Archaeology day at the Oostvaarders

120,000 years ago, Neanderthals, forest elephants, hippos and woolly rhinos roamed the area we now know as Oostvaardersplassen. A lot has happened since then! Scales and Stone Age remains have recently been found in the marsh area. And why is this nature reserve actually named 'De Oostvaarders'? Learn and discover on the Archaeology Day at the Oostvaarders!

VOC

Aagje Luijtsen from 1600 visits the Nature Experience Centre on 14 June. She married a helmsman on the VOC. She will give demonstrations of various textile crafts at the Oostvaarders. She will also give a workshop with textiles. Think about making a shoelace or bookmark: modern application of an ancient technique.

Chiselling fossils

A fossil is actually an imprint of a plant or animal in a stone, sometimes millions of years old. Cutting open such a stone is like a surprise egg: you never know what is inside but you always get something. Two experts on fossils and rocks will visit you at Festival Spot and on Archaeology Day (14 June) to teach you all about it and together carefully chisel open layers of stone. They will tell you what you have found and talk passionately about their own finds. They have even discovered a new species of fish on occasion! A fun activity for young and old alike.

Eemien

Frans Roescher, palaeonthologist at AWN comes to the Nature Experience Centre to give a lecture on the Eemian. In the past, a lot of sand was dredged up from Lake Marker, which was used to build residential areas in Almere. This sand, which comes from a depth of up to 30 metres, contains interesting fossils and flint tools. Fossils have been found of mammoths, woolly rhinos, reindeer etc. These are typical ice age animals. Surprisingly, we also found remains of hippos, forest elephants and forest rhinos. These are heat-loving animals and lived before the last ice age. In this lecture, Frans Roescher will explain the background to these finds and how AWN goes about researching these startling items. Also special is that AWN has found very many Neanderthal flint tools, which they can link to these fossil finds. The lecture will discuss this in detail.

VR movies

Continuous viewing of recent finds from Oostvaardersplassen and VR films about the Stone Age, VOC period, Batavian revolt and about a bomber that crashed in Oostvaardersplassen during World War II.