My name is Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof. I’m an academic archeologist who suffers from bipolar disorder and agoraphobic anxiety disorder, and today is the day I’m going to start openly talking about this. I truly wish that this wasn’t even a thing – the talking about these health problems. I Read more…
Since I’ve been getting a lot of messages recently from people asking what it’s like to be an archeologist and how to become one, I decided it is high time I devote a blog to how I became one! My story Ironically, I actually am not one of those people Read more…
On September 5th, 2018 I boarded a plane and flew south to attend the 24th European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) Annual Meeting in Barcelona, Spain. Every year archeologists take over a different city in Europe for a few days, and this was my third year in a row where I Read more…
I am honored and proud to say that on Friday 15-06-2018 I was awarded the Joseph Déchelette European Archeology Prize for my dissertation Fragmenting the Chieftain. This relatively new prize, named after internationally renowned scholar Joseph Déchelette (1862-1914) – one of the founders of protohistoric archeology in Europe – was recently Read more…
Last week I once again traveled abroad with Valerio Gentile to examine finds from an exceptional prehistoric grave. This time we went to Tongeren, which (apparently) is the oldest town in Belgium, and once was the only Roman administrative capital within the country’s borders (thanks Wikipedia). We stayed at a lovely interbellum house Read more…
Recently I traveled to the Archäeologisches Museum Frankfurt with Valerio Gentile to examine the finds from the Fürstengrab of Frankfurt-Stadtwald, an exceptionally rich Early Iron Age chamber tomb that yielded an extraordinary set of grave goods. As it is geographically the closest Hallstatt culture burial to those of the Low Countries (which Read more…
Early Iron Age (800–500 BC) elite burials in the Low Countries My fascination with Early Iron Age elite burials started during my Research Master when I was interning at the National Museum of Antiquities. For a year I assisted the curator of the Prehistory collection Luc Amkreutz to redo the Read more…