Experimental Archaeology : Making, Understanding, Story-Telling: Proceedings of a Workshop in Experimental Archaeology: Irist Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens with UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture, Dublin Athems 14th - 15th October 2017

Experimental Archaeology: Making, Understanding, Story-telling is based on the proceedings of a two-day workshop on experimental archaeology at the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens in 2017, in collaboration with UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture. Scholars, artists and craftspeople explore how people in the past made things, used and discarded them, from prehistory to the Middle Ages. The papers include discussions of the experimental archaeological reconstruction and likely past experience of medieval houses, and also about how people cast medieval bronze brooches, or sharpened Bronze Age swords, made gold ornaments, or produced fresco wall paintings using their knowledge, skills and practices. The production of ceramics is explored through a description of the links between Neolithic pottery and textiles, through the building and testing of a Bronze Age Cretan pottery kiln, and through the replication and experience of Minoan figurines. The papers in this volume show that experimental archaeology can be about making, understanding, and storytelling about the past, in the present.

Table of Contents

1 - Introduction. Defining Experimental Archaeology: Making, Understanding, Storytelling? - Aidan O’Sullivan and Christina Souyoudzoglou-Haywood
Acknowledgement
2 - Experimental archaeological reconstructions and the investigation of houses from the past - Aidan O’Sullivan and Brendan O’Neill
3 - Crafting prehistoric bronze tools and weapons: Experimental and experiential perspectives - Barry Molloy
4 - “Cutting edge technology”: new evidence from experimental simulation and use of Late Bronze Age woodworking cutting tools. The saw as ‘case study’ - Eleni Maragoudaki
5 - Experimenting on Mycenaean gold-working techniques: the case of the granulated cone - Eleni Konstantinidi-Sybridi, NikolasPapadimitriou, Akis Goumas, Anna Philippa-Touchais and Romain Prévalet
6 - Thinking through our hands: making and understanding Minoan female anthropomorphic figurines from the peak sanctuary of Prinias, Crete. - Christine Morris, Brendan O’Neill and Alan Peatfield
7 - Reconstructing a Bronze Age Kiln from PriniatikosPyrgos, Crete - Jo Day and Maggie Kobik
8 - Where have all the moulds gone? A detailed investigation of early medieval bi-valve clay moulds - Brendan O’Neill
9 - Recreating Neolithic textiles: an exercise on woven patterns - Kalliope Sarri and Ulrikka Mokdad
10 - Experimental archaeology in the study of painting techniques and materials - Antonis Vlavogilakis

Aidan O'Sullivan is a Professor of Archaeology at University College Dublin, Ireland. He is Director of the UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture and established the School of Archaeology's MSc in Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture in 2016.