1. Welcome to our virtual tour of UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture (CEAMC), 1pm, 23rd April 2020 at @EArchaeol Lots of ideas, photos, texts, interesting stuff, & links to colleague’s fascinating projects. @UCDEarth
#UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

2. What is Experimental Archaeology? We define it as "Making, Understanding, Storytelling", interrogating archaeological evidence from the past, in the present, through various practical, scientific and experiential approaches. #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

3. UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture (CEAMC) is located at Roebuck on southern edge of @ucddublin @UCDEstates campus, and is one of UCD School of Archaeology's research, teaching and public outreach facilities. @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

4. CEAMC supports a wide range of experimental 4. archaeological research projects, various funded by @UCD_Research Seed Funding, the @IrishResearch @fp7mariecurie and other sources.

5. CEAMC is a virtually unique archaeological teaching facility, engaging undergraduate & graduate students in archaeological teaching & learning through all their senses, & giving them a better sense of material culture in the past @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

6. CEAMC - a strong ethos of public engagement, highly visible, welcoming to both the local community, to school children & to visitors - including virtual - from across the world. Our UCD SPARC project connected with over 1,000 Dublin school children #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

7. Amongst the many projects exploring past societies, CEAMC reconstructs prehistoric and medieval buildings to answer various architectural and archaeological questions. @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

8. Some of the questions that we can ask revolve around technical or practical issues, that can be approached by recording specific types of data within reconstructions @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

9. The Mesolithic house project led by Prof Graeme Warren with students sought to create a better understanding of Mesolithic hunter-gatherer buildings, with useful insights into labour, materials, scale and how we imagine the hunter-gatherer past of this island, and beyond

10. The early medieval house project explored how houses were built, thatched, used and experienced in early medieval Ireland, AD 400-1100. @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

11. But, building a house in experimental archaeology is "good to think with", it provokes insights & enables us to ask questions we might have thought of before: What was it like in sensory, experiential terms inside a past building? @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

12. This has been part of debate within experimental archaeology, and indeed archaeology, globally. Can we have both a knowledge-focused and experience-oriented understanding of the past? @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

13. The CEAMC early medieval house reconstruction sought to understand an 8th century house from an archaeological dig at Deer Park Farms, Co. Antrim. @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

14. Practical issues of materials, technologies, time & labour can be thought about, but of course we are not experienced early medieval builders - but it certainly gets us to think about how people managed sustainable woodland and other resources #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

15. We can also think about the passage of time - not decades or centuries of course, but years, seasons, months and how buildings change across time. @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

16. We can also experience what it *might* have been like to be inside an early medieval building, with its light and darkness, and how this might have influenced daily life, and action, and thus social spaces. @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

17. Light and darkness would have been dynamic, changing according to day and night, weather conditions, and the use of fires, candles and rushlights. @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

18. This enables to make a material reading of early Irish historical texts also - how were things organised within a building - how might light and darkness influence how a space is used? @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

19. The UCD early medieval house reconstruction led us back to a phrase in early Irish law, the need for a house to have a "fire always alit". These houses requires lots of work to keep warm - that's physical work... @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

20. Interestingly, the early medieval house reconstruction was not that smoky, but we'd like to try that again using different thatch and insulation. @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

21. Heat loss was rapid, so which would you prefer - a smokey house, or a cold house? Almost certainly the former? @ucdarchaeology #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks

22. Dr Eileen Reilly's research on living conditions as part of her @IrishResearch Postdoctoral Fellowship explored early medieval living conditions. Our UCD house had its own ecology, it was alive with beetles, spiders, birds in the thatch, even a pygmy shrew.

23. Unfortunately, like many early medieval houses in archaeology, it was destroyed in an arson attack in 2019. We are aware of the penalties for arson in early Irish law... but we will be rebuilding.

24. Experimental archaeology through making, understanding & storytelling, enables us to build a better understanding of people's lives in the past, both through scientific quantification, & through reflection on our own experiences..more to come! #UCDEarthWalks #virtualwalks