archaeological open-air museum

As our societies become more diverse and the demographics of heritage visitors change, many open-air museums are concerned about how to remain relevant. Making a shift to an activist approach is one way museums can evolve to better serve their visitors and community. Many traditional museums have adopted this approach, but relatively few open-air museums have done so...

Twah Longwar is an abandoned settlement located in the State of Meghalaya in North-East India. It is located enroute to one of the world's rainiest places on earth – Mawsynram. Twah Longwar is an abandoned settlement with remnants of over twenty old houses, an ancient market, and a burial site. In a place where rainfall is a concern but also a major tourist attraction, and where lost architectural styles are only...

Since the year 2006 the Archaeological-Ecological Centre Albersdorf (AÖZA), Germany, has worked as an officially recognised partner for sustainable development on an institutional base for the Sustainable Development Goals of the UNO on a regional level. In this article the thematic background of the educational work in archaeology and ethnography will be ...

The Archaeological Institute of Hamburg University has been offering courses to students in the field of “Experimental Archaeology and Museum Pedagogy”, for over 15 years. These courses take place annually at the Archaeological/Oekological Center Albersdorf (AÖZA)...

Investigating Domestic Craft and Subsistence Activities through Experiments and Material Analysis Leiden University currently coordinates the project “Putting Life in Neolithic Houses”. This will take until 2025 and is funded by the Dutch Research Council NWO. Besides EXARC, there are other nine partners in this project.

In the early days of the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum, from September 1970, there was a Saxon building on the site, which was one of only two archaeological reconstructions at the museum. This original sunken-floor Saxon building is no longer standing but, after several years in the planning, a new project saw the construction in 2015 of another Saxon building, the Saxon Hall from Steyning...

The motivation and purpose of the RETOLD project is to capture and preserve the wealth of data from evidence informing building reconstructions and craft processes of open-air museums. Additionally, the project seeks to develop and use alternative formats of oral histories as a way of share intangible cultural heritage with a wide audience. From an artistic point of view, immersive media are to...

As part of the EU project RETOLD, the Stadtmuseum Berlin in Germany is responsible for creating standardised documentation strategies for archaeological house models and evaluating them by engaging with the open-air museums of Astra in Romania and the Steinzeitpark Dithmarschen in Germany. In order to start creating these workflows, as a first step, other open-air museum were approached ...

The origins of the European RETOLD project, led by the international association EXARC, lie in a concern to preserve the heritage generated by archaeological open-air museums through the creation of a standardised system for collecting, digitising and disseminating knowledge (memories) of the processes of building reconstruction and handcrafted objects. The project has a duration of four years ...

After several years of archaeological excavations at Borg in Lofoten in the 1980s, Lofotr Viking Museum was established in 1995. The excavations uncovered an 83-meter longhouse dated to the Viking age. A copy of this longhouse, together with a copy of the Gokstad Viking ship, were built to make the core of the new museum above the arctic circle. Lofotr Viking Museum grew bigger as the years went by...