transport

Researchers working in historical disciplines (history, archaeology, art history, legal history, theology) can draw on a source base that has grown in varying degrees. Nevertheless, source material especially for older periods remains incomplete, difficult to access or fragmentary. New insights into performance in a historical context of use - additionally to the fruitfully and carefully conducted ethnological comparison - are to be gained by supplementing, reconstructing and experimentally testing only fragmentarily preserved material or/and described evidence under historical conditions. Beyond the individual object, such reconstructions have epistemological relevance if they are methodologically controlled and verifiable.

This paper discussed the history, archaeology and experimental reconstruction of the Tranent-Cockenzie Waggonway. First it outlines the known chronology of the railway; secondly is describes the archaeology of the wooden phases of the waggonway (1722-1815) and finally the recent (2024) experimental archaeological project which attempted to reconstruct a 6m long section of the waggonway based on archaeological evidence found in 2019 and 2021...

Saturday 1 September dawns gloriously, and is unseasonably sunny. Our fingers are crossed that this is the Indian Summer we'd been praying for all August since we intend to do a lot of walking in the next three weeks...