Johan Nicolay supports the NIhK team

Johan Nicolay, lecturer and researcher at the Groningen Institute of Archaeology (University of Groningen), is strengthening the research team at NIhK since January 2025. This is the first time that both institutes are directly linked by a joined appointment.

Johan has been working in the coastal area of the Netherlands and its direct hinterland since 2003. He was project leader of the large-scale excavations of Neolithic to Medieval settlement and grave features on a sandy ridge along the river Hunze near Midlaren (Drenthe), directed the excavation of Late-Medieval farmsteads in the peat and clay-on-peat area of De Onlanden (Drenthe), and documented extensive sections of raised settlement mounds (terps) with habitation layers from the pre-Roman Iron Age onwards in the salt-marsh area of Friesland. Moreover, he published a well-known book about the use and significance of gold and silver ornaments in the 5th- to 7th-century southern North Sea area (The splendour of power, 2014), and recently co-edited a two-volume book on the first-millennium history of the province of North-Holland, in the western Netherlands (North-Holland in the 1th millennium, 2023). In 2025 a research project started, focussing on the analysis and publication of two famous terp excavations in the salt-marsh area of Groningen: Middelstum-Boerdamsterweg (excavated 1970-1973, 6th-4th century BC) and Heveskesklooster (excavated 1982-1988, 1th century BC to modern times).

In Wilhelmshaven, Johan will continue his research on terps, in the Budjadingen salt-marsh area (https://nihk.de/en/research/current-projects/dwelling-mounds-and-beach-ridges-in-northern-butjadingen). Moreover, he will try to bridge the gap between current research in Groningen and Wilhelmshaven, by linking researchers and students on both site of the Dutch-German border – and by connecting different research traditions and often different ideas on the habitation history of the Dutch versus German coastal area.