Ewoud Deschepper

Background

About Ewoud Deschepper

I am an archaeologist with a strong interest in the early historical period (Roman period - Middle Ages) in Northwestern Europe and the historical county of Flanders in particular. My research focuses on several aspects of rural settlement and society, and specifically on (long-term) dynamics in domestic architecture, settlement morphology and functions, the rural economy, population size and distribution, landscape exploitation and management, and socio-economic structures. I employ a range of different datasets, mainly archaeological fieldwork data (especially exploiting the recent boom in rural settlement evidence because of development-led archeology in Flanders), written and place name evidence, and palaeo-environmental data. I defended my PhD in Archaeology in February 2022 at Ghent University. This study focused on population dynamics, rural settlement, and domestic architecture in northern Francia (roughly modern-day northwestern Belgium) during the Early Medieval period (ca. AD This doctoral research was funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). After my PhD research, I studied medieval settlement development and village formation processes on the loamy soils of the Scheldt-Dender region of southern East-Flanders. This project was carried out together with SOLVA and is funded by Flanders Heritage Agency. On behalf of Flanders Heritage Agency, I wrote an updated version of the Onderzoeksbalans Archeologie (Archaeological State of the Art) for the early medieval period in modern-day Flanders. I am also passionate about communicating historical research to the wider public. As such, I am a part of the editorial board of Ex situ, a tri-monthly popularising periodical on archaeology in Flanders.