Near Eastern Archaeology
At Ghent University research and teaching on the Ancient Near East started in 1920 by Louis Speleers. In 1953 he was succeeded by Louis Vanden Berghe (1923-1993), who directed the "Seminar of Near Eastern Archaeology" until 1989. Undoubtedly L. Vanden Berghe's interest in the past of Iran and his many fieldactivities there clearly oriented research by Ghent. His yearly expeditions between 1965 and 1979, in Pusht-i Kuh Luristan in the W-Iranian Zagros mountains, are world-wide known. "Luristan Bronzes" in numerous museums and collections can now, thanks to this research, be better situated in a cultural and chronological context.
In 1986 a new initiative was taken by Ernie Haerinck, who was appointed in 1991 as his successor. Research was started in SE-Arabia. In collaboration with London, Copenhague and Lyon II, excavations began at the first c. A.D. site of ed-Dur, in the Emirate of Umm al-Qaiwain, U.A.E. A team from Ghent University worked there yearly between 1987 and 1995. Not only religious, funerary and domestic architecture was discovered but also numerous small finds. The material testifies of the site's integration into long distance commerce between East and West. Excavations were also conducted at a large third mill. BCE burial in the Emirate of Ajman.
After completion of this project, research was initiated in 1998 on the islands of Bahrain with surveys of S-Bahrain and on Hawar Island. In 1999 and 2000 two large burialmounds were excavated at Shakhoura, in N-Bahrain. In 2009 a new five year project started at Mleiha (Emirate of sharjah).
Since October 2014, Ernie Haerinck has been succeeded by Joachim Bretschneider. In Syria he led the German excavations at Tell Beydar (Upper Mesopotamia - 3rd mill. BC) between 1993-2000 and since 1999 he has been leading the Belgian excavations at Tell Tweini (Northern Levant - focus on Late Bronze and Early Iron Age period (ca. 1400-800 BC)). From 2012 until 2014, he was director of the Belgian team of the Al-Ghat research project in Saudi Arabia (prehistoric and 1st mill. rock art). Furthermore, he is co-director of the excavations at Pyla-Kokkinokremos (Late Bronze Age (around 1200 BC)) in Cyprus since 2014, where a large number of scholars and students carry out interdisciplinary field research every year. Within the Ancient Near East research area, various research techniques are combined; from field prospecting, excavations, topographic surveying, geophysical prospecting and aerial photography over palynology, archaeobotany, archaeozoology and geoarchaeology to the study of collections with typochronological research, provenance analysis and interactive image systems.
Recent PhD's that were succefully finalised are those of Nadine Nys (2018), Francesca Porta (2019) and Hendrik Hameeuw (2020).