Luc Amkreutz (1978) studied Prehistory at the University of Leiden. In 2004 he gained his MA with a study of the earliest farmers in the Netherlands (Linearbandkeramik) and their settlements along the river Meuse. In 2013 he was awarded his doctorate for his thesis ‘Persistent Traditions: A long-term perspective on communities in the process of Neolithisation in the Lower Rhine Area (6000-2500 cal BC)’, within the Malta Harvest project ‘From Hardinxveld to Noordhoorn – from Forager to Farmer’. He focused particularly on the socio-cultural changes in small-scale communities during the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture.
Since 2008 Amkreutz has been the curator of Prehistory at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities (RMO). Apart from numerous exhibitions, he worked on the 2011 new permanent exhibition ‘Archaeology of the Netherlands’, offering a fresh perspective on 300,000 years of the country’s history. He also co-created the exhibition ‘Cutting Edge Past’ in 2016 which ultimately led to the acquisition of the Ommerschans dirk in 2017. Amkreutz has conducted wide-ranging research including field projects into Early Neolithic farmers and the investigations of burial mounds. In 2016 he was awarded an NWO Museum grant to investigate the ‘Ancient Europe’ collection of the museum.
Currently, he is involved in researching the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Prehistory of Doggerland. In 2021 he worked on the ‘Doggerland. Lost World under the North Sea’ exhibition in the RMO and co-edited the accompanying book, which was shortlisted for the EAA Book Prize 2023. He is also part of the NWO funded ‘Resurfacing Doggerland’ project. In 2022 he co-edited a volume on the oldest Linearbandkeramik settlement of the Netherlands at Elsloo and works on several projects involving the Neolithic in the Lower Rhine area and Northwest Europe in general.
Amkreutz was appointed professor of Public Archaeology at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University in 2022.
David Fontijn (1971-2023) was professor in the Archaeology of Early Europe at the Faculty of Archaeology, University of Leiden, the Netherlands. His research dealt with the early agrarian societies of Europe from prehistory up until the early historical period, with a particular focus on the Bronze and (early) Iron Age, the exchange and deposition of metalwork and the archaeology of so-called ritual landscapes. He led the NWO-VICI project ‘Economies of Destruction’ investigating the puzzling destruction of valuable objects in Bronze Age Europe (2015-).
He graduated and wrote his PhD-thesis at Leiden University, both theses were marked cum laude and both were awarded the W.A. van Es Prize for Dutch Archaeology (1996 and 2003). His book ‘Sacrificial landscapes’ was also awarded the Praemium Erasmianum Study Prize (2003). He had a short-list nomination for best teacher of Leiden University in 2005 and won this LSR Teaching award in 2008. His project ‘Ancestral Mounds’ received the SIKB Prize for best archaeological research team in 2009 and a book resulting from it was received by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in 2012. Fontijn was senior research fellow in the excellence cluster ‘TOPOI’ in Berlin, where he worked at the Eurasia Department of the German Archaeological Institute DAI (2009-2010). From 2013-2016, he was director of Research at the Faculty of Archaeology.
Recent books are ‘Living near the dead’ (2010, editor and co-author), ‘Iron Age Echoes’ (co-editor with Q. Bourgeois and A. Louwen and co-author), ‘Transformation Through Destruction’ (co-editor with S. van der Vaart and R. Jansen and co-author), and ‘Beyond Barrows’ (co-editor with A. Louwen, S. van der Vaart, and K. Wentink and co-author). The volume ‘Death Revisited’ (co-editor with A. Louwen and co-author) came out in 2018, and he published an acclaimed book on deposition with Routledge entitled ‘Economies of Destruction’ in 2020. David Fontijn was working on a book offering a new perspective on the Bronze Age when he passed away in 2023.
