Experimental Archaeology

On 27 March 2010, the board of the Working Group on Experimental Archaeology in Switzerland (AEAS-GAES) invited a panel of experts to hold a public debate in Olten on whether the incentives that had existed at the time still played their part, how they were now constituted and what the future perspectives were...

1999 Wilhelminaoord Workshop
***Since the 1940s we have had a discussion in Scandinavia concerning ancient mould-making methods. The question of different methods in the production of ceramic moulds has taken a large part in these discussions; by lost wax or by direct matrix-methods...

1999 Wilhelminaoord Workshop
***The hoard of Farébersviller (Moselle, France) was discovered in 1991 during rescue excavations (See Image above). This set contains 130 "bronze" artifacts, which date to the Late Bronze Age (8th century BC)...

1999 Wilhelminaoord Workshop
***An historal technique of goldplating, described in 18th century literature, was reproduced. This cold-plating technique uses salts of gold, produced by dissolving gold in aqua regia. these salts are then rubbed onto a silver surfaces...

1999 Wilhelminaoord Workshop
***The limits of precision casting were explored experimentally at the Bronze Casting Workshop at Wilhelminaoord, the Netherlands, by making wax models, moulds and lost wax castings using essentially early metalworking conditions. Geometrically patterned models of Dark Age type dies were used to...

1999 Wilhelminaoord Workshop
***Considerations about a lost ancient fabrication technique of bronze attachements from a merowingian treasure box pointed out that practical experiments had to be done to reconstruct the cast and coldwork. A self made oven and mould sould help to...

1999 Wilhelminaoord Workshop
***The question studied within the framework of the Wilhelminaoord Workshop was: In which way the mould material does influence the cast structure of a bronze object? For this, casts in two different mould materials...

Experiment

When the subject of techniques of reproduction was raised these questions came back to me. Casting a slab of silver and subsequently hammering it might be a way to answer some of these questions. This would involve following the suggestions of certain treatises in combination with scientific research.

1999 Wilhelminaoord Workshop
***Bronze objects can be damaged in many ways, for example during casting or during their time of use. Often this damage was repaired using various techniques. In this paper, some examples of ancient repairs and their techniques are described and illustrated with examples published in the literature...

Plumbata - Plural plumbatae. a projectile weapon used during the latter part of the Roman period – a fletched dart. They usually consisted of a barbed iron head with a lead weight fitted to a fletched wooden shaft. Plumbatae have been found on several sites in Britain and abroad and written evidence for their existence has been reported in the fourth century by Vegitius...