On receiving the book, I found out that the seven articles in the book unfortunately were not written in both English and Lithuanian but were written in Lithuanian with a summary in English. Some summaries were quite extensive and gave a very good idea of the contents of the article while other summaries were shorter and contained sentences like “…. are described in detail as well as difficulties experienced during work process and their solving decisions are described” (p.46). These were things that I would really have liked to be able to read, so I could learn from the struggles the author had while making a Neolithic bow and arrows and could try other solutions in similar situations. On the other hand, without the good and extensive summaries, like the one of the article on food and nutrition in the Lithuanian geographical environment from the earliest times up to the 14^th century, I would not have had any idea about how wealthy Samogitian women during the middle and late Iron age used to wear head coverings made of small brass rings sewn together with thread on a daily basis and not only for special occasions or have learned about the influence of stuffing on the use of medieval leather balls. The other subjects of the articles in this wide ranging book include an article on production of glass beads of the 2^nd to 12^th/13^th century, wells and linden bark buckets in a settlement from 4^th-8^th centuries and an article about the manufacture and utilization of flint microliths. 

When reading the foreword of the book one is given the sense that experimental archaeology is still a rather young branch of archaeology in Lithuania and does not always get taken seriously by other branches of research. This is a situation that a lot of us will recognize from our own past. The compiler of the book has a theory that knowing one’s history will encourage patriotism more than media coverage will. I am a bit reluctant to use history for politics, although I do think that knowledge of the past is necessary to understand the present and gain a better future. It is fully possible that this is what the compiler meant, but that the message got lost for me in the translation from Lithuanian to English and then to my mother tongue.  

I realize that I have been reading volume 1 of what hopefully will become a long series of books on experimental archaeology in Lithuania and this first book gives me great hope for and expectation of great things for the coming books. I hope that the authors and compiler, with this compilation of information solely relating to experimental archaeology, will show other specialties that experimental archaeology is just as serious a research area as archaeology or history and I look forward to reading the next books in the series. 

Book information:

Eksperimentine archeologija. Lietuvos materialaus paveldo rekonstrukcija Experimental archaeology. Reconstruction of material heritage of Lithuania. Daiva Luchtanienė (ed). Vol. 1. Vilnius: Eksperimentinės archeologijos klubas Pajauta. 2015

ISBN 978-9955-33-684-3