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Book Review: The Emergence of Pressure Blade Making: from Origin to Modern Experimentation by Pierre M. Desrosiers (editor)

Justin Pargeter (ZA)

There are few issues in lithic studies that have captured the imagination and attention of researchers as much as laminar (blade) technologies (see Bar-Yosef & Kuhn 2009). This has resulted in a rich and detailed body of academic work partly reflected in Pierre M. Desrosiers’ (Ed.) The Emergence of Pressure Blade Making: From Origin to Modern Experimentation...

Book Review: The Value of an Archaeological Open-Air Museum is in its Use by Roeland Paardekooper

Ronan O’Flaherty (IE)
With publication of Dr Paardekooper’s monograph we now, finally, have a secure databank of facts and figures relating to archaeological open-air museums in Europe, including management structures, key financial indicators, visitor profiles and visitor numbers...

Book Review: Experimental Archaeology and Fire. The Investigation of a Burnt Reconstruction at West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village by Jess Tipper

Claudia Speciale (IT)
What should an archaeologist do if one of the reconstructions of an experimental village is accidentally burning during the night? Simple: pick up a camera and start taking pictures. And then, of course, plan the excavation to record as much information as possible followed by an analytical and detailed publication on the results...

Book Review: Guédelon - Building a French Castle the 13th Century Way

Roeland Paardekooper (NL)
Guédelon: How to Build a Castle by Darques is by no means a DIY book or a guided tour on paper of the Guédelon site. Guédelon: a Castle in the Making by Martin & Renucci is subtitled The Guédelon Adventure and although it carries a lot of information about the construction site and its sources, this book still reads much like an adventure book...

Book Review: Aurignacian Clay Hearths from Klissoura Cave 1: an Experimental Approach by Malgorzata Kot

Silje Evjenth Bentsen (SA)
About 90 concave, clay-lined hearths were identified during excavations of Aurignacian layers (ca. 35000BC in Klissoura Cave 1, Greece). Only two similar combustion features, identified at the Czech site Dolni Věstonice and defined as kilns, were known from Palaeolithic contexts before the excavations at Klissoura...

Book Review: Glossary of Prehistoric and Historic Timber Buildings by Lutz Volmer and W. Haio Zimmermann (ed.)

Roeland Paardekooper (NL)
The 1987 conference in Århus, Denmark on ESF Workshop on the reconstruction of wooden buildings from the prehistoric and early historic period has been important to EXARC as we have acquired, and are gradually publishing, the manuscripts of the unpublished proceedings....

Book Review: Fish Leather Tanning and Sewing by Lotta Rahme and Dag Hartman

Danny Honig (NL)
Judging from the extensive bibliography in this book, little to no literature exists on fish leather tanning in English. A quick Google and Amazon search reveals that a good general book on leather tanning includes at least one chapter on fish, reptile and other "alternative" skins...

Book Review: Experimentation and Interpretation, The Use of Experimental Archaeology in the Study of the Past by Dana C. E. Millson

HollyMae Steane Price (UK)

What role does experimental archaeology have in the wider discourse? According to the papers in this book, all of which were presented at the Theoretical Archaeological Group (TAG) conference in Southampton in 2008, a large one...