Neolithic

In July 2018 a group of students from the UK participating in the Placements in Environmental, Archaeological and Traditional Skills (PEATS) Erasmus + Work Placement, attended the Kierikki Stone Age Centre, Pahkalantie, Finland. Part of that training included experimental / experiential projects that were coordinated by Dr. Peter Groom of the Mesolithic Resource Group...

Annual Proceedings of the EXAR Tagung
***Like the previous issues, this periodical (Jahrbuch) 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 Unteruhldingen...

Jürgen Weiner - you can’t get away with not knowing this name if you are involved in Experimental Archaeology, even more if it involves flint. Weiner has published numerous works and he is known as a walking encyclopaedia. Along with Marquardt Lund, I met Jürgen and his charming wife in their house near Cologne. Our interview took place on a pleasant June afternoon in the garden...

In July 2018 the Mesolithic Resource Group attended the Kierikki Stone Age Centre, Pahkalantie, Finland. The visit provided us with the opportunity to practice experimental archaeology in a ‘Stone Age’ landscape at Kierikki. One project was the reconstruction of a section of the Neolithic wooden fish weir from the site of Purkajasuo, which is on display in the museum...

For the annual Tagung (conference), about 120 people convened in the southernmost point of Germany, at Lake Constance, near the borders of Switzerland and Austria. This conference is the perfect networking event for experimental archaeology in the German spoken part of Europe. Out of the 27 lectures, 25 were presented in German. The strength, but also its weakness, of the conference is that anything goes...

The Paleofestival took place on 26-27th of May 2018 in the Castle of San Giorgio in La Spezia (Italy), which today serves as a Museum of Archaeology. Reconstructors from different parts of the world introduced visitors to issues related to everyday life in ancient times. There were attractions for adults and children. There were reenactors mainly from Italy, but also from other countries...

The Rapa Nui civilization once thrived on Easter Island, and produced unique statues which became a parable for collapse around the world (Hunt and Lipo, 2011). Several experiments have been conducted to better understand this collapse, specifically surrounding the movement of the islands’ largest inhabitants, the moai – the large monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people...

The Society for American Archaeology is, perhaps with the exception of the World Archaeology Congress, the largest meeting of archaeologists in the world. The 2018 annual meeting was held in Washington DC and was attended by approximately 5000 archaeologists. Delegates were primarily from the States, but there was also a good international showing with attendees coming from around the world...

The first Experimental Archaeology conference on African soil (ACE 2018) brought people from near and afar. Without knowing it I found myself among the Local Organising Committee of the conference. Each day was a learning curve as I sat in on those meetings and was also assigned to do certain tasks as we were preparing for the conference...

Earth ovens may relate to different ancestral cooking techniques, serving specific needs and functions. In eastern and south-eastern Australia, they were a significant element of a thriving pre-colonial Aboriginal culture. However, today it is extremely rare to find such structures well preserved. Based on archaeological and historical records...