archaeological open-air museum

OpenArch Special Digest 2015 Issue 2
***Compared to other European countries, the number of Finnish archaeological open-air museums is limited. Currently, Kierikki and Saarijärvi Stone Age villages are the only two open-air museums under the care of professional museums. Both villages specialise in the Stone Age period (Kierriki 2015; Saarijärvi 2015)...

At Butser Ancient Farm our aim is to help visitors understand more about life in Britain in the distant past. We are also determined to give all our visitors a good experience when they visit. To promote this for every visitor, we need to be aware of the needs of our visitors, whatever they may be...

From the 27 July to the 6 September 2015 the Stone Age Park Dithmarschen (Archaeological-Ecological Centre Albersdorf, AÖZA) organised a Mesolithic living history experiment in its newly constructed ‘Mesolithic Settlement’ finished last year. The experiment sought to investigate, through careful reconstruction, how people may have carried out their daily lives in the Mesolithic period...

EXARC and Urgeschichtemuseum MAMUZ Schloss Asparn/Zaya joined forces to organise an international conference from the 25th to 27th of September 2015, held in Mistelbach, near Vienna focusing on Archaeological Reconstructions and Tourism...

OpenArch Special Digest 2015 Issue 2
***Terra Ibèrica [Iberian Land], the biggest event held at La Ciutadella Ibèrica of Calafell (Tarragona, Spain), is one of the highlights in the calendar of activities of this Iron Age reconstructed archaeological site...

Every year the Dutch Youth Association for History (NJBG) organizes several summer camps for children and young adults. Since the Eindhoven Museum was founded in 1982 the Workgroup for Experimental Archaeology (WEA) has organised activities in the museum which are concerned with experimental archaeology.

The museum of prehistory Urgeschichtemuseum (MAMUZ) in Asparn an der Zaya looks back on a long tradition, starting in the late 1960s, when the province of Lower Austria’s prehistoric collection found a new home at the freshly renovated palace Schloss Asparn. While the palace was being set up as a presentation area for the collection items...

OpenArch: In late May 2015, St Fagans National History Museum in Wales organized a three day meeting in and around Cardiff for OpenArch. This is a European Culture Project with 11 partners that work to improve archaeological open-air museums. The first day of the meeting was a conference on issues and trends in archaeological open-air museums...

Introduction

Museum theatre as an umbrella-term is used to describe a variety of performative events aimed to interpret fragments of cultural heritage. In the framework of one of the main challenges contemporary museums face, that of having a social impact while dealing with heritage, whom values and narratives can always be “contested and disputed” (Smith 2011, 70), museum theatre has proved that not only can it enforce a constructivist approach in a museum environment but it can also generate debate and promote critical thinking on controversial issues (Farthing 2010).