book
Book Review: An Early Meal - a Viking Age Cookbook & Culinary Odyssey by Daniel Serra and Hanna Tunberg
Publication Date
The Vikings recorded many things, from The Sagas to business transactions and personal letters. But beyond a brief and occasional mention, two of the many things they didn’t write about were what they ate and how they prepared their meals. The Vikings left no recipes...
Book Review: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences by L. Shillito, E. Fairnell and H. S. Williams (eds)
Publication Date
A set of eleven articles resulting from the call for papers for the Sixth UK Experimental Archaeology Conference (held in York in January 2012) is now published in a special issue of the Journal of Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences...
Book Review: The Emergence of Pressure Blade Making: from Origin to Modern Experimentation by Pierre M. Desrosiers (editor)
Publication Date
There are few issues in lithic studies that have captured the imagination and attention of researchers as much as laminar (blade) technologies (see Bar-Yosef & Kuhn 2009). This has resulted in a rich and detailed body of academic work partly reflected in Pierre M. Desrosiers’ (Ed.) The Emergence of Pressure Blade Making: From Origin to Modern Experimentation...
Book Review: The Value of an Archaeological Open-Air Museum is in its Use by Roeland Paardekooper
Publication Date
With publication of Dr Paardekooper’s monograph we now, finally, have a secure databank of facts and figures relating to archaeological open-air museums in Europe, including management structures, key financial indicators, visitor profiles and visitor numbers...
Book Review: Experimental Archaeology and Fire. The Investigation of a Burnt Reconstruction at West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village by Jess Tipper
Publication Date
What should an archaeologist do if one of the reconstructions of an experimental village is accidentally burning during the night? Simple: pick up a camera and start taking pictures. And then, of course, plan the excavation to record as much information as possible followed by an analytical and detailed publication on the results...
Book Review: Guédelon - Building a French Castle the 13th Century Way
Publication Date
Guédelon: How to Build a Castle by Darques is by no means a DIY book or a guided tour on paper of the Guédelon site. Guédelon: a Castle in the Making by Martin & Renucci is subtitled The Guédelon Adventure and although it carries a lot of information about the construction site and its sources, this book still reads much like an adventure book...
Book Review: Aurignacian Clay Hearths from Klissoura Cave 1: an Experimental Approach by Malgorzata Kot
Publication Date
About 90 concave, clay-lined hearths were identified during excavations of Aurignacian layers (ca. 35000BC in Klissoura Cave 1, Greece). Only two similar combustion features, identified at the Czech site Dolni Věstonice and defined as kilns, were known from Palaeolithic contexts before the excavations at Klissoura...
Book Review: Glossary of Prehistoric and Historic Timber Buildings by Lutz Volmer and W. Haio Zimmermann (ed.)
Publication Date
The 1987 conference in Ă…rhus, Denmark on ESF Workshop on the reconstruction of wooden buildings from the prehistoric and early historic period has been important to EXARC as we have acquired, and are gradually publishing, the manuscripts of the unpublished proceedings....
Book Review: Fish Leather Tanning and Sewing by Lotta Rahme and Dag Hartman
Publication Date
Judging from the extensive bibliography in this book, little to no literature exists on fish leather tanning in English. A quick Google and Amazon search reveals that a good general book on leather tanning includes at least one chapter on fish, reptile and other "alternative" skins...
Book Review: Toffee Apples & Togas by Rita Roberts
Publication Date
Although Marcus Gavius Apicius was a brilliant observer and author, he was no cook, this is possible to recognise even after 2000 years... Only people truly knowledgeable in cooking, and also those who love to experiment, can cook according to the literary translation of Apicius...