Quentin Bourgeois appointed Professor of European Prehistory

Appointment 28 July 2026

Archaeologist Quentin Bourgeois has been appointed Professor of European Prehistory as of 1 September 2026. His research focuses on major cultural phenomena that spread across vast areas of Europe during prehistory.

Pan-European developments

'Throughout my career, I have concentrated on large-scale cultural developments that in a sense reshaped the landscape of Europe,' says Bourgeois.'One of the most fascinating phenomena is the emergence of the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker cultures in the third millennium BC. Suddenly, people across enormous distances were buried in similar ways, and we find nearly identical graves along the banks of both the Volga and the Rhine. How could such developments arise in a time before modern communication technologies, or even writing? And we see this kind of large-scale cultural phenomenon repeatedly throughout prehistory, for example in the spread of agriculture, the construction of burial mounds, and the Urnfield culture.'

'Around 1000 BC, Urnfield cemeteries appear across a region stretching from Italy to Denmark and from Poland to England. Across vast distances, people treated their dead in remarkably similar ways. How do such patterns emerge, and how are they maintained?'

The emergence of burial mounds is a good example of a pan-European development

Generations

According to Bourgeois, archaeology offers a unique opportunity to investigate questions like these. Using large-scale databases, radiocarbon dating, and landscape reconstructions, he aims to study cultural developments over long periods of time. 'Today, we often view phenomena through a very short-term lens. Archaeology allows us to examine how developments arise and persist across generations.'

An important goal of his chair is to connect Dutch archaeological discoveries more closely to international research questions. According to Bourgeois, recent excavations and DNA research show that the Low Countries played a distinctive role in these developments. 'Recent research suggests that this region occupied a unique position in prehistory. Through collaborations with archaeological excavation companies in the Netherlands, we have been able to gather data that have elevated these discussions to a new level.'

Successful cultural phenomena

A key aspect of Bourgeois’ approach is that the focus is not on objects themselves, but rather on how people used them. In this respect, he builds on the work of his colleague David Fontijn, who passed away in 2024 and demonstrated that archaeological finds gain significance primarily when we examine the actions and ideas behind them. 'You can look at a bronze sword as an object, but it only becomes truly interesting when you investigate what people did with it. People may possess the same kinds of objects, but do they attach the same meanings to them? We can reconstruct this from the way such objects were treated. That, in turn, tells us something about which practices were widely shared and formed part of broader pan-European phenomena.'

Through his research, Bourgeois seeks to understand the conditions under which ideas, practices, and material forms develop into phenomena recognisable across large parts of Europe. 'That does not mean that such a phenomenon is inherently better or stronger. The real question is why some ways of doing things are adopted, adapted, and passed on in very different places, while others remain much more local.'