Geke Burger MA

PhD candidate

Area(s) of interest: Archeology, Dutch History, Early Modern History, Maritime History

Cohort/Start PhD: 2020-2021

The Scheurrak SO1 shipwreck in the maritime cultural landscape of the early modern Netherlands (1550-1650)

Leiden University
Promotor(es): Prof. Dr. Michiel van Groesen, Dr. Anita van Dissel, Dr. Martijn Manders
Aanstelling: vanaf september 2020

Geke Burger (MA) works as a PhD-candidate on the project ‘The Scheurrak SO1 shipwreck in the maritime cultural landscape of the early modern Netherlands (1550-1650)’. The project is embedded in both the Institute of History at the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Archaeology.

In this interdisciplinary project an archaeologist (Rik Lettany) works on the subproject ‘Innovatief in een conservatieve sector: ‘karveelbouw op zijn Hollands’ in een Europees perspectief’. Geke focusses on the subproject ‘Materiële geschiedenis en de moedernegotie’. The Scheurrak SO1 is the wreck of a late sixteenth-century vessel situated at the Wadden Sea close to Texel. The wreck – already excavated in the 1980s and 1990s, is almost preserved completely and over the years more than 5000 artefacts were found. Although quite some archeological and historical research has been done, this all remains fragmentary and an overarching comprehensive research is still missing. Geke focusses on the material culture of the maritime world between 1550 and 1650 that can be studied by looking at the variety of objects found, and also on the identification of the ship and its historical context.