House of Questions
Delphi House of Questions was an EU Culture 2000 project by three EXARC members. Under this umbrella, other EXARC members as well collected and answered the most frequently asked questions by visitors to archaeological open-air museums. The largest part of this collection of questions you can find here – as many of them still carry importance. In most cases we offer the questions both in the original language and in English. With several questions you will find illustrations by Savannah Parent.
How many people lived in a lake fortress (LV)?
Every dwelling house with its auxiliary structures was an independent economic unit. Each house would have been the home of one nuclear family, consisting of parents, children and grandparents...
How many children did people get in prehistory (NL)?
We do not know exactly how large prehistoric families were because archaeological finds cannot tell us much about this. Research to present today hunters / gatherers reveal, the generally speaking, have small families...
Was it really true, in the Iron Age, men hunted and women cooked the food above a camp fire (NL)?
Surely there was a set division of tasks between men and women, more traditional then nowadays. Probably, inside the house, the women were in charge, men outside. Contrasts were important; air - earth, inside - outside, north - south...
How did people make fire in the Iron Age (NL)?
Roughly seen, there are two methods of fire making. The oldest way is the fire drilling: one mounts a wooden peg on a board of wood and rotates this peg quite fast. This way, the temperature rises where the peg touches the board...
How is wood tar made (NO)?
Tar is made by placing pine roots in a conical hole in the ground, lined with birch bark. They are then covered by turf, and set on fire. The turf keeps the oxygen out, so the wood doesn’t go up in flames. The sap is boiled out of the roots and runs to the bottom of the hole, where it can be collected as tar.
What is the use of a division in Old, Middle and Young Stone Age (CH)?
Stone Age takes from 130,000 until 4,200 years before present, or no less then a huge period of 125,800 years. To understand this period better, archaeologists have tried to divide it into different phases, using certain criteria...
Did people have soap in the Early Middle Ages (NL)?
The Romans didn’t use soap: they cleaned themselves with olive oil and some sand to remove dead skin cells. Soap supposedly is a Gallic or Germanic invention...
How does one know, how to exhibit a skeleton (CH)?
The many - often very tiny - bones of a displayed skeleton can be very confusing. But nowadays people know a lot of the human skeleton and people know all the bones. With help of specially trained people, the anthropologists, skeletons are assembled correctly.
What kind of clothing did people wear in prehistory (NL)?
There has been only a limited number of finds of clothing in the Netherlands. Therefore, the reconstructions we show at Archeon are based on many assumptions and foreign finds, mainly from Germany and Denmark...
Were the people in the Iron Age in Poland religious (PL)?
It is very difficult to reconstruct the beliefs of people back then on the base of what we found. Besides that, we can only imagine if religion was all pervasive or not that important...