Dreyer B (2026)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Journal article, Original article
Publication year: 2026
Book Volume: 2026/3
URI: https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10858
Open Access Link: https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10858
Researchers working in historical disciplines (history, archaeology, art history, legal history, theology) can draw on a source base that has grown in varying degrees. Nevertheless, source material especially for older periods remains incomplete, difficult to access or fragmentary. New insights into performance in a historical context of use - additionally to the fruitfully and carefully conducted ethnological comparison - are to be gained by supplementing, reconstructing and experimentally testing only fragmentarily preserved material or/and described evidence under historical conditions. Beyond the individual object, such reconstructions have epistemological relevance if they are methodologically controlled and verifiable. This approach is based on an ever-increasing number of theoretical considerations in experimental archaeology (e.g. Coles, 1979, pp.36-39; Reynolds, 1994; Mathieu, 2002, pp.1-8), which are sometimes oriented towards concrete reconstruction, sometimes providing a sectoral or national inventory, rarely undertaking historically overarching classifications. This approach goes beyond this, also in technical terms, by conceptually including written sources and opening the discussion of methods and theory to history and, in principle, to the historical sciences–but not without starting from concrete examples that are no longer purely ‘archaeological’ in nature. With its new focus on practicability, the approach can be understood as a ‘practicability turn’: the targeted empirical reproduction of artefacts as well as their proven effectiveness and contexts of action allow central and additional questions about pre-modern societies to be answered in addition to textual and material traditions.
APA:
Dreyer, B. (2026). Basics of Theoretical Foundations in Historic Experimental Studies in the Sense of Practicability. EXARC journal, 2026/3.
MLA:
Dreyer, Boris. "Basics of Theoretical Foundations in Historic Experimental Studies in the Sense of Practicability." EXARC journal 2026/3 (2026).
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