archaeological open-air museum

The museum of prehistory Urgeschichtemuseum (MAMUZ) in Asparn an der Zaya looks back on a long tradition, starting in the late 1960s, when the province of Lower Austria’s prehistoric collection found a new home at the freshly renovated palace Schloss Asparn. While the palace was being set up as a presentation area for the collection items...

OpenArch: In late May 2015, St Fagans National History Museum in Wales organized a three day meeting in and around Cardiff for OpenArch. This is a European Culture Project with 11 partners that work to improve archaeological open-air museums. The first day of the meeting was a conference on issues and trends in archaeological open-air museums...

Introduction

Museum theatre as an umbrella-term is used to describe a variety of performative events aimed to interpret fragments of cultural heritage. In the framework of one of the main challenges contemporary museums face, that of having a social impact while dealing with heritage, whom values and narratives can always be “contested and disputed” (Smith 2011, 70), museum theatre has proved that not only can it enforce a constructivist approach in a museum environment but it can also generate debate and promote critical thinking on controversial issues (Farthing 2010).

OpenArch Special Digest 2015 Issue 2
***What does a Stone Age village or Stone Age house look like? (Almost) every person that we happen to randomly meet can answer this question with (subjectively recognized) certainty. Since the research of the 19th century, the knowledge people assume to have is based, not lastly, on images or...

As long as people have walked the earth, stories have been told; from stories around the campfire told by older people to entertain and educate the young, to 15th century knights dressing up as Romans during themed tournaments. Telling a story is putting on a little show; a show is a great way to tell a story... Including Spartacus in Archeon by Erik Collinson

The Viking Village Storholmen is an archaeological open-air museum, beautifully situated near Lake Erken, ten kilometres north of the coastal town of Norrtälje, Roslagen, Sweden. The Viking Village is situated in an exciting and historically important region that shows traces of substantial connections throughout the Baltic Sea and further east...

Linda Hurcombe, senior lecturer at the University of Exeter, visited the Hunebedmuseum in Borger ( NL) as part of a staff exchange for the OpenArch project. She talked about how to twin new tech-nologies, such as 3D-printing, within archaeology and museums...

Celtic Harmony is an Iron Age-like village and education centre north of London, providing natural & cultural heritage education. Hands-on activities and events based on Britain's Celtic culture promote a more sustainable way of life in harmony with the natural world...

In February 2014 Clara Imeyer, student of International Tourism Management at the Hochschule Bremen, Germany, completed her Bachelor thesis with the title Ways of Structuring and Organizing an Archaeological Open-Air Museum – Analysis of the Iron Age House Venne...