Germany

It is with sadness that we bid farewell to Prof. Dr. Mamoun Fansa, who passed away on 10 April 2026. With him, we have lost a figure who, like few others, stood for experimental archaeology in Germany and Europe: as a researcher, museum director, networker, and committed communicator. For Mamoun Fansa, experimentation was not an “illustration” of the past but a path to verifiable knowledge, and at the same time an invitation to the public to take part in archaeological reasoning.

The CIMA 2026 Conference brought together museum professionals, researchers, practitioners, and heritage specialists from across the world for four days of intensive exchange on agricultural and intangible cultural heritage. Hosted in Lorsch, with key venues including the Museumszentrum Lorsch and the Lauresham Open-Air Laboratory, the conference was characterized by a warm and collegial atmosphere, encouraging open dialogue and active participation across disciplines and national traditions.

The Swabian Aurignacian is well known for its vast assemblages of functional and symbolic artefacts made from mammoth ivory. This contrasts with the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic technologies that contain sparse evidence for the manufacture and use of tools made from osseous materials. Only with the early Upper Palaeolithic did hominins begin to use ivory for a wide range of tools related to hunting and subsistence, and artefacts used in the symbolic sphere...

Annual Proceedings of the EXAR Tagung
***In 2023 EXAR once again hosted their annual conference, this time from 5th until 8th October 2023 at the Experimentalarchäologischen Freilichtlabor Lauresham in Lorsch (Germany) and was attended by more 90 participants. It was the 20th edition of this conference. The Jahrbuch 2024 contains as before essays from lectures held at the 2023 conference and was presented at the 2024 conference.

This paper outlines the background to, and design of, a workflow tool intended to help plan and record archaeological experiments. The tool consists of a user-friendly interface for annotations and drawing flowcharts, and is being developed to work on smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. It is being written as part of a larger project aimed at creating a digital infrastructure that should make it easier for everyone involved in archaeology to share digital resources...

The Museumsdorf Düppel – a medieval archaeological open-air museum in Berlin – is a good example a bottom-up museum project from the 1970’s. The idea to create an open-air museum was born after the excavation of a medieval settlement had brought to light several house features, wells and objects ranging from pottery sherds to iron artefacts, in south-western Berlin...

Annual Proceedings of the EXAR Tagung
***The periodical is published by Gunter Schöbel and the European Association for the Advancement of Archaeology by Experiment e. V. (Europäische Vereinigung zur Förderung der Experimentellen Archäologie) in collaboration with the Pfahlbaummuseum Unterhuldingen...

The Stone Age Park Dithmarschen in Albersdorf (Germany) is an archaeological open-air museum focussing on the Stone Age. It consists of an outdoor park area of about 40 hectares. This includes archaeological monuments, reconstructed Mesolithic and Neolithic buildings and a recently opened museum building with an exhibition of original artifacts...

RETOLD is a project implemented through the Creative Europe program of the European Union, whose main purpose is the creation of standard documentation tools to be used in open-air museums. Along with creating documentation, craft documentation is an important component of the project that is the subject of this article...

On March 13, 2023, my long-time friend Andy Kurzweil, fellow researcher and co-founder of AG Teerschwele (Working Group on Tar) at the Museumsdorf Düppel (Berlin-West Germany), died at home at the age of 78. I met him on my first visit to the Museumsdorf Düppel in 1977 at the tar production area, when I offered him my help...