Newest Era

This book is a collection of six papers from the 2015 Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists session with the same title, co-organised by Dragoş Gheoghiu and Derek Pitman. The contributors to this work are a global team of thirteen archaeology researchers and experimental archaeologists who have studied different aspects of the use of fire and its influence on...

Our colleagues in Xanten invited us for a conference on the use of digital media in museums. Eleven speakers from Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Austria captivated an audience of about 75 participants. Many of the presented ideas were delivered by larger museums, some of them in the phase of execution...

In 2013 a team of researchers in collaboration with the community in the municipality of Coronel José Dias, around Serra da Capivara National Park, Piauí-Brazil, created the Olho D 'Água Institute and since then has been developing research and didactic experiments with the communities. The project entitled Arte na Serra aims to engage communities...

The purpose of this Learning Exchange was to discover more about the Hungarian museum landscape, with examples of successful programmes engaging in social responsibility in Hungary. The host and organiser Zsolt Sari, Deputy Director General of the Hungarian Open Air Museum (Skanzen), was joined by colleagues from the Ludwig Museum, the Petofi Literary Museum, and the Herman Otto Museum...

We live in a world where scientific method is both the expected and accepted path to knowledge. With any scientific method, experiments based on detailed, well-documented, well-considered theories, and precise set-ups must be replicated exactly by others who come to the same conclusion to consider the information gleaned from them to be valid. This has become the accepted practice for most...

11th EAC Trento 2019
***Replication of archaeological and ethnographic Māori textiles, under the direction of customary knowledge and previous practical experience, can provide a more nuanced understanding of the manufacture of taonga (treasures) made from fibre materials. A case study is presented here from the unique perspective of a weaver who...

11th EAC Trento 2019
***Participation in archaeology is the basic “inclusive process” of a human community, which allows it to identify its cultural values. Experimental archaeology with its rediscovery of gestures and techniques allows re-appropriation, a sense of belonging and ...

Some people believe that an open-air museum is a place where you leave your modern technique behind and go ‘low tech’. Other than the museums which act like digital free zones, many others experiment with going digital. Where experience and storytelling have always been the central concepts of archaeological open-air museums, exactly these ideas are behind many digital techniques. We have to...

History is a record of past events, activities, situations, and processes. As a subject, it helps students in understanding not only who they are and where they came from, but it also offers them an opportunity to make informed decisions about present issues and future developments. History also teaches responsible citizenship, and develops critical thinking and problem-solving skills...

This year’s Association of European Open Air Museums (AEOM) Biannual Conference 2019 took place at multiple sites in Poland, over four days in late August. Its two key themes were ‘How Open Air Museums represent different cultural identities’, and ‘Representing the past - technical solutions for reconstruction and archaeological interpretation’. I was invited to participate in order to...