Mixed Matters

Conference Review: Reconstructive & Experimental Archaeology Conference REARC 2013

David Wescott (US)
REARC Conferences
***This article is republished from the Bulletin of Primitive Technology #46. The 4th Annual Reconstructive and Experimental Archaeology Conference was recently held in Gastonia, NC at the Schiele Museum of Natural History. The conference theme was Education and Reconstructive and Experimental Archaeology...

Conference Review: 8th Experimental Archaeology Conference, Oxford 2014

E. Giovanna Fregni (IT)
EAC Conferences
***The conference unofficially began in the Royal Blenheim pub at 6 pm on Thursday evening. Conference staff and attendees filtered in throughout the evening eventually filling the back room. The pub had excellent food and a good variety of local ales. Those who managed to brave the flooding introduced themselves and got to know...

Book Review: The Emergence of Pressure Blade Making: from Origin to Modern Experimentation by Pierre M. Desrosiers (editor)

Justin Pargeter (ZA)

There are few issues in lithic studies that have captured the imagination and attention of researchers as much as laminar (blade) technologies (see Bar-Yosef & Kuhn 2009). This has resulted in a rich and detailed body of academic work partly reflected in Pierre M. Desrosiers’ (Ed.) The Emergence of Pressure Blade Making: From Origin to Modern Experimentation...

Conference Review: A Trip to the Birthplace of Experimental Archaeology

Artūrs Tomsons (LV)
Summer is already coming to an end, but in experimental archaeology, season is not important. Following the conclusion of a field course in experimental archaeology held in the University of Latvia, it is hoped that a short report and perhaps a more detailed article will be produced in the future...

Book Review: The Value of an Archaeological Open-Air Museum is in its Use by Roeland Paardekooper

Ronan O’Flaherty (IE)
With publication of Dr Paardekooper’s monograph we now, finally, have a secure databank of facts and figures relating to archaeological open-air museums in Europe, including management structures, key financial indicators, visitor profiles and visitor numbers...

120 Years of Strategies and Experiences in Educational and Handicraft Skills

Rüdiger Kelm (DE)
OpenArch Dialogue with Skills Issue
***One aim of the five year EU-funded Culture Project OpenArch is to encourage cooperation between archaeological open-air museums in Europe and ethnological open-air museums who have a long history of presenting and handicraft to the public in practical ways...

Conference Review: Live Interpretation, 2013 EXARC’s Meeting in Hungary

Roeland Paardekooper (NL)
In early September 2013, EXARC, in collaboration with Csiki Pihenökert, hosted a meeting in Hungary with the theme Live Interpretation in Open-air Venues. This continued the discussions held one year earlier in Foteviken, Sweden which focused on museum theatre and other forms of live interpretation...

Book Review: Experimental Archaeology and Fire. The Investigation of a Burnt Reconstruction at West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village by Jess Tipper

Claudia Speciale (IT)
What should an archaeologist do if one of the reconstructions of an experimental village is accidentally burning during the night? Simple: pick up a camera and start taking pictures. And then, of course, plan the excavation to record as much information as possible followed by an analytical and detailed publication on the results...