Archaeological Open-Air Museum

Salt has been extracted in and around Bochnia already since the Neolithic Lengyel Culture but more intensively since the 11th century. It is the same “salt field” which runs under Wieliczka. Water from wells (brine water) was raised to the surface and boiled in metal containers. When due to increasing demand, the ground water level sank, the wells needed to be dug deeper and as ac consequence, one reached to salt layers and dug up salt since about 1248 AD.

Under supervision of the Institute of Archaeology at the Jagiellonian University and the Department of Metallurgy & Metal Engineering at the AGH University of Science and Technology, both situated in Kraków, the Dziejba Society (Stowarzyszenie Dziejba) is running a settlement the way it could have been like in the Bronze Age.

The Musée des Temps Barbares (museum of the Dark Ages) in Marle focuses on the Merovingian Era. The museum is situated in the Aisne area and has both an indoor museum in an old watermill and a vast outdoor archaeological park with an enormous amount of reconstructed small houses.

The village Albertslund is not far from Copenhagen. It is a new town, with many new traditions and ways of working and living together – the population is rich in children and nationalities. The Vikingelandsbyen is a bridge in the meeting of cultures, looking back at the travels of Vikings to all different countries.

It was already known for a long time that near Hobro in Northern Jutland, Fyrkat was one of the sites where a Viking Age round fortress was situated. The site is strategillay located in a protected bay inside a fjord on the banks of a waterway that facilitated commercial exchange.

One of the first offspring of the Lejre approach within Denmark itself was Næsby, in 1973. It is situated in the northern outskirts of Odense in the breathtaking green landscape of the Stavisådal. It is by now a large centre with many reconstructed Iron Age houses (more particular, 0 – 400 AD), like a small village.

In 1971, the archaeological site Rodenkirchen-Hahnenknooper Mühle was excavated northwest of Bremen along the B 437. The excavation was coordinated by Dr. Erwin Strahl of the “Niedersächsisches Institut für historische Küstenforschung” from Wilhelmshaven, an institute which is active in this region for a long time already. This Brozne Age settlement is the oldest found in these coastal marshlands so far, dating to the 10th and 9th century BC.

The Sachsenhof in Greven-Pentrup is a reconstruction of a 1200-year-old early medieval Saxon courtyard with cultivation trials of cultivated plants and field wild herbs from that time.

At Llynnon, funding was available to put disused woodland and coppice back into use. The idea came about to construct a Bronze Age / Early Iron Age area with two roundhouses which were eventually completed in 2007. As all the materials where sourced from this woodland it proved very successful.

1997, Northeast Scotland saw the birth of a new archaeological open-air museum: Archaeolink. Goal is to interpret the Prehistory of NE Scotland via living history, craft/technology demonstrations and archaeological experimentation for the benefit of the general public, academia and the educational sector.