Wijnand van der Sanden

Who is Wijnand van der Sanden?

Wijnand Antonius Bernardus van der Sanden is a Dutch archaeologist and prehistorian.

After graduating he studied history of arts and classical archaeology at the Radboud University Nijmegen, later he studied prehistory at the University of Groningen where he gained his doctorate in 1990 with a thesis on Dutch bog body finds from the Bronze age to the Roman period Mens en moeras: veenlijken in Nederland van de bronstijd tot en met de Romeinse tijd. From 1987 to 1997 van der Sanden was curator of the archaeological department of the Drents Museum in Assen. Since 1997 he has been the provincial archaeologist of the province Drenthe. Van der Sanden was a member of the Werkgroep Hunebedden from 1988 to 1999 and since 1988 has been editor-in-chief of the archaeological section of the Nieuwe Drentse Volksalmanak.

Since 1987 van der Sanden has been working on scientific studies relating to archaeologcial bog finds in the province of Drenthe and continued his studies in this area, which was also the subject of his doctorate thesis. In 1995, as a guest curator, he organised an special exhibition at Silkeborg Museum in Denmark on North-West European bog body finds and he edited the catalogue Vereeuwigd in het veen. Since 1990 van der Sanden has been working on the scientific verification of find records and archaeological finds of bog bodies in the Netherlands and Germany, especially from the nachlass of the German scientist Alfred Dieck. Wijnand van der Sanden has also published several works on Neolithic cultures of the Netherlands.