epping Forest District Museum, one of our visitors favourite interactives is a "stone age drill". If you'd like to know more, I can send you a diagram in the post, as its rather hard to explain verbally. 

The Open Museum, Glasgow & Skara Brae, Orkney

The Open Museum have just developed an interactive for prehistory which will be based in Pollok Leisure Centre - for the Pollok Kist project.  As this is unstaffed and in a non-museum environment, we've gone for a robust, low-tech interactive. It's basically a volcano-shape with hidden drawers and flaps which reveal fossils behind perspex.  Replica fossils have been set into the surface of the 'volcano' which makes it more tactile.

Alternatively, check out Historic Scotland's Visitor Centre at Skara Brae in Orkney - excellent low and high-tech interactives illustrating the Neolithic periods. I'm just back from there - they used quite a bit of computer interactives, e.g. reconstructing a Neolithic pot by putting your finger on the piece then dragging it to position.  They also had handling materials, chert, flint, etc which you were encouraged to try out and guess its use (I managed to bruise my thumb doing this!). Also, small perspex boxes containing materials, e.g. bone, stone, wool, - place in a slot labelled for use e.g. 'food', 'clothing', 'building': raised buttons on the box correspond with buttons in the slot which would buzz if the answer was wrong.

You could also try contacting Kilmartin House Museum, Argyllshire - renowned for its interpretation of the prehistoric landscape in the Kilmartin valley, it uses high and low tech (e.g. quern stone, rubbings from prehistoric carvings), soundposts to listen to recordings of prehistoric music.  Sorry these are all a bit far north!