dr. F.A. (Fokke) Gerritsen

Office hours: contact me through e-mail 

Curriculum vitae 
 

Research interests

Near Eastern and Anatolian archaeology; Northwest European later prehistory; landscape and settlement archaeology.
 

Teaching

Courses on Archaeology of the Near East and European Prehistory.

Research

Ongoing Research Projects:

Barcın Höyük Excavations (from 2007).
This research project focuses on the site of Barcın Höyük in Northwestern Anatolia, as part of the long-term research project "Early Farming Communities in the Marmara Region", a joint project of the Netherlands Institute in Turkey and the Netherlands Institute for the Near East. A team of archaeologists and specialists, from the Netherlands, Turkey, Bulgaria, and the United Kingdom, investigate early farming communities from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, as well as a rural cemetery of the Byzantine era. The project receives its main funding from NWO. More information can be found on the project website.

The Biography of a Sandy Landscape: Noord-Brabant from the Bronze Age to the End of the Middle Ages (from 2002)
This research project is part of the interdisciplinary project The Biography of a Sandy Landscape: Cultural History, Heritage Management and Spatial Planning in the Southern Netherlands, in which archaeologists, landscape historians and historical geographers participate. It is carried out at the Faculty of Arts, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and is part of the NWO-sponsored programme Bodemarchief in Behoud en Ontwikkeling.

Completed Research Projects (and in publication stage):

The Late Prehistoric Meuse-Demer-Scheldt Region (1996-2001)
This research took place within the NWO-sponsored programme Landscape and Settlement in the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt Region, which was a collaborative project with archaeologists from Leiden University, the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The research resulted in a dissertation which was successfully defended (cum laude, highest honours) in October 2001. The dissertation Local Identities. Landscape and Community in the Late Prehistoric Meuse-Demer-Scheldt Region (Amsterdam Archaeological Studies 9; Amsterdam University Press, 2003) was awarded a Dissertation Prize (Studieprijs) of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation in 2003.Read online book reviews that appeared in the European Journal of Archaeology, and CRM: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship.

Regional Survey in the Amuq Plain, southern Turkey (2005)
See the project's webpage on the University of Chicago website for information on this project, and the list of publications below.

Tell Kurdu Excavations: Investigating a Sixth Millennium Settlement in Southern Turkey (2000-2006)
This excavation project, run in co-directorship with Rana Özbal (Bosphorus University, Istanbul, Turkey) was a collaborative project with archaeologists and anthropologists from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The main sponsors were the National Science Foundation (USA), Fulbright-Hayes, Wenner Gren, ARIT (American Research Institute in Turkey) and private donors. Currently a final publication is in preparation. For more information, see the (no longer updated) Tell Kurdu Excavations website.

Publications

Complete list of publications

Books:

• Gerritsen, F.A./E. Rensink (eds), 2004: Beekdallandschappen in archeologisch perspectief. Een kwestie van onderzoek en monumentenzorg, Amersfoort (Nederlandse Archeologische Rapporten).
• Gerritsen, F.A., 2003: Local identities. Late prehistoric communities in the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (Amsterdam Archaeological Studies 9).

Selected recent articles:

• Roymans, N., F. Gerritsen, C. van der Heijden, K. Bosma and J. Kolen, 2009: Landscape Biography as Research Strategy: The Case of the South Netherlands Project, Landscape Research 34, 337-359. DOI: 10.1080/01426390802381185

• Gerritsen, F.A., 2008: Domestic times. Houses and temporalities in late prehistoric Europe, in A. Jones (ed.), Prehistoric Europe. Theory and Practice, Oxford: Blackwell.

• Gerritsen, F.A., A. De Giorgi, A. Eger, R. Özbal, T. Vorderstrasse, 2008: Settlement and landscape transformations in the Amuq Valley, Hatay. A long-term perspective, Anatolica 34, 241-314. DOI: 10.2143/ANA.34.0.2031568

• Gerritsen, F.A., 2007: Relocating the house. Social transformations in late prehistoric Northern Europe, in R.A. Beck (ed.), The Durable House. House Society Models in Archaeology, Carbondale, 154-174.

• Gerritsen, F.A., 2007: Familiar landscapes with unfamiliar pasts? Bronze Age barrows and Iron Age communities in the southern Netherlands, in C. Haselgrove, R. Pope (eds), The earlier Iron Age in Britain and the near Continent, Oxford, 338-353.

• Gerritsen, F.A., N. Roymans, 2006: Central Places and the construction of tribal identities. The case of the Late Iron Age Lower Rhine Region, in C. Haselgrove (ed.), Celtes et Gaulois, l’archéologie face à l’histoire, 4. Les mutations de la fin de l’âge du Fer, Glux-en-Glenne: Bibracte.

• Rensink, E., F.A. Gerritsen, J. Roymans, 2006: Archaeological Heritage Management, Nature Development and Water Management in the Brook Valleys of the Southern Netherlands, Berichten van de Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek 46, 383-399.

• Van Dommelen, P., F.A. Gerritsen, A.B. Knapp, 2005: Common places. Archaeologies of community and landscape, in P. Attema, A. Nijboer, A. Zifferero (eds), Communities and settlements from the neolithic to the early medieval period, BAR International Series 1452 (1), 55-63.

• Gerritsen, F.A., P. Jongste, L. Theunissen, 2005: Late Prehistorie, Pleistoceen Noord, Oost en Zuid en Rivierengebied, Nationale Onderzoeksagenda Archeologie, chapter 17 (version 1.0, www.noaa.nl), Amersfoort. Online version.

Professional activities

• Director of the Netherlands Institute in Turkey (NIT), in Istanbul. NIT is a subsidiary institute of the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) in Leiden. The NIT website provides information on its goals and activities;
• Project director of the Barcın Höyük Excavations in northwestern Anatolia, sponsored by NWO, since 2007 (project website);
• Member of De Jonge Akademie (DJA), a body of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), since 2005;
• Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Archaeological Dialogues (AD), published by Cambridge University Press (AD online), since 2000;
• Associate Editor of the annual Anatolica (published by the Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden), since 2006;
• Advisory board member Journal of Archaeology in the Low Countries (since 2009);
• esearch Associate of the Oriental Institute (OI), University of Chicago, 2005-2007.