EXARC Journal - Latest Articles

Experience instead of Event: Changes in Open-Air Museums Post-Coronavirus

Roeland Paardekooper and
Annemarie Pothaar (NL)
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/2
Mixed Matters
The year 2020 started out for museums as usual, with plans for new exhibitions, new buildings even, and above all many events and visitors. Soon we saw how wrong we were. Open-air museums who had prepared to open up for the season found out that COVID-19 meant they were sitting ducks: no visitors, no income, no life in the museum area. The situation will not return to 'normal'...

Conference Review: Documentation Strategies in (Archaeological) Open-air Museums

Matilda Siebrecht (NL)
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/2
Mixed Matters
The conference in Documentation Strategies in (Archaeological) Open-air Museums, organised through the Experimental Archaeology Society (EXARC), was due to be held in Berlin on March 26th and 27th 2020. Unfortunately, the first half of March 2020 saw the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic throughout Europe which caused the implementation of government restrictions on travel and...

Book Review: Bronze Age Combat: An Experimental Approach by Raphael Hermann et al

Rena Maguire (UK)
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/2
Mixed Matters

Cometh the hour, cometh the book? There was a considerable anticipatory kerfuffle on archaeological social media about the release of Bronze Age Combat: an experimental approach, and rightly so. It is much more than just an experimental archaeology book with rather gorgeous photographs of swords, spears and shields (although it is that too!). It is a rare publication which manages to...

Conference Review: 2nd Experimental Archaeology Student Symposium

Yvette A. Marks (UK)
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/2
Mixed Matters
The Department of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield hosted the 2nd Experimental Archaeology Student Symposium (EAStS) between the 28th February and 1st March 2020, following on from the first successful meeting held in Newcastle in October 2018. The Symposium hosted nine papers on a variety of different experimental reconstructions of material production and processes...

Book Review: Iron Age Experience, Iron Age Kids and Kaptol - Hallstatt Food Workshop & Cookbook

Caroline Nicolay (UK) and
Lucian Petre Vulpe (RO)
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/2
Mixed Matters
Iron-Age-Danube was a cross-border project, part of the Interreg Danube Transnational Programme of the European Union. It lasted from 2017 until 2019. It counted 12 partners and seven associated organisations from in Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. The major goal of the project is to communicate a lively image of archaeological research and the Iron Age landscapes to the visitors...

Conference Review: The Later Prehistoric Finds Group Conference Crafting Identities: Making and Using Objects in the Bronze and Iron Ages

E. Giovanna Fregni (IT)
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/2
Mixed Matters
The one-day conference was held on Saturday 26th October 2019 in Edinburgh at the National Museum of Scotland. The focus was on the importance of understanding craft processes as a means of interpreting the expression of identity in prehistory. This was explored in papers that focussed on crafts and craftworkers who worked in metals, wood, glass, and ceramic materials...