Archeologia eksperymentalna — teoria, praktyka i doświadczenie

Experimental archaeology enables to achieve guides helping in the reconstruction of the production processes of goods obtained in the course of archaeological excavation. It is also an irreplaceable method of the verification of theories. Thanks to this discipline, one can acquaint themselves with countless new solutions and gain an experience so important to every researcher. Many useful skills and means known and practiced by the craftsmen of the Early Middle Ages were not written down. Their great knowledge passed down through generations was also forgotten. Today, to obtain a similar effect, at least to the smallest extent, one may rely on ethnographic analogies. However, each artisan guards their own ways of working and various manners and recipes, which they are not willing to share. Hence, who wishes to attain needed information should appeal to experimental archaeology and see for themselves how a given production process might have looked as well as accomplish their own experience through innumerable attempts and mistakes. Through the example of her own experiment carried out in the area of the present stronghold in Grzybowo, the authoress attained the most valuable knowledge as far as the pottery ware and its baking is concerned. Her works included baking in fire the clay pottery modeled as early medieval artefacts and casting moulds of the lost-wax casting method. The experience thus obtained is going to be used during the next planned attempts of this kind. Activities described in the article do not guarantee the successful baking, still they offer an adventurous endeavour at recreating some of the techniques and routines which could have been applied by ancient makers.