EXARC Meetings

Another fall has come and gone and with that fall came REARC 2019. This year was hosted for the first time by Mary Washington University and Ferry Farm (George Washington's childhood home) in Fredericksburg, VA. As in past years the conference consisted of a day of paper presentations on Friday, followed by a hands-on day on Saturday involving not just conference attendees, but Museum staff, community groups, and the public. Dozens of attendees gathered from as far away as Canada and California to participate in these broad ranging activities.

From May 30 to June 1, the 42nd conference of the Serbian Archeological Society was held in Negotin (Serbia). The session "summa summarum - experimental archaeology in the Balkans" was co-organsied with EXARC. About 130 experts from Germany, USA, Poland, Greece, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Russia and other countries took part in the event, of these several EXARC members presented their research: Vesna Vučković (RS), Milica Tapavički-Ilić (RS), Arturs Tomsons (LV), Ivan Semyan (RU), Spyros Bakas (GR), Rene Masaryk (SI), Andreja Kudelić (HR), Tena Karavidović (HR) & Ina Miloglav (HR).

Special mention is for the presentation by Ivan Semyan (RU) & Spyros Bakas (GR) on their EXARC twinning project...

In Trento (IT), EXARC held its Annual General Meeting. Over 40 members were present. Following the report over last year (see Reports and Prospects) both Martin Schmidt, EXARC founder, and Bill Schindler, EXARC Chair left the EXARC Board, with many thanks for the work they did for EXARC. We expect to see them again in the future.

EXARC, together with University Trento, organized a large conference on experimental archaeology in Italy, May 2019. This was already the 11th conference in these series. It was attended by 191 people from 28 countries and included topics like stone working, ship building, metal working and experimental archaeological methods & techniques. We had 65 students, that is 34% of all participants. 77 EXARC Members joined us (versus 114 non members), several people became members during the conference. In total EXARC got over 20 new members due to this conference. We welcome them all!

The eighth Conference on Reconstructive and Experimental Archaeology (REARC) took place in Colonial Williamsburg in October 2018. In addition to hearing scholarly presentations, the almost 80 attendees could engage with a variety of historic craftspeople as well as experts in prehistoric technologies while touring one of eastern North America’s most important early colonial sites...

EXARC’s annual meeting was in Italy this year, at the 13th Paleofestival in La Spezia. We had about 25 EXARC members present, in a field with 50 demonstrators on both days. It was a sunny weekend with plenty of visitors and enough time to chat too. EXARC wants to thank everybody who was present, but especially the organisers, Donatella Alessi & Edoardo Ratti.

There were 71 actors and 47 different events in the two days. Also, there was a lecture program with 11 presentations, 50/50 in Italian and English. Both days together, we saw over 1,500 visitors. 

For the second time in a row, the Reconstructive and Experimental Archaeology Conference took place, 16-19 November 2017. There were 68 participants from all across North America, including a high number of archaeology and anthropology students. The first day they witnessed 15 papers, including a keynote by Natalie Mueller on “Growing Lost Crops, Reconstructing Ancient Knowledge Systems”. The second day several workshops and demonstrations took place for the conference delegates, in contact with the visitors of Colonial Williamsburg. Where in one area people were processing hides, somewhere else there was an atlatl competition, bronze casting or flint knapping.