The content is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 License.

RETOLD: Documentation | Digitisation | Sharing

Persistent Identifier
https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10735

Open-air museums are vast repositories of cultural heritage data, which are currently located in archival records, photos, video, and the minds of museum staff and volunteers. RETOLD ensures that open-air museums continue telling important cultural heritage stories to a diverse public by developing a standardised workflow to collect, digitise, and share data on buildings, crafts, and traditions. By means of RETOLD, museum data are preserved and better accessible, offering opportunities for more engaging and impactful story-telling about cultural heritage to the general public.

Featured Articles

RETOLD: Unlocking the potential of archaeological house reconstructions by standardizing documentation in open-air museums – experiences from the Museumsdorf Düppel in Berlin, Germany

RETOLD: Unlocking the potential of archaeological house reconstructions by standardizing documentation in open air museums – experiences from the Museumsdorf Düppel in Berlin, Germany
Author(s)
Julia Heeb 1 ✉,
Svea Röbke 1
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2024/3
The Museumsdorf Düppel – a medieval archaeological open-air museum in Berlin – is a good example a bottom-up museum project from the 1970’s. The idea to create an open-air museum was born after the excavation of a medieval settlement had brought to light several house features, wells and objects ranging from pottery sherds to iron artefacts, in south-western Berlin...

RETOLD: Experiences in a Local Museum with Digital Documentation – The Stone Age Park Dithmarschen in Albersdorf (Germany) as a RETOLD Partner

Author(s)
Rüdiger Kelm 1 ✉,
Roeland Paardekooper 2
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2024/2
The Stone Age Park Dithmarschen in Albersdorf (Germany) is an archaeological open-air museum focussing on the Stone Age. It consists of an outdoor park area of about 40 hectares. This includes archaeological monuments, reconstructed Mesolithic and Neolithic buildings and a recently opened museum building with an exhibition of original artifacts...

RETOLD: Craft Documentation – as Part of the RETOLD Project

Author(s)
George Tomegea 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2024/2
RETOLD is a project implemented through the Creative Europe program of the European Union, whose main purpose is the creation of standard documentation tools to be used in open-air museums. Along with creating documentation, craft documentation is an important component of the project that is the subject of this article...

RETOLD: Review of the Meeting at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), June 2022

Author(s)
Clara Masriera i Esquerra 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2024/1
In June 2022, the first onsite RETOLD project meeting took place in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), hosted, and organised by the Prehistory department. The meeting in Barcelona was important to introduce the RETOLD project to a wider public of specialists and students, and to test the idea of the web-app for the first time with all partners and some expert guests...

RETOLD: Review of the Meeting at the Stone Age Park Dithmarschen, Albersdorf, September 2023

Author(s)
Rüdiger Kelm 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2023/4
At the end of September 2023 the third face-to-face meeting of the partners from the RETOLD-project took place in Albersdorf in Northern Germany, hosted by the Stone Age Park Dithmarschen (Steinzeitpark Dithmarschen). The meeting took place in the recently opened new museum “Stone Age House” and in the open-air area of the Museum...

RETOLD: A SWOT Analysis

Author(s)
George Tomegea 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2023/3
After two years of implementing the RETOLD Project, we made a SWOT Analysis of the current stage of using digital technology in the daily activities of open-air museums, as far as documentation, digitization and sharing heritage are concerned. The analysis was made based on the answers from a questionnaire applied in the three partner museums involved in the projects...

RETOLD: Review of the Meeting at ASTRA, Sibiu, March 2023

Author(s)
George Tomegea 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2023/3
At the end of March 2023 the second face-to-face meeting of the partners from the RETOLD Project was organised in Sibiu. The host was the ASTRA National Museum Complex. The meeting took place in the Open-Air Museum of Dumbrava Sibiului, one of the largest open air museums in Europe that comprises over 400 traditional dwellings...

RETOLD: Documenting Houses, Sharing the Story with the Visitors

Author(s)
Magdalena Zielińska 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2023/2
Open-air museums host much cultural heritage data. You can find them in archival records, photos, video, and the minds of people. These data are at risk of being lost. This is where RETOLD comes in, a European Project (Creative Europe Program) with six partners working together on a solution.

RETOLD: On the Way for a Digital Future of Documentation in Open-air Museums – User Requirements for Data Entry and a Management Product for the RETOLD-Project

Author(s)
Cordula Hansen 1,
Rüdiger Kelm 2 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2022/3
As part of the RETOLD project, which runs from 2020 until 2024 and is funded by the Creative Europe Programme, Nüwa Digital Media Production Studios (Ireland) in collaboration with the Archaeological-Ecological Centre Albersdorf (AÖZA, Germany) have carried out a year-long user research project for a future digital tool, that will enable open-air museums to collect and manage data...

RETOLD: Open-air Museum Mobile Applications UX Report - Looking for Inspiration

Author(s)
Pau Sanchis Rota 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2022/3
This article presents the methodology and results of the report on Open-air Museums Mobile Apps, developed by the RETOLD Project in October 2021. From the analysis of a sample composed by 15 Open-air Museums mobile applications, three models for Open-air museums mobile apps are proposed according to different visit experiences.

RETOLD: Initial Survey to Capture Current State of Digital Tech in Open-Air Museums

Author(s)
Cordula Hansen 1,
Rüdiger Kelm 2 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2021/3
The motivation and purpose of the RETOLD project is to capture and preserve the wealth of data from evidence informing building reconstructions and craft processes of open-air museums. Additionally, the project seeks to develop and use alternative formats of oral histories as a way of share intangible cultural heritage with a wide audience. From an artistic point of view, immersive media are to...

RETOLD: Documenting House (Re)constructions – An Excerpt of European Approaches

Author(s)
Julia Heeb 1 ✉,
George Tomegea 2
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2021/3
As part of the EU project RETOLD, the Stadtmuseum Berlin in Germany is responsible for creating standardised documentation strategies for archaeological house models and evaluating them by engaging with the open-air museums of Astra in Romania and the Steinzeitpark Dithmarschen in Germany. In order to start creating these workflows, as a first step, other open-air museum were approached ...

RETOLD: A European Project Digitises Memories of Experimental Archaeology for Their Preservation

Author(s)
Paloma González Marcén 1,
Clara Masriera Esquerra 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2021/3
The origins of the European RETOLD project, led by the international association EXARC, lie in a concern to preserve the heritage generated by archaeological open-air museums through the creation of a standardised system for collecting, digitising and disseminating knowledge (memories) of the processes of building reconstruction and handcrafted objects. The project has a duration of four years ...

Approaches to the Documentation of Houses in Open-Air Museums

Author(s)
Enrico Lehnhardt 1 ✉,
Stefan Solleder 1
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2021/1
The seminar was divided into two parts. One group professionally documented the long-term experiment “House 1” in the Museums Village Düppel for the first time. The house was built in the 1970s and left to decay in 1990. The area was freed from vegetation and photographed at regular intervals. The second group reflected on the continuous documentation of reconstructed houses in archaeological...

Discussion: The Concept of Authenticity in Collections of Open-Air Museums

Reconstructed Roman artefacts at an event in AFM Oerlinghausen, Germany, 2015. Photo: Roeland Paardekooper
Author(s)
Joerie van Sister 1 ✉,
Marc van Hasselt 1,
Thit Birk Petersen 2,
Lara Comis 3,
Maura Stefani 4,
David Freeman 5,
Sverre Christoffer Guldberg 6,
Randi Stoltz 7,
Henrik Zipsane 8,
Léontine Meijer-van Mensch 9,
Martin Schmidt 10,
John Ertl 11,
Thomas Bloch Ravn 12,
Nigel Copsey 13
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2021/1

How is it possible that if you go into an arts museum, the ceramics you see may be made yesterday and may be a valued and legitimate part of the museum collection, while in open-air museums, a similar object ...

Documentation Strategies at Butser Ancient Farm

Author(s)
Trevor Creighton 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/4
Butser Ancient Farm has been at the forefront of experimental archaeology in Britain1. for more than 45 years. The pioneering work of its first director Dr Peter Reynolds in the evaluation of Iron Age structures and agriculture demonstrated beyond doubt the importance of experiment in archaeology in the UK and international experimental archaeology work...

Digital Saryazd: Increasing Tourist Engagement Using Digital Documentation

Author(s)
Kristy-Lee Seaton 1 ✉,
Miglena Raykovska 1
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/3
Saryazd Castle is located in Yazd Province, Iran. The castle dates to the Samani era, with later expansion during the Safavid era. Constructed entirely of mud-brick, Saryazd was continuously used until the mid-20th century as a vault, protecting both people and their property. Earthenware structures require continual renewal in order to maintain the integrity of the structure. Today, visitors can...

Conference Review: Exploring Heritage, Museums Mediating Archaeology

Author(s)
Roeland Paardekooper 1 ✉
Publication Date
EXARC Journal Issue 2020/1
Our colleagues in Xanten invited us for a conference on the use of digital media in museums. Eleven speakers from Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Austria captivated an audience of about 75 participants. Many of the presented ideas were delivered by larger museums, some of them in the phase of execution...