The year 2018 was good for EXARC, thanks to your support!
EXARC’s new website, counting 3,500 pages, was launched in February this year. Visits increased by 20% to almost 135,000 a year. Our EXARC Journal and Events Calendar are the best viewed sections, followed by the presentation of all our members. Our website is at https://exarc.net. Please contact us if you like to update the information on your member’s profile.
Our Journal is more popular than ever before: over 30,000 people read it annually. We published over 60 articles in 2018 where we normally have about 40. The online EXARC Journal is free and open to read for everybody (open access) and everybody is welcome to publish with EXARC. We thank our over 20 volunteers who help with the Journal. You can find our Journal at: https://exarc.net/journal.
We updated our EXARC online repository at tDAR with 500 new titles and are in discussion about adding more files. You can find it at www.experimentalarchaeology.net. We plan to include more archaeological open-air museums in our online overview (https://exarc.net/venues) and, with the help of a number of volunteers, started a worldwide map of universities working with experimental archaeology
EXARC welcomed 40 new members in 2018; we currently have over 300 members in 40 countries. We unfortunately lost some, but we hope they will stay in touch on our social media, our conferences et cetera.
IMPORTANT: the EXARC membership is self-renewing. This means that if you do not tell us before January 1st that you like to cancel your EXARC membership, it automatically is renewed for the year 2019 and you are obliged to pay the membership fees. Contact us if you prefer to cancel your membership: r.p.paardekooper@exarc.net. The membership fees for 2019 can be found here: https://exarc.net/become-member
We had a few incredible meetings this year: we helped organizing the 1st EA conference in Africa, we met in Italy for the Paleofestival with many fans of Prehistory, our conference in Kernave, Lithuania, was dedicated to Museums and Interpretation, and our annual REARC Conference was well attended as well. EXARC supported TRACamp in UK as well as a conference on archaeological open-air museums in Poland.
We introduced a special project for our members – Twinning – to which several members applied. We will soon announce the winners of the 2019 grant. More information: https://exarc.net/twinning
We cooperate officially with several partners: we are member of the network of European Museum Organisations NEMO, the Archaeoforum is under EXARCs umbrella and we have an agreement with REARC in the United States. Also, EXARC is partner in several EU grant applications, news of which we will hear in the first months of 2019. More information on our cooperation with others can be found at: https://exarc.net/cooperation
We are happy that our cooperation with Colonial Williamsburg tightens. We have just opened the call for applications for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation-EXARC Fellowship for 2019. Great applications came for 2018, and we are looking forward to 2019. More information: https://exarc.net/colonial-williamsburg-foundation-exarc-fellowship
Our next International Experimental Archaeology Conference, #EAC11, takes place in Trento (IT). We received many fascinating abstracts already; the deadline for the second call is January 15 2019. Registration for this largest EXARC event of 2019 is open (https://exarc.net/eac).
We wish you all happy Holidays, and a good 2019!
