Download ebook FREE - Allemandi

Fig. 2.
Herne, Museum
for Archaeology:
Forscherlabor (photo by
Susanne Wegner).
a Neanderthal man, the visitor’s curiosity about the exhibits and the
spatial context is awakened. The result is a dialogue between content
and observer. The legendary controversy of the century among
palaeoanthropologists concerning the descent of homo sapiens from
Neanderthal man - now disproved by DNA comparison - is conveyed
by an audio track which uses the theses, arguments and polemics
of scientific opponents as a stereophonic background setting.
In 2005 the museum became an additional attraction, the Forscherlabor.
It is connected to the permanent exhibition. We think, the
ways in which archaeology and criminology solve cases are closely
related. As soon as the findings at the “scene of crime“ have been
registered, the search for clues continues in laboratories and offices by
using the proven and the most modern scientific methods.
In the research laboratory of the Museum in Herne the visitor can
actively participate in solving a “case”. Starting point is some skeletons,
which were found in a large stone grave near Warburg. A
section of the grave is in the centre of the laboratory. It consists of
the remains of the dead and their gifts for afterlife such as amber
jewellery, stone tools and ceramic bowls. Our task is to discover as
much as possible about these people and their environment, using
historical and archaeological, medical, physical an chemical methods
- a fascinating, interactive journey of discovery into the world of
contemporary archaeology
In the middle of the space the “scene of crime” is on show, a reconstructed
section of a dolmen, over which the archaeological finds
hang in special finds bags. The find bags over the scene in detail.
Fourteen “scientific containers” invite the visitor to carry out handson
experiments and make use of integrated media station so that he
himself becomes a researcher (fig. 2). The spatial setting in the form
of a laboratory stands for the analytic procedures of archaeologists
and symbolically illustrates their highly complex work. By way of
this narrative space, self-explanatory access to the scientific archaeological
process is enabled.
In the research laboratory, graphics act as a contextualising element.
The work in a laboratory and the associated technical equipment
determine the atmosphere, design, surfaces and materials. Backlit
glass walls covered in graphics demarcate the space and present an
overview of themes at the same time. The graphics demarcate the
space and makes references to the theme stations (fig. 3).
26