National Archaeology Week is here again: until July 22, digs, museums and organisations such as English Heritage will throw their metaphorical doors open to welcome children of all ages in exploring the wonders of the past. Excavation open days, guided tours, exhibitions and lectures, ancient art and craft workshops and many other events are on offer, say the Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC) and the Council for British Archaeology (CBA). Many of the events are free, and all the details are on the CBA’s website.

Launched as a single weekend event by the YAC, the "Archaeology Days" were recently extended to a full nine days, embracing two weekends.

Scotland has its own Scottish Archaeology Month in September, but the border region of Dumfries and Galloway is contributing the Newbarns excavation of two prehistoric burial cairns to events south of the border.

Wales has events ranging from "Celtic Clashes!" in Denbighshire to the north, through "Archaeological Antics" at Erddig near Wrexham, and "Tudor Fun" with Sir Rhys ap Thomas, Lord of Carew, at Carew Castle near Pembroke.

Archaeology begins yesterday, somebody once observed, and in Cornwall one of the few surviving Cold War Reporting Bunkers, at Nare Head, will be open for one day only, on July 22.

The Scilly Isles have organised an event on each island, spread out over the NAW period, with the timely warning that all events are subject to weather conditions, tides and boat schedules. "Looking for the Fleet on St Agnes" will use geophysics to seek the graves of sailors drowned in the largest maritime disaster in British naval history, when Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel’s ships went down in October 1707.

Shovel’s body was found and buried in Westminster Abbey, where he has a magnificent monument, but only one of his crew’s graves has so far been located. Quite a few crew members’ remains were found when the Mary Rose was raised, however, and they were interred in Portsmouth Cathedral. The Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth Dockyard will show you how maritime archaeology is done, in the presence of Henry VIII’s recovered flagship and some of the divers who worked on her.

Other sites will show how work has progressed since last year: the Silchester Roman Town Excavation, near Reading, will be open every day except July 20, and has a special open day for children on July 21. There will be a "Flying Museum" on site, drawn from the Museum of Reading’s collections from the Victorian dig at Silchester.

At Lewes Castle in East Sussex there will be an oppotunity to answer the question, "What does an archaeologist do?", while several sites around nearby Eastbourne will have archaeologists in action at two windmill sites and a Bronze Age barrow. In West Sussex, Littlehampton Museum is running a "Little Diggers" programme, while the Surrey History Centre has an enticing day of "Eating out — 10,000 years of wilderness survival" in the countryside between Guildford and Dorking, with "the help of a flint knapper, a leather worker and the local army".

London has numerous events scheduled, many at the British Museum but also at the Institute of Archaeology in Bloomsbury, at the Rose Theatre on Bankside and on the Thames foreshore itself, at low tide in front of the Tower of London. Near London, the High Wycombe museum has "Medieval Mayhem" and the Welwyn Roman Bath House — cocooned under the A1(M) motorway a generation ago — offers "fragrant Romans and pongy barbarians" and an explanation of ancient ablutions.

In the East Midlands, there are excavations at a Georgian mill-worker’s cottage in Bakewell, demonstrations of hand-spinning at the Cromford Mill, and an industrial heritage day at Hough Mill, Coalville.

There is also a dig at the medieval manor gatehouse at Donington le Heath, where the organisers "hope to explain the whole archaeological process" every afternoon during NAW.

Across at Castle Green in Hereford, "skeleton detectives can dig up a skeleton, or be an archaeology detective looking for clues to the castle", and at Battlefield in Shropshire — where Hotspur fell and Prince Hal proved himself in 1403 — there is a "Guts and Gore Tour to discover the site of the Battle of Shrewsbury" and visit the church put up as a memorial.Another memorial, to Sir John Barrow, the Early Victorian promoter of Arctic exploration, stands above his birthplace at Ulverston in the Lake District and needs restoration: a quiz identifying dated buildings in the town, with prizes donated by local businesses, is being used to raise funds for it.

Vikings are always popular, and themed events are planned on both sides of the Pennines, at Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire, Preston in Lancashire, and on the Isle of Man, where the new Viking and Medieval Gallery of the Manx Museum will be inaugurated on July 22.

Across the country there will be National Finds Roadshows organised by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), with experts on hand to help to identify and record archaeological objects found by the public. The PAS is a voluntary scheme to record archaeological objects found by members of the public in England and Wales. Further "Finds Days" will be held during the week as part of local museum programmes. Wherever your interest lies, National Archaeology Week offers something for everyone, from the Stone Age to the Industrial Revolution.

www.britarch.ac.uk/naw