EXARC Journal - Latest Articles

At the location of a former Roman military fort and fleet base existing from AD 15-28 in Velsen, The Netherlands, more than 3000 bones and bone fragments were excavated. Three of these can be interpreted as musical instruments. Two bone tubes, of a roe deer and a stork, are provided with one and three holes respectively, on the third, a length of an eagle wing bone with one joint removed...

Amber is a fossilized plant resin found in many areas of the world, such as the Baltic Sea coastline, in Central-and South America and, more rarely, in southern Italy. The following work aims to introduce the reader to some experiments carried out on raw Baltic amber cores, using different techniques and tools with the purpose of verifying how effective these tools can be, and any reaction of the amber...

A common theory is that copper smelting first appeared in the Near East in close connection with the early pottery industry. However, copper smelting may well have been discovered many times in history and at many places. Our hypothesis is that copper smelting could have been discovered when the copper-bearing mineral malachite, accidentally or intentionally, was present in lime-burning kilns...

One of the arguments proposed for interpreting the Neolithic site of Okhta as a settlement is the fact that potsherds found upon the site show no signs of rounding. Interpretation of the site as a settlement correlates poorly with the geological data, which suggests that, in the Neolithic period, the site was the bottom of a shallow bay of the Littorina Sea into which Paleo-Okhta and Paleo-Tosna flowed...

The Mamuz Schloss Asparn/Zaya, Austria, is best known for its archaeological open-air site with reconstructed buildings and an active experimental archaeology program. In 2021, MAMUZ designed a traveling exhibition on experimental archaeology, in collaboration with EXARC, who assisted with the provision of experimental archaeologists. Therefore, many of the authors of the exhibition are EXARC members or had previously presented at EXARC conferences...