The course provides an overview of the highlights of European archaeology. The series is structured around important themes that are relevant across periods and geographic regions. Themes are illustrated by crucial case studies taken from across European Archaeology.

The course instills familiarity with the research history of European Archaeology, with the diversity of human societies from Pleistocene hunter-gatherers to historic urban states and with the breadth of human experience.

This is a hands-on lecture course with a focus on material culture from shipwrecks dating from 1500 to 1900. We will be working with the best-dated and most well-preserved archaeological collection in the Low Countries and beyond.

After a an introduction to ceramics and the Dutch classification system, you will work with the collection yourself. The focus will be on ceramics and glass, but other artefacts will be touched upon (such as ship’s equipment, personal belongings and navigational equipment).
Although many pottery complexes from urban archaeological contexts have been published, their dating is usually broad. Shipwrecks cannot always be dated to the year, but they can be dated much more precisely than pottery from cesspits.

This is a course in which key developments in prehistoric Europe will be discussed, taking place between the 7th and the end of the 1st millennium BC. The emphasis is on how Prehistory shaped the modern world.

The focus is on agrarian communities. Themes that may be addressed include the spread of farming in Europe, the rise and history of ritual landscapes, the deep history of migration, Prehistoric religion and cosmology, invention and adaptation of metallurgy, Bronze Age and Iron Age 'world systems', ethnogenesis (Celts, Germans, Scythians), and the legacy of Prehistory in modern Europe.

In de cursus Archeologie en Erfgoed van Nederland gaan we in op de nieuwste wetenschappelijke inzichten in de Archeologie van Nederland (van Paleolithicum tot WOII). Wat weten we over het verre verleden van Nederland?

Hoe past dat in een bredere Noordwest-Europese context? Hoe brengen we ons verhaal naar het publiek, maar ook welk verhaal? Daarnaast kijken we ook naar de bredere rol van het archeologisch erfgoed in het heden. Studenten worden uitgedaagd om archeologische kennis toe te passen in een voortdurend veranderende wetenschappelijke en politiek-maatschappelijke omgeving.