Experimental Archaeology

Experimental archaeology is the study of archaeological artifacts through experimental practice. This can involve re-creating a digging stick to see how effective it was as a tool, experimenting with different natural materials to see how well they dye leather or making a dress to determine how it felt when it was worn. It's always best to conduct these experiments with authentic materials, but computer models can nevertheless act as a useful tool for experiment, at least in the preliminary research stages (or when experiment is untenable due to a global pandemic). This page presents a number of stamps and models used to create the decoration on food vessel models on this website. In this way, food vessel decorative techniques can be explored, even while the vessels themselves are inaccessible.