Research Unit

Archaeology

Acronym
ARCHAEO
Duration
19 April 2019 → Ongoing
Group leader
Other information
Research disciplines
  • Humanities and the arts
    • Archaeology not elsewhere classified
Keywords
Archaeology Area studies Art Gender History Interculturalism Religion 15th Century 16th Century 17th Century 18th Century 19th Century 20th Century Antiquity Late Antiquity Middle Ages Prehistory (Stone Age) Protohistory (Bronze Age, Iron Age) Africa Asia Belgium Middle East Southern Europe Western Europe Comparative Field research Geographic and map based Iconography and analysis of images Language and text analysis Quantitative Surveys
Description
Our research group Archaeology (ARCHAEO) is driven by five research units: (1) Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology of Northwest Europe, (2) Mediterranean Archaeology, (3) Historical Archaeology of Northwest Europe, (4) Near Eastern Archaeology and Assyriology and (5) Archaeometry and Natural Sciences. These units operate with mutual interaction and through partnerships with other research teams of the faculty or the university. The research production is diverse, original and innovative and is highly visible in the international scientific community, in part by the many successful methodological contributions to the discipline, a large number of publications and the organization of numerous scientific meetings. This research is regularly published in international journals and the broad geographical and thematic coverage of the department’s fieldwork projects leads to a significant impact on the international research community. The reputation of the various teams in the field of landscape and settlement archaeology, through the development of major field projects with a wide geographical spread across NW Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Central Asia, is particularly strong. Among the notable methodological achievements we mention the development of cutting-edge technology in the field of archaeological aerial photography and remote sensing, geophysical prospections, non-invasive survey methods, geoarchaeological field work and GIS-based analyses. Often associated with the field work, there are many interdisciplinary studies and archaeometrical analyses of archaeological (and ancient artistic) objects. Especially in the field of ceramic studies in a broad sense the department takes a pioneer position. Several projects related to historical periods combine the intensive study of the material culture with the extraction of data from historical documents and texts.