Museums activities are of a different nature: There is no scientific notion in these activities, or at least no component of research. The sole purpose is to communicate results of archaeological investigations, and these may well include results and even setups of archaeological experiments, but activities are used only for demonstration purposes. The media often confuse experimental archaeology with museums activities and such like. I would like to refer to these as experiential archaeology or in some cases as reenactment.
Within the last 10-15 years in German-speaking countries or so the field of experimental archaeology has expanded enormously. Where once museums were synonyms for boredom or dust covered display units, the visitor nowadays often enjoys much livelier museums with a wide field of different experiences. Activities range from milling flour to building bows or casting bronze. This massive popularity of led also to a new profession in Germany referred to as Archaeo-Technicians, not to mistake with the excavation technician. Archaeo technician have taken over the task of specializing in the demonstration of otherwise extinct (craft) techniques and have in many instances actually reconstructed and revived old technologies. Demonstrations are a good way to convey archaeological information visually as well as verbally. Visitors can experience how a certain implement was created, and therefore understand what they were used for in the past. Knowledge transfer becomes easier and enjoyable, as it happens as we go, the main objective being to stir the curiosity of our audience...
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Experimental archaeology is a discipline of the archaeological sciences, and like archaeological experiments, just like their relatives of the hard sciences have to meet certain conventions in order to be counted as these. They are utilized to test hypotheses experimentally, along with a proper question, observations and so on. The subsequent analyses of results are obligatory, and we compare these with the questions we posed before carrying out the experiment, as well as the expected outcome. Of great importance is the comparison results of experimental origin with authentic artefacts. as long as we apply the same analytical techniques to both experimental and original specimen we can be fairly confident to arrive at an interpretation of a production sequence that is close the prehistoric reality.
The nature of our field of study rules out to supply solid evidence, and although we will never be able to prove any of our hypotheses in the way hard science can do, archaeological experiments are a very, very powerful tool to come close to that.
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