Montale and Europe

The Montale Terramare open-air archaeological park is one of the few of its kind in Italy. With almost a century of tradition behind them, open-air archaeological museums developed first in Germany, Scandinavia and other nations of Anglo-Saxon origin. Today, they offer an exciting interface between scientific research and education, bridging the gap between academe and the public.
By reconstructing the environments and activities of the past in a striking, evocative way, they manage to convey to a wider audience the results of excavation and research.
The Montale Park has been part of the European network from its inception and has been working in synergy with leading open-air museums throughout the continent for years. It is an active member of EXARC, the European organisation that brings together open-air Archaeological Parks and Museums in a shared commitment to developing the quality of scientific research and its dissemination.

The OpenArch project

OpenArch is a project with 11 partners spread across Europe. Through funds made available by the EU Culture Programme, the partners organize common activities during the 5 years of the project. Through seminars, conferences, staff exchanges and other products, they seek to improve the visitor experience in Archaeological Open-Air Museums (AOAM). To divide the work equally, the project has been split into 7 Work Packages (WP). The other partners are:
La Ciutadella ibèrica de Calafell (ES), Amgueddfa Cymru-St Fagans National History Museum (UK), Archäologisch-Ökologische Zentrum Albersdorf (AÖZA) (DE), Hunebedcentrum (NL), Archeon (NL), Fotevikens Museum (SE), Kierikki Stone Age Center (FI), National Archaeological Institute di Belgrado (RS), EXARC (NL), University of Exeter (UK).

The Terramara Park of Montale is coordinating the WP that deals with the Dialogue with the Skills, together with the partners of AOZA Archaeological-Ecological Centre Albersdorf (DE). More information can be found on www.openarch.eu. Curious about Terramara Park contribution? Then click here. From 2011 onwards, the Park of Montale has contributed to and organized various activities. Twice per year, one of the partners organizes and international conference. We has sent employees to each of these conferences and seminars, to learn what is happening in the museum world on an international scale, and share experiences. In April 2012, the Archaological Museum of Modena and Park of Montale organized their own conference, seminar and a workshop about metallurgy in Bronze age, giving enhancement to an important interdisciplinary project, Smiths in bronze age. A collaboration began between archaeologists of various areas of expertise and craftsmen specialized in bronze age metallurgy who sought to verify the existence of differentiated skill levels among the ancient metallurgists. Combining archaeological data with experimentation, the project defined new objectives and gave the possibility to share with archaeological open air museums research methods and various ways of presenting information to diverse audience. One of the concrete product of the project has been a film firstly presented to the partners of OpenArch and to the public of St Fagans National History Museum in Cardiff (Wales) in the Oakdale Institute on 27 May 2015 in occasion of OpenArch meeting and St Fagans conference on managing archaeological open-air museums (25 - 29 May 2015).

The liveARCH project

From 2007 to 2009, the Park of Montale was the Italian partner of the European project liveARCH, an international network of cooperation between 8 Archaeological Open Air Museums of Europe. Aim of the network was to promote the knowledge and awareness about our ancient history through reconstructions of buildings and activities of the past, on the base of the archaeological evidences.
 liveARCH partners were: Eindhoven (Olanda), Unteruhldingen (Germania), Szazhalombatta (Ungheria), Bostad (isole Lofoten - Norvegia), Kenmore (Scozia), Riga (Lettonia), Hollviken (Svezia), and the Park of Montale. The eight partners present reconstructions which range from the Neolithic period (dwellings of the Constance lake in Germany) to the Medieval time (Viking villages in Sweden and Norway).
In the frame of liveARCH, the Archaeological Ethnological Museum of Modena organized the First Forum of Archaeological Open Air Museums in Europe (Modena, 25th-29th march 2009) and presented the first Guide to the Archaeological Open Air Museums in Europe connected with a film.

The Archaeolive Project

The Archaeological Park at Montale was set up in the ambit of a much wider project supported by the European Commission’s Raffaello Project, which for a four-year period from 1999 saw the Modena Civic Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology working side-by-side with Vienna’s Natural History Museum, the site of the Hallstatt salt mines and the Unteruhldingen pile-dwelling Museum, on Lake Constance.
The project, which is called Archaeolive, has combined the experience and research of three archaeological parks working in the field of European proto-history in a shared mission to give due attention to the Bronze Age as a period of cultural unity throughout the continent.