Short answers, pulled from the story.
Experimental archaeology is an academic discipline that tests archaeological hypotheses by replicating or approximating ancient tasks and technologies. It differs from living history and historical reenactment, which are generally pursued as hobbies, because it operates with a formal hypothesis, a controlled method, and results that are checked against the archaeological record.
The Kon-Tiki expedition was a 1947 voyage led by Thor Heyerdahl, who sailed a balsa raft from Peru to Polynesia to demonstrate the possibility of cultural exchange between South America and the Polynesian islands. It is one of the foundational examples of experimental archaeology because it tested a specific archaeological hypothesis through direct physical replication.
Butser Ancient Farm is one of the earliest examples of experimental archaeology, recreating buildings from UK archaeology to test theories of construction, use, and materials. The site features a working Stone Age farm, Bronze Age roundhouse, Iron Age village, Roman villa, and Saxon long halls. Its work helped establish experimental archaeology as a legitimate academic discipline and assisted in bringing the study of prehistory into the UK school curriculum.
Researchers at the University of Exeter used computational fluid dynamics to reconstruct the furnaces at Samanalawewa in Sri Lanka, which are thought to be the most likely sources for Damascus steel. The original manufacturing techniques for Damascus steel have been lost for centuries, making this a key target for experimental reconstruction.
Janet Stephens, a professional hairdresser, used her skills to reconstruct Roman-era hairstyles by hand, rebutting the previously held theory that single-prong pins were used to hold them in place. Her experimental reconstructions showed those pins could not have worked the way scholars had assumed.
Experimental archaeologists have equipped modern professional butchers, archers, and lumberjacks with replica flint tools to assess their effectiveness, then compared use-wear traces on those tools to traces on actual archaeological artifacts. Hand axes were shown to be particularly effective at cutting animal meat from the bone. Studies with enculturated bonobos also demonstrated that, after human demonstrations, those primates could produce flaked stones morphologically similar to early lithic industries in East Africa.