Scientific Profit through Daily Routine

Abstract

Examples from a 9th century potter’s workshop as presented in "Campus Galli”, a medieval construction site in Southern Germany. The open-air museum Campus Galli is a construction site where we built an early medieval monastery, following the so-called “Plan of St. Gall”, an architectural drawing from the first half of the 9th century (Carolingian period) as our major reference source (cf. Schedl, 2014; Facsimile: Tremp, 2014). Compared to many other archaeological open-air museums, our focus is not only on the appearance of finished buildings, but the crafts and techniques of the building process itself, not unlike the Guedelon castle construction project in France. We started by building a wooden church which we intend to be followed by a large, stone-built abbey church. Along with the construction, we also demonstrate other aspects of early medieval life to the public – monastic life, agriculture and various crafts that are necessary for construction and for supply. The work is performed during our open season and is visible to visitors, so our craftspeople double up as interpreters. Our work is based on archaeological and historical background research. We collaborate with scientists and scientific institutions and we are expanding our scientific network continually.

Keywords

• ceramics
• furnace
• kiln or oven
• research
• early middle ages
• germany