The York Experimental Archaeology Research (YEAR) Centre is a unique experimental facility in the UK, home to specialists in hunter-gather material culture, ancient cooking technologies, historic textiles, bone and antler working, pottery production, and metal production and use. We combine experimental analysis at our dedicated outdoor facility with cutting edge microscopic and bioarchaeological analysis in partnership the BioArCh lab and the PalaeoHub material culture lab.

The YEAR centre is situated at the heart of the West Campus of the University of York in an idyllic setting next to a lake and surrounded by woodland, home to a diverse array of wildlife and trees. It’s the perfect immersive setting for experiments all year round. We have a full range of materials and tools for designing and testing ideas and we're always open to creative and interesting approaches.

Experimental archaeology is a method of testing hypotheses by using appropriate materials and skills to approximately reproduce ancient activities. This could involve testing how stone tools function, how iron was forged or how boats and houses were constructed. While these may never accurately replicate the past, experimental archaeology can often disprove previous assumptions and generate new data for further research.

Experimental archaeology is scientific, but embraces what are called ‘actualistic’ experimental settings. Actualistic experiments accept that the researcher will lose control of many variables (in contrast to a controlled experiment in a lab) but tries instead to mimic conditions closer to the historical reality.

​Experimental results can be combined with other techniques, such as microscopy, use-wear analysis, biomolecular analysis and forms of spectroscopy and chromatography, which can make results more rigorous.

The outdoor centre is integrated with our indoor laboratories housed a short distance away in the PalaeoHub and Environment buildings. This provides access to cutting edge equipment to perform a wide array of different kinds of analyses. The current inventory of equipment includes an SEM-EDX, high and low power microscopes, cameras and photographic equipment, pXRF, high specification computers, 3D imaging and printing equipment, X-ray machine, and universal materials testing machine, and facilities to extract, sample and analyse residues and DNA. PalaeoHub also houses our experimental reference and teaching collections.