Christina Souyoudzoglou-Haywood and Aidan O’Sullivan (eds.), Experimental Archaeology: Making, Understanding, Story-telling, Proceedings of a Workshop in Experimental Archaeology: Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens with UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture, Dublin (Athens, 14th-15th October 2017), Paperback; 205x290mm; vi+106 pages; 96 figures, 1 table (59 pages in colour). (Print RRP £28.00). 570 2019. Available both in printed and e-versions. Printed ISBN 9781789693195. Epublication ISBN 9781789693201.
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.
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. His research interests focus on early medieval Ireland, AD 400-1100, in its northwest European context; Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture studies; and Wetland Archaeology and Environments globally. He is the author and co-author of 13 books, including Early Medieval Ireland, AD 400-1100. The evidence from archaeological excavations (Royal Irish Academy, 2013) and co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Wetland Archaeology (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Christina Souyoudzoglou-Haywood is Director of the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens (IIHSA) and Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Classics, University College Dublin. Her main research area is the Late Bronze Age of Greece, particularly the western periphery of the Mycenaean world, focusing on the Ionian island of Kephalonia, where she has been conducting a diachronic fieldwalking survey since 2003. For many years Curator of the Classical Museum, UCD, she has published on its history and contents as well as on Greek and Cypriot antiquities in other Irish museum and university collections.
