Experimental Archaeologist and Wilderness Skills Educator
Werner Pfeifer is an experimental archaeologist and educator whose work is grounded in long-term, practical experience of living and working in wild landscapes. Raised on a bush farm in Namibia, he spent his early years moving through the land on foot, learning tracking, hunting, and close observation from direct experience. After military service, he worked as a game warden, managing wildlife and tracking poachers across remote terrain. It was during this time that he was first introduced to long-forgotten Stone Age settlement sites in the desert, an encounter that shaped the direction of his work.
He went on to explore archaeological sites across Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, developing a field-based understanding of early human lifeways. After moving to northern Germany, he studied Biology and Geography, alongside private study in Archaeology and History, and began working in museums and historical settings as a Stone Age and Viking interpreter. During this period, he trained with leading practitioners including flintknapper Harm Paulsen and Danish bow maker Ole Nielsen, developing skills in stone tool production and traditional bow making that he continues to teach today.
For more than 30 years, Werner has specialised in the longest period of human history: the hunter-gatherer and fishing cultures that shaped how people lived for the vast majority of our evolution. His work focuses on the full chain of subsistence and material culture, from hunting, fishing and gathering through to the making of tools, clothing, shelters and adhesives. He teaches flint knapping, bow and arrow construction, trap making, tanning, natural glues, prehistoric cooking and more, always through direct, hands-on practice. His approach is rooted in experimental archaeology, testing how these technologies function in real conditions using only the materials available in the landscape.
Central to his work is a simple idea: that these skills are best understood by doing. Werner has undertaken extended Stone Age immersions, spending weeks in the wilderness using only period-appropriate equipment, refining and testing the knowledge he teaches. He describes his aim as reaching a point where he could, in principle, enter the wilderness with minimal tools and live well through knowledge and skill alone.
His connection to southern Africa remains an important part of his work. As a Namibian, he has spent many years learning from and travelling with San (Bushmen) communities in the Kalahari, exchanging knowledge around tracking, hunting and living from the land. Through his involvement with the Living Culture Foundation Namibia, he has supported initiatives that enable indigenous communities to sustain and share their cultural knowledge in meaningful ways in the present day.
Werner has taught widely across Europe and southern Africa, delivering courses in Germany, England and Namibia. He is based at the Stone Age Park Dithmarschen in northern Germany, where he works as a museum educator and experimental archaeologist, organises international gatherings, and continues to develop and test reconstructions of prehistoric technologies.
He brings together archaeological knowledge, technical skill, and lived wilderness experience. His courses are direct and practical, focused on building competence rather than demonstration, and on giving participants the understanding needed to continue these skills independently.
