EXARC Meetings

EAA conference – the Big One of the archaeology world. If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere, as the song says. We (Giovanna Fregni, Brendan O’Neill and myself) were determined to make it a great one for the delegates who signed up to share their work, with free EXARC Digests and biscuits from Belfast’s finest small home bakery, The Old Oven Door –archaeology marches on its stomach and it was an early start!

Back in 2019, the 11th International Experimental Archaeology #EAC took place in Trento Italy. We had close to 200 participants and we started discussing with our colleagues from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland about the next conference.

But instead, we organised an online only conference in 2021, with a strong base in Exeter (UK) and it was only in 2023 we could meet in Poland.

The EXARC Annual General Meeting (AGM) takes place by email and starts on Saturday April 1, 2023. While there are no pressing issues on the agenda, let us know if there is anything you want to be discussed.

We call all EXARC members to join the meeting by replying to the material below before April 4 to info@exarc.net.

The EXARC Board will then look at all the comments and reply to you all. This will be followed by a request to vote (April 5 - 19).

EXARCs largest event of the year will be in Poland in May: the #EAC13 international conference on experimental archaeology.

And we will have some very special guests! A delegation from Ukraine will join us for a live dialogue on how to strengthen the experimental archaeology cooperation between Ukraine and the rest of the world. Keeping culture alive, and keeping the network going is essential. Please support the network we build up with Ukraine colleagues. 

The international Experimental Archaeology Conference #EAC13 will be a big feast! We have registered 60 presentations so far and we already have over 100 participants. This includes people from around the world who will join the online part (free to access), but we also have many people traveling to Toruń in Poland to be part of the live conference. It all takes place 1-3 May and includes several very interesting excursions.

One of our goals this year - and for many years to come - is focussing on the Sustainable Development Goals and we wanted to highlight this with this year's conference "A Sustainable Revolution for Open-Air Museums".

After months of planning, the conference went live yesterday, 22 August 2022. With thirteen pre-recorded presentations from our speakers and six hotspot presentations from our lovely sponsors. We had over fifty only registrations but almost one thousand views during the hours the conference was live. The range of presentations showed that sustainability is part of so many different projects around the globe. From collecting and growing seeds to preserve a specific plant, over digitalisation of historic farming techniques to engaging the public with stories about climate change.

EXARC cannot have an Annual General Meeting (AGM) as usual. We therefore will do the AGM by e-mail.

The opening of the AGM will be on Tuesday, April 5, with all members receiving a newsletter and documentation about the past year and the plans for the current year. Your feedback is needed before April 19.

The Board will then look at all the comments, and reply soon after that. This will be followed by a request to vote by all the members.

We are very happy to announce that the next International Experimental Archaeology Conference, #EAC13, is planned to take place in Toruń (PL), on 1 – 3 May 2023. You will find the Save the Date with more information here

Integrating the Archaeological Experiment into a Multidisciplinary Science and its Popularisation

By organizing the Experimental Archaeology Conference (#EAC13) in Toruń, we would like to honor the unique role that experimental archaeology plays in such a modern, scientific and interdisciplinary approach to research to reconstruct life in the past...

EXARC decided to move the conference titled "A Sustainable Revolution for Open-Air Museums" from Butser Ancient Farm (UK) in May to being a part of the ICOM General Conference (in Prague and online) on 22 August.

These changes are mainly Corona related. By linking our online conference with the ICOM General Conference, we expect to reach a large group of interested museum professionals we otherwise would not reach, plus a good number of people who follow EXARC already. There will be a part exclusively for ICOM and its conference participants, while EXARC will broadcast a larger free and open access program around that...

We managed to organise another successful volunteer day despite the pandemic. This year we met in Leiden.

Prof. Dr Annelou van Gijn (Leiden University) gave a wonderful talk and introduction to the “Putting Life into Late Neolithic Houses” project. EXARC is one of the ten partners involved and we wanted to show our members and volunteers what we were up to lately. Leo Wolterbeek, one of our members involved in the project, brought one of the tools used for digging out the canoe...