Mixed Matters

How to Communicate an Event to the Media

Martine Sarfati (FR)
In 2018 a very important event took place in Russia that had worldwide impact: the Football World Cup. I'm French and we won! But aside from patriotism, the craze for this extremely popular sport can be largely attributed to the media. Without them, such an event could not have achieved such a magnitude of success. The World Cup has been explored by the media from all angles: fashion, science...

Event Review: Yeoncheon Palaeolithic Festival: from Hand Axe to Street Dance

Eva IJsveld and
Dorothee Olthof (NL)
In 1978 a US Army soldier stationed in the North of South Korea discovered several hand axes near Jeongok in the Yeoncheon Province. This was the start of many years of archaeological investigations and eventually the building of the very futuristic Jeongok Prehistory Museum and the organisation of the annual Yeoncheon Paleolithic Festival...

CRAFTER: An Experimental Approach to Fire-Induced Alteration of Pottery Fabrics

Carlos Velasco Felipe,
José María Bellón and
Bartolomé Bellón (ES)
In doing an inventory of ceramic materials from archaeological excavations, it is a common practice to indicate their observable atmosphere of firing. This parameter refers to the presence of gases, especially oxygen, during the firing and cooling of pottery: if oxygen circulates freely, the procedure is said to be oxidising; if, on the contrary, the atmosphere of firing lacks free air, it is called reducing...

Book Review: Experimental Archaeology: from Research to Society, by Isabel Cáceres et al.

Patrícia Machado (PT)
“Experimental Archaeology: from research to society” is a transcript of the proceedings of the Vth International Congress of Experimental Archaeology in Tarragona, Spain, on the 25-27th October 2017. The conference, organized by Experimenta (Asociación Española de Arqueología Experimental), the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES)...

CRAFTER: Re-creating Vatin Pottery 2: an Examination of Clay Quality and its Behaviour

Vesna Vučković and
Dejan Jovanović (RS)

The Bronze Age Vatin culture has been known in archaeology as a cultural phenomenon distinguished by a specific material culture which existed between c. 2200 to 1600 B.C. in the region of the southern part of the Pannonian Plain, and the area along the lower Sava river and south of the Danube river. The Vatin culture followed on from the Early Bronze Age cultures in the region, indicating stabilization in this area after the disintegration of the Aeneolithic Vučedol culture by tribes from the Russian steppe (Garašanin 1979, p. 504; cf.

Conference Review: Hands on History ReConference, 2-4 November 2018

Helen Bowstead Stallybrass (UK)
Copenhagen 2 November, and a warm welcome received at the National Museum in Copenhagen. What better way to start a conference than with colouring flags and glitter? Well, it certainly was a great icebreaker for an international conference on re-enactment, for people from all over the globe speaking several different languages. Being asked to write a review, I wondered how best to approach this...

Book Review: A Handbook for Men's Clothing of the Late 15th Century by Anna Malmborg & Willhelm Schütz

Jens Börner (DE)
Although there is a wide variety of publications about costume history and of single archaeological sites with textile remains of period clothing, the number of books that interdisciplinarily cover the fashion of past eras in the context of different source categories is, frankly, really small. Some attempts to draw a complete image of medieval fashion simply fail just because of the scale of it; others try to...

Interview: JAPKE – The Female Viking Power-house of Lejre

Christine Sonne-Jensen (DK)
Jutta Eberhards has been working with drama and living history for over 30 years. Born in the Friesland district in Germany, Jutta has over the years become a power-house in the management group of Sagnlandet Lejre – The Land of Legends (www.sagnlandet.dk). She has been tirelessly working to uphold the standards of the educational method that she and her colleagues developed...

Conference Review: EAStS 2018 – 1st Experimental Archaeology Student Symposium, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Marco Romeo-Pitone (UK)

On the first day of the Symposium, after a brief introduction to the conference by Marco Romeo Pitone (EXARN), a series of interesting talks were presented by post graduate students from universities across the UK and beyond.

Event Review: CRAFTER: Back to Bronze Age Craftsmanship: International Meeting of Potters and Archaeologists

Ágnes Király (HU)
At the end of October 2018, nearly 30 experts – potters and archaeologists – met in the city of Mula (Murcia, Spain) to study Europe’s Bronze Age pottery-making techniques. The event was the initiation stage of the CRAFTER project (Crafting Europe in the Bronze Age and Today), implemented in the framework of the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 and the Creative Europe Program...