Ancient Technology

There can be various reasons for reconstructing clothing for museum purposes. The most frequent one, as in the case of this paper, is to improve and liven up an exhibition with 3D models (Hendszel et al., 2008), which present the fashion culture of individual periods, nationalities or specific regional features to the general public...

10th EAC Leiden 2017
***Scientific attempts to understand early prosthesis manufacturing techniques are rare. The academic research of artificial limbs has been limited to the historical analysis of documentary sources. This area still remains a fairly under-researched topic even under the more recent developments of disability studies (Childress, 1985)...

10th EAC Leiden 2017
***Of Erasmus, prince of humanists (1466?-1536), no less than eight portraits from life survive – all eight in the exact same bonnet. A recently published investigation of this iconic garment (Kruseman, Sturtewagen and Malcolm-Davies, 2016) involved establishing a 250-year typology of the bonnet from iconographical sources, compiling technological and...

This article is dedicated to the reconstruction I’ve done in 2017 of a Picenian cloack clasp which is a pretty unique find. It has been found in a prince’s grave dating back to the early 7th Century b.C. and is considered a rare find because only a few similar items have been found in Central Italy, and because of the rare use of amber decorations and bronze plates, that makes this find a true masterpiece...

10th EAC Leiden 2017
***This article presents a practical approach to a Graeco-Roman woodworking tool called “ascia-Hobel” in the archaeological literature, respectively “adze-plane” as the corresponding English term. The tool in question consists of an often semi-circular adze-blade attached to a two-handled shaft and seems to be suited both for chopping and...

This bow was a concept, commissioned from Ulrich Velthuysen, a Swedish archer. This horn bow could be classified as a post-conquest design from early 14th century AD Mongolia. In this article, I will describe, step-by-step, the gathering and processing of materials, and the construction of this design of horn bow...

The grassland and forest steppes ranging from the Ural to the Altai-Sayan mountains were dominated by Andronovo Family cultures during the second millennium BC (the Bronze Age) (Koryakova & Epimakhov 2007; Мартынов 2005). The Andronovo dated ceramic series were characterized by a distinctly expressed geometric ornamentation style...

Baskets are among the most ancient of human artefacts. Everyone is familiar with their most common functions as containers for transport and storage. When told that baskets have also served as cooking vessels, most people will be unable to conceive of how this is possible, yet this was a primary function of baskets for many cultures of the past, and some until the present...

This article examines the art and craft of flintknapping and how the OpenArch project has influenced the way in which this specialized body of craft-knowledge can be most efficiently presented to the public, but additionally—and more importantly—how making the most of teaching opportunities can convey a deeper interpretation to the museum-goer...

Analysis of plant remains and soils collected during excavations of the Iron Age and Roman Period salt production site at Stanford Wharf Nature Reserve on the coast of Essex have shown that saltmarsh plants and adhering sediments had been used as fuel to evaporate brine and crystallise the sea salt.