review

Book Review: Historical Brewing Techniques by Lars Marius Garshol

Author(s)
Susan Verberg 1
Publication Date
My fascination with Scandinavian yeast rings let me to meet Lars Marius Garshol, online, several years ago. It was refreshing to meet someone, even if only online, who, just like I, enjoys the practical aspects of enjoying and brewing a good home brew as well as being deeply fascinated with its traditions and history. We shared research, compared notes, and had lively discussions, even though...

Conference Review: Documentation Strategies in (Archaeological) Open-air Museums

Author(s)
Matilda Siebrecht 1
Publication Date
The conference in Documentation Strategies in (Archaeological) Open-air Museums, organised through the Experimental Archaeology Society (EXARC), was due to be held in Berlin on March 26th and 27th 2020. Unfortunately, the first half of March 2020 saw the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic throughout Europe which caused the implementation of government restrictions on travel and...

Book Review: Bronze Age Combat: An Experimental Approach by Raphael Hermann et al

Author(s)
Rena Maguire 1
Publication Date

Cometh the hour, cometh the book? There was a considerable anticipatory kerfuffle on archaeological social media about the release of Bronze Age Combat: an experimental approach, and rightly so. It is much more than just an experimental archaeology book with rather gorgeous photographs of swords, spears and shields (although it is that too!). It is a rare publication which manages to...

Conference Review: 2nd Experimental Archaeology Student Symposium

Author(s)
Yvette A. Marks 1
Publication Date
The Department of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield hosted the 2nd Experimental Archaeology Student Symposium (EAStS) between the 28th February and 1st March 2020, following on from the first successful meeting held in Newcastle in October 2018. The Symposium hosted nine papers on a variety of different experimental reconstructions of material production and processes...

Book Review: Iron Age Experience, Iron Age Kids and Kaptol - Hallstatt Food Workshop & Cookbook

Author(s)
Caroline Nicolay 1 ✉,
Lucian Petre Vulpe 2
Publication Date
Iron-Age-Danube was a cross-border project, part of the Interreg Danube Transnational Programme of the European Union. It lasted from 2017 until 2019. It counted 12 partners and seven associated organisations from in Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. The major goal of the project is to communicate a lively image of archaeological research and the Iron Age landscapes to the visitors...

Conference Review: The Later Prehistoric Finds Group Conference Crafting Identities: Making and Using Objects in the Bronze and Iron Ages

Author(s)
E. Giovanna Fregni 1
Publication Date
The one-day conference was held on Saturday 26th October 2019 in Edinburgh at the National Museum of Scotland. The focus was on the importance of understanding craft processes as a means of interpreting the expression of identity in prehistory. This was explored in papers that focussed on crafts and craftworkers who worked in metals, wood, glass, and ceramic materials...

Conference Review: ICA II Conference Paris, France

Author(s)
E. Giovanna Fregni 1
Publication Date
The ICAII International Conference on Archaeometallurgy was held 25 September to 1 October 2019 at the Sorbonne University, Paris-Saclay University, and at Melle dans le Poitou where experiments were conducted. Papers were delivered in French and English and primarily focused on the metallurgy of the Bronze Age and New Kingdom periods in Egypt and the Middle East, using evidence from...

Book Review: Zivot experimentem. Sbornik praci k zivotnimu jubileu Bohumira Dragouna

Author(s)
Veronika Trubačová 1
Publication Date
This publication was created on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the eminent Czech archaeologist and experimenter Bohumír Dragoun. In its 168 pages the book looks at his life, and also at the increasingly popular interactive museums and experimental activities in archaeology...

Book Review: Mittelsteinzeit, ein Leben im Paradies? by Werner Pfeifer

Author(s)
Michael Müller 1
Publication Date
Considering actual studies about the analysis of ancient DNA is an important question, if only the lifestyle or the population, too, changed when hunter-gatherers became farmers and stockbreeders. The results point so far towards the latter possibility. However, the foragers of the Northern European Ertebølle culture preserved their lifestyle for one millennium, even though they lived in neighboring areas...

Book Review: Slow Tech by Peter Ginn

Author(s)
Jonny Crockett 1
Publication Date
Slow Tech by Peter Ginn is a guide for step-by-step experimental archaeology. It is more a manual than a text or reference book, clearly showing the chaîne opératoire for potential experiments to try at home. Each of the five chapters includes a brief introduction to the relevant topics, followed by a series of experiments with clear procedure instructions and lists of required equipment...