EXARC Journal Issue 2021/4

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***The demand for innovative solutions to pressing ecological and societal challenges is on a constant rise. Ancient technologies provide extensive yet underutilized opportunities to help solve such problems. This paper presents three of these technologies and their successful application in modern contexts based on five illustrating case studies...

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***This paper outlines the experimental weaving project of an ancient Greek chlamys to investigate the weaving production capacity of a typical household and reconstruct women’s contribution to household GDP in ancient Greece. While some scholars have researched finer textiles and tech-niques based on visual evidence...

The Iron Stand from Sutton Hoo, Mound 1 was excavated in 1939. While a first tentative interpretation of its original appearance was made in 1952, this was updated in 1972 following a science-led investigation of the artefact. However, some features of the object were not included in the later representation. The examination of these additional features suggests that the basket element of the iron stand may have been...

Evidence that Neanderthals had mastered the production of birch bark tar as an adhesive has generated important and timely debate concerning behavioural complexity. Increased resolution of the data on palaeo-climatic conditions has also brought into sharp focus the need for hominins living in high latitudes to possess complex cultural mechanisms to deal with cold environments...

To date, archaeologists often use a typological approach to assess the functions of bone artefacts from the Roman period. In some of these assigned typological groups, certain artefacts do not have a clear definition. This study aimed to assess whether use-wear analysis combined with experimental archaeology could be applied to bone artefacts from the Roman period as ...

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***This research aimed to evaluate the hypotheses related to the production and possible uses of a class of deer antler tools from the Bronze Age Terramara of Pragatto (Italy). These bevel-ended instruments are traditionally considered handled hoes...

Beeswax is a frequently mentioned binder additive in the literature. Unfortunately, it is not so durable as to be well preserved in archaeological records, although there are faint exceptions. Because of its strengthening capabilities, which is believed to be its role, this research set out to carry out an experiment to verify the effects of adding it to the adhesives potentially used in the European Stone Age...

At the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, in the town of Turku (SW Finland), a new quarter was built near a lake that came to be known as Mätäjärvi (‘Rotten Lake’), possibly because it was polluted by the waste from leather tanners, shoemakers, and other artisans. In the excavated remains of a wooden house in this quarter, objects like leather shoes, clippings and scrapings, imported stoneware from Germany...

The experiment aimed to investigate certain aspects of the textile dyeing process in Anglo-Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon Britain: substances known as mordants and assists. This aspect of the dyeing process is often omitted by researchers, who mostly focus on dyestuff as a source of colour. Mordants and assists deserve wider research, however, as they play a great part in the dyeing process...

Bone and wood pipes are among the medieval aerophones which have been discovered during archaeological excavations in Poland. The ones that interested us are characterized by a parallel arrangement of sound holes. They are short pipes, several centimetres long, with two holes cut in different places of the pipe body, either at one end or in the middle...

Two metallurgical traditions coexisted in the Chalcolithic Southern Levant: the lost wax casting of polymetallic alloys and the pure copper technology. Details of their operational sequences are still unknown. To date, no production sites of lost wax casting technology have been found. Only the main steps of the pure copper technology can be reconstructed from the archaeological record...

Bone pipes are the most numerous instrument surviving from Early Medieval England. These instruments are usually classified as ‘flutes’ despite many of the examples missing the defining categorisations. Two examples from the archaeological record of early Medieval England will be used as case studies: one instrument from North-West Essex and the other from York...

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***In Japan, over 1,000 prehistoric house reconstructions have been built at 360 different locations since 1949. Pit houses from Neolithic Jomon Period (14,000–300BC) are the most common but they are mostly based on archaeological remains limited to pits and postholes. Therefore, decisions on material and structure come...