University of Groningen

Faculty Member, Archaeology

Lecturer Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology and Wetland Archaeology

About

My research focusses primarily on the archaeology of hunter-gatherers in prehistoric NW Europe. Main topics of interest are: (1) relationships between environmental dynamics and hunter-gatherer perceptions and use of landscape; (2) ritual dimensions in domestic activities and 'daily behaviour'; (3) technological variability in material culture (lithics in particular) and cultural transmission of knowledge and skill; (4) emergence of archaeological patterns through coupling of processes that operate at different scales in time and space; (5) representation of prehistoric hunter-gatherers and heritage management; (6) archaeological and anthropological theory. Approaches to this research involve, amongst others, GIS-based modelling of landscape change and hunter-gatherer behaviour, chaîne opératoire analysis of lithics, and spatial analysis of distributions of archaeological remains.

In my research I seek to merge archaeological, evidence-based analysis with an interdisciplinary contextual approach that combines archaeology, anthropology, and environmental/earth sciences (physical geography, geology, ecology).

Some other fields of interest concern self-organisation in human behavioural dynamics, the nature and 'causes' of culture change, and complexity theory in general.

Other engagements:
I am currently a member of the Management Committee of the SPLASHCOS (www.splashcos.org) project (EU-Cost Action TD0902). Earlier, I stood at the basis of the development of the North Sea Prehistory Research and Management Framework (NSPRMF), which is downloadable from these pages; the scientific background volume to NSPRMF is in preparation and will be published as a special issue of the Netherlands Journal of Geosciences / Geologie en Mijnbouw in 2013.


Photo: The guy with the baseball cap is Bill Lovis (MSU).

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