Bronze Age
Now we’re Cooking with Gas! How Experimental Archaeology Challenges Modern Assumptions about Metal Recycling
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It is accepted knowledge that when re-melting alloys, some of the metal with a lower melting temperature is lost through oxidation, and more metal must be added in order to maintain the desired alloy proportions. In order to understand the changes in alloy content when recycling using Bronze Age technology, experiments were undertaken by the author and others...
Conference Review: the EAA 2017 in Maastricht (NL)
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The annual conference of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) is an important venue for the presentation of any type of archaeology in Europe. This year, the conference was attended by about 1,800 archaeologists including about ten EXARC members. EXARC was involved in organising two sessions...
Book Review: Experimentelle Archäologie in Europa, Jahrbuch 2016
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Annual Proceedings of the EXAR Tagung
***The periodical "Experimentelle Archäologie" is issued by Gunter Schöbel and the "Europäische Vereinigung zur Förderung der experimentellen Archäologie", together with Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen from Germany. Issue no. 15 includes 223 pages of text, with numerous colour photographs...
***The periodical "Experimentelle Archäologie" is issued by Gunter Schöbel and the "Europäische Vereinigung zur Förderung der experimentellen Archäologie", together with Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen from Germany. Issue no. 15 includes 223 pages of text, with numerous colour photographs...
Conference Review: This Time for Africa: African Conference on Experimental Archaeology (ACE) 2018
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Prologue
Toronto, 2012: There is a session on experimental archaeology at the Society for Africanist Archaeologists’ biannual conference. While waiting to upload our presentations to the conference laptop, my colleague and I pass the time chatting. “I am sure we could fill a whole conference on experimental archaeology in Africa,” my colleague says. I nod, say that someone will probably initiate such a conference soon and turn to tell the student volunteer where to find my presentation on the USB stick.
Sherd Shatter Patterns Experiment
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In field archaeology, the importance of non-diagnostic sherds is often overlooked. This archaeological experiment suggests that archaeologists should take into greater consideration, contexts where sherds are found grouped together in close proximity. The authors tested a series of experimental drops of modern pots...
Reconstruction of the Ancient Greek Long Jump - an Opportunity for Multidisciplinary Collaboration
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The Games of the XXXI Olympiad – the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (5 August to 21 August, 2016) – continued the long tradition of Olympic sports, which began in ancient Greece (circa 776 BCE), and were heavily modified in their re-creation by the International Olympic Committee...
Broken Rocks, Fired Clay and Soured Milk – A Summer of Experiments with the Bamburgh Research Project at the Bradford Kaims Site
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The Bamburgh Research Project operates an archaeological field school every summer in Northumberland, England. We have two sites: one located at seaside Bamburgh Castle and the other a few miles away inland at the Bradford Kaims. The Bradford Kaims is located on the edge of a wetland and has shown evidence for prehistoric seasonal human occupation...
Event Review: the Bronze Casting Festival at the Bronzezeithof, Uelsen, Germany
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The first Bronze Casting Festival was held in May 2017 at the Bronzezeithof in Uelsen, Germany. The event was organised by Martijn van Es, who has an active interest in bronze casting and experimental archaeology. A call was put forward to skilled metal workers to come to Uelsen to conduct experiments and...
The Colour Palette of Antique Bronzes: An Experimental Archaeology Project
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Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, with lead also added. Hellenistic and Roman bronze objects have a variable percentage of metals, and because of this the colour of the alloy will differ depending on the proportions. The colour of the alloy can be maintained by polishing, but it is also possible to give a patina to the surface of bronze using a reagent...
Prehistoric Beekeeping in Central Europe - a Themed Guided Tour at Zeiteninsel, Germany
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Over the past few years, beekeeping has been a media focal point. Nevertheless There is a paucity of knowledge surrounding the prehistory of beekeeping outside of the information from the east and south Mediterranean regions...