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Introduction

I studied Archaeology and Prehistory at the Universiteit of Groningen. And since the first work experience in Greece as a student on the excavation at Halos, Thessaly, I have spent all my summers in Greece excavating, surveying or working in tourism. I enjoyed my stays in Greece so much that I applied for a scholarship at the Netherlands Instituut in Athens and was rewarded with a three months stay in Athens. I that period I familiarized myself with all great things Athens has to offer, from extensive libraries and museums to its great monuments, nearby islands and excellent restaurants and bars.

            In my final stage at the university I wrote my thesis on the meaning of Late Mycenaean pottery in funerary contexts on the Greek islands of Rhodes and Kos. At that time my interest in pottery was born.

 

After my graduation I was granted a 6 months scholarship at the Netherlands Institute in Athens, as a preparation phase for future PhD research on ceramic analysis, in survey archaeology in particular. During this period I acquired the basic theoretical knowledge on ceramic analysis which I use nowadays in my PhD research.

Work experience in Archaeology

As a student I participated in the archaeological projects run by the University of Groningen in Italy and Greece , where I gained the basic experience in excavating, find processing and survey.

            After getting this basic experience within the university program I became actively involved in the Zakynthos Archaeology Project; a collaboration between the Netherlands Instituut in Athens and the 35 th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities. During this 5 year-project I gained a lot of experience in survey methodology, in theory and practice, in find processing and in the actual analysis of survey ceramics. Also, for comparative purposes, I acquired wide-range knowledge on the archaeology in the wider region around Zakynthos, namely the other (northern) Ionian Islands and the western mainland.  

 

Since 2008 I am a researcher at the University of Amsterdam for the New Perspectives on Ancient Pottery – project, directed by Vladimir Stissi. This project started in 2007 and will continue until 2014 and is very much focussed on the processing and detailed analysis of large amounts of pottery fragments from the archaeological sites of Satricum in Italy , Halos in Thessaly , Greece and from the survey project on Zakynthos , Greece .

 

In the first three years at the NPAP project I worked as an assistant for all PhD students at each subproject. In Halos I set up the fabric classification for the Hellenistic pottery assemblage for which now thin-sections have been made and their interpretations are integrated in PhD research. In Satricum I helped setting up the fabric classification for the Hellenistic ceramic assemblage and for part of the Archaic- Classical roof tile and storage jar assemblage. Also for the Zakynthos project I developed the fabric classification system from scratch which now forms the basis for my current PhD research. Because of my mobility among the subprojects I communicated ideas and occurring problems among all researchers which has led to a uniform approach to ceramic classification, especially to fabric classification, within NPAP. During these three years I have been actively involved in all subprojects and acquired a (still growing) understanding of the complexity of ceramic analysis, from basic find processing to fabric classification systems, from the meaning and use of typo-morphological descriptions to the use of microscopic and chemical analysis in ceramic studies.

 

Research interests

Ionian islands-Zakynthos, Northwest Greece, Survey Archaeology, Ceramic studies, Dodecanese, Late Bronze Age