During several periods of the Neolithic, be it the Michelsberger or Vlaardingen period, flint tools to cut cereals are absent in the archaeological record. Could this absence be due to the fact that people cut cereals with other tools? To answer this question an experiment was made in summer 2022 to cut cereals with other […]
On a hot and sunny Saturday, a group of volunteers gathered in the flintknapping area of Masamuda Archaeological Educational Centre. Their first task: making simple flint flakes to clean out some deer legs. Only one of the participants had knapped flint before, but an hour later everyone had a handful of the necessary tools. These […]
The research project Putting Life into Late Neolithic Houses is a rather comprehensive research project that aims to understand various aspects of Neolithic life in the Rhine/Meuse delta of the Netherlands. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the project, people with different skills and knowledge are required. Apart from academics, the project needs people skilled […]
One way of communicating about the archaeological past to a broader public, is by making visual representations. For our research project Putting Life into Late Neolithic Houses, archaeological reconstruction illustrator Kelvin Wilson is bringing to life those times long gone. An archaeological reconstruction illustrator translates what once was minutely excavated into visualization manageable for […]
On 16 September, the dugout – or boat made from a hollowed log – was launched at Natsec, a canoe club near the Vlaardingen cultuurhuis (figure 1). The making of the dugout, which is part of the research project Putting Life into Late Neolithic houses, started in June 2021 and lasted through July 2022. Starting […]
The heavy storms in February and March this year damaged one of the Stone Age houses at Masamuda. In order to repair the house, that was originally built with Stone Age tools, members of the Putting Life into Late Neolithic Houses team joined forces under the supervision of Leo Wolterbeek and started the reparation of […]
In December 2021 a number of researchers of the ‘Putting Life into Late Neolithic houses’ project gathered in Masamuda for the first series of cooking experiments. Cooking and food preparation was most likely an important part of the daily life of the Vlaardingen people and as we are fascinated by the details of their life, […]
On March 14, professor Annelou van Gijn gave a lecture in Edinburgh for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in collaboration with the Prehistoric Society. During this lecture, she presented our research project on the Late Neolithic Vlaardingen culture and the importance of experimental archaeology in combination with use-wear analysis in orde to discover the […]
Om meer ideeën op te doen voor de kano die op dit moment gereconstrueerd wordt in Vlaardingen, zijn Leo, Kirsti en Caroline op donderdag 15 juli naar het Huis van Hilde geweest om daar de kano van de Wieringermeer te bekijken.[1] We mochten er met ons neus bovenop, en met behulp van een bouwlamp hadden […]
On the 11th and the 25th of July, hide-working experiments were conducted at Masamuda, Vlaardingen. The goal was simple: obtain a processed animal skin. The method, however, resembled prehistoric hide-working processes. The process After a short introduction on hide-working given by Diederik Pomstra, the animal hides – in this case, red deer and fallow deer […]