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Prehistoric wooden projectiles likely have a complex evolutionary story in a similar way to stone tools, depending on their functions, and the cognitive and physical capabilities of hominins who used them. The technologies of some ancient projectiles (e.g., spears, arrows) can be studied more directly because they were equipped with stone points which survive archaeologically, but other implements made entirely of wood are extremely rare archaeological finds and need an indirect study of their ethnological diversity to try to shed light on their evolution. The evolution of throwing sticks is often restricted to the invention of boomerangs which, as returning objects, have fascinated Europeans, particularly since the early 19th century colonisation of Australia. However, the innovation of returning boomerangs is probably relatively recent, compared to their entire technological evolution. The resulting technological diversity of forms through time is reflected in the different morphological types of ethnological throwing sticks found on the Australian continent but is also present in other parts of the world. A scheme of evolution for throwing sticks is proposed here, according to the technology that can be observed on numerous ethnological objects studied in museum collections, and experience gained from throwing replicas, which allow us to distinguish different development phases for these projectiles.

The pathogenic environment has been a constant shaping presence in human evolution. Despite its importance, this factor has been given little consideration and research. Here, we use experimental archaeology and microscopic analysis to present and support a novel hypothesis on the pathogenic properties of bifacial butchery tools during the Middle Pleistocene. Use-wear evidence from the Acheulean site of Boxgrove, Sussex suggests that a sample of flint bifaces were used for butchery tasks for a remarkably limited duration. Circumstantial evidence from other Acheulean sites, such as the apparent discard of bifaces at single-episode butchery sites, and biface caching sites, also suggest limited-use, and extend this interpretation beyond Boxgrove. There is no current utilitarian explanation for why such an apparently over-engineered tool would be discarded after such a limited duration of use. This pilot study demonstrates, via experimental investigation, that residual animal tissue from performing butchery tasks cannot be completely removed from the flake scars of flint bifaces using prehistorically available cleaning methods. It is argued that the animal tissue is likely to begin spoiling within hours of butchery, which poses a significant risk of introducing pathogens into foodstuffs if the biface is reused, resulting in foodborne illness. Subsequently, hominins likely learned to minimise this risk by discarding each flint bifacial tool after a single episode of butchery.

Archaeological excavations have revealed important sites from the prehistoric sites, with the cultural achievements of the early lithic tools of hunters-gatherers in the Palaeolithic, to the emergence of the farmer-village societies in the Neolithic, reaching on to urbanisation and the complex societies of the Chalcolithic. On the other hand, natural landscapes reveal the distribution of prehistoric sites near resources related to open-air lands or in caves. The biggest asset of presenting prehistoric sites is in not only boosting tourism and local economy, but also diversifying cultural activities. This covers not only the preserving and restoration work on the original sites, but also a "Discovery Centre" by creating sites like "Open-air Stand" with a permanent exhibition, as well as indoor and outdoor spaces. These can be dedicated to workshops, conferences and temporary exhibitions, and allows visitors to learn and practice "Early Human Lifestyle" activities. Attracting visitors to prehistoric sites and museums complements the sites with new job opportunities via restaurants, gift shops and bookstores, in order to achieve prosperity and welfare within the partnerships. This paper comes into three directions and depends on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals "SDGs"; first, analysing the problem and challenges, second a more dynamic design of prehistoric sites, while the third is for the strategy's feasibility, refreshing and possible benchmarks.

In the Upper Palaeolithic levels of the site of Grotta Continenza (Abruzzo, Italy), numerous shells shaped as half-moons have been found. These artifacts, being important examples of ancient ornaments, have been regularly subjects of study, but the production process has only been hypothesised. This research, with the support of an experimental protocol, presents a possible manufacturing sequence for their creation.

The periodical is published by Gunter Schöbel and the European Association for the Advancement of Archaeology by Experiment e. V. (Europäische Vereinigung zur Förderung der Experimentellen Archäologie) in collaboration with the Pfahlbaummuseum Unterhuldingen.

The Baffoni Cave is a cavern that lies in the Genga territory, in the province of Ancona, Italy. It is part of a complex of caves, the most famous of which are the Frasassi Caves. The whole territory is rich in archaeological features, with the most ancient specimen found within the Genga territory being a flint biface dating to the Lower Palaeolithic (Montanari and Pignocchi, 2022, p. 125). In 1952-1954, an archaeological expedition led by Dr Antonio Mario Radmilli searched the Baffoni Cave. Among the other specimens, three objects caught the attention of the scholar: a sandstone with signs of use, a bronze dagger and what initially appeared to be a clay mould for making unidentified metal objects.

The whys and hows of surviving plant macro-remains from the beginnings of agriculture onwards is a central question in the understanding of early sedentary economies. The vast majority of archaeological macro-remains consists of cereal grains, often described as charred. The research presented here repeats charring experiments with a variety of modern seed samples and complements the results with additional data from the literature. Whereas previous charring experiments have required further experimentation to explain the survival of charred macro-remains, the results presented here suggest an alternative explanation: a cold carbonisation involving fermentation and humification as opposed to a hot charring process. Additional fermentation experiments show the positive effects of this process in order to create seeds close to those from prehistoric pits. The biochemical and economic outlines of the fermentation technique are described and thus reintroduced into archaeology. Earth pit fermentation was documented by ethnological fieldwork in many parts of the world, whereas such data is not available for Europe. Analytical methods to verify one or the other conservation model are discussed.

Beeswax is a frequently mentioned binder additive in the literature. Unfortunately, it is not so durable as to be well preserved in archaeological records, although there are faint exceptions. Because of its strengthening capabilities, which is believed to be its role, this research set out to carry out an experiment to verify the effects of adding it to the adhesives potentially used in the European Stone Age. The study used pine resin and its various compositions with beeswax and frequently used charcoal. The binders obtained were then compared with birch tar, which is considered to be one of the best adhesives in prehistory. Arrow ballistics were used to verify the effectiveness of beeswax addition, which shows that this addition has a high-quality effect on the natural binders.

The periodical (Jahrbuch) was published by Gunter Schöbel and the European Asssociation for the advancement of archaeology by experiment e. V. (Europäische Verinigung zur Förderung der Experimentellen Archäologie) in collaboration with the Pfahlbaummuseum Unterhuldingen. The 19th issue of the periodical includes 19 essays over 231 pages which present the contributions of the EXAR conference held in 2019. The annual report (Jahresbericht, p.225) and the instructions for authors (Autorenrichtlinien, p.229) of Experimentelle Archäologie in Europa can be found at the end.

This volume on prehistoric tanning technology is the revised and expanded version of the dissertation submitted to Exeter University in 2015. It is noteworthy in that it places experiment at the heart of the entire research programme, thereby radically changing the perspective from which archaeological and ethnographic artefacts might be approached. As the author comments in the Introduction, the original intention was to examine surviving leather artefacts in museum collections in order to establish the sort of processing techniques that had been employed. But in the absence of any previous systematic research into the visible traces left by the different methods, and the unsatisfactory nature of existing physical and chemical analyses, Emmerich was compelled to start afresh and from the very basics, constructing her own standardized reference collection through a carefully constructed series of experiments.

Evidence for the production, use, and control of fire by Neanderthals in Europe ranges from the scale of ecosystems to microscopic alterations of artefacts. While there is a consensus that Neanderthals were skilled in the use of fire, there remains a dispute over whether they had mastered the ability to produce fire on demand. The unique discovery that Neanderthals may have been utilising manganese dioxide as an additional component to their fire starting toolkits has opened the possibility that they had a novel level of understanding of inorganic materials. This paper aims to experimentally test the proposal that manganese dioxide is effective at improving the fire lighting capacity of different tinder using an actual methodology. The results suggest that it may be of use in a certain concentration, but that manganese dioxide may also possess interesting visual properties when added to flammable materials.

In November 2019, Experimental and Experiential Archaeology made its debut as an independent session at the ASOR Annual Meeting in San, Diego, California, USA, featuring research done in the context of the ancient Near East (http://www.asor.org/). The session was organized by Tracy L. Spurrier from the University of Toronto who has been dabbling in modern lost wax bronze casting in order to research how King Sennacherib cast colossal bronze statues in 700 BC Nineveh (northern Iraq, ancient Mesopotamia). This inspired her to start a session for other archaeologists exploring experimental and experiential archaeology in the ancient Near East and the ASOR meeting was a perfect North American outlet.

The supposition that an unusually perforated femur of a juvenile cave bear found at the Divje babe I Palaeolithic cave site in Slovenia could be a musical instrument led to heated debates. According to its archaeological context and chronostratigraphic position, if made by humans, it could only be attributed to Neanderthals. The crucial question was related to the origin of the perforations. These could only have been made either by the teeth of a carnivore or by modification of the bone by human intervention. Experimental piercing on fresh juvenile brown bear femora using metal dental casts of wolf, hyaena, and bear showed that the four perforations exactly aligned in the middle of the longitudinal axis of the diaphysis can not be reasonably explained by carnivore biting/gnawing action. Experimental archaeology showed that morphologically identical perforations could be made by replicas of stone and bone tools, found in the Mousterian levels of Divje babe I, without leaving any conventional tool marks (i.e. cuts and micro-striations left by stone tools). Recent musical experiments performed on a replica of the reconstructed find revealed its great musical capability.

Little is known about the process of the invention of the prehistoric spear thrower which appeared around 25,000 years ago in Europe, although it may have emerged earlier on other continents. This innovative weapon had a late arrival in Australia from Papua New Guinea at the end of the late glacial maximum, and probably induced an adaptation in hand throwing spear technology used by local people. But could the spear thrower have also originated independently from older prehistoric technology on this continent? In this work, the hypothesis of a technological evolution from throwing sticks to the spear thrower is examined through several particular wooden Australian Aboriginal implements observed in ethnographic collections. Indeed, some traditional Aboriginal hooked throwing sticks from Coopers Creek might be a trace of a prehistoric throwing stick/spear thrower technological complex which has disappeared to be replaced by true specialised spear throwers from New Guinea, rendering them obsolete. Interestingly, other intersections between these two weapons could be found in the particular type of “on edge” built Aboriginal spear throwers from Northern Queensland where rare examples of spear throwers made from modified throwing sticks can also be found. Do they result from an adaptation of throwing sticks in contact with spear thrower importations from New Guinea or do they reflect the continuity of an older, independent Indigenous Australian spear thrower invention? Experimental replicas and throwing tests have been used here to try to shed light on the potential and limits of such implements which could have been used simultaneously for both functions.

Stone tools can, apart from human-made retouch, exhibit traces of damage due to post depositional processes. As a result of post depositional factors, whether animal, human or natural in origin, this damage can sometimes be interpreted as human-made retouch, even though it is actually the so called pseudo-retouch. Due to the problems arising in differentiating these two wholly opposite things, the last few decades have shown an increase in trampling experiments, the goal of which was to separate and recognize real retouch from pseudo-retouch. This article is going to show three such experiments executed by the authors, their methodology and results, as well the comparison to the results of the pseudo-retouch analysis done on lithic finds from a Middle Palaeolithic site of Mujina pećina in Croatia. The third experiment also consisted of taking a sample for soil micromorphological analysis which provided even more insights into this complex topic.

This paper investigates the creation, utilisation, and destruction of engraved Magdalenian plaquettes through the application of actualistic experimental replication. Archaeological evidence suggests that there is a relationship between plaquettes and hearth structures, as well as engraved depictions and the destruction of the plaquettes through heating. However, this relationship between fire and plaquettes has not yet been tested using experimental archaeology. This paper focuses on understanding the relationship of the plaquettes with hearth construction, and how this stage of their object biography may relate to and inform the depictions produced. Further, the experiments presented here explored whether there was a practical benefit to utilising plaquettes in hearth construction, as well as the effects of heating within specific hearth configurations, informed by observed spatial patterning of plaquettes at Magdalenian sites. The results of these experiments showed that the stacking of plaquettes to form an oven-like hearth structure decreased fuel consumption by over 50% whilst still producing adequate directional heat. However, the heat modification exhibited on the experimental plaquettes did not match those of the archaeological examples, with very few experimental examples of cracking and colour change. The paper discusses some potential explanations for the disparity between experimental results and archaeological patterning.

This periodical (Jahrbuch) is published by Gunter Schöbel and the European Association for the advancement of archaeology by experiment e. V. (Europäische Vereinigung zur Förderung der Experimentellen Archäologie) in collaboration with the Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen. It is the 18th issue of the periodical and includes 27 essays on experimental archaeology as well as an annual report (Jahresbericht, p. 321), an obituary for Sylvia Crumbach (p.325) and instructions for authors (Autorenrichtlinien, p. 326) of Experimentelle Archäologie in Europa on 328 pages.

The 9th annual Reconstructive and Experimental Archaeology Conference, hosted by the Center for Historic Preservation at the University of Mary Washington and George Washington’s Ferry Farm in Fredericksburg, Virginia, took place between October 25th and 26th. The 25th saw thirteen papers presented on a variety of topics, while demonstrations of some of the experiments took place on the 26th.

The oldest bifacial “handaxes” known so far belong to the “Kokiselei 4” site, dated to 1.76 Ma (West Turkana, Kenya; Texier, 2018). They have been manufactured by direct lithic percussion on magmatic effusive stone materials. Considering that the evolution of “fully operational intelligence” (Wynn, 1979) has been associated with the so-called “Mode 2” chaîne opératoire, it seems interesting to verify the potential adaptive meaning of selecting scarcely isotropic stones. This techno-behavioural approach, somehow similar to the so-called “lithic translation strategy” (Chelidonio, 1997), is a preliminary hypothesis that could be applied to the Fontana Ranuccio handaxes (458 ka BP, Latium/central Italy). In this very peculiar Acheulean assemblage, a few bifacial tools were manufactured using local “lava”1 (Biddittu, 1993, p. 58); others were roughly manufactured by flaking off thick elephant bones (Pereira et al., 2018). The above hypothesis has been preliminarily tested by experimenting the “Mode 2” techno-evolutionary step on some basalt samples at my disposal, to verify symmetrical flaking results applied to non-vitreous or non-cherty stones. Obviously, it is advisable to perform future tests on the basalt-like material available in the Fontana Ranuccio area, to adequately assess the techno-behavioural meaning of this peculiar lithic assemblage.

In 1978 a US Army soldier stationed in the North of South Korea discovered several hand axes near Jeongok in the Yeoncheon Province. This was the start of many years of archaeological investigations and eventually the building of the very futuristic Jeongok Prehistory Museum and the organisation of the annual Yeoncheon Paleolithic Festival. This year we were invited, thanks to Wulf Hein and Lee Hanyong, director of the Jeongok Prehistory museum, to join the 27th festival from the 1st – 6th of May 2019. It was a fun and memorable experience.

Experimental archaeology, especially experimental lithic technology, has not yet been established as a line of research in Brazil (or most of South America). This article presents the first systematic experimental research aiming the replication of Paleoamerican (or Paleoindian) lithic industries. Experimental replication of the stemmed points from Rioclarense and Garivaldinense industries were carried out in order to better understand their original technology. This article presents the results of this experiment and the comparison of the technological attributes of the replicated points and flakes to the archaeological ones. The results lead us to a discussion on some important technological aspects of the first lithic industries of Eastern South America.

Rondelles are thin, circular disc cut-outs typically made from the blade of the scapula of medium sized ungulates, such as horse or cervid. These are primarily associated with the Late Upper Palaeolithic Magdalenian and focused around northwest Europe. Rondelles are frequently perforated, with 2 mm - 3 mm diameter holes being common. There are many questions as to the production and use of rondelles. In this article, we discuss experiments on the making of both bone and slate rondelles and their usage.

In August 2018, members of EXARC participated in Moscow’s Times and Epochs Festival for the third year. The annual festival is held on park boulevards that surround the inner city, providing an ideal green space for reenactors to recreate various periods of Russia’s history. The main sites were located in Tverskaya Square, Nikitsky, Passion and Tver Boulevards, on Kamergersky Lane and Profsoyuznaya Street. The festival was spread over 10 kilometres with over 30 locations, hosting over 200 reenactors coming from various European and Asiatic countries. The periods recreated ranged from the Palaeolithic to the 20th century. There were impressive army encampments from the Napoleonic Wars, a Viking village, and medieval Muscovites. The festival also hosts a contest in which the presenters of a winning proposal receives one million roubles to implement their historical project.

Hand-delivered spears are the earliest clear hunting technology in the archaeological record, with origins from 400,000 years ago, before the evolution of our own species. Experimental archaeological approaches to early weaponry continue to grow, and both controlled and naturalistic experiments are making significant contributions to interpreting such technologies. Using human participants is often useful and sometimes necessary for such work. This paper argues that greater consideration should be afforded to a number of aspects of human performance in experimental work - whether naturalistic or controlled - including how proficiency and physiology may affect outcomes.

Antler working was prevalent throughout prehistory, with a breadth of intricately detailed and technologically complex antler artefacts observed within the archaeological record. In particular, during the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic, antler working with flint tools would have been a time-consuming process. While the chaîne opératoire of producing certain antler artefacts has previously been explored (Elliott and Milner, 2010; Marquebielle, 2011; Langley, 2014) there is a debate surrounding whether the soaking of antler was a necessary stage in this process. Soaking antler as a part of the chaîne opératoire is yet to be explored in depth, and thus the full implications of this stage to antler working processes in prehistory have not been considered. Where soaking antler has been explored, no distinction is made between soaking antler beams whole (for example, with no prior modification) or soaking antler which has had tines removed to expose the interior of the antler. We present the results of experiments which tested whether there is a significant difference between the workability of dry, soaked-whole antler, and soaked-exposed antler. We argue that there is a missing stage in current understandings of the chaîne opératoire of antler artefact manufacture. We conclude this stage could be responsible for the observed deposits of tine-removed antler in wetlands at prehistoric sites, such as Star Carr.

“Experimental Archaeology: from Research to Society” is a transcript of the proceedings of the Vth International Congress of Experimental Archaeology in Tarragona, Spain, on the 25-27th October 2017. The conference, organized by Experimenta (Asociación Española de Arqueología Experimental), the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES), the Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica (ICAC) and the Institut Català de Recerca en Patrimoni Cultural (ICRPC), should be considered within the scope of the programme of affirmation and development of the practices of experimental archaeology in Spain, a programme that consists of 12 years of activities. In fact (and as mentioned in the presentation) this initiative, that has now materialized in this book, attests to the “growing vitality of experimentation in Archeology” (Cáceres et al. 2018, 10) in Spain.

Jürgen Weiner - you can’t get away with not knowing this name if you are involved in Experimental Archaeology, even more if it involves flint. Weiner has published numerous works and he is known as a walking encyclopaedia. Along with Marquardt Lund, I met Jürgen and his charming wife in their house near Cologne. Our interview took place on a pleasant June afternoon in the garden, later shifting into the kitchen; Jürgen is an excellent cook and prepared a bean stew „tavče prebranac“. We subsequently moved down into the basement, where we were captivated by his library, workspace and collection. We finally ended our conversation in the early hours of the following morning, in the living room. Jürgen´s stories are as spicy as the dinner, embellished with anecdotes, all of which I cannot render here. Moreover, he turns out to be an exceptional entertainer, time and again falling skilfully into every possible dialect and more than once matchlessly imitating certain luminaries of archaeology – we laughed a lot throughout the evening.

For the annual Tagung (conference), about 120 people convened in the southernmost point of Germany, at Lake Constance, near the borders of Switzerland and Austria. This conference is the perfect networking event for experimental archaeology in the German spoken part of Europe. Out of the 27 lectures, 25 were presented in German. The strength, but also its weakness, of the conference is that anything goes. The Tagung is a friendly platform where high school students, seasoned professors, craftspeople, and everybody in between meet and exchange knowledge. Another strength is their swift publication process; last year’s conference proceedings (consisting of 230 pages) was available at this year’s conference and almost 30 books have been published since 1990.

The 8th annual Reconstructive and Experimental Archaeology Conference hosted by EXARC drew speakers and participants from many parts of the world. The REARC conference was once again hosted by Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, from October 18-20th. Friday was reserved for the presentation of papers, by students and researchers alike, demonstrating the wealth of information and practical skills available within the EXARC community. Saturday was filled with numerous demonstrations in which the conference attendees could participate and museum visitors could watch and learn.

The Paleofestival took place on 26-27th of May 2018 in the Castle of San Giorgio in La Spezia (Italy), which today serves as a Museum of Archaeology. Reconstructors from different parts of the world introduced visitors to issues related to everyday life in ancient times. There were attractions for adults and children. There were reenactors mainly from Italy, but also from other countries (Poland, North America, Azerbaijan, and UK).

The first Experimental Archaeology conference on African soil (ACE 2018) brought people from near and afar. Without knowing it I found myself among the Local Organising Committee of the conference. Each day was a learning curve as I sat in on those meetings and was also assigned to do certain tasks as we were preparing for the conference. As the clock ticked the conference time came nearer and the three days of the conference we had been waiting for had arrived. The conference was held from the 20th -22nd of March 2018.

Experimental archaeology, as an educational means, has become a particularly useful practice in museum institutions in Romania, although there is no tradition in this field. Here, we present activities of the History and Ethnography Museum in Târgu Neamţ, where several experimental archaeology workshops were organised for pupils aged between 9 and 12 years. Participants were introduced to the prehistoric technologies of processing stone, producing ceramic vessels, and processing wood and bone. The schoolchildren made various tools, household objects and decorations by carving and polishing, they moulded small clay pots, and they processed cereals using ancient methods. The workshops were held in 2016 and 2017 during which 100 students, divided into several groups, attended the practical activities. Some of the objects made by students were later used in educational activities in the schools.

On 9 March 2017, Peter Kelterborn, Swiss civil engineer and experimental archaeologist closed his eyes for good at the age of 89. He was known to many of his colleagues through his well-researched works on prehistorical flint and rock technology, but also from his methodological scientific experiments in archaeology. Many cherished him as a modest and thoughtful colleague, friend and counsellor.

The first African Conference on Experimental Archaeology (ACE) took place at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, between 20th and 22nd March 2018 (See Figure 1). The conference, co-organised by EXARC, provided a platform for African-based scholars to showcase their experimental research.

The book Skanseny Archeologiczne i Archeologia Eksperymentalna published by the Podkarpackie Muzeum in 2012 brings up the subject of open-air museums, opportunities and disadvantages of the promotion of cultural tourism and experimental archaeology mainly in Poland but also in Slovakia. Articles presented in this book were prepared for two different conferences organised by this museum.

This volume of Experimentelle Archäologie in Europa does not only serve as 2017’s year book of the European Association for the advancement of archaeology by experiment (EXAR), but also acts as a Festschrift dedicated to Professor Mamoun Fansa, who celebrated his 70th birthday. Mamoun Fansa is one of the most influential figures in establishing experimental archaeology as a means of disseminating research results and public engagement in Germany, as well as central to the foundation of EXAR. Julia Heeb’s introduction dignifies his many important achievements towards the discipline and his past and current work.

Earth ovens may relate to different ancestral cooking techniques, serving specific needs and functions. In eastern and south-eastern Australia, they were a significant element of a thriving pre-colonial Aboriginal culture. However, today it is extremely rare to find such structures well preserved. Based on archaeological and historical records, we re-created an earth oven with clayey heating elements in Jadawadjali Country, central western Victoria, and cooked a culturally significant Aboriginal staple food: the yam daisy or murnong. The aims of the experiment were to explore the cooking process and investigate the nutritional implications of using this earthen structure for cooking these tuberous roots. Nutritional analyses of fresh and cooked samples of Microseris scapigera (used in place of the traditional M. walteri), reveal that the cooking process does not increase the chemical potential energy, but softens and sweetens the solid matter, perhaps providing a desirable and warm baby food. Detailed carbohydrate analysis revealed that the M. scapigera is a good source of prebiotic inulin-type fructans (2.71 g/100 g wet wt).

A unique popular education publication called Oblékání pravěku (Dressing prehistory) has appeared on the Czech book market. It is a work by archaeologist Kristýna Urbanová, and Jan T. Půlpán, an experienced experimenter. At first glance the book attracts attention with an unusually large format, well chosen because of the foundation elements of the publication – colour photographs of prehistoric clothes reconstructions.

This paper aims to present and discuss ongoing activities that combine Experimental Archaeology and Ethnoarchaeology developed in the scope of a master's degree, a post-doctoral and other research projects at the University of Vigo (Galicia, Spain), in collaboration with regional open-air museums and educational centres. Actions have focused on teaching about material properties and transformations, as well as on the design and application of experimental protocols, specially focused on archaeometallurgy. Within this framework, we have promoted the interest of archaeology students in this subject, and other specialised members of the public. As a result, a richer transfer of acquired knowledge from academia to the more general public has been reached.

On the 17th – 20th June 2015 40 participants of the 25th Archaeological working group East Bavaria/ West and south Bohemia/ Upper Austria, were hosted by the Upper Palatinate town Bärnau which lies on the border with the Czech Republic. The meeting took place in the conference hall of the Historic Park Bärnau-Tachov, a remarkable archaeological open-air museum which demonstrates architecture from the 9th to 13th centuries and the ways of life in this period.

Experimentelle Archäologie in Europa. Bilanz 2013 published by Gunter Schöbel and the European Association of Archaeology by Experiment e.V. is the product of the experimental archaeology conference AEAS/GAES, held between the 4th - 7th October 2012, Switzerland. The presented papers cover the period from the Mesolithicum to the Middle Ages, with topics including experiments, education and theory of archaeology. As a result, the book invites all readers to participate in active thinking and active experiments in experimental archaeology.

Volume number 14 of the periodical “Experimentelle Archäologie in Europa: Bilanz 2015” represents the proceedings of the 11th meeting of EXAR held in cooperation with the Labor für Experimentelle Archäologie (LEA), a branch of the Römisch-Germanischen-Zentralmuseums in Mainz (RGZM), in Mayen, Germany, in 2015.

The book “Flinthandwerk” is a co-production of two known German experts in experimental archaeology. Both authors have been studying prehistoric techniques for years; Lund has spent his whole lifetime practicing flint-knapping skills during his free time, whilst Hein is the founder of a company that specializes in the reproduction of Stone Age artifacts for museums. Lund is the initiator of the European flint-knapping conference that takes place every year.

The Norwegian Forum for Experimental Archaeology (NFEA) is a yearly seminar aimed at presenting and popularising experimental research within archaeology. It has been held since 2011 at the Veien Cultural Hertage Park, and as the name implies, it is a gathering of Norwegian archaeologists, held and presented in Norwegian. In 2017, things were done a bit differently.

Experimental archaeology is an important methodological resource for academic and historical scientific research, not separated from the rest of archaeological and historical sciences, and usually used to interpret the formation of the archaeological record and past human behaviour. Moreover, experimental archaeology has a great significance as part of archaeological diffusion, historical reconstructions, and education purposes.

The annual conference of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) is an important venue for the presentation of any type of archaeology in Europe. This year, the conference was attended by about 1,800 archaeologists including about ten EXARC members. EXARC was involved in organising two sessions, one on live interpretation, and the other on experimental archaeology. We intend to be present again next year in Barcelona.

The periodical "Experimentelle Archäologie" is issued by Gunter Schöbel and the "Europäische Vereinigung zur Förderung der experimentellen Archäologie", together with Pfahlbaumuseum Unteruhldingen from Germany. Issue no. 15 includes 223 pages of text, with numerous colour photographs. The content of the issue is divided into three main parts: Experiment und Versuch (Experiment and Attempt), Rekonstruierende Archäologie (Reconstruction Archaeology) and Vermittlung und Theorie (Interaction and Theory).

The Society of Experimental Prehistoric Archaeology is an organisation affiliated with the Nicolaus Copernicus University’s Institute of Archaeology since 1998. The first academic supervisor of SEPA was Jolanta Małecka-Kukawka, now led by Grzegorz Osipowicz. The Society brings together people interested in experimental archaeology, especially in studies aimed at the analysis and interpretation of Stone Age research problems. An important part of SEPA activities are the popularisation of, and education in, experimental archaeology. The aim of this paper is to summarise the near 20-year history of the Society by exposing the latest projects of its members to a wider audience.

Good news: The first African Conference on Experimental Archaeology (ACE) will be held in Johannesburg on the 20th to the 22nd of March 2018. Join us for presentations, posters, mini-workshops, demonstrations and round-table discussions of experiments in an African context!

The 2016 REARC conference hosted by EXARC in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, from November 18th to the 20th, was an unforgettable experience. After a midnight drive and a short night's rest it was time to listen to papers. Everyone giving a presentation was incredibly knowledgeable and the passion they had for their topics was unprecedented.