Viking Age

Craftsmanship relies upon the silent knowledge of the skilled experience of the creative workings of the hands, a knowledge that is difficult to convert to written characters without creating a blur of words that make very little sense. Theoretical reasoning lacks the dialogue with, and the resistance from, the raw material. Making up a picture of how wax, clay and metal would behave without practical experience of them is...

REARC Conferences
***The 8th annual Reconstructive and Experimental Archaeology Conference hosted by EXARC drew speakers and participants from many parts of the world. The REARC conference was once again hosted by Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, from October 18-20th. Friday was reserved for the presentation of papers...

The ‘West Coast Cumbria’ hoard, discovered in 2014, is a late ninth/ early tenth-century Viking silver hoard, housed at the Beacon Museum, Whitehaven, UK. It is composed of 20 Viking silver objects: bar-shaped ingots and ornaments, in various stages of fragmentation (PAS ‘Find-ID’ LANCUM-FA14C8). One, complete ingot (museum no. 2016.162.5) bears coarse cloth-impressions on its upper surface...

The eighth European Textile Forum took place 6-12th November 2017, organised by Katrin Kania and Sabine Ringenberg. It was held at its adopted home LEA (Labor für Expermentelle Archäologie) in Mayen, Germany, a satellite of the RGZM (Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum) at Mainz, by invitation of LEA director Michael Herdick...

The book Skanseny Archeologiczne i Archeologia Eksperymentalna published by the Podkarpackie Muzeum in 2012 brings up the subject of open-air museums, opportunities and disadvantages of the promotion of cultural tourism and experimental archaeology mainly in Poland but also in Slovakia. Articles presented in this book were prepared for two different conferences organised by this museum...

This 700-plus page book is dedicated to the exploring the basics of tablet weaving. This book will not only allow the reader to understand the step-by-step methods for different tablet weaving techniques but also describes the process behind creating one’s own pattern...

The Norwegian Forum for Experimental Archaeology (NFEA) is a yearly seminar aimed at presenting and popularising experimental research within archaeology. It has been held since 2011 at the Veien Cultural Hertage Park, and as the name implies, it is a gathering of Norwegian archaeologists, held and presented in Norwegian. In 2017, things were done a bit differently...

On the 17th – 20th June 2015 40 participants of the 25th Archaeological working group East Bavaria/ West and south Bohemia/ Upper Austria, were hosted by the Upper Palatinate town Bärnau which lies on the border with the Czech Republic. The meeting took place in the conference hall of the Historic Park Bärnau-Tachov, a remarkable archaeological open-air museum which demonstrates...

10th EAC Leiden 2017
***Tens of thousands (Callmer, 1977, pp.12-32) of beads marking the rich graves of the Viking world indicate that the production of these beads is an area worthy of study. Evidence such as mandrels, crucibles, bead fragments, and semi-manufactures exist at Helgo, Birka, Paviken, Hedeby (Lundström, 1976, p.3), Kaupang (Gaut, 2011, p.232), Frojel (Carlsson, 2011), Åhus (Callmer, 2001, p.138), and Ribe (Sode, 2004, p.86). At Ribe...

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...